Shakira performs at the UN in honor of Pope Francis

Shakira performed for Pope Francis at the UN today (Friday), Shakira - Imagine (Live at the UN's General Assembly 2015):

The text at her YouTube channel says, "Shakira, before the Pope at the UN in NYC, dedicates her performance of John Lennon's Imagine to Aylan and Galip Kurdi and all the children turned refugees due to the Syrian war / Shakira, frente al Papa en la ONU, dedica su actuación a los hermanos Aylan y Galip Kurdi y a los niños refugiados por la guerra."

I can't quite tell from the reports I've seen, but it seems as though the Pope may have left the Assembly hall before she sang. (Shakira le canta 'Imagine' al Papa en la ONU El Periódico 25.09.2015)

Also on Shakira's agenda was meeting with the attorneys of her former boyfriend Antonio de la Rúa to try to settle a lawsuit in which De la Rúa is demanding a portion of her earnings from the time they were together. (Shakira viaja a Nueva York para ver al Papa y arreglar cuentas con su ex El Espectador 24.09.2015)

I don't see Shakira in the following video herself, although she has very publicly expressed her solidarity with it. (Shakira, Santana, y Gloria Estefan cantarán contra Donald Trump El Espectador/EFE 24.09.2015)

It's a video made in solidarity with American immigrants and American-born Latinos against the racist, xenophobic, God-hating immigrant-bashing being practiced by Donald Trump and the supporters of his white-trash bigotry, Video musical "Todos Somos Mexicanos" Univision Noticias 09/21/2015:

Pope Francis Tuesday

The Pope has been visiting Cuba over the weekend. That visit called to mind this song by Kate Campbell that references an earlier papal visit to the island.

Rosa's Coronas 11/30/2014

Joshua McElwee reports on Pope Francis' major speech in La Habana at the Plaza de la Revolución in Under image of Che Guevara, Francis says Christian service 'never ideological' National Catholic Reporter 09/20/2015

This combination of images of two of the most famous Argentines is surely more jarring for an American audience than for Argentines. When I visited the Presidential Palace Casa Rosada) in Buenos Aires in 2012, the entry hall had two portraits prominently displayed together: Che Guevara and the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered by a death squad while presiding over Mass in a hospital. Pope Francis formally declared Romero a martyr this year and he's on the road to sainthood. I doubt any Pope will canonize Ernesto Guevara. Although there was and maybe still is a folk shrine to "St. Che" near the place in Bolivia where he was assassinated in 1967. I think a few miraculous cures have been reported there. Go figure.

The staunchly anti-Communist and theologically conservative Pope Juan Paul II also celebrated mass in Plaza de la Revolución on his visit to Cuba in 1998.

This was also an interesting part of the Pope's message: "At the end of the Mass, the pope appealed to Colombia's government and Marxist FARC guerrillas to ensure that nearly three years of peace talks in Cuba are successful in order to end their 'long night' of war." (Pope meets Fidel Castro, warns against ideology on Cuba trip Buenos Aires Herald 09/20/2015) Cuba has hosted peace talks to end that long-running conflict.

Darío Pignotti notes in Página/12 (Cuba se viste de blanco y amarillo por el Papa 19.09.2015) that the chatter in Cuba he heard before Francis' arrival included many mentions of the "Argentine Pope." (Pignotti goes a bit Tommy Friedman in this piece and reports on an interview with a taxi driver.)

How much of the Pontiff's worldview is actually consistent with that of a government like Cuba's?

Eric Bugyis in a post which,so far as I can tell, is supportive of Pope Francis, argues that there is a great deal of philosophical/ideological agreement It Is Marxism! Commonweal 09/22/2015:

In Bolivia, Francis called for "the just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor" saying that this is "about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right." Linking the fruits of labor to rights in this way suggests the "labor theory of value" that one finds in Thomas Aquinas and in the social encyclicals beginning with Rerum Novarum, but it is also the theory of value that one finds in Marx. It is the theory that says that those who work to produce goods and services, through agriculture or manufacture, ought to have a share in the ownership of those goods. It is a rejection of the wage slavery whereby workers are shackled by policies that seek to interrupt the worker's relationship with the fruits of his or her labor by turning this labor into a commodity itself. The price of this commodity, then, must be weighed against the expected profits to be gained through the sale of commodities owed by stockholders. On this account, it should be made clear, the stockholder owns both the workers (now often more honestly referred to as "human resources") and the commodities that these workers produce and profit to the extent that the stockholder (and the market) values the former less than the latter. Thus, when Francis talks about a "formal market" in which people are "exploited like slaves," what else could he be talking about but the alienation of workers from the means of production? And when he calls for governments to promote "the strengthening, improvement, coordination and expansion of forms of popular economy and communitarian production," what could he be referring to other than supporting the formation of unions (another thing endorsed by the social encyclicals) and empowering local commerce by limiting the monopolistic practices of transnational corporations? All of which, I assume, Mr. Langone would rightly identify as "Marxism." [my emphasis]

Now, I'm hardly allergic to Marxist perspectives, as any of my numerous posts about the Frankfurt School thinkers can illustrate. And I'm definitely in sympathy with the perspectives of the Pope described here.

But this just gets some history wrong. No St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25-1274) did not invent the "labor theory of value." Marx' version built on those of the distinctly modern philosophers and political economists Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Ricardo (1772-1823). Marx also made a clear distinction between chattel slavery, where the workers actually are owned, and wage labor, which Marxists also call wage slavery, in which it is not the case that "the stockholder owns ... the workers," as Bugyis puts it.

A great undergraduate professor of mine, the late Howard Bavender, was my adviser on this now long-ago paper ("Just War Concept and American Churches in the American Antiwar Movement" 1974). As I was trying to sort through the relationship of Catholic theology to dissenting movements, he stressed that while the Church took strong positions on issues of social justice and the just war that at times were in accord with left political positions, the Church had never abandoned its criticism of Marxism on matters where it contradicted the Church's view of the nature of humanity.

In fact, what I wrote where I took his advice on that wasn't bad:

The Roman Catholic Church, in the United States and around the world, had been staunchly opposed to "atheistic Communism" before and after World War II. The American hierarchy continued to speak strongly against Communism even during the wartime alliance with Soviet Russia. Many Roman Catholic churchmen really believed that the United States was threatened by Communism, but they were also interested in acquiring American aid in their world-wide battle with Communist governments, particularly in Eastern Europe where the Soviet Urion attempted to break the political power of the church. ...

However, around the time of Pope John XXIII's ascendancy, Catholic attitudes toward international relations began to change. Pope John issued his encyclical Pacem in Terris, which many Catholics took to be "a clear call for total pacifism in a nuclear age." [1970 quote from Francine du Plessix Gray] Pope John stated in that famous document, as quoted above, that war was unacceptable in the nuclear era. The support of the Catholic Church for such projects as the Cold War against Communism was clearly decreasing, although the Church has never abandoned its opposition to those elements of Communism which challenge the Christian conception of man. This notable decrease in support nevertheless was to be an element in the future Catholic opposition to Vietnam policies in the United States.

It's also important to remember that when the Church has criticized capitalism or aspects of it, that also comes from centuries of theoretical development that has some of its roots in pre-capitalist concepts and economic arrangements, i.e., European feudalism. "Corporate state" arrangements like those in Mussolini's Italy or the Austrian Standestaat of Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt von Schuschnigg were forms of government with which the Catholic Church of that time were generally comfortable.

The Catholic Church is a worldwide institution that has congregations within the entire spectrum of contemporary forms of government: secular ones and ones with established religions (Christian and otherwise); military and civilian; democracies and dictatorships, and varying degrees of both. The Catholic Church doesn't take the position of American neocons that they shouldn't even have formal conversations with governments they finding displeasing. On the contrary, they are interested in negotiating the best possible arrangements for the Church and its members even in countries hostile to the Catholic Church.

Eduardo Valdés, the Argentine Ambassador to the Vatican, notes that Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of La Habana, has played a key role in the current process of rapprochement between the US and Cuba which the Holy See has helped to mediate. (Premonición Página/12 19.09.2015)

The Catholic News Service provides this description of Fidel Castro's view of Christianity as expressed in a 1985 book of interviews with Fidel in which he positioned himself as supportive of the views of liberation theology: Cathy Lynn Grossman, Christ, Marx and Che: Fidel Castro offers pope his religious views National Catholic Reporter 09/21/2015. Pope Francis has views more friendly to liberation theology than his two immediate predecessors. John Paul II was a bitter opponent of it. Benedict XVI was known before and during his Papacy as generally reactionary on theological and political issues. However, both of them also took positions based on Catholic social teaching (feudal roots and all) that challenged politically conservative positions. They also took pacifist positions at odds with the normal power politics on which the world runs far too much.

