Link to source: http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2010/03/the-rwanda-hit-list/

My experience with the Great Lakes region of Africa began in 1991. While traveling in southern Uganda I was witness to the shooting of an unarmed man by unknown assailants believed to be rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front. Since then I have worked tirelessly to uncover the truth about the war in the Dem. Republic of Congo (DRC) and 'genocide' in Rwanda.

I began researching and reporting on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda in 1995; I began reporting on events in Zaire (DRC) in 1996. In 2000 at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania I explored the case of Major Bernard Ntuyahaga, ex-Forces Armée Rwandaise (ex-FAR), a celebrated Hutu 'genocide ringleader, who I personally met there.

Of course, I presumed the man guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide, prior to any trial, according to the prevailing climate of institutionalized suspicion and assumptions of guilt against all Hutu people, and certainly against all officials of the former government under President Juvenal Habyarimana. Major Ntuyahaga committed genocide. We all knew it. Why bother with a trial?

Link to source: http://www.helium.com/items/306028-corrections-corporation-of-america-cca-us-concentration-camps

Corrections Corporation of America or CCA is the largest owner of privatized correction and detention centers in the USA. With a total of 63 facilities and a capacity of 67,000 beds in 19 states CCA specializes in inmate services for the federal government. Its motto is "Excellence in Corrections".

In the summer of 2006 the T. Don Hutto Residential Center (owned by CCA) opened its doors in Taylor, Texas. T. Don Hutto was originally a privately owned state prison, converted or "remodeled" to hold illegal immigrants seeking asylum, ending the catch and release program of the past it houses about 375 prisoners, approximately 200 of which are children. Many inmates are of Hispanic origin but reportedly include large numbers of Africans, Asian and Europeans. CCA will receive 2.8 million dollars from for housing these inmates.

Link to source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18064

The Empire will stop at nothing to find mechanisms and techniques to achieve its final objective, and we cannot disregard the possibility of a military conflict in the near future. If the US places Venezuela on the “terrorist list” this year, we could be on the verge of a regional war.

Latin America has suffered constant aggressions executed by Washington during the past two hundred years. Strategies and tactics of covert and overt warfare have been applied against different nations in the region, ranging from coup d’etats, assassinations, disappearances, torture, brutal dictatorships, atrocities, political persecution, economic sabotage, psychological operations, media warfare, biological warfare, subversion, counterinsurgency, paramiliary infiltration, diplomatic terrorism, blockades, electoral intervention to military invasions. Regardless of who’s in the White House – democrat or republican – when it comes to Latin America, the Empire’s policies remain the same.

In the twenty-first century, Venezuela has been one of the principle targets of these constant aggressions. Since the April 2002 coup, there has been a dangerous escalation in attacks and destabilization attempts against the Bolivarian Revolution. Although many fell beneath the seductive smile and poetic words of Barack Obama, it’s not necessary to look beyond the past year to see the intensification of Washington’s aggressions against Venezuela. The largest military expansion in history in the region – through the US occupation of Colombia – the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet of the US Navy, as well as an increased US military presence in the Caribbean, Panama and Central America throughout the past year, can be interpreted as preparation for a conflict scenario in the region.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/israeli-settlement-expansions-continue.html

Currently, around 500,000 Jews reside illegally in over 120 West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements as well as dozens of outposts. Their numbers grow daily despite occasional pledges to curtail or slow them, the latest last November when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10 month freeze, calling it a move to "help launch meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians."

Never mind Israel's history of past peace process futility because all previous efforts were more pretense than real, or as some Palestinians say - How can they negotiate in good faith without a willing partner? They've never had one and don't in Netanyahu, an extremist hard-right zealot.The same holds for a settlement freeze, just rhetoric with no substance, especially given Israel's plan to make all Jerusalem a Jewish city, according to Netanyahu. During a May 22, 2009 Jerusalem Day ceremony (commemorating the city's 1967 reunification), he declared:

"United Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/brutalizing-palestinian-children.html

As an isolated incident, it would be appalling and criminal. As a regular occurrence, it's state-sponsored terrorism against defenseless children, subjected to barbarism by Israeli soldiers committing crimes against humanity to crush their will for wanting to live free on their own land - what Westerners take for granted; what Palestinians since 1948 haven't had, and since 1967, under military occupation denying their very humanity.

Nora Barrows-Friedman does heroic reporting for Pacifica Radio's KPFA Flashpoints Radio and as an activist/teacher/journalist in Occupied Palestine during regular visits. On March 8 on the Electronic Intifada, she wrote about Amir al-Mohteseb, a 10-year old Hebron child, arrested, detained, and savagely beaten after his 12-year old brother Hasan endured similar treatment a week earlier.

