[Photo: Chiquibul Forest Reserve near Guatemalan border: top showing significant illegal clear cuts. while the bottom shows the beginnings of cutting. Credit: Tony Rath.]

=By= Jeff Abott

Across Guatemala, indigenous communities are organizing to challenge logging in the country’s vast forests. These communities are concerned with the impact that both legal and illegal logging will have on their watersheds and on the environment.

On June 15, concerned residents from the highland Ixil Maya municipality of Nebaj, Quiche staged a protest outside the municipal building to express their concern with the steady increase in trucks leaving town loaded with lumber.

The action was organized by residents and members of the Indigenous Authority of Nebaj in order to pressure the state authorities to strip the nine companies of their licenses to exploit timber on private lands. Residents raised concern over the fact that the deforestation affects everyone in the area.

Following the protest, concerned residents in the neighboring Ixil municipality of Chajul blocked and detained several trucks transporting lumber from the region for a number of hours. They demanded that the National Institute of Forests, or INAB, and the Division for the Protection of the Environment cease their operations and described the amount of lumber being taken from the local forests as “excessive.”

The Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj also issued a statement to INAB asking them to take action. But the government body declined to act and issued a statement that they are planting new trees for every one that is cut down. But this response did not satisfy concerned residents. “We went to the government bodies and issued statements asking to cease extending licenses for the exploitation of forests,” said Caty Terraza, the communications representative for the Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj. “They told us that they are sowing new trees, but how long will it take for those trees to grow to the same size as the trees that were there before?”

The companies involved in logging operations responded to the protests by significantly reducing the number of trucks transporting lumber from mountains. According to residents, however, it is unclear if this will continue into the future.

The mobilization of communities organizing to challenge logging operations in the highlands of Guatemala represent a growing concern over the destruction of the environment by companies. This challenge to logging companies reflects the understanding of communities of the vital part forests play in the protection of the water sources.

“The trees serve us and the animals,” Terraza said. “The loss of trees is drying up the aquifers. As a youth and as human, I must think of my future, and what I’m leaving my children.” Other communities held similar protests following the actions taken in the Ixil region. On June 26, a similar action was held in Santa Cruz del Quiche, the department’s largest city. Once again protesters were demanding that authorities stop issuing licenses for the exploitation of forests.

Increase in Logging across Guatemala

Guatemala is home to vast forests and jungles, but these regions have increasingly come under threat to deforestation. Critics blame uneducated campesinos clearing land for agriculture as one of the prime culprits. This does represent a threat, but there are other bigger threats, including lumber companies, and organized crime. The protest over logging industry activity in indigenous regions occurs at a time in Guatemala of increased concern over deforestation, and comes after the historic march for water in April 2016. Community representatives, nongovernmental organizations, and activists see a connection between forests and water. The Guatemalan government, too, maintains a campaign of reforestation, but this has not stopped companies from cutting down forests for the valuable woods, or the razing of forests by narco-traffickers in the northern department of Petén to build landing strips.

The Guatemalan Ministry of the Economy actively promotes the investment of companies interested in exploiting the country’s nearly 2 million acres of forests. Logging companies and lumber traders have taken an interest in the vast forests of the highlands of Guatemala, where they can find rare hard and soft woods, such as teak, mahogany, oak and the more common pine. These resources can fetch hefty prices at market.

The exportation of lumber and products produced from wood from Guatemala has increased significantly. From 2013 to 2014, lumber exports increased 8 percent, from $6.7 million dollars to $8.6 million. This continues the long trend of the increase in the exportation of lumber and wood products, such as furniture.

But this increase in export of lumber brings the companies into conflict with indigenous communities. According to research by Guatemalan environmentalist and researcher, Juan Skinner, the indigenous regions of the country on average contain more forest cover than the non-indigenous regions of the country.

A 2005 report that Skinner authored highlights that municipalities that are less than 25 percent indigenous have forest cover of around 12 percent. Whereas regions where the population is more than 75 percent indigenous have forest cover of around 35 percent. Guatemala’s Mayan communities are not alone in their concern with the destruction of forests. The southern Xinca community of Quesada, Jutiapa has long taken steps to protect the forests that make up their communal territory. The Xinca people are one of the many ethnicities that make up Guatemala. The rural community in the southern department of Jutiapa has held their forest as communal lands since the 1850s, with subsequent generations continuing to protect the mountain and the forests. Today the forests represent 80 percent of the more than 13,500 acres of land, with the remainder utilized for crops, such as coffee and maize. “Our ancestors left us the land and a group to protect our mountain,” said Jak Mardogueo Ogorio, a representative of the communities’ Directive Council. “All this was passed down through the generations, and we continue this today. In order to cut a tree down, you first must receive permission from the council.” The community leaders have also barred any large-scale logging operations. “We don’t permit companies to operate in our forests,” Ogorio said. “In past epochs companies tried to negotiate for access to the forests, but they always wanted more. How many years for a new tree to grow? Up on the mountain there are trees that you cannot encircle with three people. This is what we are protecting.”

Ogorio and the other 13 members of the community council work directly with the residents to build awareness of the importance of the forests through regular meetings, trainings and a campaign to build alternative cooking stoves that utilize less firewood. In August and September 2016, the council implemented the insulation of 400 cooking stoves in conjuncture with Utz Che, a Guatemalan non-governmental organization.

“This project allows us to slow deforestation because the stoves use less firewood, and there is no need for more and more wood,” Ogorio said. “These stoves allow us to protect our forests.”

Community leaders of Quesada maintain vigilance over the threat of forest fires on communal lands for which they receive funding from INAB. This has generated work opportunity in a region where there are not many options.

The community of La Bendición in the southern department of Esquitla is one of the few regions on Guatemala’s southern coast not dominated by sugar and African oil palm plantations. Residents of the small community were displaced by the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict. At the end of the war they negotiated the purchase of a 5,500-acre coffee farm through the Land Fund in 2000 for about $1 million, far more than the value of the land.

When the families already burdened by debt arrived in 2001, they were shocked to learn that the land was not in the state that the Land Fund had promised. There were no rivers, as they were promised there would be, and the high winds meant that their crops were damaged, and there was no paved road. But there was a forest that contained an aquifer. Disappointed residents quickly left the community, leaving just 53 families of the original 170.