Vatican Radio reports on the meeting between Francis and Fidel in Pope Francis meets former Cuban president Fidel Castro 09/20/2015:

Pope Francis gave Castro several books, including one by Italian priest Alessandro Pronzato and another by Spanish Jesuit Segundo Llorentea. The Holy Father also gave him a book and two CDs of his homilies, as well as his two encyclical letters, Lumen Fidei and Laudato si'.

In return, Castro gave Pope Francis an interview book entitled, "Fidel and Religion," written in 1985 by Brazilian priest Frei Betto. The dedication reads: "For Pope Francis, on occasion of his visit to Cuba, with the admiration and respect of the Cuban people."

The head of the Vatican Press Office, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "familiar and informal," and the two men spoke about "protecting the environment and the great problems of the contemporary world."

Father Lombardi compared the private encounter to that which took place with Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, saying Fidel Castro asked Pope Benedict many questions, while Sunday's meeting with Pope Francis was "more of a conversation."

Emphasizing some of the differences between the Church and the Cuban regime, Martín Granovsky reports (Ortega, el cardenal de las negociaciones secretas Página/12 19.09.2015):

¿Piensa el cardenal Ortega que el proceso de normalización ya es irreversible? Está en camino a serlo, pero según él “Obama y Raúl tienen enemigos y hay que protegerlos a ambos porque los dos saben que antes de irse todavía tienen mucho que hacer”. Cuando habla de los retos a Raúl, Ortega describe el peso de lo que él llama “ideología”, o sea el resabio del modelo soviético y de la rigidez. Para el cardenal el efecto se nota aún en sectores del Partido Comunista Cubano, en los medios controlados por él, en la TV, la radio y la prensa escrita.

Contó un ejemplo. El periodista Amaury Pérez lo entrevistó para la tele cubana y en vez de la media hora habitual le dio una hora. Era el primer reportaje televisivo en 60 años. El director de TV se opuso. Quería revisar y cortar partes. “La entrevista se pasa sin tocar una coma”, le dijeron a Ortega que fue la frase de Castro. El diálogo se puede ver haciendo click en http://bit.ly/1JCqhe7.

[Does Cardinal think that the process of normalization is now irreversible? It's on the way to being so, according to him: "Obama and Raúl {Castro} have enemies, and we have to protect both of them because the two know that before they leave {the political scene}, there is still a lot to do." When he speaks of Raúl's challenges, Ortega describes the weight of what he calls "ideology," that is, the bad taste of the Soviet model and the rigidity. For the cardinal, the effect can be observed even in sectors of the Cuban Communist Party, in the media controlled by them, in TV, radio and the written press.

He gave an example. The journalist Amaury Pérez interviewed him for Cuban television and gave him an hour instead of the usual half hour. It was the first television report {featuring Ortega?} in 60 years. The TV director opposed it. He wanted to edit it and cut parts. "The interview will air with touching a comma," Ortega was told was the phrase {Raúl} Castro used.]

It's reasonable to assume that when Francis spoke about the problem of "ideology" in Cuba, his meaning was the same or similar to that in which Cardinal Ortega is using it.

In the TV interview referenced, Ortega recounts a conversation he had with Pope Benedict XVI, in which Benedict said that the Church is not in the world to change governments. It's in the world to spread the Gospel. Ortega says it in a context that makes it clear he agrees with that perspective. And he also says that is the perspective of Pope Francis.

Granovsky continues to report on Church-related consequence of the long-standing embargo:

El desafío para la Iglesia es ganar feligreses, sobre todo entre la juventud, y conseguir fondos propios para ayuda humanitaria. Por el bloqueo la Iglesia no puede recibir dólares porque los aportes de afuera son interferidos en algún punto de su curso por Estados Unidos. Ocurrió con fondos regalados por Los Caballeros de Colón, por la Isla de Malta y por grupos irlandeses. Llegaron a Cuba tras operaciones clandestinas e incluso algún obispo debió recorrer el mundo con 200 mil dólares ocultos en una valija. En La Habana no hubo problemas.

[The challenge for the Church is to win parishioners, above all among youth, and obtain its own funds for humanitarian support. Because of the {US} blockade, the Church is not able to receive dollars because donations from outside are intercepted at some point in their course from the United States. That has occurred with funds donated by the Knights of Columbus, from the island of Malta and from Irish groups. They arrived in Cuba after {via} clandestine operations, including one bishop who has said to have traversed the world with $200,000 hidden in a valise. In Havana, he had no problems.]

Meanwhile, columnist George Will prior to the Pope's arrival in the US is griping about the Jesuit Francis defending science on the topic of climate change. (Anthony Annett, On Fact-Free Flamboyance: George Will vs. Pope Francis Commonweal 09/21/2015) Awesome.

Wars, refugees and complexities of anti-imperialism

The single most constructive thing that the United States, the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and even France and Britain could do to ease the refugee crisis in Europe would be to stop promoting wars and "regime change" operations in the Middle East.

Wofgang Münchau (The deadly disunity of the Europeans Financial Times 09/06/2015) writes on the EU and the European refugee crisis: "Angela Merkel is, for once, on the right side of the argument." (my emphasis) That is truly an historic moment!

He also says:

The EU has 500m inhabitants. Setting aside refugees, net immigration — the difference between those coming into and those leaving the EU — was 539,000 in 2013, about 0.1 per cent of the total population. Net immigration was higher in 2010, when it stood at 750,000. ...

Net immigration including refugees is clearly rising. Still, this is not an immigration crisis. It is a collective action crisis.

Its solution would be straightforward in the presence of a central authority empowered to take decisions. But this is not how the EU works. It works through co-ordination and harmonisation — through fiscal rules, banking regulation and neighbourhood policies. But none of them prevented the crisis, and none of them helps solve it.

As Yanis Varoufakis recently called attention to the way in which the dysfunctional response to the financial/debt crisis in the eurozone has compounded the problems the EU has in developed common policies and implementing them effectively, now particularly in the refugee crisis (On CNBC discussing Greece and Europe – full transcript, 4th September 2015 09/04/2015):

You’re quite right; in the end we created a common currency which divided us. And the deeper those divisions grew, the greater the failure to be united when it came to other matters. For instance, the refugee crisis. For instance, ways of dealing with the dearth of investment throughout Europe. Instead of getting closer together we were torn apart. In the United States, in the 19th Century, there was one financial crisis after another. Even at the beginning of the 20th century – and especially after 1929. Every time, the United States faced a major financial crisis it managed to consolidate. To get closer together. To create institutions that were common and which created shock absorbers for the system. In Europe, the idea was that we must bind ourselves together by means of the same currency in order to create this process. But, the first time a crisis tested us, following the financial that began in Wall Street, the City of London, and so on – we failed. Instead of consolidating, we are dividing and multiplying. And failing at other realms. So Europe’s monetary failure is spreading to other realms. [my emphasis]

Thalif Deen writes in Europe Invaded Mostly by “Regime Change” Refugees Inter Press Service 09/03/2015:

The military conflicts and political instability driving hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe were triggered largely by U.S. and Western military interventions for regime change – specifically in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria (a regime change in-the-making).

The United States was provided with strong military support by countries such as Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Spain, while the no-fly zone to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was led by France and the UK in 2011 and aided by Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Canada, among others.

And the article highlights the concept of "regime change refugees":

The United States was directly involved in regime change in Afghanistan (in 2001) and Iraq (in 2003) – and has been providing support for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad battling a civil war now in its fifth year.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who says he is “horrified and heartbroken” at the loss of lives of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean and Europe, points out that a large majority of people “undertaking these arduous and dangerous journeys are refugees fleeing from places such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

James A. Paul, former executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS the term “regime change refugees” is an excellent way to change the empty conversation about the refugee crisis.

Obviously, there are many causes, but “regime change” helps focus on a crucial part of the picture, he added.

And the use of that term is a reminder that the anodyne phrase "regime change" describes a reality that can and sometimes does produce conditions that are catastrophically bad. Syrian and Ukraine are two current examples of that.

The left-Peronist site La Batalla Cultural raises an important point about regime-change operations in Los idiotas funcionales al imperialismo (Sept 2015; accessed 09/07/2015). The title, "The Useful Idiots of Imperialism," has a definite Leninist ring to it. But the point made by the article is a fairly basic one. Powerful countries like the US for Britain or France are happy to use democratic- and humanitarian-sounding claims and slogans to promote interventions whose aims are primarily narrow power-political ones. The difference in the US between "humanitarian hawks" and neoconservatives when it comes to advocating war is getting harder and harder to discern. Even the rhetoric is similar. Neocons are more likely to use cynically pragmatic arguments, but they have always used humanitarian claims to promote war as well.

