<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>The rest is indeed "less lighthearted," including the best short summary I've seen of Obama's typically mendacious "withdrawal" from Iraq. I read it on "AWARE On the Air" today. </div><div><br></div><div>But even Homer nods, and at one point Blum simply repeats the typical liberal/village-atheist bromide about Christianity in Latin America:</div><div><br></div><div>"Throughout most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in Latin
America taught its flocks of the poor that there was no need to do
battle with the ruling elite because the poor would get their just
rewards in the afterlife."</div><div><br></div><div>The reality was quite different. Here's a better account:</div><div><br></div><div><div>"Apart from Cuba, the plague of state terror in the Western hemisphere was initiated [by the US} with
the Brazilian coup in 1964, installing the first of a series of neo-Nazi National Security States
and initiating a plague of repression without precedent in the hemisphere, always strongly backed
by Washington, hence a particularly violent form of state-directed international terrorism.
The campaign was in substantial measure <i>a war against the Church.</i> It was more than symbolic
that it culminated in the assassination of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests,
in November 1989, a few days after the fall of the Berlin wall. They were murdered by an elite
Salvadoran battalion, fresh from renewed training at the John F. Kennedy Special Forces
School in North Carolina. As was learned last November [2009], but apparently aroused no interest,
the order for the assassination was signed by the chief of staff and his associates, all of them so
closely connected to the Pentagon and the US Embassy that it becomes even harder to imagine
that Washington was unaware of the plans of its model battalion. This elite force had already
left a trail of blood of the usual victims through the hideous decade of the 1980s in El
Salvador, which opened with the assassination of Archbishop Romero, 'the voice of the voiceless,' by much the same hands.</div><p>"The murder of the Jesuit priests was a crushing blow to liberation theology, the remarkable
revival of Christianity initiated by Pope John XXIII at Vatican II, which he opened in 1962,
an event that 'ushered in a new era in the history of the Catholic Church,' in the words of the
distinguished theologian and historian of Christianity Hans Kueng. Inspired by Vatican II, Latin
American Bishops adopted 'the preferential option for the poor,' renewing the radical pacifism
of the Gospels ... In the post-Vatican II attempt to revive
the Christianity of the pre-Constantine period, priests, nuns, and laypersons took the message
of the Gospels to the poor and the persecuted, brought them together in 'base communities,' and encouraged them to take their fate into their own hands and to work together to overcome
the misery of survival in brutal realms of US power.
</p><p>"The reaction to this grave heresy was not long in coming. The first salvo was Kennedy's
military coup in Brazil in 1964, overthrowing a mildly social democratic government and instituting
a reign of torture and violence. The campaign ended with the murder of the Jesuit intellectuals
20 years ago. <i>There has been much debate about who deserves credit for the fall of
the Berlin wall, but there is none about the responsibility for the brutal demolition of the attempt
to revive the church of the Gospels. </i>Washington's School of the Americas, famous for
its training of Latin American killers, proudly announced as one of its 'talking points' that liberation
theology was 'defeated with the assistance of the US army' -- given a helping hand, to
be sure by the Vatican, using the gentler means of expulsion and suppression.
</p><p>"As you recall, last November [2009] was dedicated to celebration of the 20th anniversary of the
liberation of Eastern Europe from Russian tyranny, a victory of the forces of 'love, tolerance,
nonviolence, the human spirit and forgiveness,' as Vaclav Havel declared. Less attention -- in
fact, virtually zero -- was devoted to the brutal assassination of his Salvadoran counterparts a
few days after the Berlin wall fell. And I doubt that one could even find an allusion to what
that brutal assassination signified: the end of a decade of vicious terror in Central America,
and the final triumph of the 'return to barbarism in our time' that opened with the 1964 Brazilian
coup, leaving many religious martyrs in its wake and ending the heresy initiated in Vatican
II -- not exactly an era of 'love, tolerance, nonviolence, the human spirit and forgiveness.' We can wait until tomorrow to see how much attention will be given to the 30th anniversary
of the assassination of the Voice of the Voiceless while he was reading mass, a few days
after he wrote a letter to President Carter pleading with him -- in vain -- not send aid to the
military junta, who 'know only how to repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadorean
oligarchy' and will use the aid 'to destroy the people's organizations fighting to defend
their fundamental human rights.' As happened. And we can learn a good bit from what
we are unlikely to see tomorrow... </p></div><br><div><div>On Jan 3, 2012, at 6:37 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>From Bill Blum's report: <a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer101.html">http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer101.html</a>.</div><div><br></div><div>The rest is less lighthearted. </div><div><br></div><div>--mkb</div><div><br></div><div><h2 style="color: blue; font: normal normal bold 18px/20px 'Times New Roman', Georgia, serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px; ">Happy New Year. Here's what to look forward to...</h2></div></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>