On March 7 at 2AM, "Israeli soldiers (broke) into (his) house, snatch(ed) Amir from his bed, threatened his parents with death by gunfire if they" interfered, took him down the stairwell, and brutally beat him causing internal abdomen bleeding, requiring overnight hospitalization. "In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half."

Link to source: http://liberalpro.blogspot.com/2010/03/wea-are-all-accountable.html

Enough is enough. This nation has gone so far beyond the rule of law and reason that it is almost impossible to know where to start to bring in order to right all of the terrible wrongs we have perpetrated in the last fifty years. We have seen the American military machine wreck havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan. We not only occupied Iraq, but we have poisoned the soil and made the place uninhabitable because of our use of depleted uranium in our munitions. We can deny that depleted uranium is harmless, but the facts coming in about the deformed babies being born in Iraq says otherwise. We must all come to the conclusion that not only was the invasion of Iraq a crime against humanity, but turning Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia into a radioactive wasteland are even larger crimes against humanity.
We must hold not only the government of this country accountable, but the facts are that knowing what we know now, we are all accountable. You may ask where I am getting my information from. Let me share my sources with you. When you click these links, please understand that some of these sources show very explicit photographs of the effects of depleted uranium on newborns. These pictures are disturbing, but no less disturbing than turning a blind eye to what we have done to these innocents in the name of “liberating” these people.

Link to source: http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/10/proud-to-be-an-embarrassment

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/business-of-water-privatizing-essential.html

In her 2002 book titled, "Water Wars," noted author, social activist, and ecologist Vandana Shiva called privatizing water:

-- ecological terrorism;

-- a global water crisis;

-- along with overuse, waste and pollution, it can cause "the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth;"

-- the road to "an ecological crisis with commercial causes but no market solutions; (they) destroy the earth and aggravate inequality; the solution to an ecological crisis is ecological, and the solution for injustice is democracy;" and

-- water rights are natural and "usufructuary....water can be used but not owned;" it belongs to everyone as part of the commons as an essential "basis of all life....under customary laws, the right to water has been accepted as a natural, social fact."

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/russell-tribunal-on-palestine-barcelona.html

Launched on March 4, 2009, "The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) seeks to reaffirm the primacy of international law (to settle) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (by focusing on) the enunciation of law by authoritative bodies (and) address(ing) the failure of application of law even though it has been so clearly identified. (It begins where the International Court of Justice) stopped: highlighting the responsibilities arising from the enunciation of law, including those of the international community, which cannot continue to shirk its obligations."

RTP is separate from but inspired by the BRussell Tribunal, named after famed philosopher, mathematician, and anti-war/anti-imperialism activist Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), who warned over 50 years ago:

"Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war" and live in peace, because there's no other choice.

Established in 1967, the BRussell Tribunal investigated Vietnam war crimes, more recently Iraq war ones and Bush administration imperialism continued under Obama. RTP exposes decades of Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians, calling for an end to colonialism, occupation and apartheid and for justice, equality, and peace.

Link to source: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hayden

It's been a long winter for the peace movement. Waiting for Obama has proved fruitless. The Great Recession has strengthened Wall Street and diverted attention from the wars. The debate over healthcare still won't go away and has demoralized progressive advocates. Given a chance to exit from Afghanistan when the Karzai election proved to be stolen, President Obama escalated anyway, but also promised to "begin" exiting almost before an opposition could mobilize at home.

Representative Dennis Kucinich will step into the crosswinds this week and force the House of Representatives to wake up, pay attention, and vote up or down on the Afghanistan war. The Kucinich initiative at least will reveal where Congress stands. Whether it will energize the peace movement for upcoming March protests or beyond is unpredictable.

Kucinich, interviewed along with other members of Congress by The Nation last week, is introducing a so-called privileged resolution requiring the House to hold a three-hour debate this coming Wednesday, followed by a vote on the Afghanistan war. The vote is expected to authorize the war, but passage of Kucinich's initiative would require a withdrawal in thirty days. If the president rejected such a decision, the withdrawal would be delayed until the end of 2010, nine months from now.

"It's time to force a debate," Kucinich says. "It's not enough to slow-walk the end of the war." On Friday Kucinich had seventeen co-sponsors for his measure.