The fact that a regime is bad in some way, even seriously bad, does not in itself justify military action against it. All the considerations of classic Just War theory still apply, including considering realistically whether the military action has a reasonable prospect of success. Any military action like the Iraq War of 2003 that produces more than a decade of civil war, massive population displacement and intensified international conflict is hard to see as one that ended up in a success in anything much more than killing a lot of Arabs and Kurds. Those who pointed the small chances of a good outcome prior to the invasion were not sympathizers of Saddam Hussein, as the Republicans inevitably called us. Actual sympathy for Saddam Hussein's general form of governance in the US was effectively nonexistent.

But it is possible to distinguish between the particular regime and the nature of a particular war. The Malvinas/Falklands War of 1982 is an excellent example. It pitted a cruel and unpopular dictatorship in Argentina against democratic Britain.

But Argentina had by far the better claim on the territorial question of to which country the islands belong. As the UN webpage on decolonization says as of this writing, " At present, 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs) across the globe remain to be decolonized, home to nearly 2 million people." The NSGT designation is a euphemism for "illegal colony." The Malvinas Islands are one of those cases. Ten of the 17, including the Malvinas and Gibraltar, are controlled by Great Britain.

In 1982, the Argentine military dictatorship landed its armed forces on the Malvinas. Britain retook the islands. But despite the unpopularity of the dictatorship, the war was tremendously popular among Argentines. That, of course, was part of the dictatorship's calculation. They hoped for a patriotic rallying to the government. Instead, the defeat of Argentina in that popular military cause was the nail in the coffin of the dictatorship. Losing wars is always unpopular. Losing wars that the public considers genuinely patriotic and justified is especially unpopular.

The current Argentine government headed by Cristina Fernández and the previous one held by her late husband Néstor Kirchner both strongly emphasized human rights and insisted on a thorough legal and educational reckoning with the crimes of the dictatorship.

But they also have pressed the claims of Argentina to the Malvinas - including the rights to major oil reserves to be controlled by the country that controls the islands - and have made a big deal out of honoring the veterans of the Malvinas War of 1982. Their recognition of the justness of Argentina's claim to the Malvinas in the 1982 war does not mean that they or their supporters admire the government that conducted the war. They don't even recognize the legal or moral legitimacy of that extra-constitutional and criminal dictatorship.

The Argentine Pope also supports the nation's legitimate claim to the Malvinas, as illustrated by this photo from August of this year, with him holding a sign saying, "It's time for dialogue between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas":

In an article appearing on Cristina's website, Alicia Barrios writes (A Francisco nadie lo toma por sorpresa #MalvinasArgentinas 21.08.2015):

Francisco es, fue y será muy malvinero. Todos los años, el 2 de abril, celebraba misa en la Catedral metropolitana junto a todos los familiares y ex combatientes de Malvinas. Los alentó y abrazó siempre. A las seis de la tarde las puertas del templo se abrían de par en par para ellos. Recordaba con emoción a los 649 caídos en combate. En ese día glorioso y doloroso para la memoria de los argentinos, de la misa salían con una sonrisa. Esperanzados para seguir luchando un año más. Antes era un ruego desde el país, ahora es desde el Vaticano para el mundo. Al Papa no lo tomó de sorpresa la presencia de Gustavo Hoyo, director de Diálogo Malvinas. Se acercó. Tomó la pancarta en sus manos y les dijo: “Sigan adelante”. Posó para la foto. Nunca dudó, sus homilías así lo demuestran, que las Malvinas son argentinas. Él sabe mejor que nadie, que decir la verdad no conforma a todos.

[Francisco is, was and will be a malvinero [i.e., supporter of Argentina's claim to the Malvinas]. Every year on April 2, he celebrated Mass in the Catedral metropolitana together with all the relative and ex-combatants of the Malvinas [from the 1982 war]. He always encouraged and embraced them. At 6:00 in the evening, the doors of the temple opened wide for them. He recalled with emotion the 649 fallen in combat. On this glorious and mournful day for the memory of Argentines, the left the Mass with a smile. We hoped to keep to keep fighting another year. Then it was a prayer from the country, today it is from the Vatican for the world. The Pope was not surprised by the presence of Gustavo Hoyo, director of Diálogo Malvinas [Diálogo por Malvinas, a campaign promoting Argentina's claims to the Malvinas]. He took the poster in his hands and told them, "Keep going forward." He posed for the photo. He never doubted, as demonstrated by his homilies, that the Malvinas are Argentine. He knows better than anyone to state the truth not accepted by everyone.]

For whatever reason, the Vatican decided they needed a little diplomatic dissimulation on that particular event, presumably to avoid the impression that the Pontiff was directly endorsing a particular political campaign, in this case on an issue rather than a candidate. (Nadia Khomami, Pope Francis 'tricked' into calling for Falklands talks The Guardian 08/20/2015)

See also: Carlos Cué, El Papa sostiene un cartel a favor del diálogo para las Malvinas El País 19.08.2015; Rosie Scammell, Pope Francis holds sign urging Falkland Islands dialogue, causes stir in Argentina Religion News Service/National Catholic Reporter 08/21/2015. The points Barrios makes about how Francis knew very well what he was doing are convincing. Who knows what the diplomatic mealy-mouthing afterward from Vatican press people was about?

Getting back to the polemical article in La Batalla Cultural, they are taking an anti-imperialist position informed by a Latin American view not so familiar to most Americans, and not always a comfortable one for people in the US and Europe. One widely-held perspective on the Argentine dictatorship of 1976-83 is known as the Two Devils theory, a kind of Both Sides Do It approach in which the crimes of the dictatorship are considered together with violent actions by the leftwing guerrillas in Argentina before and during the dictatorship. The latter are certainly a major part of the historical story. The now-annual journal La Lucha Armada en la Argentina, for instance, is a journal devoted primarily to a serious historical study of the leftwing guerrilla movements of that period.

But the crimes committed by the military government not only were far more massive in number. They also were done in the name of the Argentine nation and under general cover of law. And of the Christian religion, as the dictatorship endorsed a strong reactionary/national brand of Christianity that was deeply rooted in part of the Argentine Catholic Church. (Pope Francis has no justification for being proud of the general role he played during the dictatorship. But it's clear that he now identifies more with the liberation theology that was violently and murderously persecuted by the dictatorship.)

Americans can understand how the Two Devils theory can be misused as a defense of the dictatorship by reference to the current political movement in the US known as Black Lives Matter. White racists who want to see the widespread practice of (mostly white) police killing unarmed African-Americans (mostly men) continue, are eager to make a both-sides-do-it argument, arguing that the advocates against criminal violence by police practiced on young black men is somehow an incitement to active violence and murder against police. It is a bad-faith argument that really is directed only at providing phony justification for police murdering African-Americans at will and with impunity. (See Charlie Pierce, who addresses this issue though not exactly like I'm going here in Texas Cop Killing Could Spark National Backlash Against #BlackLivesMatter Esquire Politics Blog 08/31/2015)

Sometimes "both sides do it" is really an attempt to validate the actions of one side.

La Batalla Cultural (LBC) argues that not only is the Two Devils framing dominant in the way Argentines think about the dictatorship and the guerrillas. It also argues that this attitude carries over into views of foreign policy, and specifically to the Syrian conflict. LBC makes the point that a Two Devils approach to a situation like Syria, in which the Assad regime in Syria is equated with ISIS/Daesh and its Sunni backers can make an effective cover for regime-change intervention by countries like the US, France and Britain for whom alleged humanitarian concerns are entirely subordinate to other power-political consideration. LBC puts it this way:

Tenemos ahora en Medio Oriente un clásico escenario de invasión imperialista. Los Estados Unidos y sus amigos de la OTAN (en una palabra, el Occidente capitalista y cristiano) están poniendo la mesa para entrar con todo en Siria y hacer allí un nuevo Irak o Afganistán, para luego apropiarse de los recursos naturales y disponer de la suerte de los pueblos. ¿Cómo? Con estas sencillas jugadas, que son de manual:

1. Financiando y armando a los grupos llamados “rebeldes” sirios, que son lo equivalente a la oposición cipaya de Venezuela o Argentina (o de cualquier otra semicolonia) hasta fogonear bien la guerra civil
2. Con la guerra civil en marcha, poniendo en el territorio al “Estado Islámico” o ISIS, un tercer actor para complicar y desestabilizar aún más.

[Today we have in the Middle East a classic scenario of imperialist invasion. The United States and its friends in NATO (in a word, the capitalist West) are setting the table to enter Syria in full force and make a new Iraq or Afghanistan there, in order to later appropriate their natural resources and control the fortune of the peoples. How? With these open plays that are right out of the book:

1. Financing and arming groups called Syrian "rebels," that are the equivalent of the opposition loyal to foreigners of Venezuela or Argentina (or of any other semi-colony) to the point of fomenting civil war
2. With the civil war in progress, set up a third actor in the territory of the "Islamic States" or ISIS to further complicate and destabilize {the situation}.]

LBC particularly calls attention to the way that the ugly consequences of these policies, like today's refugee crisis between the Middle East and Europe, can be used by warmongers as excuses to continue and intensify the very policies that generate the problem in the first place.