Residents continued to be burdened by debt, despite the rich forests. In 2002, the Land Fund proposed a solution: sell the forest. “The same Land Fund that assisted us in purchasing our land was pressuring us to sell the forests in order to resolve the debt,” said Veronica Hernandez, a 47-year-old community leader. “But we refused because if we would have sold our forests, we would have been left without water, or with contaminated water.” Since refusing to sell the land to logging interest, the community has organized to maintain the forests, and protect them from illegal logging and from forest fires. The residents also hold regular community-wide meetings to work to train everyone on the importance of the forests, and to guarantee that no one goes up into the mountain to cut down the precious trees.

Residents have also worked to develop projects like those being implemented in Quesada in order to decrease their impact on the forests. These stoves and solar projects are received across the community to great success. The residents’ resolve to protect their forest was further strengthened following the April 2016 water march, when thousands of campesinos marched to demand the protection of Guatemala’s water sources.

“The April march was important for us and other communities along Guatemala’s coast,” Hernandez said. “It has strengthened our drive to protect the forests and the mangroves along the coast.”

Despite the fact that the community was able to hold off the lumber interests following the purchase of the land, Hernandez and the other residents maintain vigilance to guarantee that no company comes to exploit their land and forests. “These companies always come into our communities to rob from us,” Hernandez said. “They then leave us with all the costs.”

Back in Nebaj, the Indigenous Authority is working to replicate the awareness in La Benedición and Quesada over the importance of forests.

“We are trying to inform community members of the impacts of deforestation,” Terraza said. This sharing of information is strengthened through the local Ixil University, which works to build awareness, and bring higher education to the region.

“But we have to do more,” Terraza added. “We must struggle to guarantee that people know what the impacts are.”

The Indigenous Authorities of Nebaj stated that they are considering other actions, including the continuation of pressure on the state bodies, including INAB, the continuation of protests, and the direct action of blocking trucks transporting lumber.

“[INAB] is an institution of the state,” Terraza said. “If we have all these trees, then it is because we have protected the forests for some time; our ancestors also protected these forests. It should not be so easy for them to arrive and issue licenses to companies to exploit the forests.”

Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist based in Guatemala

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

=By=
Chris Hedges

Corporate colonization proceeding as planned.

A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning. The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United States. They took control of their nations’ own resources and destinies. They mounted the first successful revolt against neoliberalism and corporate domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.

But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned—the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups d’état; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an old, dirty game.

President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political asylum to Julian Assange four years ago and for closing the United States’ Manta military air base in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the 1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders, students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from the United States and logistical support and training from the Central Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.

Photo by daniel.julia

Latin America looks set to be plunged once again into a period of dictatorial control and naked corporate exploitation. The governments of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, which is on the brink of collapse, have had to fight off right-wing coup attempts and are enduring economic sabotage. The Brazilian Senate impeached the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. Argentina’s new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, bankrolled by U.S. hedge funds, promptly repaid his benefactors by handing $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The payout to hedge funds that had bought Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar meant that Singer’s firm made $2.4 billion, an amount that was 10 to 15 times the original investment. The previous Argentine government, under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had refused to pay the debt acquired by the hedge funds and acidly referred to them as “vulture funds.”

I interviewed Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs and human mobility, for my show “On Contact” last week. Long, who earned a doctorate from the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, called at the United Nations for the creation of a global tax regulatory agency. He said such an agency should force tax-dodging corporations, which the International Monetary Fund estimates costs developing countries more than $200 billion a year in lost revenue, to pay the countries for the natural resources they extract and for national losses stemming from often secret corporate deals. He has also demanded an abolition of overseas tax havens.

Long said the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and ’90s were profoundly destructive in Latin America. Already weak economic controls were abandoned in the name of free trade and deregulation. International corporations and banks were given a license to exploit. “This deregulation in an already deregulated environment” resulted in anarchy, Long said. “The powerful people had even less checks and balances on their powers,” he said.

“Neoliberalism is bad in most contexts,” Long said when we spoke in New York. “It’s been bad in Europe. It’s been bad in other parts of the world. It has dismantled the welfare state. In the context where we already have a weak state, where institutions are not consolidated, where there are strong feudal remnants, such as in Latin America, where you don’t really have a strong social contract with institutions, with modernity, neoliberalism just shatters any kind of social pact. It meant more poverty, more inequality, huge waves of instability.”

Countries saw basic services, many already inadequate, curtailed or eliminated in the name of austerity. The elites amassed fortunes while almost everyone else fell into economic misery. The political and economic landscape became unstable. Ecuador had seven presidents between 1996 and 2006, the year in which Correa was elected. It suffered a massive banking crisis in 1999. It switched the country’s currency to the U.S. dollar in desperation. The chaos in Ecuador was mirrored in countries such as Bolivia and Argentina. Argentina fell into a depression in 1998 that saw the economy shrink by 28 percent. Over 50 percent of Argentines were thrust into poverty.

“Latin America,” Long said, “hit rock bottom.”

It was out of this neoliberal morass that the left regrouped and took power.

“People came to terms with that moment of their history,” Long said. “They decided to rebuild their societies and fight foreign interventionism and I’d even say imperialism. To this day in Latin America, the main issue is inequality. Latin America is not necessarily the poorest continent in the world. But it’s certainly the most unequal continent in the world.”

“Ecuador is an oil producer,” Long said. “We produce about 530,000 barrels of oil a day. We were getting 20 percent royalties on multinationals extracting oil. Now it’s the other way around. We pay multinationals a fee for extractions. We had to renegotiate all of our oil contracts in 2008 and 2009. Some multinationals refused to abide by the new rules of the game and left the country. So our state oil company moved in and occupied the wells. But most multinationals said OK, we’ll do it, it’s still profitable. So now it’s the other way around. We pay private companies to extract the oil, but the oil is ours.”

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ong admitted that there have been serious setbacks, but he insisted that the left is not broken.

“It depends on how you measure success,” he said. “If you’re going to measure it in terms of longevity, and how long these governments were in power—in our case we’re still in power, of course, and we’re going to win in February next year—then you’re looking at, more or less in Venezuela 17 years [that leftist governments have been in power], in Ecuador now 10, and in Argentina and Brazil it’s 13.”

“One of the critiques aimed at the left is they’re well-meaning, great people with good ideas but don’t let them govern because the country will go bust,” he said. “But in Ecuador we had really healthy growth rates, 5 to 10 percent a year. We had lots of good economics. We diversified our economy. We moved away from importing 80 percent of energy to [being] net exporters of electricity. We’ve had big reforms in education, in higher education. Lots of things that are economically successful. Whereas neoliberal, orthodox economics was not successful in the previous decade.”

