‘Weaponizing human rights’: UN chief Bachelet’s Venezuela report follows US regime change script

Anya Parampil
The Grayzone

Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas slams UN High Commissioner Bachelet’s report on Venezuela as a politicized collection of baseless accusations by “advocates of regime change”

When United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet traveled to Venezuela earlier this year, she met with an array of citizens who lost family members to right-wing violence in the country. 

Among them was Inés Esparragoza, whose 20-year-old son, Orlando Figuera, was doused with gasoline and lit on fire by an opposition mob during violent anti-government riots, known as guarimbas, in May 2017. 

“He was stabbed, beaten and cruelly burnt alive,” Esparragoza declared before Bachelet in March. “Simply because of the color of his shirt, the color of his skin, and because he said he was Chavista.”

While Esparragoza poured her family’s torment out before the former Chilean president, Bachelet scribbled notes and glanced down at horrific photos which captured the moment masked men attacked Figuera. As the young man knelt to the ground, a gang of anti-government thugs poured petrol over his body before lighting a match.

“I call on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to make justice,” she said. “These are not peaceful protesters, they are bloodthirsty.”

Yet shockingly, when Bachelet released her long-anticipated report on the situation in Venezuela on July 5, it was as though that meeting never took place.
 
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The Planning of a Coup against Venezuela: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup. The Imposition of a Neoliberal Agenda

Michel Chossoudovsky
Global Research

The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was to impose the neoliberal economic agenda. “Regime change” was enforced through a covert military intelligence operation. Sweeping macro-economic reforms (including privatization, price liberalization and the freeze of wages) were implemented in early October 1973.

Author’s Introduction

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More than forty-five years ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende.

The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship.

The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot.   

Is Washington’s ongoing initiative directed against Venezuela modelled on Chile?

In early 1970s, in a note to the CIA in relation to Chile, Henry Kissinger recommended “Make the economy scream.” Visibly the same concept has been applied to Venezuela, with advanced techniques of financial warfare, which were not available in the 1970s.

Today it’s Mike Pompeo and John Bolton who are calling the shots, in tandem with the CIA.

Bolton has gone far beyond the Nixon-Kissinger agenda formulated at the height of the Cold War. Bolton refers to “The Troika of Tyranny”. The US sponsored coup against Venezuela is also directed against Cuba. And from Washington’s standpoint “after Venezuela, Cuba is next”.

“The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—has finally met its match. In Venezuela, the United States is acting against the dictator Maduro, who uses the same oppressive tactics that have been employed in Cuba for decades.”  (John Bolton)

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Latin America Embraces BDS as Chilean City Becomes First to Join Boycott of Israel

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

ALDIVIA, CHILE – Last Tuesday, in the wake of recent victories for the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement elsewhere in Latin America, Valdivia, a relatively small city in southern Chile, became the first city in all of Latin America to officially join the boycott against Israel for its apartheid policies, military occupation of the West Bank and illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. The vote to adopt the boycott at the city level was taken unanimously by the local government after the initiative was personally introduced by the city’s mayor, Omar Sabat, who is of Palestinian descent.
 
The measure adopted by the city specifically declares the municipality as an “Apartheid Free Zone” and prohibits the city from working with any business that benefits or is linked to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and/or Israel’s apartheid policy that targets Palestinians. According to the text of the declaration, the ban on working with such businesses will remain in effect until Israel ends its occupation of Palestine and dismantles the border wall; until Palestinians are granted fundamental human rights by the Israeli state and are treated as equals under Israeli law; and until the right of return of Palestinian refugees is granted, as stipulated by UN Resolution 194.

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Chile: Sex Change No Longer Required To Alter Gender Identity

TeleSur 

The supreme court ruled that the rights of transgender people need to be respected and they don't need an operation to prove their gender identity.

Chile's Supreme Court has ruled 4-1 that transgender citizens can change their name and sex on state registries without needing a sex-change operation to prove their gender identity.

