Daily Headlines: June 5, 2014

* U.S.: Nearly one year after the U.S. Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, a recent poll of registered Hispanic voters found that most respondents are upset with both the Democrats and Republicans over their inaction to approve immigration reform.

* Colombia: Is Chiquita, a company that hired guerillas and paramilitaries in Colombia in the 1990s, trying to block a proposal that would “allow 9/11 victims to sue companies that fund terrorists”?

* Bolivia: The world’s highest cable car system was inaugurated last week some 12,00 feet above sea level and connecting the Bolivian capital of La Paz with a nearby city.

* Brazil: The Brazilian government announced a five-year moratorium on a type of catfish with the aim of cutting down on the killing of the Amazon pink dolphin.

Video Source – Associated Press via YouTube  (“Roman Catholic leaders made a rare visit to the border and celebrated Mass (last April) in the shadow of the fence separating the U.S. and Mexico, offering Holy Communion to people on both sides”.)

Online Sources – ABC News; The Latin Americanist; NBC News; Fox News Latino; Sydney Morning Herald

Chile: Widow of Charles Horman Seeks Justice

The widow of slain U.S. journalist Charles Horman said that she is continuing to seek for justice in his death that occurred days after the 1973 military coup d’état in Chile.

“(Charles Harmon’s) story is just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, and makes the cases against those responsible just as pressing,” wrote Joyce Horman in an article published in The Guardian on the fortieth anniversary of the coup.

She described how she “feared the worst” when she discovered that her husband disappeared on September 17, 1973 and the frustration against who hindered her efforts to locate her husband.

“In the days and weeks that followed, Charles' father, Ed Horman, and I sought the help of American officials. Rather than aiding our search, however, they inquired about our social circles, and asked if we had been "annoying" the Chileans… Charles was transformed from an American citizen who was entitled to protection, to a vulnerable and disposable threat to powerful forces” by U.S. officials,” claimed Joyce.

One month after he was kidnapped, Joyce was informed that Charles was executed by the military and was buried in the walls of the national stadium in Santiago.
 
The Horman case became the inspiration for the award-winning 1982 film “Missing” by the director Costa-Gavras.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government would deny any involvement in Horman’s death until 1999 when a declassified 1976 State Department memo admitted, “U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part.”  These and other documents were instrumental in the 2011 indictment in a Chilean court of ex-U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis.  Davis was accused of providing Chilean military intelligence agents with information on Horman and Frank Teruggi, another U.S. citizen killed in Chile in 1973.

Chilean officials last year approved the extradition from the U.S. of Davis but thus far it hasn’t been served.

“If and when that happens, it would set an important precedent for a US military officer to be charged by another country for the death of American citizens,” Joyce mentioned.

Weekend World Watch: Intervention

* Uganda: U.S. president Barack Obama announced that 100 troops and military advisers will be sent to Uganda in order to combat the Lord's Resistance Army rebels.

* Yemen: At least twelve people at an anti-government rally were shot and killed by “security forces and plain-clothed government loyalists.”

* U.S.: A federal judge recommended that Al-Qaeda pay $9 billion for “property loss, business interruption, and related damages, and attest that these damages were directly caused by the September 11th terrorist attacks.”

* Liberia: Opposition candidates threatened with withdrawing from the presidential elections due to alleged electoral fraud favoring recent Nobel Peace laureate and current president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Video Source –Via YouTube user AlJazeeraEnglish

Online Sources- Reuters, The Guardian, New York Daily News, BBC News

Today's Video: 9/11/01

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks gave us time to commemorate the nearly 3000 victims such as the father of Jillian Suarez, a New York City police officer who died at the World Trade Center (WTC). We also remember those like William Rodriguez, a janitor at the North Tower of the WTC whose quick action helped save dozens of lives. We cannot forget the hundreds of people who regardless of details such as immigration status unselfishly worked in rescue and recovery efforts. Lastly we honor those who have helped in the rebuilding process that cotinues in the decade since 9/11.

The feelings of loss and longing due to the attacks are perhaps best encapsulated in the following emotional video via StoryCorps:
http://youtu.be/7k8HHfJe828

Online Sources - WNYC, Azteca Noticias, La Nacion

Video Sources - Univision Nueva York, StoryCorps via YouTube

World Watch: Asleep at the switch

* Congo: A preliminary report from the U.N. found that peacekeepers “failed” to protect residents of an eastern Congo town where over 300 people were raped by militia troops.

* India: Organizers of the Commonwealth Games in India have come under scrutiny for a myriad of problems from shoddy construction of venues to the use of child labor.

* Iran: President Barack Obama blasted his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for suggesting that the U.S. government may have been behind the 9/11 attacks.

* Asia: Relations between Japan and China are expected to improve after Japanese authorities released a detained Chinese fisherman.