Long conceded that his government had made powerful enemies, not only by granting political asylum to Assange in its embassy in London but by taking Chevron Texaco to court to try to make it pay for the ecological damage its massive oil spills caused in the Amazon, where the company drilled from the early 1960s until it pulled out in 1992. It left behind some 1,000 toxic waste pits. The oil spills collectively were 85 times the size of the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico and 18 times the size of the spill from the Exxon Valdez. An Ecuadorean court ordered Chevron Texaco to pay $18.2 billion in damages, an amount later reduced to $9.5 billion. The oil giant, however, has refused to pay. Ecuador has turned to international courts in an attempt to extract the money from the company.

Long said that the different between the massive oil spills elsewhere and the Ecuadorean spills was that the latter were not accidental. “[They were done] on purpose in order to cut costs. They were in the middle of the Amazon. Normally what you’d do is extract the oil and you’d have these membranes so that it doesn’t filter through into the ground. They didn’t put in these membranes. The oil filtered into the water systems. It polluted all of the Amazon River system. It created a huge sanitary and public health issue. There were lots of cancers detected.”

Long said his government was acutely aware that Chevron Texaco has “a lot of lobbying power in the United States, in Wall Street, in Washington.”

“There are a lot of things we don’t see,” he said of the campaign to destabilize his government and other left-wing governments. “Benefits we could reap, investments we don’t get because we’ve been sovereign. In the case of [Ecuador’s closing of the U.S.] Manta air base, we’d like to think the American government understood and it was fine. But it was a bold move. We said ‘no more.’ We declared it in our constitution. We had a new constitution in 2008. It was a very vibrant moment of our history. We created new rules of the game. It’s one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It actually declares the rights of nature. It’s the only constitution that declares the rights of nature, not just the rights of man. We made Ecuadorean territory free of foreign military bases. There was no other way. But there are consequences to your actions.”

One of those consequences was an abortive coup in September 2010 by members of the Ecuadorean National Police. It was put down by force. Long charged that many of the Western NGO’s in Ecuador and throughout the region are conduits for money to right-wing parties. Military and police officials, along with some politicians, have long been on the CIA’s payroll in Latin America. President Correa in 2008 dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, commanders of the army and air force, and the military joint chiefs, saying that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.”

“There is an international conspiracy right now, certainly against progressive governments,” he said. “There’s been a few electoral setbacks in Argentina, and Venezuela is in a difficult situation. The media frames it in a certain way, but, yes, sure, Venezuela is facing serious trouble. There’s an attempt to make the most of the fall of prices of certain commodities and overthrow [governments]. We just saw a parliamentary coup in Brazil. [President Rousseff had been] elected with 54 million votes. The Labor Party in Brazil [had] been in power for 13 years. The only way they [the rightists] managed to get rid of it was through a coup. They couldn’t do it through universal suffrage.”

Long said that even with the political reverses suffered by the left it will be difficult for the rightists to reinstate strict neoliberal policies.

“You have a strong, disputed political ground between a traditional right and a radical left,” he said. “A radical left, which has proved it can reduce poverty, it can reduce inequality, it can run the economy, well, it’s got young cadres that have been [government] ministers and so on. I reckon that sooner or later it will be back in power.”

Corporate leviathans and the imperialist agencies that work on their behalf are once again reshaping Latin America into havens for corporate exploitation. It is the eternal story of the struggle by the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the powerless against the powerful, and those who would be free against the forces of imperialism.

“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara said. “We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Moti Nissani, PhD
No Planet – No People

Combined flag of Anglosphere nations.

Part IV of: Why does the Invisible Government Continue to Grow in Strength?

We must admit to ourselves that there are truly evil geniuses out there, and in most cases these characters have taken control of the power structure. — Mike Krieger

The Controllers

Juan O’Gorman, Enemies of the Mexican People

This article takes if for granted that the five major countries of the Anglosphere—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US—are governed behind the scenes by a small group of people.

This group in turn shapes historical events, accounts for the near-uniformity of these five countries’ political developments, and enjoys partial or full control of most countries of the world. As far as we can guess, this group is comprised of a few banking families and their allies in the information, corporate, military, intelligence, and “religious” worlds. This group goes by such names as the deep state, invisible government, bankers, oligarchy, Bilderbergers, and Directors. In this posting, following Aldous Huxley, I shall refer to the members of this group as the Controllers.

What is it that the Controllers are after? Why aren’t they content with what they already have? The best guess is that they are just as sick as the fictional Eddorians:

While not essentially bloodthirsty—that is, not loving bloodshed for its own sweet sake—they were no more averse to blood-letting than they were in favor of it. Any amount of killing which would or which might advance an Eddorian toward his goal was commendable; useless slaughter was frowned upon, not because it was slaughter, but because it was useless—and hence inefficient. And, instead of the multiplicity of goals sought by the various entities of any race of Civilization, each and every Eddorian had only one. The same one: power. Power! P-O-W-E-R!! (Doc Smith, Interplanetary, 1948)

David Rockefeller

The Mush-for-Brains Misconception

Most independent analysts take a dim view of the Controllers’ intelligence. Mao Zedong, for instance, referred to the USA as a paper tiger.

In a recent speech—one of his most outspoken yet—President Putin said:

“I am under the impression that our counterparts [read: America’s Controllers] have mush [porridge] for brains. They really have no idea what is going on in Syria and what they are trying to achieve.”

In other words, the people controlling the USA are poor strategists: They are stupid, do not understand what’s going on, and don’t have clear goals.

In his wonderful China Rising, Jeff Brown writes:

“Baba Beijing and the Chinese think in terms of decades and centuries. Americans can’t think past the 24-hour propaganda spin and quarterly stock reports.”

Likewise, A. Raevsky (“Saker”) believes that the Western leadership is clueless, lacking political vision and professionalism. The American empire is weak and delusional. Echoing Khruschev’s famous reply to Mao, “yes, a paper tiger, but with nuclear teeth,” Raevsky feels that the Russians are only worried about the West because it “does not take a great deal of intelligence to trigger a nuclear war.”

Dmitri Orlov et al. likewise talk about “a string of foreign policy and military disasters such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the Ukraine.”

A few more examples of this fundamental misperception appear below, in the Middle East section.

_________

Origins of the Mush-for-Brains Misconception

Alexander Zinoviev’s Self-Portrait: Thinking is Painful.

We shall shortly see that the Controllers have, over the past three centuries or so, made enormous strides: they have accumulated power and riches at a steady pace. This is nothing new. Taylor Caldwell, a novelist, saw this worrisome and astounding progress already in 1972:

“[The men of the Invisible Government] would continue to grow in strength, until they had the whole silly world, the whole credulous world, the whole ingenuous world, in their hands. Anyone who would challenge them, attempt to expose them, show them unconcealed and naked, would be murdered, laughed at, called mad, ignored, or denounced as a fantasy-weaver.”