This is why, despite the record of some its major figures like Henry Kissinger, I can't give up my fondness for the "realist" school of foreign policy theory. At its best - as in Stephen Walt's work - it emphasizes careful evaluation of the potential negative consequences of foreign policy decisions and the dangers to clear thinking that comes from taking one's side's own propaganda too seriously.

And LBC is also reminding its presumably mainly Argentine readers that a regime-change approach used in one part of the world without effective international criticism and resistance can be used in other parts, as well.

Cristina at the UN fighting the #GrieFault

Argentine President Cristina Fernández spoke to the UN General Assembly Wednesday. She had harsh words for the vulture funds seeking to drive Argentina into bankruptcy with the willing help of Nixon-appointed zombie judge Thomas Griesa.

This is Part 2 of an Argentine documentary on sovereign debt and the vulture funds, Deuda: Historia de una extorsión (2 de 5) TV Pública argentina 20.09.2014. This segment features an interview with Argentine Economics Minister Axel Kicillof.

See previous post for Part 1.

As the Buenos Aires Herald reports in CFK denounces vultures' 'economic terrorism' to UN General Assembly 09/24/2014:

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner today addressed the United Nations General Assembly, accusing holdout investors of committing "economic terrorism" and reiterating her wish for a multi-lateral framework to regulate sovereign debt.

"The vulture funds threaten and attack with actions against our country's economy, causing rumours, mistruths and outright lies," she told the organisation.

"It is almost a type of economic and financial terrorism." ...

Returning on the offensive against those investors who did not enter 2005 and 2010's debt swaps, Cristina slammed them as "economic terrorists that create poverty, hunger and misery through the sin of speculation." [my emphasis]

Cristina's speech is availble as a UN webcast with English translations: Argentina, General Debate, 69th Session 09/24/2014. But it doesn't seem to be available for embedding here. (The UN should make better use of their YouTube channel IMHO.)

This is the full speech, Visión 7 - Cristina felicitó a la ONU por la resolución para reestructurar deudas soberanas TV Pública argentina 09/24/2014:

Here's a Spanish-language news report on the speech, which at 12:00 has a long excerpt of some airhead commentator at Bloomberg News talking smack about Argentina and the debt. As the Argentine commentators note afterward, she's just basically repeating the vulture funds' lobbying spin, Visión 7 - Buitres: El terrorismo económico TV Pública argentina 24.09.2014.

Andrés Cala has an accessible explanation in English of the current situation, Argentina v. the Hedge Funds Consortium News 09/24/2014:

Default or not, Argentina for now appears to be winning the war, at least as defined by the ultimate judge in all financial matters: the market. The market is demanding a higher interest to hold Argentina’s debt, but not too much more. In part that is because Argentina has been shut out of credit markets since its default in 2001. Investors also are looking forward to Argentina exploiting new oil and gas fields.

Thus, Argentina's defiance has so far had little economic impact on the South American nation, while accepting the U.S. ruling would again plunge it into bankruptcy. It is not that Argentina doesn't have the $1.5 billion that the holdouts are demanding. It is that Argentina’s national laws forbid making the concession and – even if legally possible – such a capitulation would trigger an onslaught of new lawsuits and years of renegotiations to offer all bondholders the same terms, which would exceed the amount of its original 2001 default. [my emphasis]

Additional reports:

The Nixon zombie judge is still at it: Griesa asks Argentina to show why it should not be declared in contempt Buenos Aires Herald 09/24/2014

CFK: “En épocas de buitres económicos y halcones de la guerra necesitamos más palomas de la paz” Página/12 2r.09.2014

Victoria Ginzberg,“Es una suerte de terrorismo económico” Página/12 25.09.2014

"Alemania ha tenido una actitud hostil con la Argentina" Página/12 25.09.2014: The Chief of Cristina's Cabinet, Jorge Capitanich, complained publicly about the hostile attitude that Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble against Argentina and in favor of the vulture funds. This is an indication that Angela Merkel's government is fine with making it effectively impossible for countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain to default on any of their sovereign debt.

Tags: angela merkel, argentina, cristina fernández, jorge mario bergoglio, neoliberalism, european union, vulture funds

Argentina's fight with the vulture funds went to the Vatican last week and to the UN this one #GrieFault

Argentine President Cristina Fernández is in New York for a presentation to the United Nations on Wednesday about reforming the sovereign debt regime to avoid the absurd situation in which a Nixon-appointed zombie judge can make up his own rules in support of vulture funds holding debt and thereby try to force a country into default, the situation Argentina has faced this year.

She had a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and also with financier George Soros, bogeyman of the American right wing. Soros has a $450 million investment in YPF, the Argentine energy company majority-owned by the state. Pablo Gonzalez wrote for Bloomberg News in a July 31 report (YPF Shale Quest Seen Withstanding Argentina’s Debt Debacle 07/31/2014):

YPF will generate enough cash to finance operations for the next 12 months and has access to new funding sources, the Buenos Aires-based company said in an e-mailed response to questions yesterday. Since Argentina missed a July 30 payment on $13 billion of debt, the yield on YPF’s $1 billion of bonds due 2024 rose 0.15 percentage point to 8.2 percent. Similar sovereign yields rose 0.83 percentage point to 9.97 percent.

The company, control of which was seized from Spain’s Repsol SA in 2012, will be resilient in gaining access to financing operations to develop shale deposits in southern Argentina and boost production, according to broker-dealer Seaport Group. YPF is the country’s largest company.

“Argentina’s shale oil and gas reserves, overseen by YPF, make the company a key institution and it will have continuous access to financial markets,” Michael Roche, an emerging-market strategist at Seaport, said in a telephone interview from New York. “The company may structure securities where its earnings are escrowed outside of Argentina for use in repaying debt and receive attractive terms.”

According to the Argentine government's statements, Pope Francis was sympathetic to Argentina and the Group of 77+China in their fight for new international rules to provide for orderly sovereign debt defaults. (Victoria Ginzberg, Un almuerzo y una charla “naturales” Página/12 21.09.2014)

This is Part 1 of 5 of a special in TV Pública argentina documentary on the effects of sovereign debt in Argentina and the fight with the vulture funds and the Nixon zombie judge, Deuda: Historia de una extorsión (1 de 5) 20.09.2014:

Cristina also brought Victoria Montenegro with her on her visit with the Pope. Victoria is a woman kidnapped by the military dictatorship of 1976-83 and her parents "disappeared" and murdered. She was taken and raised by Herman Tetzlaff, an intelligence colonel - who headed the group that murdered her biological parents. (“El momento más emotivo” Página/12 21.09.2014; Vladimir Hernandez, Stolen baby hails 'liberating' verdict BBC Mundo 07/06/2014)

The current Argentine Pope didn't have the purest of records during the dictatorship; but at least for the moment he's making an effort to put his weight on the other side.

No incidentally, the military dictatorship loaded Argentine up with loads of debt in pursuit of the neoliberal economic policies. The Argentine people saw little if any benefit from it. But they were obligated to pay it off. Neoliberal darling Carlos Menem piled up even more during his Presidency.

Horacio Verbitsky in A Dios rogando Página/12 21.09.2014 writes:

Desde ese punto de vista, el encuentro en la residencia Santa Marta ha sido de mutua conveniencia, un día después del fallo de la Cámara de Apelaciones de Nueva York que dejó en pie las prohibiciones del juez Thomas Griesa y en vísperas del duro discurso contra el anarcocapitalismo financiero que la presidente pronunciará el miércoles ante la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas.

[From this point of view, the meeting {of Cristina and Francis I} in the Santa Marta residence had been one of mutual convenience, one day after the decision of the Appeals Court in New York that left in force the prohibitions of the {Nixon zombie} judge Thomas Griesa and in New York and days before the tough speech against financial anarcho-capitalism that the President will deliver this Wednesday before the General Assembly of the United Nations.]

Verbitsky, who wrote a four-volume history of the Catholic Church in Argentina, suggests that Pope Francis used the visit as a way to highlight the themes of economic justice he has chosen to emphasize.

On Cristina's visit with the Pope, see also: CFK, Francis meeting: 'Global financial reform, pope's constant concern' Buenos Aires Herald 09/20/2014.

