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The 1970s were a heady time for Barbie. He lectured widely on the new South American fascism, often at candlelight vigils in so-called Thule halls adorned with Nazi flags and other iconography from the Third Reich. The war criminal also traveled freely. During the late 1960s and 1970s, Barbie visited the US at least seven times. Incredibly, he also journeyed back to France, where he claims to have laid a wreath on the tomb of Jean Moulin.
Catholic missionaries and priests were one of the groups that Barbie and Banzer went after with particular zeal, since Banzer believed that they had âbecome infiltrated with Marxists.â Priests were hauled in for interrogation, harassed, tortured and killed. One who was murdered was an American missionary from Iowa named Raymond Herman. This repression campaign against liberationist clergy became known as the Banzer Plan, and it was enthusiastically adopted in 1977 by his fellow dictators in the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation. This crackdown was also backed by the CIA, which provided information to Barbieâs men on the addresses, backgrounds, writings and friends of the priests. Barbie also was at the heart of the US-sponsored Condor Operation, a kind of trade association of South American dictators, who merged their forces in an effort to stamp out insurgencies wherever they broke out on the continent.
Suárezâs drug syndicate became known as La Mafia Cruzeña. He enjoyed a near monopoly on the most productive coca-growing fields in the world: 80 percent of the worldâs cocaine originated from his fields in the Alto Beni. He was the primary supplier of raw coca and cocaine paste to MedellÃn cartel. Suárez maintained one of the largest private fleets of aircraft in world, which he used to fly much of his coca paste to Colombian cocaine labs. The cocaine planes were launched from one of Suárezâs network of private airstrips. Other coca paste was shipped to Colombia via Barbieâs firm, Transmaritania.
By the time Klaus Barbie went on the payroll of an American intelligence organization in 1947, he had lived several lifetimes of human vileness. Barbie sought out opponents of the Nazis in Holland, chasing them down with dogs. He had worked for the Nazi mobile death squads on the Eastern Front, massacring Slavs and Jews. Heâd put in two years heading the Gestapo in Lyons, France, torturing to death Jews and French Resistance fighters (among them the head of the Resistance, Jean Moulin). After the liberation of France, Barbie participated in the final Nazi killing frenzy before the Allies moved into Germany.
After weeks of work from advocates and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, the Senate voted to pass the FIRST STEP Act.
The Senate passed a major criminal justice bill, the FIRST STEP Act, by a vote of 87-12 Tuesday night.
The bill still must go to the House, which passed a different version of the bill in May, but today's vote was an emotional victory for advocacy organizations and a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have worked for years, with little success, to shepherd a criminal justice bill to the Senate floor. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) hugged each other as the final votes rolled in.
Getting to that point required unending back-and-forth negotiation, numerous rewrites, rallies in the sweltering D.C. summer heat, convincing the notoriously flighty president to back the bill, and then convincing Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to put it on the Senate schedule—not to mention holding together a coalition of liberal, conservative, and evangelical groups.
"Historic" and "once-in-a-generation," senators called the White House-backed bill.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a former opponent of criminal justice reform who became one of the chief authors of the bill, said in a statement that its passage was "an important victory in our years-long effort, which has resulted in a broad bipartisan recognition of the need for reforms."
In reality, the FIRST STEP Act is large but modest, and filled with numerous exceptions to gain the backing of law enforcement organizations, whose support was critical in gaining Trump's endorsement. The bill would expand reentry and job training opportunities for federal inmates, ban the shackling of pregnant inmates, and require inmates to be housed within 500 miles of their families, when possible.
It also includes four changes to federal sentencing law that would reduce some mandatory minimum sentences, expand judges' discretion under the so-called safety valve, and make the reductions to crack cocaine sentences under the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 apply retroactively to current inmates.
I now think of that often-played band when I see this thread title on the RAFT. Not that they're a failure by any means. They are quite talented but are pretty monotonous and non-distinctive for my tastes. They seem pretty generic - even if the front-man is dating Krysten Ritter - aka "Jane Margolis" and "Jessica Jones".