Why would so many knowledgeable people ignore such a striking and obvious historical record? Let me offer two overlapping speculations.

One possibility involves a failure to appreciate the difference between wisdom and cleverness. The Controllers are indeed utterly clueless about the true meaning of our brief journey on earth. Anton Chekhov said:

“In reality, everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.”

The Controllers are manifestly oblivious to these higher aims. Subscribers to the mush-for-brains view confuse this profound lack of wisdom with stupidity.

This confusion is aided in turn by the seeming contradiction between the Controllers’ avowed and real goals. If you take them at their word, they are indeed idiots. If, on the other hand, you judge the success of their actions by their hidden agenda, they are evil geniuses.

_________

Why is this Mush-for-Brains Controversy Important?

Sun Tzu famously said, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” To retain their independence, Russians, Chinese, and revolutionaries the world over must indeed know their enemy. And they certainly must know whether they are confronting imbeciles or Machiavellians.

_________

The Historical Record

The key to the proper assessment of the Controllers is their achievements. Are they steadily nearing the goal they set for themselves (enslaving humanity)? Who is gaining ground, the Controllers or the rest of us?

The historical record, as Caldwell so clearly saw, is unequivocally in favor of the evil geniuses view. One could fill an entire Kindle with examples, but here a few scattered fragments should be enough to drive the point home.

_________

The Domination of Europe

The vicious brilliance of the Controllers at times defies belief. Thanks to bribes, assassinations, the recent variation of the Gladio conspiracy, extensive wiretapping and blackmail of who’s who in Europe, economic warfare (e.g., the FIFA “scandal,” the VW “scandal”), and control of the banks, corporations, media, and intelligence services of Western and central Europe, this continent is now a submissive colony of the USA. In the words of one historian, “the level of abjection passes belief.”

Likewise, the level of strategic planning needed to bring this abjection about, to force once-independent countries like Germany and France to betray the interests of their people in the service of the Controllers’ agenda, also defies belief.

_________

Latin America

As we speak, the Controllers are brilliantly undermining the progressive governments of Latin America, once more turning this entire area into their back yard. Thus, “a new gang of vassal regimes has taken-over Latin America. The new rulers are strictly recruited as the protégés of US financial and banking institutions. Hence the financial press refers to them as the ‘new managers’ – of Wall Street.”

The most brilliant move involves Argentina and Brazil, countries who maintained friendly relations with Russia and China and pursued, now and then, independent policies that served the interests of their own people. In Brazil, especially,

“A phony political power grab by Congressional opportunists ousted elected President Dilma Rousseff. She was replaced by a Washington approved serial swindler and notorious bribe taker, Michel Temer.

“The new economic managers were predictably controlled by Wall Street, World Bank and IMF bankers. They rushed measures to slash wages, pensions and other social expenditures, to lower business taxes and privatize the most lucrative public enterprises in transport, infrastructure, landholdings , oil and scores of other activities.

“Even as the prostitute press lauded Brazil’s new managers’, prosecutors and judges arrested three newly appointed cabinet ministers for fraud and money laundering. ‘President’ Temer is next in line for prosecution for his role in the mega Petrobras oil contracts scandal for bribes and payola.

“The economic agenda by the new managers are not designed to attract new productive investments. Most inflows are short-term speculative ventures. Markets, especially, in commodities, show no upward growth, much to the chagrin of the free market technocrats. Industry and commerce are depressed as a result of the decline in consumer credit, employment and public spending induced by ‘the managers’ austerity policies.

“Even as the US and Europe embrace free market austerity, it evokes a continent wide revolt. Nevertheless Latin America’s wave of vassal regimes, remain deeply embedded in decimating the welfare state and pillaging public treasuries led by a narrow elite of bankers and serial swindlers.”

The remaining bastions of semi-independence—Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba—are obviously being targeted now by the “witless” Controllers—while the Russians and Chinese are standing by, doing next to nothing.

China in particular, offers a puzzling example of shortsightedness. China is sitting on trillions of digital dollars that it is surely going to lose. Yet, it doesn’t occur to Xi and his colleagues to counter American aggression by creating their own version of the CIA, NGOs, and regime change outfits. It doesn’t even occur to them to give Venezuela an outright gift of at least $50,000,000,000, to help it ride the current American-engineered maneuvers and especially the masterstroke of manipulating the price of petrol downwards. China faces a far greater peril now than the Controllers-imposed opium addiction, and yet it nickel-and-dimes its few remaining potential allies.

_________

The Middle East

From its inception, America’s modeled itself after the vicious Roman Empire, not the far more civilized Democratic Athens or the Iroquois Confederation. Like the Americans, the Romans endlessly bragged about bringing peace to the world. The reality was diametrically opposite, as one eloquent victim explained: “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

In the Middle East, one independent, secular, country after another has come under American control. The countries whose leaders sought an independent path suffered genocide, neo-colonialism, devastating wars, sectarian and ethnic conflicts where hardly any existed before, millions of refugees, fragmentation, environmental contamination, and as a consequence, higher cancer, mutation, and birth malformation rates.

Most independent analysts feel that America (the Controllers’ chief enforcer of military and economic conquests) is failing in the Middle East. These analysts seem to believe American politicians and presstitutes when they say that their main goal is to bring peace and democracy to Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Yemen (the Americans of course prefer to keep silent about the vicious dictatorships of their Wahhabi friends). These analysts, as we have seen, believe the politicians when they say that their hearts go out to the long-suffering Arabs, that they really care about the ongoing genocides of Christians and everyone else.

In a typical naïve outburst, for instance, a Georgetown University professor asks: “Why did the United States fail in its war on Iraq?”Eric Margolis calls the Iraq War “the worst disaster for the United States since Vietnam.” Paul Craig Roberts sees America’s policies in the Middle East as a failure.

These astute commentators see the American-created desert, the devastation, the hate that America incurred in the Middle East and elsewhere, and they conclude that these policies have been a failure. But the consistent pattern of “failures” suggests that these “failures” are not an unintended consequence caused by the pursuit of other, loftier, goals. Rather, the “failures,” future conflicts, and chaos themselves are the goal.

Sharmine Narwani describes the real goals of the Controllers:

“A 2006 State Department cable that bemoans Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strengthened position in Syria outlines actionable plans to sow discord within the state, with the goal of disrupting Syrian ties with Iran. The theme? ‘Exploiting’ all ‘vulnerabilities’ [and suggesting, among other things, playing] ‘on Sunni fears of Iranian influence.