And this TV report, Visión 7 - Cristina en el Vaticano: "El encuentro fue cordial y natural" TV Pública argentina 20.09.2014:

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, jorge mario bergoglio, neoliberalism, european union, vulture funds

The Catholic Church and divorce

The Catholic Voice, a generally conservative-leaning paper of the Oakland (CA) diocese, ran this brief item in its 08/12/2013 print edition, title "Speaking of Divorce:

VATICAN CITY-When Pope Francis spoke to journalists about the need for a stronger Catholic pastoral approach to marriage and to divorced people, he made a parenthetical reference to how the Orthodox churches handle the breakup of marriages differently. "The Orthodox have a different practice," he told reporters July 28 during his flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro. The Orthodox "follow the theology of 'oikonomia' (economy or stewardship), as they call it, and give a second possibility; they permit" a second marriage. While the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain both use the English term "ecclesiastical divorce" when referring to the use of "oikonomia" to permit a second marriage, Orthodox scholars and the websites of both archdioceses make clear that the Orthodox practice differs from both a Catholic annulment and a civil divorce. it! Unlike an annulment, which declares that a union was invalid from the beginning, the Orthodox decree does not question the initial validity of a sacramental marriage and unlike a civil divorce it does not dissolve a marriage. Rather, the Orthodox describe it as a recognition that a marriage has ended because of the failure or sin of one or both spouses.

Was that a deliberately enigmatic trial balloon from the Pope about liberalizing the Church's position on divorce? Or was he just chatting about something that interested him?

Something from last year that I thought worth flagging.

Tags: jorge mario bergoglio, pope francis i

Papal revolution? Seriously? Maybe it's time to take a deep breath

John Allen Jr. has been inclined to friendly reporting on the current Pope Francis I/Jorge Bergoglio. He was too willing in my view to brush off real concerns about Bergoglio's role during the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83. (See Hard questions about Francis in Argentina and a lesson from Chile National Catholic Reporter 04/12/2013.

And in A revolution underway with Pope Francis National Catholic Reporter 08/05/2013, he seems to be letting his enthusiasm for the current Pope get him carried away. He writes that "everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer a Catholic glasnost." Or at least that's his impression reporting from Rome. He's seeing a lot in what looks to me is still Francis' honeymoon period:

In terms of public opinion, Francis is already on the cusp of achieving the iconic status of Nelson Mandela, a figure of unquestioned moral authority. It's telling that during his trip to Brazil, protagonists in the nation's current unrest virtually tripped over one another in a contest to see who could demonstrate more deference and respect.

There's also a sense in which Francis is the "Teflon pope," in that nothing bad seems to stick. When anything scandalous happens, reaction isn't to blame the pope, but to see it as additional proof of why he's needed.

Allen was considerably more cautious in Francis and the risk of overheated expectations National Catholic Reporter 04/26/2013:

Yet it's an open question whether Francis will move fast enough and far enough to satisfy the moderates most elated by his election and who have already projected a fairly elaborate set of hopes and dreams onto his embryonic pontificate.

The truth is, in some ways it's surprising wariness hasn't already set in.

In his very first homily, in the Mass celebrated with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel the day after his election, Francis quoted the French novelist Léon Bloy: "Anyone who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil." Had someone been so inclined, that line could have been seen as spectacularly insensitive to non-Christians. If it had been a pope who came into office carrying the baggage of being "God's Rottweiler" rather than a man who was already drawing rave reviews for humility and simplicity, it's not difficult to imagine the contretemps that would have ensued.

On Tuesday, Francis celebrated Mass in the Pauline Chapel for his name day, the feast of St. George, and included this line: "It is not possible to find Jesus outside the church." Once again, it's easy to imagine how that would have played had it been Benedict.

In reality, it's unlikely that on most matters of faith and morals Francis will represent any real departure from either John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and sooner or later he'll likely draw the same mixed reactions, even if the most intense disappointment in his case comes from another quarter.

Oddly, even in that post and in the 04/12/2013 one linked above, Allen softpedals the harshness of Bergoglio's opposition to same-sex marriage, which is now legal in Argentina.

And I think more recently that people have seen things that aren't there in Pope Francis' recent statement on gays. (Here I'm more-or-less in agreement with the conservatives' characterization of his words, but not of the policy and doctrinal position they represent. On that, see Roy Edroso, Tighten Up, Francis: Rightbloggers Reassure Us the Pope Isn't That Gay-Friendly Village Voice 08/04/2013.

It's been the Church's position for a while that it no sin to be gay but it is a sin to act gay. Francis/Bergoglio was against Argentina's marriage equality law, saying opposing it was a "war of God" against the Devil, a position he has not withdrawn. In his recent interview, he said "The problem is not to have this tendency [i.e., being gay] but to constitute a lobby. That is a very grave matter for me." ("El problema no es ser gay, sino hacer lobby" Página/12 29.07.2013; my translation from the Spanish) That was a reference in particular to the alleged "gay lobby" in the Vatican, though he seems to have meant it in the larger sense, as well.

If there's any change of the Church position in there, it's not obvious to me. But one prominent Argentine gay leader did see it as expressing an intention to dial back at least the intensity of his previous anti-gay positions. For good (?) measure, the Pope threw in that on the matter of female priests, "That door is closed." Although he did say the Church needs to deepen it "theology of women," whatever that may mean. (Mejor no hablar de sacerdotisas Página/12 29.07.2013; my translation)

Pope Francis is taking what looks like good action on cleaning up the Vatican Bank. But on gays and female priests, so far he's sticking with the same-old same-old. When Allen in his "revolution" article gets down to describing the outlines of what he sees as progressive change, it comes down to some reforms that do look hopeful: changing "the Italian monopoly on governance" in the Church, which will be progressive if he replaces conservative Italian administrators with more moderate-to-liberal ones; building up the role of the laity; increased accountability, as with the Vatican Bank; and, a diplomatic downplaying of hot-button culture war issues like abortion.

Joanna Moorhead defines the current situation in a way similar to how I see it in Friendly rhetoric from Pope Francis in Brazil. But will it translate into action? Guardian 07/30/2013:

Even as a cardinal, Bergoglio had already clamped down on priests who refused to baptise children born out of wedlock; now he has gone further and said gay people should not be marginalised ("if a person is gay and seeks God, who am I to judge him?" he asked). On the role of women, (we're only 70 percent of the church's membership, so we really shouldn't push our luck) he said having girls as altar servers and employing a handful of senior women in the Vatican might perhaps not be quite enough. On the matter of women priests, of course, there was no debate to be had.

So we're seeing a thaw, though definitely not a revolution; a subtle but significant change of direction, yet from a man who remains deeply conservative. You don't need to be radical to be seen as a wind of change in the Catholic hierarchy (what they'd have made of Christ, one shudders to think). But as Francis is no doubt all too aware, the foreign trips are the easy bits. Because the truth is that it's in the Vatican, the smallest state on Earth, that most of his problems lie. None of his difficulties have gone away while he's been on the beach in Brazil. The fact is that by signalling a change of style, the new pope has raised expectations of a change of substance.

And Nick Cohen caught a dark twist that I had not seen discussed before in Francis' now-famous comment about gays (Don't be fooled. Pope by name, pope by nature Observer 08/10/2013):

But consider the sequel. "Being gay is not the problem," the pope continued, "lobbying is the problem and this goes for any type of lobby... political lobbies, masonic lobbies, all lobbies." ("Lobby dei politici, lobby dei massoni, tante lobby.")

And with that casual phrase, the pope signalled his fealty to the deep strain of reaction in European history and hardly anyone noticed. Few Anglo-Saxon readers understand that prejudice against freemasons is the founding conspiracy theory of the far right. It saw the machinations of a society that began among harmless Scottish craftsmen in the 15th century as responsible for liberalism, the enlightenment, the rights of man... everything it hated.

In the 1790s, an abbé named Augustin Barruel, an alarming combination of Dan Brown and David Icke, looked at the American and French revolutions and concluded that the masses could have overthrown divinely ordained monarchs and the holy mother church only if they were the dupes of an international conspiracy of freemasons.

The masons were not middle-aged men in fancy dress, but the descendants of the Knights Templar, who went underground in the Middle Ages and swore to avenge themselves on the church and monarchy that had persecuted them.

It sounded mad. Indeed it was mad. But a conspiracy theory that says that human rights are a sham behind which a sinister secret society manipulates the world was too useful to waste. Successive popes issued bulls against it. Pius IX included freemasonry along with socialism, liberalism and freedom of conscience as evils the faithful must fight in his Syllabus of Errors of 1864.

The antisemites and fascists of the early 20th century added that the masons were in league with the Jews. Franco and Mussolini persecuted them. The Nazis made freemasons wear red triangles and murdered them by the thousand.

Do not think these foul ideas are dead. Radical Islam echoes the European far-right's ravings. (The Hamas charter says the freemasons are in an alliance with the Jews and – brace yourselves – the Rotary Club and the Lions as well.) Like Hamas, Luigi Negri, a Catholic bishop, believes that freemasons were responsible for the French revolution and the Russian revolution, too. Last week, the [British] Catholic Herald took its cue from the pope's condemnation of the "masonic lobby" to raise the "truly frightening thought" that masons had infiltrated the Vatican and were subverting the Holy See from within. These devils in aprons are everywhere.

A second part to Allen's "revolution underway" article is due out tomorrow.