The ruling said that Chile is part of several international human rights accords, including the American Convention of Human Rights and the International Pact of Civil and Political Rights, which obligates the state to "guarantee the human rights of all without discrimination based on race, color, sex, language, religion, political opinions… or any other social condition."

With these agreements as precedents, the judges ruled that "transgender people, they must always be treated with full respect and guarantees to their human rights enshrined in the various international instruments."

The ruling, released Wednesday, reads that "any change of name must respect the reality that serves the (person's) parameters." 

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Volcanoes in Japan, Colombia and Chile spew ash – Colombian airport closed

The Extinction Protocol

July 2015 – JAPAN – Ōwaku Valley, a part of Mount Hakone with high volcanic activity, has been showing more signs of an impending eruption recently. The smoke which regularly issues from its vents was mingled with ash, turning noticeably gray, for about ten seconds around noon on July 21. On June 30 and July 1, it had also erupted on a very small scale, ejecting material to a distance of over 100 meters (328 feet), which technically meets the qualifications for an “eruption.” (The distance material from the recent eruption was ejected has not yet been measured.) However, tremors associated with volcanic eruptions have not been recorded. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, “it has the characteristics of an eruption, but that would have an effect on disaster prevention by inciting residents’ anxieties, so the term ‘eruption’ is not appropriate.” – Rocket News 24

Colombian Airport closed: Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted in an ash cloud on Sunday, prompting authorities to temporarily close two airports in the area. The civil aeronautics agency said it closed airports at Manizales and Pereira as a precaution after the 8:30 am (1330 GMT) eruption. This resulted in the cancellation of at least 16 flights on Sunday. A major eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 melted the volcano’s snowcap, unleashing mudslides that wiped out the town of Armero, killing an estimated 23,000 people. The volcano, which has been active for an estimated 150,000 years, is 220 kilometers (137 miles) west of Bogota. - Yahoo News

Chile: The Cabulco volcano in southern Chile has erupted twice in the last 24 hours after being dormant for decades. And there may be more action on the way. CBSN’s Anne-Marie Green and David Begnaud discuss what geologists are monitoring. –Yahoo News

The Extinction Protocol

 

Chile fire: Amazing pictures show full force of huge blaze that killed two and destroyed hundreds of homes as it rips through city of Valparaiso

  

The Independent

A massive forest fire has raged through the Chilean port city of Valparaiso, killing at least two people and destroying hundreds of homes, officials have confirmed.

Thousands of people have been evacuated, including more than 200 female inmates at a prison.
Firefighters were having difficulty combating the blaze because of the topography of the city, which is surrounded by dozens of steep hills where most people live.

President Michelle Bachelet has declared the city a catastrophe zone, which puts the armed forces in charge of maintaining order and evacuating thousands of people affected by the smoke and flames.

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Psychopaths Rule The World?

 The Devaluation of Human Life

 

 

Chilean protests turn violent

Chile to investigate death of poet Pablo Neruda

The Telegraph

Chile's Communist Party wants a formal investigation into the death of the country's revered poet Pablo Neruda, who officially died of cancer only days after the 1973 coup toppled his close friend, President Salvador Allende. Several witnesses have raised doubts about his death recently, including Neruda's driver, who says he was poisoned by government agents. Neruda died at the age of 69 on Sept. 23, 1973, 12 days after the coup. He had just published a withering criticism of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship that eulogized Allende and accused Chile's soldiers of having betrayed their country. He'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years earlier, giving him great international prestige. Neruda died, officially of prostate cancer, in the same clinic where former President Eduardo Frei was allegedly poisoned in 1981 by six people, including several Pinochet agents, who were charged last year in connection with his death. Now Neruda's driver, Manuel Araya, has alleged that Pinochet agents injected deadly poison into Neruda's stomach. [There are] similar doubts about the deaths of Allende, Frei and Allende's defense minister Jose Toha, who was found hanged in a closet while in military custody.

 

Chile volcanoes spew ash

BBC News