El devenir tardío pero ejemplar del castigo a las conductas criminales de la dictadura argentina no solo ilustra la banalidad del mal, de la que nos hablara premonitoriamente Hannah Arendt, a contra-corriente del sionismo que tuvo que lidiar con el caso Eichmann, y su enjuciamiento, sino la importancia de recobrar la memoria y hacer "justicia" a las víctimas, a su familia, y a la sociedad ofendida. Los Kirchnner, no hicieron mutis por el foro al clamor de las víctimas, y los militares han venido siendo por fin juzgados por crímenes de lesa humanidad.

En Colombia seguimos viviendo cualquier tipo de tretas para hurtarle el bulto a esas responsabilidades, y ocultar el rostro de determinadores de la bestialidad como es patente en casos como los de la guerrillera Irma Franco, o el magistrado auxiliar Carlos Urán, "ejecutado" con un tiro de gracia. N d la R.

Cadena perpetua para Alfredo Astiz, el 'ángel de la muerte' de la dictadura argentina.

EFEPor sus crímenes durante la dictadura, Alfredo Astiz se ganó el mote del ´ángel de la muerte´. -

ARGENTINAEs el responsable de innumerables secuestros de personas que permanecieron cautivas en la ESMA, cárcel clandestina de la dictadura, entre ellas las fundadoras de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo y las monjas francesas Alice Domon y Leonie Duquet.

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Semana

Jueves 27 Octubre 2011

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La combinación de su ferocidad con los indefensos y su cara aniñada hicieron que el exmarino Alfredo Astiz, quien fue condenado este miércoles a prisión perpetua por crímenes cometidos durante la dictadura, se ganara el apodo del ‘ángel de la muerte’.
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Sus acciones son el máximo símbolo del terrorismo de Estado que asoló a Argentina entre 1976 y 1983. Nació en la ciudad bonaerense de Mar del Plata el 8 de noviembre de 1951 y tras el golpe de Estado de 1976 fue asignado a la Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), en la zona norte de Buenos Aires y donde funcionó la principal cárcel clandestina del régimen de facto.
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Como capitán de fragata perteneció al Grupo de Tareas 332 (GT 332), responsable de innumerables secuestros de personas que permanecieron cautivas en la ESMA, por la que los organismos humanitarios calculan que pasaron unos 5.000 detenidos, de los cuales solo sobrevivieron cerca de 100.
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Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo fueron algunas de las primeras víctimas de su accionar delictivo, cuando el 10 de diciembre de 1977 Astiz "marcó" con un beso en la puerta de una iglesia a quienes unas horas después serían secuestradas por su grupo: Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino y María Ponce, las fundadoras de esa organización.
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La misma suerte corrieron las monjas francesas Alice Domon y Leonie Duquet, quienes permanecieron cautivas en la ESMA hasta que fueron arrojadas al mar desde un avión militar en uno de los tristemente célebres "vuelos de la muerte".
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Tiempo después el marino asesinó por error a la adolescente sueca Dagmar Hagelin al confundirla con una guerrillera.
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En 1982, durante la guerra por la soberanía de las Malvinas, Astiz integró un grupo de comandos al que se le asignó la defensa del archipiélago de las Georgias del Sur y fue tomado como prisionero por las fuerzas británicas sin ofrecer resistencia alguna.
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En 1986 y 1987 fue uno de los cientos de represores beneficiados por las leyes de Punto Final y Obediencia Debida, y en 1990 la Justicia francesa lo condenó en ausencia a prisión perpetua por los crímenes de las religiosas Domon y Duquet.
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Siete años después, el juez español Baltasar Garzón solicitó su captura y extradición junto a las de otros 44 militares argentinos acusados de genocidio, y en 1998 fue expulsado de la Marina, institución a la que, decía, estaba "orgulloso" de pertenecer.
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Antes había protagonizado un escándalo mediático al ofrecer una entrevista a un semanario en la que confesó su admiración por el guerrillero Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara y su miedo durante los tiroteos callejeros, además de jactarse, con gran soberbia, de que algunos exmilitares le habían buscado para que liderara un nuevo golpe de Estado.
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El año 2003 marcó el principio del fin para el antiguo marino, cuando el Parlamento anuló las denominadas "leyes del perdón" y se reactivaron cientos de causas por delitos de represión contra otros tantos militares y miembros de las fuerzas de seguridad, entre ellos Alfredo Astiz.
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La "megacausa ESMA" lo llevó a una cárcel militar a comienzos del 2004 y dos años después un tribunal ordenó la reapertura de la investigación por la desaparición de la joven sueca Dagmar Hagelin.
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Tras ser condenado a prisión perpetua en Italia, también en ausencia, Astiz fue trasladado en 2007 a una cárcel común, donde ha esperado el juicio por sus crímenes en la ESMA que esta semana llegó a su fin.
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EFE