“In 2013, influential former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger openly advocated redrawn borders along sectarian, ethnic, tribal or national lines that will shrink the political/military reach of key Arab states and enable the west to reassert its rapidly-diminishing control over the region.”

As usual, Israeli strategists are more outspoken than their American counterparts. By 1982, they had already spelled out its goal of redrawing

“the Mideast into small warring cantons that would never again be able to threaten the Jewish state’s regional primacy. Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan.”

Thirty years later, that nightmare describes the world. Narawani warns:

“Arabs and Muslims need to start becoming keenly aware of this ‘small state’ third option, else they will fall into the dangerous trap of being distracted by detail while larger games carve up their nations and plunge them into perpetual conflict.”

Similarly, Russia, China, and humanitarians everywhere must become keenly aware that the Controllers are international grandmasters. Given the comparative naiveté of the people who oppose them, they almost always win.

_________

Former Members of the Warsaw Pact 

The “featherheaded” Controllers now manage, impoverish, and run roughshod over many former countries that had been part of the Russian alliance. Who would have thought, just 30 years ago, that the Americans would one day find a peaceful way of placing nuclear delivery vehicles in countries like Romania and Poland? Who would have predicted that they would ever again place German soldiers 100 miles from St. Petersburg?

_________

Other Nations

The Controllers manage most of the world’s countries. Their armies conquered Japan, Germany, and Italy—and never left. They stole parts of Mexico and Colombia, and turned most of Latin America into subservient, violence-ridden, colonies. Again and again, they assassinated patriotic leaders and replaced them with quislings willing to enrich themselves by serving their foreign masters. No people is safe from their regime change operations (including the American people), and no country—even traditional safe haven Switzerland—is safe from their financial blackmail.

_________

The Controllers’ Brilliant War on their Own People

Sadly, owing in part to the 1990s manufactured collapse of the USSR, America’s Controllers have acquired vastly more power and riches, while gradually relegating the American Constitution to a meaningless piece of paper (see Part I of this series). They, assassinated or brutally tortured their real and imaginary opponents, stole so much from so many to the point that America’s 20 wealthiest people now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, neglected America’s infrastructure, elevated self-serving mendacity to an art form, conducted a phony war on drugs, used these very drugs and an utterly broken justice system to turn the USA into an incarceration nation in which jailers enjoy a de facto license to kill, destroyed American industry, and converted a once-rich country to the “most bankrupt nation in history.”

Take as just one example the so-called bailout of Western banks. In reality, that was the biggest transfers of money (and hence power) in history—from the vast majority of the peoples of these countries to the Controllers.

The criminals who planned the 2008 crisis, the criminals who are deliberately undermining the world’s economies, were paid handsomely for their misdeeds. 

The money the bankers got, had Western governments chose to nationalize these banks instead of giving them the people’s money, could have worked miracles in improving the economic situation of the world’s people.

I must confess that I wouldn’t have thought it possible that anyone could perform such astounding hat tricks as “bailouts” and not have to contend with a revolution the following day. The Controllers had a deeper understanding of the power of propaganda and human nature.

_________

The 1990s Neo-Colonization of Russia and Its Aftermath: Four Trojan Horses

Throughout the 1980s, I studied the Russian-American standoff. And yet I failed to predict Russian naiveté, decency, inferiority complex, and the enormous damage inflicted on the Russian psyche by Stalin. I still find it hard to believe that the “dumb” Controllers were able, in the 1990s, to achieve the de facto occupation of Russia, sinking that once-powerful country into chaos, poverty, criminality, corruption, assassinations, organized crime activities, and social discord. Washington and its quislings were running—and deliberately ruining—the country.

Gratefully, the Americans eventually left—but only after leaving four Trojan horses behind.

_________

Trojan Horse #1: Western-Style “Democracy”

Instead of establishing real democracy, the controllers re-created Russia in their “democratic” image. Even at the best of times, such “democracies” do not represent the interests of ordinary people. Sooner or later, they are doomed to be taken over by psychopaths.

_________

Trojan Horse #2: Oligarchs and the Russian Economy

Another brilliant move on the part of the Controllers was the patronage and creation—from thin air—of the scourge of the Russian oligarchs. These “shysters basically stole Russia’s most valuable companies in the 90s, minting a small handful of mega-billionaires, while the rest of the country ate”—and is still eating—dirt. Very little has so far been done “to strip said shysters of their ill-gotten gains, and redistribute shares to the people.” As a result, unlike the much-maligned Soviet Union, Russia is plagued by vast income inequalities, poverty for the majority, inequality before the law, and unaffordable housing.

These oligarchs, “are still in full control of the Russian financial and banking sector, of all the key economic ministries and government positions, they control the Russian Central Bank and they are, by far, the single biggest threat to the rule of Putin and . . . to the Russian people and Russia as a whole.” Moreover, these oligarchs “connive to make Russia join the West as a junior partner.

Besides controlling the economy, the oligarchs corrupt everything they touch and provide a demoralizing proof that in Russia—as in the West—crime pays.

_________

Trojan Horse #3: Russia’s Central Bank and Constitution

It is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the following question to the wealth and liberty of a nation: Is its central bank private or public?

Here are two quotes (many more are available here), both underscoring the import of this question.

“The issue which has swept down the centuries, and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.”—John Acton (1834-1902)

The second quote provided a dire warning to the American people from the very start. William Pitt, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, said of the inauguration of the first privately-owned central bank of the United States under Alexander Hamilton:

“Let the American people go into their debt-funding schemes and banking systems, and from that hour their boasted independence will be a mere phantom.”

This is exactly what the Controllers accomplished, taking control of Russia’s Central bank. From that point to the present day, Russia’s boasted independence has been a mere phantom.

Controllers bearing gifts: The Central Bank of Russia

The most meticulous documentation of this paradoxical reality known to me comes from historian Nikolay Starikov’s Rouble Nationalization (you can read a book review here or freely download the entire English translation of the book here):

“The structure of today’s world is a financial one par excellence. Today’s chains consist not of iron and shackles, but of figures, currencies and debts. That’s why the road to freedom for Russia, as strange as it may seem, lies in the financial sphere. Today we are being held back from the progress at our most painful point—our rouble… Our rouble, the Russian currency unit, is—to put it delicately—in a way, not quite ours. And this situ­ation is the most serious obstacle to our country’s development. . . .

“Let us start with the simplest question—who issues roubles? This is easy—the Central Bank of Russia, also known as the Bank of Russia, has the monopoly on issuing the Russian national currency.

