“As the 40th anniversary of the death of Argentinean-born revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, murdered in Bolivia on October 9, 1967, on the orders of the CIA, arrives, there is increasing evidence that his spirit of struggle against injustice continues to get stronger in Latin America.Five left-wing Latin American governments used the United Nations’ September 25-October 3 General Assembly meeting to slam US imperialism and corporate control of the world economy — the very things Che died fighting against — insisting these two things threatened to destroy the planet. Representatives of the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua attacked the hypocrisy of the US government, and demanded changes to the global capitalist system that puts profits before people’s needs and the environment.”
Che Guevara's legacy lives on in Latin America by Stuart Munckton
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/10/che-guevaras-legacy-lives-on-in-latin.html
“Beyond the sound and fury of its conquest of Iraq and campaign against Iran, the world’s dominant power is waging a largely unreported war on another continent – Latin America. Using proxies, Washington aims to restore and reinforce the political control of a privileged group calling itself middle-class, to shift the responsibility for massacres and drug trafficking away from the psychotic regime in Colombia and its mafiosi, and to extinguish hopes raised among Latin America’s impoverished majority by the reform governments of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.”
Latin America: the hidden war on democracy by John Pilger
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2008/04/latin-america-hidden-war-on-democracy.html
“On Sept. 11, 1973, Pinochet's forces attacked the Chilean presidential palace. Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president, died in the palace, apparently by his own hand, because he was unwilling to surrender to the assault that demolished Latin America's oldest, most vibrant democracy and established a regime of torture and repression.”
South America: Toward an Alternative Future by Noam Chomsky
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/01/south-america-toward-alternative-future.html
“Remember the “ownership society,” fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? “We’re creating…an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property,” Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush’s greatest legacy, remembered “long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.” Yet in Bush’s final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society’s undertaker.
Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around the world. The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market–a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension–they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic.”
Disowned by the Ownership Society by Naomi Klein
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2008/02/disowned-by-ownership-society-by-naomi.html
“It is clear from this inundation of personal stories of abuse and retribution against ordinary Americans that a network of criminal behavior and intention is catching up more and more mainstream citizens in its grasp. It is clear that this is not democracy as usual — or even the corruption of democracy as usual. It is clear that we will need more drastic action than emails to Congress.The people I am hearing from are conservatives and independents as well as progressives. The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police state no one is safe.
I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven soldiers wrote op-eds critical of the war — in The New York Times; three are dead, one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become a whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers’ money: shot in the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a critique of the war: shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq — taken hostage FROM the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept without recourse to a lawyer in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks — and scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors before being ejected from the country.”
American Tears by Naomi Wolf
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/10/american-tears-by-naomi-wolf.html
“Torture works,” an American special forces major - now, needless to say, a colonel - boasted to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. It seems that the CIA and its hired thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq still believe this. There is no evidence that rendition and beatings and waterboarding and the insertion of metal pipes into men’s anuses - and, of course, the occasional torturing to death of detainees - has ended. Why else would the CIA admit in January that it had destroyed videotapes of prisoners being almost drowned - the “waterboarding” technique - before they could be seen by US investigators?”
Torture Does Not Work, as History Shows by Robert Fisk
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2008/02/torture-does-not-work-as-history-shows.html
Cochabamba was where the US Military Advisory Group, which was supervising the operation to capture and kill Guevara, established its HQ. And it was to Cochabamba that I fled from Camiri in 1967 after being briefly arrested, accused of being a Cuban guerrilla called Pombo, Che’s bodyguard and one of those who escaped the encampment and returned safely to Cuba. I holed up there till I could get a flight to La Paz and a connection to Europe via Brazil. Hearing me reminisce with Richard Gott, who was also defending humanity, and who had been the Guardian’s chief Latin America correspondent in 1967, a young Telesur journalist from Madrid said: ‘God. It’s just like listening to Spanish Civil War veterans returning to Spain."
London Review of Books Diary: Caracas/Cochabamba by Tariq Ali
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/06/london-review-of-books-diary.html
Quotes compiled by John/Togs Tognolini each week , check out Togs's Place.Com
Che Guevara's legacy lives on in Latin America by Stuart Munckton
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/10/che-guevaras-legacy-lives-on-in-latin.html
“Beyond the sound and fury of its conquest of Iraq and campaign against Iran, the world’s dominant power is waging a largely unreported war on another continent – Latin America. Using proxies, Washington aims to restore and reinforce the political control of a privileged group calling itself middle-class, to shift the responsibility for massacres and drug trafficking away from the psychotic regime in Colombia and its mafiosi, and to extinguish hopes raised among Latin America’s impoverished majority by the reform governments of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.”
Latin America: the hidden war on democracy by John Pilger
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2008/04/latin-america-hidden-war-on-democracy.html
“On Sept. 11, 1973, Pinochet's forces attacked the Chilean presidential palace. Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president, died in the palace, apparently by his own hand, because he was unwilling to surrender to the assault that demolished Latin America's oldest, most vibrant democracy and established a regime of torture and repression.”
South America: Toward an Alternative Future by Noam Chomsky
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/01/south-america-toward-alternative-future.html
“Remember the “ownership society,” fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? “We’re creating…an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property,” Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush’s greatest legacy, remembered “long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.” Yet in Bush’s final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society’s undertaker.
Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around the world. The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market–a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension–they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic.”
Disowned by the Ownership Society by Naomi Klein
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2008/02/disowned-by-ownership-society-by-naomi.html
“It is clear from this inundation of personal stories of abuse and retribution against ordinary Americans that a network of criminal behavior and intention is catching up more and more mainstream citizens in its grasp. It is clear that this is not democracy as usual — or even the corruption of democracy as usual. It is clear that we will need more drastic action than emails to Congress.The people I am hearing from are conservatives and independents as well as progressives. The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police state no one is safe.
I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven soldiers wrote op-eds critical of the war — in The New York Times; three are dead, one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become a whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers’ money: shot in the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a critique of the war: shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq — taken hostage FROM the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept without recourse to a lawyer in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks — and scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors before being ejected from the country.”
American Tears by Naomi Wolf
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/10/american-tears-by-naomi-wolf.html
“Torture works,” an American special forces major - now, needless to say, a colonel - boasted to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. It seems that the CIA and its hired thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq still believe this. There is no evidence that rendition and beatings and waterboarding and the insertion of metal pipes into men’s anuses - and, of course, the occasional torturing to death of detainees - has ended. Why else would the CIA admit in January that it had destroyed videotapes of prisoners being almost drowned - the “waterboarding” technique - before they could be seen by US investigators?”
Torture Does Not Work, as History Shows by Robert Fisk
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2008/02/torture-does-not-work-as-history-shows.html
Cochabamba was where the US Military Advisory Group, which was supervising the operation to capture and kill Guevara, established its HQ. And it was to Cochabamba that I fled from Camiri in 1967 after being briefly arrested, accused of being a Cuban guerrilla called Pombo, Che’s bodyguard and one of those who escaped the encampment and returned safely to Cuba. I holed up there till I could get a flight to La Paz and a connection to Europe via Brazil. Hearing me reminisce with Richard Gott, who was also defending humanity, and who had been the Guardian’s chief Latin America correspondent in 1967, a young Telesur journalist from Madrid said: ‘God. It’s just like listening to Spanish Civil War veterans returning to Spain."
London Review of Books Diary: Caracas/Cochabamba by Tariq Ali
http://togsplace.blogspot.com/2007/06/london-review-of-books-diary.html
Quotes compiled by John/Togs Tognolini each week , check out Togs's Place.Com
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