Esta es una contribución remitida por Luis Mejía desde New York, en un tiempo en que el New Deal se confronta con el proceso real de deterioro capitalista, y el levantamiento de los indignados en New York, Washington y otras ciudades que se une al coro de los que rechazan el caracter depredador del capitalismo global. N de la R.

What the New Deal Accomplished

651,000 miles of highway. 8,000 parks. The Triborough Bridge. Do conservatives who attack the New Deal actually know what America gained from it?

By Michael Hiltzik|Posted Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011, at 10:34 AM ET

This excerpt, which is courtesy of the Free Press, comes from Michael Hiltzik’s new book, The New Deal: A Modern History.

During the years of the New Deal, America’s government built as it never had before—or has since.

The New Deal physically reshaped the country. To this day, Americans still rely on its works for transportation, electricity, flood control, housing, and community amenities. The output of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, represents a magnificent bequest to later generations. The WPA produced, among many other projects, 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings built, rebuilt, or expanded. Among the latter were 41,300 schools.

The transformative power of this effort is inestimable. The Tennessee Valley in 1933 was a quintessential backwoods region of “grim drudgery, and grind” in the words of its savior George Norris: beleaguered by floods, drained of its manpower by the siren call of the cities, the latent wealth of its river and lumber left fallow. The TVA of Norris and Franklin Roosevelt turned it into a land of plenty that called its workers home, put its natural endowments to productive use, and delivered to its residents the promise of a secure American middle-class lifestyle.

The Public Works Administration provided Harold Ickes with a larger construction budget than any American government official ever had received: $3.3 billion, more than 20 times the $150 million the government spent on public construction projects in 1929. Ickes was determined to make the most of it. The impression is accurate that he disbursed the money with the tightfistedness of a man spending from his own pocket; but there is no denying that he thereby ensured that it would create for the nation a greater patrimony.

PWA built or helped build monumental projects from sea to sea. In Washington State, Grand Coulee Dam put 8,000 men to work starting in 1933 and used materials and equipment from 46 of the 48 states. In Southern California, PWA helped repair or replace 536 school buildings damaged or destroyed by the great Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933. Most of them, rebuilt to the most exacting seismic standards of the time, are still in use at this writing. In Florida, the exemplary project was the Overseas Highway, 127 miles of causeways and bridges connecting the mainland and Key West, built on the remains of a railroad line destroyed by hurricane in 1935, and transforming the latter island from a dismal outback of dispossessed relief recipients to one of America’s premier tourist destinations. In New York was built the greatest project of them all—the Triborough Bridge tying together three of the city’s five boroughs, rescued from insolvency in 1933 by a PWA grant and loan totaling $44 million, and dedicated in 1936 with FDR in attendance despite his loathing for the project’s municipal overseer, Robert Moses, whom the president had repeatedly tried to remove from the project, without success. But he swallowed his enmity for Moses long enough to bask in the nationwide publicity marking Triborough’s completion.

The Triborough ceremony marked a coming of age for the New Deal’s approach to spending for physical infrastructure. At first Roosevelt and his aides had a murky understanding of how to balance the need to put people to work with the goal of efficient and lasting construction. Rexford Tugwell, a top Roosevelt adviser, had witnessed an especially telling exchange between the president and New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia about government funding for what would later be christened LaGuardia Airport. “They were happily agreeing that bulldozers and other powered machines should be banned,” he related. “There should be only hand tools so that more men would be employed.” Finally, Tugwell interjected that if they really wished to put the maximum number of men to work, why not confine them to hand trowels? The point was driven home that they might indeed employ more men, but they would never be able to finish one airport, much less build any others.

FDR came to understand the political luster of great public works. When possible, he dedicated them in person—even when, as in the case with the structure that would ultimately be known as Hoover Dam, credit for its construction belonged to his Republican predecessors. Skeptical early in his first term about their cost and utility, he soon became an enthusiast, demanding more plans and more works—more bridges, more dams, even a highway spanning the American continent from sea to shining sea.

A good portion of Franklin Roosevelt’s immortality rests upon the New Deal’s physical works; but even more rests upon its transformation of the nation’s social and economic structures.