Tags: banco vaticano, jorge mario bergoglio, pope francis i, vatican bank

"Francis is and is not Bergoglio"

The Argentine philosopher Ricardo Forster has something to say about Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I that I find especially interesting (Té para tres por Ricardo Forster Página/12 29.04.2013):

Está dentro de la anomalía argentina, porque que el primer papa no europeo sea argentino es una desmesura. Creo que Bergoglio se enfrenta a ser Francisco y una situación terriblemente crítica de la Iglesia. A su vez, eso pone en discusión hacia dentro de la Argentina la relación con una Iglesia y su jerarquía que a lo largo de la historia fue tremendamente conservadora y que en los momentos más oscuros fue cómplice. Francisco es y no es Bergoglio. Porque si bien tiene detrás su biografía está en un lugar completamente distinto, que modifica incluso la subjetividad de la persona.

[He is within the Argentine anomaly, because of the fact that the first non-European Pope is an exceptional thing. I think Bergoglio is confronting being Francis and terribly critical situation for the Church. At the same time, it bring puts into discussion inside Argentina the relation with a Church and its hierarchy that throughout history was tremendously conservative and that in the darkest moments was complicit. Francis is and is not Bergoglio. Because if there is good behind his biography, he is in a completely distinct place, which modifies even the subjectivity of the person.]

I'm not familiar with Forster's style, so I'm not sure if he is being particularly circular there.

But I find the statement "Francis is and is not Bergoglio provocative in that context. On one level, it's a statement of the banal reality that having a significantly different formal role in an organization forces a person to have a new perspective and possibly to act in new ways.

But on another level, it suggests that Bergoglio's dark record in collaborating with the dictatorship of 1976-83, while avoiding the level of collusion and public defense of the regime that others in the Argentine Church hierarchy committed, could have more to do with the calculations of an ambitious and promising Church leader dominated bya reactionary, authoritarian, often explicitly anti-democratic Church hierarchy. And that his new role gives him new freedom to act in a more humane and honestly Christian way, if he really wants to.

I'm more inclined to think that the dictatorship was a more crucial test of the quality of person Bergoglio is. I'm hoping he surprises us. I'm hoping he sees his less-than-entirely-honorable role in relation to the dictatorship is something that as Pope he has to live down, to remove as a liability. And that to do so, he will push for some constructive and badly needed reforms in the Church to make the Church's business more transparent and its clergy more responsible and responsive and less exclusively male.

"Francis is and is not Bergoglio" is a good-news/bad-news message. The good news is that he has new freedom and power to do constructive things. The bad news is that he's Jorge Bergoglio.

Tags: pope francis i, jorge mario bergoglio

Argentina's Catholic Church and the dictatorship of 1976-83

Horacio Verbitsky's careful work on the role of the Catholic Church during the 1976-83 military dictatorship in Argentina became of wide interest recently with the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I. La mano izquierda de Dios, Tomo 4: La última dictadura (1976-1983) (2010) is the fourth volume of his Historia política de la Iglesia Católica (Political History of the Catholic Church), which despite the broad title focuses on the Catholic Church in Argentina.

But in La mano izquierda de Dios he also looks at the role of the Vatican, which became an important player in a network of relationships involving the Argentine dictatorship when Ronald Reagan became President. St. Reagan partnered with Pope John Paul II not only in opposing the Communist regimes in Poland and eastern Europe but also in the Central American counterinsurgency movement his Administration conducted in Central America, with El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras being particularly affected.

The cover shows Papal Nuncio in Argentina Pío Laghi (2nd from r.) with members of the junta (l. to r.) Orlando Ramón Agosti, Joreg Rafael Videla and Emilio Eduardo Massera

Bergoglio comes in for criticism in this book, though he was by no means the worst among senior officials in their collaboration with the dictatorship. There have been three main concerns about Bergoglio's role during this period that have been publicly discussed this year: his role in the arrest and torture of Jesuit priests Franz Jalics and Orlando Yorio who worked in a project in a very poor neigborhood and who Bergoglio very likely fingered for arrest, though there wasn't the slightest evidence they were involved with guerrillas or any criminal activity; his promotion of the career of Massera, pictured on the cover above; and, his membership prior to the coup in the Peronist paramilitary group Guardias de Hierro (Iron Guard) some of whose members played an important role in supporting the coup and with which Massera was closely associated.

One of Bergoglio's/Pope Francis I's more visible and attractive defenders on criticism of his role during the Argentinian dictatorship of 1976-83 is Nobel Peace Prize winner Pérez Esquivel, who himself was imprisoned by the junta for his public defense of human rights. But Horacio Verbitsky, who has been one of Bergoglio's most prominent critics on the issue, has recalled this year that in 2005, Esquivel was saying that Bergoglio had believed that people who did social work with the very poor were "comunistas, subversivos, terroristas" ("Communists, subversives, terrorists")

Esquivel said it on a national TV program when Bergoglio was being considered for Pope in the conclave of 2005. This relates in particular to the case of Jalics and Yorio, who worked in a project in a very poor neigborhood and who Bergoglio very likely fingered for arrest, though there wasn't the slightest evidence they were involved with guerrillas or any criminal activity. The video of Esquivel is on YouTube:

Verbitsky gives an account in the book of the Jalics/Yorio case, in which Bergoglio looks guilty of essentially ratting the two of them out to dictatorship for no good reason.

His account of the participation of the Vatican and its financial network in providing payments for leading members of the dictatorship - don't dictatorships always feature that, if not always with the Vatican's help - and in providing funding for the Nicaraguan contras and their terrorist campaign against the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, is also particularly interesting. The Contras' cocaine business was probably more important to its leaders than their counterrevolution. The Argentine dictatorship trained Central American death squads with the approval of the Reagan Administration. One of the main players in the financing of the Contras was construction magnate Franco Macri. His son, Maurizio Macri, is now governor of the City Buenos Aires and the leading opposition figure to Cristina Fernández' government. Verbitsky in the book compares Marurizio Macri to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. Macri's police are currently under heavy criticism for a recent incident in which they attacked demonstrators in a manner that would have made the military dictatorship proud.

Verbitsky's chronological account shows us a picture of a Catholic hierarchy actively collaborating with a brutal dictatorship whose Catholic-national ideology required the Church's cooperation to be credible. The key human rights issues of the desaparacedos, those kidnapped, tortured and often murdered by the dictatorship, and of the babies kidnapped by the military from pregnant female political prisoners, who they kept alive until they gave birth and then routinely murdered them, the Church's record is downright shameful. On the whole, the Church hierarchy covered for the military, repeated their propaganda justifying the disappearances and torture, and mostly refused to even recognize the appeals from parents and grandparents of the missing, much less doing anything of substance to help the victims. An important part of Verbitsky's story is the Church's special ministry to the military, in which priests were frequently taking confessions from torturers, meaning that the Church was extensively informed about the ugliest aspects of the regime the hierarchy so firmly supported. Some priests and Church officials participated in the torture, telling the victims they were getting what they deserve and telling them to cooperate with the torturers.

Verbitsky contrasts this behavior with that of the Church in Chile, which took a notably more active role in addressing human rights violations by the Pinochet regime, showing a clear example than an alternative position by the Church in Argentina was entirely feasible.

As always in such situations, there were active collaborators, which included the main hierarchy and the military priests. Others, including Bergoglio, took as less public and active but nevertheless supportive and often collaborationist attitudes toward the regime. Some priests, seminarians and lay activists defended human rights and continued to work with those in need in defiance of the regime's preferences. Verbitsky relates a number of cases of them being threatened, kidnapped and murdered. The Church hierarchy was typically passive even in those cases.

But as it started to become clear that a transition to an elected, civilian government was coming closer, the Church hierarchy began to careful create alibis for themselves, making more explicit statements of concern about human rights issues while continuing their collaboration.

The Vatican did play an important and constructive role in this period in facilitating diplomatic negotiations in a territorial dispute between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Islands, which very nearly led to war between the two dictatorships. And the Church also helped facilitate the transition to democracy in 1983. However, it's sickening to read how the Church for years echoed the regime's hate propaganda against "subversives," and then as the transition to democracy approach, started talking up the virtues of forgiveness and Christian charity to the victims of the regime's cruelty, backing the dictatorship to the end and after in their efforts to secure amnesty from any legal accountability for their crimes.

It's also striking to see spelled out the extent to which pre-modern theological ideas and explicit rejection of democracy were so deeply influential in the Church hierachy in Argentina.

Tags: argentina, jorge mario bergoglio, horacio verbitsky, pope francis i

Anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina

Today is the 37th anniversary of the military coup of 1976 that installed a brutal and murderous military dictatorship that remained in power until 1983. Prosecutions of officials who committed crimes during that dictatorship, known as El Proceso from its preferred name for its project of purging democracy and democratic freedoms from Argentina forever. Forever last only seven years.

