Chile: Recalling the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffett

September 21 marked the 40^th anniversary of the murder of exiled Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier del Solar and his U.S. assistant Ronni Karpen Moffit.  Both were killed in the middle of Washington D.C.’s embassy row; agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet had attached a bomb to the bottom of Letelier’s automobilie and detonated it by remote control.  Ronnie Moffit’s husband, Michael Moffit, was injured but survived.

On Wednesday Granma, the newspaper of the Communist Party of  Cuba, published an article under the title “The Murder of Letelier Could have been Stopped”.  Calling the crime “one of the worst atrocities of Operation Condor” (the secret agreement among Latin American dictatorships which had them cooperating among themselves to murder their exiled political opponents).   The article points out that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been tracking Letelier’s every move for years, and also that the Cuban exiles involved in the murder had been recruited and trained by the C.I.A.  The activities of violent right wing Cuban exiles were known, also, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.  had been present in a meeting in the Dominican Republic when the group CORU, an extremist Cuban exile group suspected of being involved in both the Letelier – Moffit murder and the blowing up a Cuban passenger airliner.  The implication is that the U.S. agencies were in a position to stop the murder of Letelier and Moffit, but failed to do so.

Venezuela:  Olga Luzardo, pioneering Venezuelan Communist, presente!

 Olga Luzardo, a revered senior member of the Communist Party of Venezuela passed away on Monday September 20 at age 100.  Luzardo was the oldest member of the party.  She got involved in activism for workers’ rights at age 13, helping to organize streetcar workers  in Maracaibo.   She was active in the long struggle against the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez, who ruled Venezuela with an iron hand and the support of U.S. oil interests until his death in 1935.  After Gomez’s death, she was one of the early pioneers of the founding of the Communist Party of Venezuela, and was heavily involved in labor organizing, the struggle for women’s rights and in literary activities.

 

Cyprus:  Communists call for new political dispensation

AKEL, or the Progressive Party of Working People, which is the Communist Party of the Mediterranean nation of Cyprus,  has issued a call for a new political dispensation in the country, has issued comments and proposals on the ongoing negotiations for the future of the country, and the resolution of the division between ethnic Greek and Turkish zones that resulted from the Turkish invasion of 1974  According to a statement of the AKEL Political Bureau, for the division of the country to be finally solved, the following things are required, among others:  The withdrawal of Turkish troops; no NATO solution to security issues, prohibition of secession of any part of the country; a strong central government, single Cypriot nationality and single citizenship; maintenance of a 4 to 1 ration of future Greek and Turkish immigrants, support by the U.N. Security Council for implementation of the agreement.

 

European Communists say block neoliberal trade pacts

Several  Communist Parties in European Union countries are joining labor and other progressive people’s organizations to block the approval and implementation of two monster neo-liberal “free trade” pacts:  The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and  CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement mean to join Canada with the European Union.  These two pacts are similar in design to the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TPP) that has generated so much opposition in the United States, Latin America and other countries on the Pacific Ocean littoral.  Major worries about them include the concern that they will undermine the European Union’s product safety, labor and environmental standards.   There is also fear that these treaties, if ratified and implemented, will allow U.S. and Canadian corporations to sue European governments if, for example, they try to re-nationalize privatized government health services in which the multinational corporations have invested; this is a strong concern in the United Kingdom especially, with the National Health Service.  Major demonstrations against the TTIP and CETA have been taking place, including one of 15,000 people in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday September 20 and another in Berlin  on Saturday September 17, with more to come.  The protest in Brussels, headquarters of the European Union, was multinational, reflecting the worries people in several countries have about the pacts.   Communist Parties calling for the TTIP and CETA include, among others, the Belgian Workers’ Party, the Communist Party of Portugal, the Communist Party of Canada, the United Left of Spain, the Communist Party of Ireland,  the Communist Party of Germany.

Photo: Creative Commons 3.0

 

 

 

 

 

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