“‘Article 6. The Bank of Russia is authorized to file suits in courts in ac­cordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. The Bank of Russia is entitled to appeal to international courts, courts of foreign countries and courts of arbitration for protection of its rights. . . .

“The Russian economy does not have as much money as required for its proper operation but equal to the amount of dollars in the reserves of the Central Bank. The amount of roubles that can be issued depends of the amount of dollars Russia received for its oil and gas. That means that the whole Russian economy is artificially put in direct correlation with the export of natural resources. This is why a drop in oil prices causes a collapse of everything and everywhere. . . .

“An idea of a bank independent from the state was brought into the Soviet Union as a Trojan horse—through ‘advisors’, through those who had practical trainings at Columbia University, those who were recruited or simply betrayed their country . . .

“Among other things, it contains such amusing details as article 7: ‘Drafts of federal law and regulatory documents of the federal bodies of executive power concerning duties of the Bank of Russia and its performance shall be submitted to the Bank of Russia for approval.’ If you want to dismiss bankers through making amendments to the legislation—kindly submit the draft of the bill to them in advance. Otherwise, they might as well sue you for your legal mayhem in a court of Delaware . . .

“The second security level is the Constitution, as the ‘reformers’ shoved some words on the Central Bank and its status even into the Constitution. Article 75 (points 1 and 2) says that ‘the currency of the Russian Federation is the rouble’, and ‘issuing of money shall only be done by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation’, that ‘it performs independently from any other governing bodies.’ If you want to be surprised—have a look at Soviet Constitutions. Read the Constitution of the USA. You will find no mention of a bank that issues money independently anywhere, because such articles should not be a part of the main law of the country. What body issues the currency is a technical question, it is not fundamental for the country and its people. For the people it is not very significant, but it is a key issue for enslaving the country. That is why it was hastily dragged into the Constitution. And now this technical detail is there next to the fundamental rights of Russian citizens.”

Western control by proxy of Russian banking, finance, and the economy as a whole, has yet another sinister aspect. Prof. Michael Hudson and others underscore the fact that the USA has consistent, massive, balance of payment deficits with such countries as Russia, China, and Japan. Financialized and deindustrialized America buys real goods abroad and pays by running its printing press. Consequently, such countries accumulate the digital equivalents of billions or trillions of dollars.

They then use a good part of this money to buy U.S. treasury bonds. The net result of this convoluted, scarcely credible, process is straightforward: By financing the U.S. military and economy, these countries empower their own oppressors.

That is then one other legacy of the Controllers: They created a situation whereby Russia, while fighting for its very survival, finances its own military encirclement and the ongoing attacks on its economy and currency. Thanks to the powerful fifth column and alien constitution the Controllers bequeathed, Russia is “economically enslaved to the United States.”

Can witless people plan and execute such a coup?

_________

Trojan Horse #4: Information

Inside Russia too, the Controllers left behind another curious legacy: Hostile foreigners and their agents indirectly own some mainstream Russian media. And state-owned, independent, and private media are still afraid to tell the people of Russia and the world ugly truths about the West, still trying to curry favor with Washington and its Controllers, still often take the Controllers and their vassals at Langley and Washington at their word.

_________

Parting Words

The Controllers have been trying to subjugate Russia, its vast resources, and educated and creative people, for centuries. They tried direct or proxy wars, and so far failed. They tried nuclear brinkmanship, and they failed. They tried sleight of hand in the 1990s—and almost succeeded. They are resorting to blood-curdling brinkmanship now, and it remains to be seen whether this will lead to the conquest of Russia, its annihilation, or the destruction of humanity.

They are now resorting to military intimidation and economic warfare. They came close several times to turning Russia and China into vassal states, and they are now pursuing that goal, full steam.

They hope that one day soon they will have reached at long last their vision of the future: “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

The Controllers are engaged in a cross-generational undertaking. They are closest now to achieving their dream than any other empire in history has ever been. They could be the brightest bunch of psychopaths that ever lorded over humanity. If Russia, China, and revolutionaries everywhere wish to prevail, they must never underestimate their opponents. As well, they must level the intellectual playing field.

Moti Nissani

is an organic farmer (in Argentina), a former university professor (in the USA), a jack of many trades, and the compiler of  “ A Revolutionary’s Toolkit.”.

=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable

[huge_it_share]

Dispatches from
G a i t h e r
Stewart
European Correspondent • Rome

AMULET  A Political-Fantasy Novel by Roberto Bolaño
As read and admired by political novelist Gaither Stewart

I am reading for the first time the work of Chilean born writer, Roberto Bolaño. His novel, Amulet, set in a phantasmagoric Mexico City that, perhaps, also because it is Latin America’s biggest city, represents the entire crushed and tortured and imprisoned and murdered Latin America while also his characters are emblematic of the suffering and decimation of much of the best of the Latin American youth. Perhaps the author chose to highlight Mexico City, not only because of the massacre of Mexican students there in 1968, but also because he moved there as a teenager and lived there many years before moving to Spain and Barcelona where he died at 50.

This distinct novelist-fabulist, Roberto Bolaño, depicted in his  Amulet the systematic U.S. – organized political disasters (Operation Condor) in Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. Bolaño was a literary writer who attempted to correct official governmental history such as that of the Chilean revolution and its crushing by the counter-revolution of General Pinochet and Operation Condor, as well as the massacre of Mexican students by government police and army on Plaza Tlatelolco in Mexico City The narrator of this fable is the author’s dream-like Auxilio Lacouture who, when the riot police and soldiers arrive that day in 1968 and arrest everyone, hides in a stall in the women’s bathroom of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature in the National Autonomous University of Mexico where she remains alone and without food for thirteen days, eating only toilet paper until all hunger passes and with time becoming a Mexico City Legend. During those interminable days and nights on the cold tiles of the bathroom she dreams and imagines the characters and actions of Bolaño’s  fable about the young poets of Mexico City and Latin America.

Graphic by Merit Freeman

In the first chapter of AMULET, Auxilio, young herself and beautiful except for four (unexplained) missing front teeth, who calls herself “the Mother of Mexican Poetry” relates of herself after her arrival in Mexico from Uruguay or perhaps from Buenos Aires (facts here are always elusive and uncertain) when she goes to work for free for two older and famous Spanish poets, although she has no money, no official work, and often no fixed residence:
“… Auxilio, leave those papers alone (the two Spanish poets would say), woman, dust and literature have always gone together….” How right they are, dust and literature from the beginning …and I conjured up wonderful and melancholy scenes, I imagined books sitting quietly on shelves and the dust of the world creeping into libraries, slowly, persistently, unstoppably, and then I came to understand that books are easy prey for dust….However heroic my efforts with broom and rag, the dust was never going to go away, since it was an integral part of the books, their way of living or of mimicking something like life.”