Here is a report from TV Pública argentina on the anniversary, featuring a brief presentation by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, A 37 años del golpe cívico militar 22.03.2013:

Here is a longer report of a the speech of Cristina's excerpted in the report above, Cristina inauguró nuevos Espacios de la Memoria (2 de 2) TV Pública argentina 22.03.2012:

She posted the following to her Facebook wall:

24 de marzo, un aniversario que no quisiéramos tener los argentinos, pero que tenemos la obligación de recordar. Un recuerdo que no es patrimonio de ningún sector político de la Argentina. Cuando se atenta contra la democracia, se atenta contra la forma de vida en que queremos vivir todos los argentinos. Entendamos que esta es una fecha de la democracia, que tanto costó recuperar y debemos asegurar: Lo que pasó no fue por casualidad. Si uno mira los índices que tenía el país de ocupación, calidad de vida, industrialización, desarrollo social al momento de producirse el golpe, y cómo terminamos en 1983 cuando llega la democracia, y luego lo que pasó en la segunda parte, cómo terminamos en el 2001... vemos que el mejor homenaje que se puede hacer a todos los que hoy no están, o los que están y sufrieron, es seguir logrando esta Argentina, una Argentina con mayor inclusión social, con mayor trabajo, de fábricas abiertas, de ciencia y tecnología.

El objetivo del golpe no sólo era un país sin industrias, un país donde manejara solamente el capital financiero, era además instalar en cada uno de los argentinos que no valía la pena ocuparse del otro, porque si te ocupabas del otro te podía pasar algo. El miedo. Y al miedo le siguió el egoísmo. El egoísmo es el hijo del miedo. Los que no tienen miedo son solidarios. Seguir luchando por más igualdad, por los que menos tienen, para estar siempre junto a ellos, ese es el mandato de los 30.000 desaparecidos.

Recuerdo palabras de él [Néstor Kirchner], 24/3/2004: “Hablemos claro: no es rencor ni odio lo que nos guía y me guía, es justicia y lucha contra la impunidad. Dejaremos todo para lograr un país más equitativo, con inclusión social, luchando contra la desocupación, la injusticia, y todo lo que nos dejó en su última etapa esta lamentable década del ’90 como epílogo de las cosas que nos tocaron vivir. Hermanas y hermanos, compañeros que están presentes por más que no estén aquí, Madres, Abuelas, chicos: gracias por el ejemplo de lucha. Defendamos con fe, con capacidad de amar, que no nos llenen el espíritu de odio porque no lo tenemos, pero tampoco queremos la impunidad. Queremos que haya justicia, queremos que realmente haya una recuperación fortísima de la memoria. Que en esta Argentina se vuelvan a recordar y tomar como ejemplo a aquellos que son capaces de dar todo por los valores que tienen. Una generación en la Argentina que fue capaz de hacer eso, ha dejado un sendero, su vida, sus madres, sus abuelas y sus hijos."

Página/12 reports on this message in CFK: "Esta es una fecha de la democracia que tanto costó recuperar y debemos asegurar" 24.03.2013. In it, she makes a moving statement about how the dictatorship's state terror functioned (quoted above in Spanish in a slightly different form; just after 18:30 in the last video; my translation from the video version):

... the objective of the coup was not only a country without industries, a country where only finance capital ran things; it was also to install in every one of the Argentines that it was not worth it to be concerned with others, because if you concerned yourself with other something could happen to you. Better to be concerned with yourself, and if your were concerned with yourself, nothing would happen to you. Fear. And after fear follows egoism. Egoism is the child of fear. Don't ever forget it. Only those who are afraid can be egoists. Those who are not afraid are those who practice solidarity.

She also says, "... we are going to fight for more equality, for more equality for those who have the leaset, for the poorest, to always be there together with them, this is the mandate of the 30,000 desaparecidos" i.e, the "disappeared", those kidnapped and murdered by the dictatorship.

She speaks from experience. She was a human rights attorney during the dictatorship who worked actively to help its victims. It surely one of the sources of tension between her and Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I, who was anything but a profile in courage during the dictatorship, and probably actively collaborated in dishonorable ways.

I just read Emilio Mignone's 1986 book, Iglesia y dictadura: El papel de la iglesia a la luz de sus relaciones con el régimen militar (2006), which has figured in the news reports on Bergoglio's conduct in relationship to the dictatorship. Mignone's daughter Mónica was kidnapped by the dictatorship in 1976, taken from their home. Mignone and his wife Chela were never able to contact her. He died in 1998 without ever knowing for sure what happened to Mónica, or where her remains lay. Although he assumes that she was likely tortured and murdered, the usual fate of the desaparecidos.

This is how state terror works. Not only was she arrested but was held incommunicado, never given any kind of a public trial, her parents and other relatives and friends were never able to see her in prison, and never knew for sure what happened to her.

It's very common for Americans to hear something like this about another country and think how this shows the superiority of the United States and our political system to the benighted "Third World." But Americans are generally unaware of the nature of the United States long interaction with Latin America. St. Reagan approved of the Argentine junta, as Robert Perry reports in Did Reagan Know about Baby Thefts? Consortium News 07/06/2012:

Despite U.S. government awareness of the grisly actions of the Argentine junta, which had drawn public condemnation from the Carter administration in the 1970s, these Argentine neo-Nazis were warmly supported by Ronald Reagan, both as a political commentator in the late 1970s and as President once he took office in 1981.

When President Jimmy Carter’s human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, berated the Argentine junta for its brutality, Reagan used his newspaper column to chide her, suggesting that Derian should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. [For details, see Martin Edwin Andersen's Dossier Secreto. {Perry's note}]

Reagan understood that the Argentine generals played a central role in the anti-communist crusade that was turning Latin America into a nightmare of unspeakable repression. The leaders of the Argentine junta saw themselves as something of pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. ...

After becoming President in January 1981, Reagan entered into a covert alliance with the Argentine junta. He ordered the CIA to collaborate with Dirty War experts in training the [Nicaraguan] Contras, who were soon rampaging through towns in northern Nicaragua, raping women and dragging local officials into public squares for executions.

Perry's article contains other details about the domestic conduct of the Argentine junta.

The Reagan Presidential Library's website has the gall to implicitly credit St. Reagan with somehow restoring democracy in Argentina, a gag-inducing idea: "While President Reagan was in the White House, Free, democratic elections were held for the first time in many years in the Republic of Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the Philippines. By the time President Reagan left office, the number of people in Latin America living under freely elected governments tripled from what it had been ten years earlier." (my emphasis) (President Reagan's Foreign Policy: Making the World Over Again; n/d, accessed 03/24/2013)

Robert Perry also writes about St. Reagan and the Argentine junta in Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities Consortium News 02/06/2011. Ironically - or, more accurately, highly cynically - the "neoconservatives" who understand themselves as continuing the kind of policies Reagan practiced in Central America will treat even negotiating with countries with which they want to go to war (Iran, right now) as immoral connivance in whatever bad thing the regime may be doing at home.

Cristina's reference to the goal of the junta as "not only a country without industries, a country where only finance capital ran things" isn't just a rhetorical flourish. The junta, like its predecessor and contemporary in the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, set out to implement the "free market" policies that would favor American capital in particular, the policies most of the world knows as neoliberalism. But it didn't look much like a "free" free market to industrialists who were targeted by the junta for economic reasons. Investigations over the last year of the conduct of the junta office known as the Comisión Nacional de Valores (CNV, the National Commission of Values) has brought to public light information on junta kidnappings of businesspeople in 1978-9 especially, not for political reasons as such but in order to implement the neoliberal economic policies of Economics Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz (1925-2013), who died just this month. Though some of the kidnapped businesspeople were accused of providing funds to guerrillas. Part of the motivation, though, may have been that they were running out of what they considered the most plausible political targets and the CNV still wanted to find subversives to fight. Something all countries should consider when building up massive internal security apparatuses, including the United States. They all need to justify their existence by showing some kind of results. And sometimes they just like exercising their power. (See Alejandra Dandan, La trama financiera de la última dictadura Página/12 24.03.2013)

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, evita, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Cristina Fernández has an audience with papa Francisco I

Argentine President Cristina Fernández had an audience with the Pope today. She raised the issue of Britain's continuing occupation of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. (CFK: "Le pedimos a Francisco que interceda en el diálogo entre Argentina y Gran Bretaña" Página/12 18.03.2013) It will be interesting to see if Bergoglio/Pope Francis I gets actively involved in promoting serious diplomatic negotiations between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas. In his previous positions, he has indicated his support for Argentina regaining its rightful control over the islands. But that was a very safe position in Argentine politics, since it's supported across the political spectrum.

Cristina recalled that Pope John Paul II had helped mediate negotiations between Argentina and Chile over a long-running border dispute when both were ruled by dictatorships. Since Argentina and Britain are both democratic countries now, conditions for similar negotiations over the Malvinas are more favorable, she said.

