beemill:

Operation
Condor
was a covert, multinational “black operations” program organized
by six Latin American states (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Paraguay, and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru), with
logistical, financial, and intelligence support from Washington.

In the
Cold War climate of the 1960s and ’70s, when U.S. leaders and Latin
American militaries regarded popular movements and political dissidents
as “internal enemies,” any methods were considered legitimate in the
“war against subversion.” In fact, many of these new social movements
were indigenous nationalist, leftist, socialist, or radically democratic
forces fighting to represent the voiceless and the marginalized.

As
leftist and nationalist leaders won elections throughout Latin America
in the 1960s and early 1970s, and new revolutionary and progressive
movements gained strength, U.S. security strategists feared a
communist-inspired threat to U.S. economic and political interests in
the hemisphere. Local elites similarly feared that their traditional
political dominance and wealth were at risk. Washington poured enormous
resources into the inter-American security system, of which Condor was a
top-secret part, to mobilize and unify the militaries in order to
prevent leftist leaders from taking power and to control and destroy
leftist and popular movements in Latin America. Anticommunism and
“preventing another Cuba” were the national security priorities of the
U.S. in Latin America.

The reigning
national security doctrine incorporated counterinsurgency strategies and
concepts such as “hunter-killer” programs and secret, “unconventional”
techniques such as subversion, sabotage, and terrorism to defeat foes.
Much of counterinsurgency doctrine is classified, but scholars have
documented many of its key components. Michael McClintock, for example,
analyzed a classified U.S. Army Special Forces manual of December 1960
Counter-Insurgency Operations, one of the earliest to mention
explicitly, in its section “Terror Operations,” the use of
counterinsurgent terror as a legitimate tactic. He cites other secret
U.S. army special operations handbooks from the 1960s that endorsed
“counterterror,” including assassination and abduction, in certain
situations. One March 1961 article in Military Review stated, “Political
warfare, in short, is warfare…[that] embraces diverse forms of
coercion and violence including strikes and riots, economic sanctions,
subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and, when necessary, kidnapping
or assassination of enemy elites.”  In short, “disappearance” was a key
element of counterinsurgency doctrine.

Read More: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Operation-Condor-Cross-Border-Disappearance-and-Death-20150523-0031.html

prepaidafrica:

Meet George Muga who runs his fish farm on solar power

In Summary

  • Muga, a fish farmer who runs a hatchery in Kendu Bay, Homa
    Bay County of Kenya, is able to keep his pond water fresh without incurring any
    electricity bills.
  • From this simple innovation, the 48-year-old
    farmer is able to hatch more than 100,000 tilapia fingerlings a month.
    He sells each at fry stage at Sh5 and Sh7 for five-gram fingerlings.
  • To
    construct the hatchery and housing unit measuring 5m by 4m, Muga spent
    about Sh65,000. The eggs take three to four days to hatch.
  • Muga,
    who is also the chairman of the Homa Bay Multipurpose Aquaculture Sacco
    that trains its 300 members on fish production techniques, says that a
    major challenge in tilapia farming is predators.