Here we must consider Americans’ relationship with what is, after all, their government. The New Dealers did not think about government in the limited terms of their predecessors, as an agency of national defense and little else. They did not perceive it as an antagonist of the common man, an enemy of liberty, or an entity interested in its own growth for growth’s sake. They understood that it was a powerful force and that its power could be exercised by inaction as well as action, to very different ends. The condition of the American people when the New Dealers assumed office demanded ameliorative action, and this they strived to deliver. They did not invariably achieve their goals, but in appraising their performance it is important to acknowledge that the crisis they addressed was uniquely cataclysmic in American history, and that suitable precedent for addressing it simply did not exist.

Federal deposit insurance, by eliminating bank runs even in times of economic crisis, cut the number of bank failures from the peak of 4,000 in 1933 to nine the next year. Bank failures would not exceed 75 in any one year until the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, and for a three-decade stretch beginning in 1943 never exceeded single figures. The importance of this record for depositor confidence and the safety of the nation’s monetary stock is incalculable.

The reforms implemented under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which established the Securities and Exchange Commission, professionalized an industry burdened in the aftermath of 1929 with a reputation for insider transactions and sharp dealing. The transparency of financial reporting mandated by the act for public corporations and brokerages set the foundations for the explosive growth of the U.S. capital markets and corporate economy ever since.

The New Deal instilled in Americans an unshakable faith that their government stands ready to succor them in times of need. Put another way, the New Deal established the concept of economic security as a collective responsibility. As of this writing, Social Security, by any measure the outstanding domestic achievement of the Roosevelt administration, serves 54 million beneficiaries. Over the decades the program has kept many tens of millions of American workers and their families out of poverty. The promise of corporate pensions has largely disappeared from the employment contract and the investment markets have disappointed many workers’ expectations of comfortable retirements, but Social Security endures, providing retirees with benefits that grow with inflation and that cannot be outlived. Social Security began as an “awkward and insufficient” program, as Rexford Tugwell would observe; but it was expanded in succeeding decades, under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, in a continuing effort to uphold its original promise. Its 1960s addendum, Medicare, sprang organically from that promise.

The New Deal effectively ended in 1939, amid doubts about Roosevelt’s leadership and under the shadow of war, as a work in progress. To a great extent it is still unfinished.

Bank failures periodically surge because of outbreaks of imprudent management inadequately monitored by federal regulators, as occurred in the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s and the financial crisis of 2008. The business reforms of the ’30s have proven unequal to chicaneries of later ages, and periodically must be updated. The physical infrastructure bequeathed by the ‘30s has been allowed in many places to crumble from inattention. The public debate about the proper role of the federal government in Americans’ lives is never-ending, as perhaps it should be. Yet, because the New Deal’s principle of collective security has become so ingrained in the American system, efforts to roll back the programs founded under Franklin Roosevelt almost always seem invested with nostalgia and the scent of unreality. Catastrophe snuffed out the economic and governmental structures of the 1920s and the march of modernity buried them.

Buy Michael Hiltzik’s new book, The New Deal: A Modern History.

Our dear friend Aleta, from the Graduate School in NY, shares with us this news, and how things go with Hillary Clinton in this crucible that goes beyond Feminism and has to do with the future global order. N d la R.

Feminist News

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September-29-11

Hillary Clinton Calls for Ratification of CEDAW

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a meeting with Catherine Ashton, the top diplomat for the European Union and Michelle Bachelet, executive director of UN Women and the former president of Chile, signed a document in support of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). "We call upon all States to ratify and fulfill their obligations under the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and to implement fully Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women and Peace and Security and other relevant UN resolutions," the women leaders wrote in their joint statement.

Melanne Verveer, ambassador-at-large for global women's issues at the State Department, told the Huffington Post, "I've testified that around the world, the number one question I'm asked is why hasn't the U.S. ratified CEDAW. We would be much stronger if we could be in the right place, but it's up to the Senate."

CEDAW was first signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980 and has been approved by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations twice, but the United States has never ratified the treaty. The treaty has been ratified by 186 of the 193 member nations of the United Nations. The other six nations that have not signed the treaty are Iran, the Republic of the Sudan, and Syria, as well as the three small Pacific Island nations of Palau, Tonga and Nauru.

Media Resources: Huffington Post 9/20/11; Joint Declaration: On Advancing Women's Political Participation 9/19/11; Feminist Daily Newswire 11/17/11 <>