She also said they expressed their mutual agreement on the need to oppose human trafficking and slave labor. And she invited him to visit Argentina in his new role.

It's nice to know the Pope is opposed to slavery.

Cristina praised Bergoglio/Francis for referring to Latin America as "la Patria Grande," a term associated with San Martín y Bolívar, heroes of the Latin American independence movement and which emphasizes the unity of Latin American nations.

Here is the video released by the President's office, la Casa Rosada, of Cristina's press conference talking about her meeting with the Pope, 18 de MAR. Conferencia de prensa de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Asunción Francisco I (Spanish with Italian translations):

Osvaldo Pepe editorializes in the anti-Cristina Clarín in a piece called Una oportunidad para Cristina 18.03.13. The opportunity of which the title speaks? He basically says it's an opportunity for Cristina and her supporters to shut the hell up about Bergoglio's actions or lack thereof during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Liberation theologian Jon Sobrino discusses the new Pope in an interview published in Noticias de Gipuzkoa, "Bergoglio no fue un Romero, se alejó de los pobres durante el genocidio argentino" by Concha Lago 16.03.02013; Commonweal, which has been reporting on the questions around Bergoglio's dealings with the Argentine junta, includes a partial translation in Sobrino on Bergoglio by Eduardo Peñalver 03/18/2013.

Sobrino emphasizes his hope that Bergoglio/Francis will take seriously the need to make the Church genuinely a Church exercising a preferential option for the poor and not a Church that sides with the wealthy against the poor. He also stresses the need to improve the status of women within the Church, to give greater attention to environmental issues, and to reform the Vatican Curia. His comment on abortion in this interview is ambiguous and could be read as approval of Bergoglio's outspoken anti-abortion stand in Argentina.

On the question of Bergoglio's dealings with the dictatorship, Sobrino is careful not to accuse him of "culpability" in the dictatorship's crimes. But he effectively judges him guilty of irresponsibility and possibly even cowardice - though he doesn't use either word - by noting that he distanced himself from the "popular Church" that was actively engaged with poor communities and paying attention to their material as well as spiritual needs. Which, of course, fit in with the program of the junta for the Church.It's hard not to see a touch of bitter sarcasm in what he says of Bergoglio here:

En todo ello se aprecia una forma suya específica de hacer la opción por los pobres. No así en salir activa y arriesgadamente en su defensa en las épocas de represión de las criminales dictaduras militares. La complicidad de la jerarquía eclesiástica con las dictaduras es conocida. Bergoglio fue superior de los jesuitas de Argentina desde 1973 hasta 1979, en los años de mayor represión del genocidio cívico militar.

{In all that, one can assess his specific way of making the option for the poor. Not in actively going out and risking oneself in their defense in the periods of repression of the criminal military dictatorships. The complicity of the Church hierarchy with the dictatorships is known. Bergoglio was superior of the Jesuits in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, in the years of the worst repression of civil-military genocide.} [from the translation used by Peñalver with my corrections]

He also pointedly refers to the examples of Latin American Church leaders who literally became martyrs or who suffered or were seriously persecuted during that period because of their defense of human rights, including Óscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, Juan José Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala, Leónidas Proaño of Ecuador, Helder Camara, Aloysius Lorscheider of Brazil, and Samuel Ruiz of Mexico. He says that "los mártires por la justicia, es lo mejor que tenemos en la Iglesia. Es lo que la hacen parecida a Jesús de Nazaret" ("the martyrs for justice, that is the best that we have in the Church. It is what makes it resemble Jesus of Nazareth.")

This is not, as the dissembling Jesuit Bergoglio partisan Thomas Reese might like us to believe, demanding that "every Christian" be a martyr. It's holding up the highest examples as a way of judging where Bergoglio falls on the continuum between principled resistance and crass collaboration.

Peñalver in his blog posts has been focusing on the issues raised by Bergoglio's relationship to the dictatorship. In Popes and Dirty Wars 03/13/2013, he writes:

The Church has a lot of ugly secrets in Latin America. Liberation Theology, whatever its flaws, represented — as a cultural matter — an historic break with shameful tradition in which church, army and oligarchy stood together to defend an unjust status quo, by any means necessary. Keeping silent or perhaps even working quietly behind the scenes in a few cases while thousands were tortured, raped and killed for the crime of demanding political freedom and economic dignity was — for those in a position to do more — often a form of complicity. Even that limited intercession raises questions, since it would not have been possible without ties to the murderous regime. To their credit, some in the Argentine hierarchy refused to stay quiet. Our new Pope was not among them.

In More on Bergoglio and the Dirty War 03/17/2013, he provides an article by political scientist Charles Kenney, which is the best summary I've seen in English so far on the issues relating to Bergoglio and the dictatorship, though it doesn't include anything specific about his connection to the Iron Guard group.

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, falklands, francis i, jon sobrino, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo, malvinas

Bergoglio/Francis' election as Pope brings new focus on some important aspects of Argentine history

I mentioned yesterday that Robert Perry of Consortium News has been using the event of Jorge Bergoglio's election as Pope Francis I to highlight some of the broader issues of the "dirty war" period in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America that, among other things, produced the Iran-Contra scandal.

On 03/15/2013 he republished an article from 08/19/1998 by Marta Gurvich, Argentina’s Dapper State Terrorist, on Jorge Rafael Videla, who she describes as "the dapper dictator who launched the so-called Dirty War in 1976." Videla was the first head of the junta that overthrew the constitutional government of Argentina in 1976. Argentina had seen military dictatorships before, all of which brought their share of arbitrariness and cruelty. But the junta, who called their project El Proceso, took things to the next level, as we say these days.

Her article focuses on the kidnappings of babies from political prisoners, a heart-rending issue that persists today as a major concern in Argentina:

Videla, known for his English-tailored suits and his ruthless counterinsurgency theories, stands accused of permitting — and concealing — a scheme to harvest infants from pregnant women who were kept alive in military prisons only long enough to give birth.

According to the charges, the babies were taken from the new mothers, sometimes by late-night Caesarean sections, and then distributed to military families or shipped to orphanages. After the babies were pulled away, the mothers were removed to another site for their executions.

Last year I posted links to a mini-series run by TV Publica argentina, Volver a nacer, that deals with this issue in a moving way. (YouTube playlist for the entire miniseries here.)

The 2005 film Cautiva also deals with this issue and is available with English subtitles. At this writing, the film is also available on YouTube without subtitles. Here is Part 1, posted 09/27/2009. This is the video of the first part, which is unfortunately a poor quality reproduction:

Consortium News also on 03/16/2013 reprints an article of 01/07/1999 by Georg Hodel, Evita, the Swiss and the Nazis, that reminds us that the Catholic Church and the first Peronist regime cooperated to some significant degree in facilitating the immigration of former Nazis, some of them serious war criminals. Peronism was widely regarded in the United States in real time as a more-or-less fascist government. The view persists, and is reflected in Hodel's article: "During World War II, Gen. Peron — a populist military leader — made no secret of his sympathies for Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Even as the Third Reich crumbled in the spring of 1945, Peron remained a pro-fascist stalwart, making available more than 1,000 blank passports for Nazi collaborators fleeing Europe."

Peronism is a devilishly complex political phenomenon. Not least among its complications is that Peron did admire aspects of Mussolini's and Hitler's regimes. Hodel engages in some legitimate speculation based on circumstantial suggestions about what role Evita Perón may have played in the immigration of former Nazis.

But he makes polemical claims about Evita that are false: "Born in 1919 as an illegitimate child, she became a prostitute to survive and to get acting roles. As she climbed the social ladder lover by lover, she built up deep resentments toward the traditional elites. As a mistress to other army officers, she caught the eye of handsome military strongman Juan Peron. After a public love affair, they married in 1945." There is no evidence that Evita ever was a prostitute, that she slept her way up the "social ladder" - she always had contempt for the traditional "social ladder" of oligarchical Argentina - or that she was the girlfriend or "mistress" of any army officer other than Juan Perón. This kind of careless reproduction of gossip doesn't boost confidence in Hodel's speculations in the rest of the article.

This excerpt from the excellent 1996 Spanish-language film Eva Perón gives a sample of the contradictory nature of Evita and her politics, Eva Perón hablándole a los trabajadores ferroviarios:

The current President Cristina Fernández is head of the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ) and proudly uses both Juan and Eva Perón as positive symbols of her democratic and prolabor policies. What a political figure represents in popular memory and historical symbolism may be very different from what they really were. That's part of why we have historians.

These two videos from TV Publica argentina show Cristina speaking about Evita.

Cristina inauguró un mural sobre Evita 26.07.2011:

Cristina: "Evita cumplió su propia profecía de volver a una Argentina diferente" (35:55 minutes) 26.07.2012 on the 60th anniversary of Evita's death:

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, evita, eva perón, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo