Good for you, sadie! I'll mark the same hours with thoughts of these survivors as well, standing in spirit with you all.
Here's how I'm gonna mark Reagan's passing
"As the nation honors the life and death of former President Ronald Reagan this Friday many of us will be remembering and mourning the deaths of the tens of thousands of victims of Ronald Reagan's policies during his administration."
http://indybay.org/news/2004/06/1684696.php
http://indybay.org/news/2004/06/1684696.php
1 - 17 of 17 Posts
Good for you, sadie! I'll mark the same hours with thoughts of these survivors as well, standing in spirit with you all.
I recommend reading Charlie Pierce's take on Reagan writing to Peggy Noonan from the pearly gates. It will hopefully help take the edge off:
"Peg. Please, for the love of God -- who's in the next hammock, by the way? -- shut the hell up.
"I'm not kidding. The adjustment's been tough enough. First thing, Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney come up and start asking me about kicking off the 1980 campaign down by the earthen dam there in Philadelphia, and about what all that stuff about states' rights was. I tried to be charming, and I used all the sunny optimism that disarmed even my political opponents, as you know. Mostly, though, they just wanted to talk, so we did. You'll be amazed at what I think is one of the best parts about this place. Two words: no grudges."
More here: http://www.prospect.org/web/printfri...iew.ww?id=7822
"Peg. Please, for the love of God -- who's in the next hammock, by the way? -- shut the hell up.
"I'm not kidding. The adjustment's been tough enough. First thing, Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney come up and start asking me about kicking off the 1980 campaign down by the earthen dam there in Philadelphia, and about what all that stuff about states' rights was. I tried to be charming, and I used all the sunny optimism that disarmed even my political opponents, as you know. Mostly, though, they just wanted to talk, so we did. You'll be amazed at what I think is one of the best parts about this place. Two words: no grudges."
More here: http://www.prospect.org/web/printfri...iew.ww?id=7822
I thought of you today between 2:00 and 3:30 my time............I put my energy into the group of you........
Earlier, I lit a candle and pulled out Sr Dianna Ortiz's book. I'm trying to finish it. It is difficult for me to do so.
Sister Ortiz was a nun from a Kentucky convent. She was in Guatemala teaching children to read when she was abducted one morning in 1989.
One of 10's of thousands abducted, one of the few to survive it .
Perhaps she spoke today?
Let me share from a review of her book:
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/11/19/ortiz/
We interfered in Guatemala for 50 years............
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/10/16/wilkinson/
Quote:
Central America -
I will not overlook this.............................
Not in my name.............................
Earlier, I lit a candle and pulled out Sr Dianna Ortiz's book. I'm trying to finish it. It is difficult for me to do so.
Sister Ortiz was a nun from a Kentucky convent. She was in Guatemala teaching children to read when she was abducted one morning in 1989.
One of 10's of thousands abducted, one of the few to survive it .
Perhaps she spoke today?
Let me share from a review of her book:
Quote:
| They force Ortiz, who entered the novitiate at the age of 17, to jerk them off and perform oral sex. They hurt her in other ways she won't describe. (The most chilling line in the book is in a different section, where Ortiz, casually explaining her fear of dogs, says, "Dogs were used in my torture in a way that was too horrible to share with anyone. Even now, I don't talk about that part of the torture.") And they put her in a pit of dying and dead people who've already been tortured -- including children. Most damaging of all, they position Ortiz's hands around a machete and force the machete, in her hands, into another torture victim, murdering the woman. *snip* But in the middle of Dianna Ortiz's torture, something distinctly inimical to torture happens. While her tormentors take a break, she finds herself alone in a room with a figure curled under a bloodstained sheet. When Dianna pulls back the sheet, there is a woman who "opens her eyes, and they are light brown in the black and blue of her face. Her teeth appear in the crack of her swollen lips. She is trying to smile. I catch a sob in my throat and gently take her hand. Her breasts have been cut, and maggots are crawling in them." The woman asks Dianna's name, and says "Dianna, be strong." They hold hands. "For what seems like hours, we hold on to each other." |
We interfered in Guatemala for 50 years............
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/10/16/wilkinson/
Quote:
| ......Chief among them in Guatemala was that you had the U.S. government presenting a very rosy picture of what was taking place there. The U.S. actually defended the Guatemalan government. There's a moment in the book when Ronald Reagan meets with [former president] General Rios Montt. Reagan described Montt as this man of great personal integrity at the same moment that Montt's elite group of soldiers was marching off to kill an entire village. Most of the people were buried alive in the village well. Children were killed by being grabbed by their ankles and slammed against walls, women were raped over the course of three days. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan told the press that Rios Montt was committed to democracy and was receiving a bum rap. This is something else that continued during the Reagan administration: You had human rights organizations trying to tell the world what was happening and their accounts were being refuted. We now know that the U.S. government knew full well the extent of the violence and who was responsible for it. |
Central America -
I will not overlook this.............................
Not in my name.............................
I heard Sister Ortiz speak on Australia's Radio National about a year ago. She still lives the nightmare of US sanctioned torture in Guatemala all those years ago.
may we never forget what happened all across Central America in our name........
may we never forget what happened all across Central America in our name........
oh my god. i'm shuddering and crying. that's horrific. it's equally horrific that this man who sat by and let it all happen is being HONOURED. sick. sick. thank you sadie, and el's 3 ones.
This is new to me, as I was a child at the time it was happening. Would someone mind giving a ilttle background and a sort of Readers Digest version of what happened in Central America? Why were these governments massacring their people?
The last link in my post above gives a short (very short) synopsis of some of the key players. The US has been involved in most of their rise to power.
(note: if you scroll to bottom of page you can see players from all around the globe. Wonder which one we should go after next in our war of "liberation" ? Certainly no lack of countries under oppressive regimes -------but, since we propped many of them into place, I find it as hypocritical as our "liberation" of Iraq)
The link to my second quoted paragraph above (which I just edited in) reviews a book written about Guatemala.
I found this while doing my research, really details the US involvement: http://www.webdelsol.com/AGNI/asp98jl2.htm
Quote:
I've written many time about the School of the Americas, a search will bring you much info. This torture training school was previously located in Panama, but they got wise and kicked us out. Now on American soil, Ft Benning GA. Many of the Central American troops/leaders were trained there or by agents from there....................
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/120.html
The more I read, the more I understand the worlds' disdain for the US.
And, the more I agree with it,quite frankly. We will reap what we have sown.
(note: if you scroll to bottom of page you can see players from all around the globe. Wonder which one we should go after next in our war of "liberation" ? Certainly no lack of countries under oppressive regimes -------but, since we propped many of them into place, I find it as hypocritical as our "liberation" of Iraq)
The link to my second quoted paragraph above (which I just edited in) reviews a book written about Guatemala.
I found this while doing my research, really details the US involvement: http://www.webdelsol.com/AGNI/asp98jl2.htm
Quote:
| The relationship began early. Recently declassified C.I.A. documents confirm that the C.I.A. engineered the 1954 coup that toppled the Democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman-and led to decades of military led governments. The documents included instructions on how to assassinate ten people in a conference room. The U.S. has trained more than sixteen hundred Guatemalan military personnel at the U.S. Army School of the Americas now in Ft. Benning, Georgia. In September 1996, the Pentagon released seven S.O.A. training manuals that were used in the 1980s to teach torture, extortion and murder. A Defense Intelligence Agency biographical sketch from 1967, when the S.O.A. was based in Ft. Gulick, Panama, stated that Guatemala's future defense minister, Hector Gramajo, studied counterinsurgency techniques. And in 1991 he gave the school's commencement address. Public disclosure of intelligence concerning human rights abuses in Guatemala remains rare. After Guatemalan guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca Vel Esquez disappeared and was tortured by the military in 1992, for three years U.S. officials told his wife, Harvard-educated lawyer Jennifer Harbury, that they had no information about him. But Harbury obtained a Defense Intelligence Agency document that said the U.S. Embassy officials in Guatemala were told of Bamaca's death in 1993. And in the spring of 1995, Congressman Robert Torricelli said that a Guatemalan officer, an S.O.A. graduate on the C.I.A. payroll, had been involved in Bamaca's execution. |
I've written many time about the School of the Americas, a search will bring you much info. This torture training school was previously located in Panama, but they got wise and kicked us out. Now on American soil, Ft Benning GA. Many of the Central American troops/leaders were trained there or by agents from there....................
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/120.html
The more I read, the more I understand the worlds' disdain for the US.
And, the more I agree with it,quite frankly. We will reap what we have sown.
Thank you El. The new link was helpful. I know a little about the SOA since many of my friends from SEAC went to protest it my Senior year. What I didn't understand was what the gvmn'ts were trying to repress.
And in many ways it is history repeating itself with Iraq.
Look into John Negroponte....for instance....He helped to cover up the brutality (the torture, including of women and children) in Central America and look what position he landed for himself- US ambassador to Iraq!
And if the new evidence that I have heard about from Iraq indeed documents what I have heard that it does...it's the same thing all over again.
Check this out:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/mov...es/000987.html
Sy Hersch is quoted at the above link:
"You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."
OK, so when is enough enough? I certainly have had enough, in fact it's truly getting to be gratuitous, what is happening in our names with our tax dollars.
It was bad back when, and it's just as bad today.
Joyce in the mts.
Look into John Negroponte....for instance....He helped to cover up the brutality (the torture, including of women and children) in Central America and look what position he landed for himself- US ambassador to Iraq!
And if the new evidence that I have heard about from Iraq indeed documents what I have heard that it does...it's the same thing all over again.
Check this out:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/mov...es/000987.html
Sy Hersch is quoted at the above link:
"You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."
OK, so when is enough enough? I certainly have had enough, in fact it's truly getting to be gratuitous, what is happening in our names with our tax dollars.
It was bad back when, and it's just as bad today.
Joyce in the mts.
It's truly amazing what humans will do to each other.
The links reinforce how dehumanization and hate have caused fear and revenge to run rampant.
The links reinforce how dehumanization and hate have caused fear and revenge to run rampant.
I'll be remembering all of this too. When I hear people say "But he had such a great sense of humor..." I want to scream!
I've been looking around for a suitable thread to post this to. I guess this is it! Not specifically about CA, but I think you all can appreciate it.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...604.DTL&nl=fix
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...604.DTL&nl=fix
1 - 17 of 17 Posts
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