(X-Post) Bain, Romney, spooks and death squads (Remember the nuns killed in El Salvador)

[flamingdem]

Bain, Romney, spooks and death squads (Remember the nuns killed in El Salvador)
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2012/07/bain-romney-spooks-and-death-squads.html

good reads post:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101635122#post5

Lots of links and info in this article

excerpt:

Bain and death squads. It has been well-known for decades that the CIA has had close ties to the 14 families -- mostly late 19th century immigrants from Europe -- who financially commandeered El Salvador and who, for more than a hundred years, have run the place like feudal lords. In 1987, former CIA officer John Stockwell gave a talk that may have some relevance to the Vanity Fair piece referenced above.

Now we're pouring money into El Salvador. A billion dollars or so. And it's a documented fact that the... 14 families there that own 60% of the country are taking out between 2 to 5 billion dollars - it's called de-capitalization - and putting it in banks in Miami and Switzerland.

Markos Moulitsas, of Daily Kos fame, comes from a wealthy family in El Salvador, although his is not one of the fourteen. He also has a strange background with the CIA. Nevertheless -- and we must give credit where due -- Daily Kos published, back in 2008, a seminal work on Romney's connection to the Poma family and the death squad backers.

Link to KOS article:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/01/28/444617/-Mitt-Romney-s-ties-to-El-Salvador-s-death-squad-backers

---- excerpt from this article:
Thugs, supported by the U.S. administration, often in spite of American law, in the name of "anti-communism," have given us a sordid legacy throughout Central America. Of course, part of the reason for this support was the profits derived from U.S. corporations and investors who were financially and ideologically tied to these regimes of brutality; Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a candidate who regularly invoked the holy Republican name of Reagan, is one such profiteer.

If you're my age, you'll remember the death squads, whose murderous depredations outraged and politicized quite a few young Americans. (Including myself.) The Salvadoran terrorists created some extremely ugly headlines around the world, especially when they assassinated Archbishop Romero. They also murdered American nuns, as documented in the photo seen here.

[proud patriot]

1. that's what made me the activist I am today

I was a kid but was sick about it

[flamingdem]

2. I remembered when it happened

I was living in NY and we went from a service at a cathedral, can't remember which one but near enough to walk over to the NY Times. The chant was "New York Times print the truth!".

They had covered the Nicaraguan wars well with Alan Ridenaur but changed their tone in El Salvador

[blm]

3. Bush, Moon, Latin America, Barbie (Klaus) ....yeah....for REAL.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/121710.html

Long Excerpt - Robert Parry ALLOWS Dem Underground to reproduce his articles in their entirety as long as it is also linked and credited. I posted only a part of the article. It really is a must read. It's the neo-fascism, stupid.

Hitler's Shadow Reaches toward Today

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
December 17, 2010

The U.S. government protected Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the years after World War II and later unleashed the infamous Butcher of Lyon on South America by aiding his escape from French war-crimes prosecutors, according to a new report issued by the National Archives.

The report, entitled “Hitler’s Shadow,” concentrates on the decisions by the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps to use Barbie and other ex-Nazis for early Cold War operations, but other work by investigative journalists and government investigators has shown how Barbie’s continued allegiance to Nazi ideology contributed to the spread of right-wing extremism in Latin America.

With his skills as an intelligence operative and his expertise in state terror, Barbie helped shape the particularly vicious style of anti-communism that dominated South America for most of the Cold War. He also played a role in building a conduit for drug proceeds to fund right-wing paramilitary operations, including Ronald Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

In 1980, Barbie used his perch in Bolivian intelligence to organize an alliance of military leaders and cocaine barons to overthrow Bolivia’s democratically elected leftist government in a bloody coup. Though fitting with Washington’s distrust of left-wing populist governments in South America, the so-called Cocaine Coup had other long-term consequences for the United States.

Bolivia's coup regime ensured a reliable flow of coca to Colombia’s Medellin cartel, which quickly grew into a sophisticated conglomerate for smuggling cocaine into the United States. Some of those drug profits then went to finance right-wing paramilitary operations, including the CIA-backed Contras, according to other U.S. government investigations.

Barbie reportedly collaborated, too, with representatives of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church as they worked with Bolivia’s Cocaine Coup regime to organize anti-communist operations in South America. By then, the region had become a center for Moon’s global money-laundering operations. In 1982, Moon began pouring hundreds of millions of his mysterious dollars into the right-wing Washington Times newspaper to influence U.S. politics.

Eventually, as Bolivia's corrupt Cocaine Coup government crumbled and Barbie’s identity became well known, French authorities finally secured Barbie’s return to France to face a war-crimes trial in 1983. (He died in 1991.)

The Butcher of Lyon's role in these South American anti-communist activities caused brief embarrassment for Moon’s church and some right-wing Americans. But the Nazi collaboration didn't draw much attention from the U.S. news media, which was already shying away from critical reporting on the Reagan administration’s unsavory alliances in Central and South America.

A Long Continuum

Indeed, the Right’s growing dominance of Washington opinion circles can be viewed as a continuum dating back to those days right after World War II, when U.S. priorities switched quickly from prosecuting Axis war criminals to seeking their help in crushing leftist political influence in Western Europe and Asia.