The public is angry. Why should the public pay for the bankers mistakes. Iceland blogger Halldor Sigurdsson

Who cleans up the mess when ignorant, greedy bankers rack up massive debt then go broke? The people of Iceland made a strong statement Saturday. The sins of big bankers and government regulators shouldn't fall on the citizens. By a 93% to 2% margin, they voted down a proposal requiring them to cover bad debt incurred by one of the nation’s oldest and largest banks. Covering the debt would have cost Iceland's 317,000 citizens around $17,000 each.

Iceland's national referendum was the first opportunity for the people of any nation to vote directly on who pays when the financial elite fail.

As citizens voted, Iceland's Prime Minister was dismissing the importance of the vote and promising to negotiate a payment scheme obligating citizen subsidies for bad debt created by Iceland's beyond-bad bankers.

Icelanders are struggling with a collapsed economy. Businesses are failing at a startling rate, unemployment is soaring, and the prospects for the future are simply not there. Yet the British and Dutch governments demand that their swindled citizens receive compensation from beleaguered Icelanders. Where were the British and Dutch central banks and politicians while their citizens were being fleeced? Aren't the rulers of these countries aware that the failed Icelandic bank was owned by wealth investors, not the citizens?

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/targeting-israeli-apartheid.html

Reports like the Cape Town, South Africa-based Human Sciences Research Council's (HSRC) May 2009 one titled, "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid" highlight what many others understand, including former UN Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, John Dugard, stating in January 2007:

"Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). At the same time, elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law."

Article 7(1)(j) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls apartheid a crime, stating:

"For the purpose of this Statute, (a) 'crime against humanity' means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

The crime of apartheid" includes murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, arbitrary arrest, illegal imprisonment, denial of the right to life and liberty, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and other abusive acts imposed by one group on another.

Link to source: http://home.clara.net/heureka/gaia/du.htm

July 2001

Don't be misled by the term 'depleted uranium'. Like spent fuel' from civilian reactors, depleted uranium is highly toxic and carcinogenic and has a half life of some 4.4 billion years. -- Alice Slater

NATO is trying to save Kosovars, but if they leave Kosovo filled with depleted uranium, it's not a happy situation. They [would be] poisoning them. If you are going to use depleted uranium in warfare, it's better to drop an atom bomb and kill 30,000 people instantaneously rather than killing them over 20 or 30 years. -- Hari Sharma

Desert Storm veterans along with the people of Iraq and Kuwait were victims of one of the latest military experiments on human beings. I believe that the ignorance was culpable and criminal. -- Rosalie Bertell

We came across a lot of destroyed vehicles and dead bodies as we moved up through Kuwait. Nobody ever told us to stay away from the vehicles that might have been contaminated with depleted uranium. -- Victor Suell, radio operator, US Marines

In Iraq in 1997, I discovered monstrous births of deformed babies and old men who, amid the wreckage which the Allies had blasted with our uranium shells, told me of daughters with breast and liver cancer. -- Robert Fisk

There is now overwhelming evidence that use of depleted uranium is killing peacekeepers from Allied countries now based in the Balkans. It is killing the soldiers who went into the Balkans when the Serbs withdrew, and it is killing the people there who we went to war to supposedly protect. It is also killing the ordinary people of Iraq who have to suffer the triple pressures of a despotic regime, international sanctions, and death from depleted uranium. Using depleted uranium is clearly immoral, but it is also against international law and UN conventions which prohibit the use of weapons which cause indiscriminate deaths and injury. -- Caroline Lucas MEP

In the Navajo creation story, the people were warned not to touch a yellow substance called 'cledge', to leave it in the ground. 'Cledge', now known to be uranium, was from the underworld. The Navajo people had a choice, yellow 'cledge' or yellow corn pollen. The yellow corn pollen posses the positive elements of life, if 'cledge' were to be released from the ground it would bring forth the serpent. The serpent would bring into the world evil, death, and destruction.

Link to source: http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair07042003.html

July 4, 2003

The war on Iraq couldn't have come at a more dire time for Iraq's beleaguered farmers. Spring is harvest time in the barley and wheat fields of the Tigris River valley and planting time in the vast vegetable plantations of southern Iraq.

The war is over, but the situation in the fields of Iraq continues to rapidly deteriorate. The banks, which provide credit and cash, have been looted, irrigation systems destroyed, road travel restricted, markets closed, warehouses and grain silos pillaged.

To harvest the grain before it rots in the fields Iraqi farmers need more than eight million gallons of diesel fuel to power Iraq's corroding armada of combines and harvesters. But most of the fuel depots were incinerated by US bombing strikes. There's no easy way to get the fuel that remains to the farmers who need it most and no desire to do so by the US forces of occupations.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/barry-c-lynns-cornered-new-monopoly_04.html

Lynn is director of the Markets, Enterprise, and Resiliency Initiative, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and author of "Too Big to Fail" about the dangers of monopoly capitalism.