Unexpectedly I stayed longer than anticipated in chapter one, in fact I moved backwards when early on I saw that this book requires much repetition and much interpretation. For this is a very political novel, a criminal act for many readers for which crime I have lost friends,  though Bolaño covers it up well, not only with brilliant writing but through his strange heroine Auxilio Lacouture, the “mother of Mexican poets” some of whom she sleeps with and who do not mention her missing four front teeth. The author disguises the political also with love and with travel. One day Auxilio leaves Montevideo for Buenos Aires across the Rio de la Plata and then travels on to Mexico, her destiny she says, in search of two Spanish poets living in Mexico City.

“Maybe it was madness that impelled me to travel. It could have been madness. I used to say it was culture. Of course culture sometimes is, or involves, a kind of madness. Maybe it was a lack of love that impelled me to travel. Or an overwhelming abundance of love. Maybe it was madness…..

“You run risks. That’s the plain truth, and even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny’s whims.”

In Bolaño’s prose, objects come alive and play major roles. Auxilio becomes obsessed by a vase her god-like poet stares at. She stares at it too and comes to fear and hate it and wants to smash it on the floor but is afraid to touch it, certain it contains hell in its depths. Over the years,  lost books, dead poets, then love dissolve into the air of Mexico City and perhaps become part of the dust that blows through the city.

“The dust cloud reduces everything to dust. First the poets, then love, then, when it seems to be sated and about to disperse, the cloud returns to hang high over your city or your mind, with a mysterious air that means it has no intention of moving.”

Bolaño works in images. Mostly created by his fantastic characters, some independently and deeply buried in the at times arcane text. He uses repetition to make his point. The two chief images are the massacre of Mexican students on Mexico City’s Plaza Tlatelolco by the state (during which thirteen days Auxilio remains locked in her stall in the women’s bathroom on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico) and the crushing of the democratically elected leftwing Chilean government of Salvador Allende in Santiago by Operation Condor/General Pinochet. Repetition, Repetition.

They are all young, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old, the “young poets of Mexico City” with whom Auxilio, the Mother of Mexican poets, hangs out all night in the bars of Colonia Napoles and Colonia Roma and in chic Colonia Polanco or in the Zona Rosa or she visits someone  in very elegant Coyoacan  as well as in many of the city’s “incurable streets”,  but above all in the bars like the author’s  Café Quito on Avenida Bucareli and they are poor but they are not all really Mexican. They are all of Latin America. They are positive youth, the best, in contrast with the other group hanging out in the same bars, referred to as “old, failed journalists” and Spanish exiles, friendly people but not good company, all engaged in the same old conversations such as their stories about Fidel and Che  Guevara during their stay in Mexico. No one is satisfied with the answer of a very sexy female character named Lilian who was very beautiful when she was younger, who says she slept with Che and that in bed “he was normal.” “Lilian was Mexican …. It was said that in the course of her drawn-out youth she had many fiancés and admirers. Lilian, however, was not interested in fiancés, she wanted lovers, and she had them too.”  She liked nothing better than lying in bed with a man and moaning with pleasure till dawn. That too is Bolaño. El Che in bed could not possibly be just normal. Other accents enter the individual stories, Uruguayan or the Porteño of Buenos Aires or Chilean and mentions of Ecuador and Honduras and Nicaragua and Panama. The reader gradually comes to realize that these poor, bedraggled, homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, faceless, nameless, unidentified youth are the lost generation(s) of all of martyred Latin America.

On October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres  Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City, Mexican riot police and military forces massacred hundreds of  students and civilians to suppress the growing student protest movement centered at the National Autonomous University of Mexico—ten days before the opening of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City which were not to be disturbed. These events were part of the Mexican Dirty War when the government used all its forces to suppress political opposition. Thousands were arrested, beaten and tortured by security police. There is no consensus on how many were killed that day in the plaza area. At the time the government and the mainstream media in Mexico claimed that government forces had been provoked by protesters shooting at them. But official documents made public since 2000 suggest that the snipers had been employed by the government. If this makes you think of Kiev, Ukraine, in 2014, it is because it is the same U.S.- organized Dirty War. Same formula. Same dead youth. False flag in 1968. Estimates of a death toll from 30 to 300 contrasts with eyewitnesses reporting many hundreds dead, their bodies stacked in huge piles.

As Auxilio hallucinates in her stall-home in the women’s bathroom of the National Autonomous University of Mexico Faculty of Philosophy and Literature she ruminates about her relationship with the children of the sewers, from the darkest, dirtiest places of Mexico City, i.e. of all of Latin America and to the small voice that is her herself she launches into a series of connected-disconnected prophecies of the reincarnation of the greats of literature: “These are my prophecies, Vladimir Mayakovsky shall come back into fashion around the year 2150. James Joyce shall be reincarnated as a Chinese boy in the year 2124.Thomas Mann shall become an Ecuadorian pharmacist in the year 2101. For Marcel Proust, a desperate and prolonged period of oblivion shall begin in the year 2033. Ezra Pound shall disappear from certain libraries in the year 2089….

“Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045….Virginian Woolf shall be reincarnated as an Argentinean fiction writer in the year 2076. Louis-Ferdinand Céline shall enter Purgatory in the year 2094. Paul Eluard shall appeal to the masses in the year 2121.” And the writer-Auxilio-Mother of Latin American Poets continues through some Italian and French literary greats before coming out with predictions like: “Framz  Kafka shall once again be read underground throughout all of Latin America in the year 2113….

“The case of Anton Chekhov shall be slightly different: he shall be reincarnated in the year 2003 (the year of Bolaño’s death in Barcelona), in the year 2010, and then in the year 2014. He shall appear once more in the year 20181. And never again after that.”

The connection of these two pages of literary prophecies with the rest of the text of this book is a riddle. Do the names selected have significance? Do the years for their reappearance, underground life, the alterations in their vocation have meanings? I myself will leave these considerations to others and pass on to the novel’s final and for me most meaningful passages.