Image – BBC News
Online Sources- The Telegraph, Voice of America, AFP, CNN

Nuestro Cine: The other 9/11

This past Saturday was the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. Several events were held nationwide including in New York where over 3000 people died when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

While most people in the States associate September 11th with the tragedies in 2001, that date has a different significance for some Chileans. On that day in 1973 the Chilean military carried out a coup d'etat against the government led by Salavdor Allende. Over 3000 people marched in Santiago on Saturday in order to "pay homage to the victims of the military dictatorship" under Augusto Pinochet Others, however, view Pinochet's legacy in a more positive light and defended the coup. Opinions differ in Chile over whether the coup was justified but September 11,1973 was a key date in that nation's history.

"The Battle of Chile" was a critically acclaimed documentary filmed in three parts by Patricio Guzman. Filmed in 1975, 1976, and 1979, the movie examined the conditions that led to the coup against Allende as well as the deep social and political divisions before and after the golpe. The following clip from Guzman's film shows the military onslaught against the Chilean presidential residence, the military junta's first post-coup televised address, and the start of the infamous crackdown against government dissidents.

Online Sources - BBC News, Press TV, NPR, Icarus Films, YouTube

World Watch: 589 and counting

* China: The official death toll of a 6.9-magnitude earthquake is at 589 while rescuers keep struggling to find any remaining survivors. (Check this out if you wish to help Chinese relief efforts).

* U.S.: Attorney General Eric Holder has not eliminated the chance that accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could be tried in New York.

* Britain: A local department store apologized and withdrew sales of padded bikinis made for girls.

* Italy: The country’s Supreme Court rejected gay marriage by calling requests for such arrangements “not admissible” and “unfounded.”

Image – New York Times (“The rubble near a destroyed building after an earthquake at Jiegu Town in Yushu county, a Tibetan autonomous prefecture in western Qinghai Province of northwest China on Wednesday.”)
Online Sources- BusinessWeek, ABC News, Huffington Post, BBC News, CNN

Weekend World Watch: Trial and error?

* U.S.: Controversy has erupted after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the criminal trial of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be held in New York City.

* China: At least forty people have died and thousands were left homeless in areas of China including the capital of Beijing as a result of heavy snowfall.

* Ethiopia: “Ethnic-Somali rebels” have reportedly killed a "significant number" of Ethiopian troops and taken over several towns.

* Iraq: British officials are looking into allegations of over 30 new cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq since 2003 including rape and torture.

Image – Guardian UK (“The rubble of the World Trade Center smolders after the 9/11 terrorist attack.”)
Online Sources- The Telegraph, Reuters, BBC News, Los Angeles Times

Maegan’s thoughts on 9/11

Note: The events of September 11th have caused us to feel a wide wave of emotions from anger and sadness to hope and remembrance. Earlier today, former contributor Maegan la Mala expressed her viewpoint on the 9/11 anniversaries here in the U.S. and in Chile. Her thought-provoking post was originally published in VivirLatino and reproduced here with her permission.

I almost feel like I’m obligated to write something today about 9-11 and frankly, I’m tired of the date. It’s exhausting on so many levels since the combination of numbers can be multiplied, added, subtracted and divided in so many ways. It’s a date that carries real physical weight and reaction in my muscles and bones. I can feel it settling, heavy in my gut.

I survived 9-11-01. Not in some abstract way but in a real sitting in a subway car underground in downtown Manhattan for hours as smoke and fire rose above. My mother survived 9-11-01, feeling the World Trade Center reverberate from the impact of a plane, she managed to lead all of her employees to safety. It was the second time she survived an attack on the WTC.

Pero I also have to sit down with my hijas, half Chilenas, and talk about their relatives that did not survive 9-11-73 or the 17 years of U.S. sponsored military dictatorship that followed. It is why the family of my younger daughter came to the United States. It is why the family of my older daughter remain active in Chilean politics in the southern part of that country.

Pero given the current political climate, with undocumented immigrants used as throwaway compromises in health care reform and with comprehensive immigration reform played as a waiting games while people are killed because of what they look like, how they speak, and where they are assumed to come from, I think of the undocumented today.

It wasn’t too long ago that the undocumented were blamed for 9-11-01 while denying that I wonder what happened to those families, the families of the undocumented that once had a bill introduced to help them stay in the U.S. . Have they been detained, deported? Do we remember them today?

Image- 911-911movie.com (The sites of violence – the World Trade Center in New York City 9-11-2001 and Palacio de La Moneda in Santiago, Chile – 9-11-1973. From the animated short film 9-11/9-11.”)
Online Sources- VivirLatino, GovTrack.us

Relief for 9/11 immigrant relatives

The U.S. government has eased some of the red tape facing the families of illegal immigrants who died during the 9/11 attacks. Lawyers for approximately the relatives of 25 illegal immigrants said that they are eligible to receive monies from the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund yet have had trouble collecting them due to fear of deportation. As Gothamist noted:

The legal reprieve will not be extended to illegal immigrant family members who have criminal records, ties to terrorism, or deportation orders that were already in effect at the time of the attacks…

Homeland Security's Stewart Baker said the family members will be allowed to provide biographical and personal information regarding their family situations without providing their names. The reprieve is meant to give lawmakers and lawyers an opportunity to gather information about this group of people in order to possibly grant them permanent legal status.

Sources- Gothamist, International Herald Tribune

Daily Headlines: September 13, 2007

* Another name to add to the list of 9/11 conspiracy theorists: Fidel Castro.

* Some people take this whole “North American Union” b.s. a little too seriously.

* Paraguay’s government declared a state of emergency for thousands of acres of forestland decimated by wildfires.

* Brazil's economy grew at its fastest pace in three years according to government figures.

* Follow-up: The U.S. Senate voted 74-24 to block a pilot program permitting Mexican trucks to travel on U.S. highways.

Sources- Guardian UK, Snopes.com, BBC News, Bloomberg, Monsters & Critics, The Latin Americanist

Image- Guardian UK (“Smoke billows from the Pentagon in Washington after (the 9/11) attack”)

Daily Headlines: September 12, 2007

* In retaliation for strict U.S. visa rules, Bolivia’s government will obligate U.S. tourists visiting the Andean country to obtain visas.

* U.S. government to illegal immigrant: “Thanks for volunteering to the 9/11 rescue efforts. Now get ready to be deported.”

* Spanish authorities arrested a con man who duped dozens of Cuban exiles into buying false plane tickets to the island.

* Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is promoting biofuels in Sweden as he continues a tour of Scandinavia.

* Opposition politicos in Mexico are increasing the pressure against a tax reform bill pushed by President Felipe Calderon.

Sources (English)- Monsters & Critics, CNN, Bloomberg

Source (Spanish)- El Diario/La Prensa

Image- Jobs and Visas

Weekly Debate: 9/11 – 1973 and 2001

In terms of tragedies the date September 11^th is most closely associated with the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the U.S. Nothing can erase the images in our collective conscience on that day; whether it is recalling the skyscrapers falling, seeing people jump hundreds of feet to their death, or the acrid smoke rising into the sky. As we observed one year ago, the consequences of those attacks have been far reaching and have led to major social, economic, and political changes in the U.S. as well as around the world.

Yet lost amongst the grief and commemoration of the incidents in 2001 is that on this day in 1973 Chile’s democratically elected government was toppled in a coup led by Augusto Pinochet. President Salvador Allende was one of thousands who died during the insurrection and the recently-deceased Pinochet would become Chile’s leader for sixteen years.

The effects of the coup would be felt in Chile and the Americas; for some the coup was needed and the new government signaled the start of economic growth and stability for Chile:

“Emilio Humarez, a self-proclaimed “Pinochetista”, was a member of the extreme right-wing political party, Patria y Libertad, when Allende won the election in 1970. During that time, his mother was national secretary of the Christian Democrat Party, which came to oppose Allende during his presidency.

Humarez claims that he and many others with similar political beliefs, suffered harassment and violent threats from leftist radicals during Allende's presidency.

When asked if the violence of the military coup was justified, Humarez answered, ‘Yes, I saw so clearly that we needed a change. In the years of Allende we were terrified. When Pinochet arrived we were very relieved.’”

For others like Alvaro Acevado the coup was the beginning of a dark period of repression, suffering, and injustice:

“Our neighbours and us celebrated after we knew what happened, but my grandfather was a socialist doctor, who spent all of his life working in poor rural areas. He told my mother, "There is nothing to cheer about, soon you'll regret this coup". He died from cancer a week later.

After all these years and having spent all my youth under Pinochet, I know he was right. My parent's generation was lost. No matter what their political creed was at that time, illusions, dreams and friends died in 1973. And the wounds still hurt us.”

Several questions come to mind in retrospect of the events six years ago in the U.S. and in 1973 in Chile:

• Who is most to blame for the events of those days?
• Could they have been avoided or where they inevitable?
• What lessons have we learned from those two days?
• Are coups justifiable? Was the 1973 coup right?
• Can coups be classified as “revolutions” despite their support not coming from the grassroots levels?

What do you think?

Please feel free to leave any concerns, comments, and/or replies to this post via the comments section. If you wish, you can also vote in our poll located on the sidebar to the right.

Your opinion counts!

Image (left)- BBC News (“In New York, the families of those who died after two planes ploughed into the World Trade Center paid their respects once more”)

Image (right)- La Tercera (Chilean president Michelle Bachelet lays flowers at the memorial for Salvador Allende)

Sources- BBC News, Australian Green Left, The Latin Americanist, International herald Tribune, Monsters & Critics