He expands on the threat in his newest book titled, "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," explaining today's peril given the power of predatory giants.

They control governments, the courts, war and peace, dominant information sources, and essential services, including health care, air and water, what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, and school curricula to the highest levels. They own genetic code patents, basic human life elements to be commodified the same as toothpaste, tomatoes or toilet paper

Omnipotent, they plunder recklessly, ruthlessly at our expense. They're private tyrannies, endangering humanity, basic freedoms, environmental sustainability, and planetary survival. Without exaggeration, they're unaccountable, unchecked "weapons of mass destruction."

Link to source: http://obrag.org/?p=18322

Tens of thousands of Californians will join protests all around the country on Thursday, March 4th to protest budget cuts in education and social services.

Six regional protests in California are scheduled, including events in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the East Bay, Sacramento and San Diego. Additional actions include walkouts, teach-ins, picketing and rallies at dozens of campuses around the State.

Following rallies at UCSD, SDSU, and City College, area protesters will gather at the east side of Balboa Park (near Central Cultural) at 3 pm for a short rally (yours truly has been asked to speak), followed by a march through downtown to the local offices of the Governor. The protests are expected to last into the evening.

Demands that will be voiced for San Diego’s Day of Action on March 4th include:

** A halt to layoffs and pay cuts and restoration of full funding to education with a guarantee of free access to all citizens and non-citizens, k-12 up to graduate level.

**Stop the privatization of education and increase public participation in decision-making processes through the democratic election of teachers, parents, and students to run institutions in the interests of society as a whole.

**Progressive taxation on corporations and the wealthy to fully fund social services that sustain community, including the right to health care and living wages for California’s workers.

**Tax payer money for education, not for prisons, wars, and corporate bailouts.

The March 4th actions are just the beginning of what promises to be the biggest spring of protest since the early 1970’s.

Link to source: http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/pentagon%E2%80%99s-full-spectrum-dominance-facing-headwinds/

According to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has derided European contributions to NATO in the past, the public and political oppositions in Europe to military action represent an impediment to operations in Afghanistan and, as the New York Times referred to the policy of which Afghanistan is a small part, “the alliance’s broader security goals.”¹

(From Wikipedia): Full spectrum dominance refers to an open Pentagon policy, whereby a joint military complex strives to control all elements of the battle space using land, air, maritime and space based assets. Full-spectrum dominance encompasses air, surface and sub-surface, as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies the subordination of all opposition forces, rendering their ability to confront the Pentagon and its allies wholly inhibited.

Harold Pinter referred to the policy as he accepted the 2005 Nobel Prize award:

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum dominance’. That is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

“The demilitarization of Europe—where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it—has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st century,” Gates told NATO officers and officials in a speech at the National Defense University, a graduate school, financed by the Defense Department, for military officers and diplomats.

Link to source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BRO20100302&articleId=17881

In addition to mandatory private health insurance premiums, we may soon be hit with a “mandatory savings” tax and other belt-tightening measures urged by the President’s new budget task force.  These radical austerity measures are not only unnecessary, however, but will actually make matters worse.  The push for “fiscal responsibility” is based on bad economics.

When billionaires pledge a billion dollars to educate people to the evils of something, it is always good to peer closely at what they are up to.  Hedge fund magnate Peter G. Peterson was formerly Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the New York Federal Reserve.  He is now senior chairman of Blackstone Group, which is in charge of dispersing government funds in the controversial AIG bailout, widely criticized as a government giveaway to banks.  Peterson is also founder of the Peter Peterson Foundation, which has adopted the cause of imposing “fiscal responsibility” on Congress.  He hired David M. Walker, former head of the Government Accounting Office, to spearhead a massive campaign to reduce the runaway federal debt, which the Peterson/Walker team blames on reckless government and consumer spending.  The Foundation funded the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” to amass popular support for their cause, which largely revolves around dismantling Social Security and Medicare benefits as a way to cut costs and return to “fiscal responsibility.”

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/funding-israeli-militarism-belligerence.html

From birth, Israel was a regional menace until America became its benefactor in the late 1960s. Now it's a global one, powerful with a large standing army and the latest weapons and technology, nuclear armed and ready to use them. It's belligerent on the slightest pretext or none at all, and a threat to world peace and security because US administrations since Lyndon Johnson supported a nation of 5.6 million Jews in an area the size of New Jersey, partnering in its worst crimes and abuses.

It's due largely to the Israeli Lobby's influence, or as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in their book, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," America's Middle East policy is driven "almost entirely (by) US domestic politics, and especially (because of) the (Lobby's) activities....This situation has no equal in American political history."

In his book, "The Power of Israel in the United States," James Petras documented its enormous influence, explaining its roots throughout government, the business community, the dominant media, academia, the clergy, and powerful wealthy Jewish families. Broad support comes from thousands of dedicated activists, including doctors, lawyers, accountants, other professionals, philanthropists, and journalists given special prominence and benefits for their unwavering pro-Israeli reporting, suppressing decades of its militarism, belligerence, and illegal occupation while vilifying Israel's enemies.

As a result, Israel receives enormous benefits, including billions in annual aid, the latest weapons and technology, unrestricted US market access, and free entry of its immigrants. Its imperial wars, illegal occupation, and crimes of war and against humanity are supported. Harmful Security Council resolutions are vetoed and General Assembly ones ignored. As a result, it operates freely, including spying in America by covertly penetrating US military bases, the FBI, CIA, IRS, DHS and many other government agencies, remaining unaccountable for its actions.

Israel is unique as America's largest aid recipient, on the most favorable terms, and virtually anything more requested, given openly or covertly, in violation of the 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act (as amended), stipulating that no aid be provided to governments that engage:

"in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country."

In 2004, the amended Act let the president provide aid to treat orphans, other vulnerable children, those with HIV/AIDS, and to set up schools and other supportive programs.

US Aid to Israel

In November 2008, Shirl McArthur of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) used Congressional Research Report (CRS) data for a "Conservative Estimate of Total Direct US Aid to Israel" since 1949, saying it's almost $114 billion, but explaining that determining the exact figure is impossible since parts are buried in various agency budgets, mostly the Defense Department's (DOD) or in forms not easily quantifiable.

He states:

"It must be emphasized that this analysis is a conservative, defensible accounting of US direct aid to Israel, NOT of Israel's cost to the US or the American taxpayer, not of the benefits to Israel of US aid. The distinction is important, because the indirect or consequential costs suffered by the US as a result of its blind support for Israel exceed by many times the substantial amount of direct aid" provided.

Besides Afghanistan and other Middle East conflicts, excluded from McArthur's data, is the mounting Iraq invasion and occupation cost, estimated by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes to be $3 trillion in their book titled, "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict."

They include an extra $2 trillion national debt, ad infinitum interest on it, veterans' healthcare and disability payments, the economic impact of lives lost and jobs interrupted, the higher cost of oil, the long-term economic impact, and numerous intangibles such as global anti-American sentiment, the near universal Arab world view that Washington attacked Iraq for Israel, and the US's reduced capability to respond to other global crises and address vital homeland needs.

Link to source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/wsjo-m02.shtml

In an editorial published Monday, “A Tale of Two Quakes,” the Wall Street Journal compares the outcome of the massive earthquake that hit Chile on Saturday with the dimensions of the human disaster that has unfolded in Haiti.

Citing the far greater scale of death and destruction in Haiti, the newspaper praises the comparatively higher level of preparedness for such a disaster in Chile, and writes: “But such preparation is also the luxury of a prosperous country, in contrast to destitute and ill-governed Haiti. Chile has benefited enormously in recent decades from the free-market reforms it passed in the 1970s under dictator Augusto Pinochet.”

One wants to respond, to coin a phrase, “Lie, but at least make sense.”

The Haitian people live in dire misery above all because the small island has been under the direct thumb of the US for a century, having experienced military occupations, some lasting for decades, on several occasions. The US propped up the regimes of the hated and brutal Duvaliers, father and son, for thirty years, from 1957 to 1986.

In the most recent period, Washington and the global financial community have imposed “free market” policies on Haiti—precisely the policies that the Journal claims saved Chile from a massive loss of life in its earthquake—with disastrous consequences for the Haitian population. The small farmers in Haiti have been ruined and crowded into Port-au-Prince’s horrific slums, the worst in the Western hemisphere. Whatever infrastructure and social fabric previously existed have been devastated, compounding the toll of death and destruction from the January 12 quake.

Chile’s historical and social development is different. It won independence from Spain in 1818, and although the social structure remained largely intact and the population enjoyed few benefits from independence, the country did not experience the direct domination of the US as Haiti did.

In any event, Chile can be said to be “prosperous” only if one focuses on the conditions of the wealthy. The CIA-backed military dictatorship that took power in September 1973, overthrowing the Allende “Popular Unity” government, killed tens of thousands of political opponents, torturing an equal or larger number in the most barbaric fashion. This is the regime the Journal holds up as a model