Suddenly, U.S. intelligence agencies were freeing Nazi and Japanese war criminals from prison and exploiting their talents to neutralize labor unions, student groups and other left-wing organizations.

Though the new National Archives report deals with ex-Nazis in Europe, a similar program was underway in Japan where war criminals such as right-wing yakuza gangsters Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa were freed and allowed to become important political figures in Japan – and later internationally by supporting a global crusade against communism.

In the 1960s, Kodama and Sasakawa joined with Rev. Moon and two right-wing dictators, Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek and South Korea’s Park Chung Hee, to create that World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which also brought in right-wing leaders from Latin America and Europe, including ex-Nazis and neo-Nazis, according to authors Scott and Jon Lee Anderson in their landmark 1986 book, Inside the League.

So, with the Cocaine Coup in 1980, Barbie not only closed the circle, bringing together death-squad commanders, ex-Nazis, neo-Nazis and various sociopaths from around the globe, but he helped ensure that drug proceeds would be available to fund right-wing causes in the future.

“Hitler’s Shadow,” in effect, tells the first chapter of this right-wing restoration as U.S. intelligence agencies turned to former Nazi officials and SS officers to counter the perceived greater threat from the Soviet Union and Communist groups in Europe.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[Judi Lynn]

4. Still reading the linked material in your article. This information is necessary education

for anyone hoping to have any grasp of US relations with Latin America, and clearly those ties between Romney and El Salvador and his Miami contacts are critically important.

Have already found links from the original article I had to save for future use.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thomm Hartmann discussed this article this week. Just heard it in a repeat show on Sirius.

He said it's a big story and one to look for in the future.

I wondered when I heard it if he saw your thread, since he does read D.U., as he mentions in his shows.

It's a really UGLY story. A good person wouldn't want to do business this way.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched With Millions From Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities

Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched With Millions From Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities
Friday, August 10, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is facing new scrutiny over revelations he founded the private equity firm Bain Capital with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s. We’re joined by Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim, who connects the dots in his latest story, "Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads." "There’s no possible way that anybody in 1984 could check out these families — which was the term that (Romney’s campaign) used — and come away convinced that this money was clean," Grim says.

Video with Amy Goodwin and Ryan Grim:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/10/romneys_death_squad_ties_bain_launched

[flamingdem]

7. This was very well done, looks like there is plenty of dirt to reveal to the Latino community

and I hope the Obama campaign is aware and able to put something together on this.

They know what went on even if most immigrants or their children try hard to forget.

[Judi Lynn]

8. U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign

U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign
by Brendan Fischer — August 16, 2012 - 8:39am

Amidst reports that Mitt Romney launched Bain Capital with funds from investors tied to 1980s Salvadoran death squads, his new running mate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is getting foreign policy briefings from a man who actively covered-up some of the worst atrocities committed by those same death squads. The GOP's vice-presidential candidate also earned his political stripes working under neoconservative Republicans who funneled billions in U.S. aid to those military hitmen. Though the war in El Salvador was just one chapter in history, Romney and Ryan's relationship with that war may provide a snapshot into their worldview.

Between 1979 and 1992, an estimated 75,000 people were killed in the conflict in El Salvador and countless others were "disappeared" or displaced, an astonishing number for a country the size of Massachusetts. A United Nations Truth Commission estimated that the right-wing, military-led government was responsible for 85 percent of the violence while the left-wing insurgency fighting against vast economic and political inequality, including farmers, teachers, priests and union activists, was responsible for only 5 percent. Much of the violence was attributable to clandestine military or paramilitary death squads, which committed countless assassinations and acts of brutal violence against suspected political dissidents.

Recent reports suggest that some of the same members of the Salvadoran oligarchy that backed the death squads gave Romney the startup funds for Bain Capital.

Romney's Early Bain Capital Funders Tied to Salvadoran Death Squads

Photo from El Salvador's civil warLast week, the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler reported on how Romney went to Miami in 1983, at the height of El Salvador's civil war, to raise $9 million from Salvadoran expatriate families to start Bain Capital. This seed money amounted to 40 percent of Bain's startup funds. Although Romney claimed that he had vetted the backgrounds of the investors, some of their families had been identified by the U.S. ambassador and others as closely tied to either death squads or death squad leader and ARENA Party founder Roberto d'Aubuisson (known as "Blowtorch Bob" for his use of blowtorches to torture political prisoners).

More:
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11710/us-funded-war-el-salvador-casts-shadow-over-romneyryan-campaign

[flamingdem]

9. A shadow indeed

--- Jeane Kirkpatrick - now that's a blast from the past! No wonder he was nominated he fits the extreme right profile perfectly -- but in a new shiny package.

>>Even if Romney can distance himself from the death squad-linked Salvadoran investors that provided the seed money for his vast wealth, Ryan's political upbringing and his being mentored by a man of Abrams' pedigree makes it clear that the tragedies of El Salvador's civil war and this dark chapter in U.S. history will continue to cast a shadow over the Romney - Ryan campaign.

Thanks for the heads up. I have to wonder if the US electorate gets any of it but if this was printed in Spanish language newspapers -- they would recognize the players the best I imagine.