In the story’s last and most powerful scene, in which Auxilio has imagined she is descending from the frozen heights of snow and ice of Machu Pichu toward the valley, abandoning  her stall in the women’s bathroom of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, thinking of the legend borne on the winds of 1968 that circulated among the dead and survivors, and that now everyone knew that “when the university was occupied in that beautiful, ill-fated year, a woman remained on the campus …”. And when people said that I was the mother of Mexican poetry I would say that “I’m nobody’s mother, but I did know them all, all the young poets, whether they were natives of Mexico City, or came from the provinces, or other places of Latin America …and I loved them all.”

And Auxilio endured and left the immense regions of snow and ice and saw a great valley opening below. And then she saw that at the end of the valley it opened into a bottomless abyss. The valley led straight into the abyss, And then she saw a shadow spreading and advancing from the other end of the valley and after a while she realized that the advancing shadow was “a multitude of young people, an interminable legion of young people on the march to somewhere….

“I also realized that although they were walking together they did not constitute what is commonly known as a mass: their destinies were not oriented by a common idea. They were united only by their generosity and courage…..

“They were walking toward the abyss. I think I realized that as soon as I saw them. A shadow or a mass of children, walking unstoppably toward the abyss….

“And I heard them sing. I hear them singing still, faintly, even now that I am not in the valley, a barely audible murmur, the prettiest children of Latin America, the ill-fed and the well-fed children, those who had everything and those who had nothing, such a beautiful song it is, issuing from their lips, and how beautiful they were, such beauty, although they were marching deathward, shoulder to shoulder….The only thing I could do was to stand up, trembling, and listen to their song … right up to the last breath, because, although they were swallowed by the abyss, the song remained in the air of the valley….

“So the ghost-children marched down the valley and fell into the abyss. Their passage was brief. And their ghost-song or its echo, which is almost to say the echo of nothingness, went on marching….

“And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure.

“And that song is our amulet.”

Gaither Stewart

Our Senior Editor based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press.

=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable

Andre Vltchek
Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist

March of Silence, May 21, 2016. Montevideo,Uruguay. © Andre Vltchek

As Mr. Vltcheck notes in this article, the “March of Silence” started as a remembrance of Uruguay’s disappeared under the civic-military dictatorship from 1973-1985. However, over the years it has become a broader remembrance of the disappeared across Latin America under brutal governments supported by the United States. This remembrance has contemporary footings as assinations of people considered “troublesome” to the powers that be (including US interests) are still occurring. These people range from journalists to labor activists, to indigenous leaders fighting for the lands and rights of their peoples. For example, The Clinton-backed Honduran Regime is Picking off Indigenous Leaders (2016); Berta Cáceres; and Death Stalks Colombia’s Unions. -rw

They were marching shoulder-to-shoulder, young and old, in absolute silence. Some were carrying small placards with names and photos of their loved ones, who disappeared four decades ago, during the pro-Western dictatorship here in Uruguay.

The entire center of Montevideo came to a standstill. Blocks and blocks of this marvelous city were literally inundated by the river consisting of human bodies.

Then, in front of the municipality, the silence was broken. A huge screen above the square lit up, and photographs of each man and woman who disappeared, suddenly emerged, one by one. When no photograph was available, a gray contour was projected on the white screen. Two voices, one of a man, and one of a woman, were reading names of the victims. And the crowd chanted back: “PRESENTE!”

[metaslider id=124789]

One block further, the “March of Silence” ended. The national anthem of Uruguay resonated all over the old city. Some people stood still, in silent salute and reverence, others fell into each other’s arms, weeping openly and uncontrollably.

Uruguay, at least to some extent a socialist country, was still standing. All over the continent, left-wing governments were collapsing, under the terrible weight of constitutional coups as well as the media and business manipulations of the ‘elites’ and the Empire. Argentina was crying out in pain under the neoliberal President Mauricio Macri, while the great Brazilian nation, fooled, cheated and spat at, was just slowly and painfully waking up after the long night of a shameless coup that brought a corrupt lackey and snitch of the West – Michel Temer – to the Presidency.

But even in Uruguay, the old establishment was still clinging to power, blocking many essential changes, resisting and silencing the calls for justice.

Around 300 people disappeared in the small Uruguay during the extreme right-wing dictatorship (1973-85), of course much less than in Argentina or Chile.

“But that is enough. Enough!” An old lady who was holding a placard with the image of her sister told me. “300 are much more than enough. We want justice and truth. Because without those, there could be no real progress in this country.”

One of the posters read:

AGAINST IMPUNITY OF THE PAST AND PRESENT! TRUTH AND JUSTICE!

Other placards were much more explicit:

NO FORGETTING NO FORGIVENESS!

And even one stronger one:

THEY ARE INSIDE US, SHOUTING ‘REVOLUTION!’

“This is so impressive, so touching!” whispers my friend Lilian Soto, a leading Paraguayan left-wing politician and former MP and Presidential candidate. “I have already participated in this march on several occasions. I really love this country!”

I briefly speak to my colleague and comrade from TeleSur, who is covering this great event for all of Latin America and the world.

This year, after what happened in neighboring Argentina and Brazil, the march is gaining great symbolism. Cuban flags are flying, not far from the great Uruguayan Cinemateque, where my film about the US-backed 1965 coup in Indonesia had been shown many years ago. In front of the statue of Socrates, a man poses, proudly, wrapped in a huge Brazilian flag.

“Those flags were just personal statements by several individuals,” explains my friend, Uruguayan journalist and activist Agustin Fernandez. “The demonstration was still mainly about the crimes committed by our past dictatorship.”

Mainly, yes; but those men and women I spoke to, on the night of 21 May, in the center of Montevideo, appeared to be extremely concerned about the macabre developments shaking the neighboring countries.

In Latin America, as well as all around the world, everything is clearly inter-connected. The West, the Empire, are behind almost all the horrid crimes against the humanity.

A great Greek film director, Costa Gavras, depicted the Uruguayan dictatorship and the Yankee involvement (a story of a US diplomat and expert in torture, who was kidnapped by the Uruguayan resistance group Tupamaros), in his iconic film “State of Siege” (1973).

The US and the West were behind the disappearances and torture in this historically peaceful and democratic country… as they were responsible for the horrors of fascist dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere… and just as they are accountable for the recent ‘events’ in Argentina and Brazil.

Who said that the US was ‘too busy in the Middle East, while also provoking Russia and China?’ Who said that ‘the Empire finally closed its eyes, stopped looking south?’ It never does! It never sleeps!

Walking down the streets of Montevideo, photographing and talking to the marching masses, on several occasions I felt like shouting:

“Hugo Chavez Frias!”

And:

“Salvador Allende Gossens!”

Expecting to hear those loud, clear and proud voices replying to me: “PRESENTE!”

Article first published by RT.

Andre Vltchek

Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable