Chile’s Secret Nazi Past

The Colony: Chile’s Dark Past Uncovered

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

This documentary concerns a secretive post-World II German colony in Chile. Named Colonia Dignidad, the colony was run as a cult by ex-Nazi pedophile and Baptist minister Paul Schaefer. Roughly 300 of Schaefer’s followers emigrated from Germanye in 1961, after he persuaded him the Soviets were about to invade. In Chile, Schaefer and his close circle of supporters were in close contact with Mengele, Rauff and other Nazi war criminals who escaped to South America.

On Schaefer’s orders, the cult removed babies from their parents’ custody at birth and raised them communally. Parents who tried to establish close relationships with their offspring were publicly punished humiliated and sometimes beaten. Cult members who escaped and sought sanctuary in the German embassy (in Santiago) were returned to the colony.

Children began a life of heavy farm labor at age 7. Allowed only one rest day a year, both children and adults worked 12-hour days seven days a week. Schaefer used the farm profits to expand his land holdings.

When the fascist dictator Pinochet came to power in a 1973 CIA coup, Schaefer made his hospital facilities available to the Chilean army to interrogate human rights activists under torture.

Despite the restoration of Chilean democracy in 1990, it would take the government until 2005 to investigate and close Colonia Dignidad. Schaefer (who died in 2010) was arrested and given a 20 year sentence for child molestation in 2005. Five of his accomplices were arrested and sent to jail in 2013. The sixth fled to Germany, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Chile.

Winfried Hempel, one of the children abused at the colony, has since become a lawyer. He’s suing the governments of Chile and Germany. He has compelling evidence that both were aware of the atrocities yet did nothing to stop them.

In 2019 the German government agreed to pay 50,000 euros to each of the 50 remaining victims. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48318295

 

New Film Exonerates Michael Jackson

Square One: New Witness in Michael Jackson Case

Directed by Danny Wu (2019)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the mainstream media’s misportrayal of the late Michael Jackson as a Caucasian wannabe and pedophile. The new witness is a New York acquaintance of Jordan Chandler, the alleged victim in a civil lawsuit Jackson settled in 1993. The woman reveals Chandler, still a major Jackson fan, considered him incapable of the predatory behavior he was accused of.

It was only in viewing this film I learned that Jackson suffered from lupus, a serious autoimmune disease responsible, not only for his vitiligo,* but for the complete erosion of his nasal cartilage, requiring numerous reconstructive surgeries.

The video also details the extensive police and FBI investigations of the star’s alleged pedophilia. He was totally exonerated of all criminal charges against him in 2005.

Despite these facts, a quirk in California law forced Jackson to settle a civil lawsuit pertaining to the same victim a year earlier. In 1994, an unconstitutional judicial ruling allowed the civil lawsuit to proceed before the criminal case was resolved. Concerned Jackson’s deposition in the civil case would give criminal prosecutors an unfair advantage (by revealing the defense strategy), Jackson’s lawyers advised him to settle.

The documentary also reveals the blackmail/extortion scheme Jordan Chandler’s father subjected Jackson to prior to going to the police (and filing the lawsuit). Chandlers’ parents were divorced, and his dentist father Evan illegally took custody of Jordan and gave him to sodium amytal  injections, presumably to pressure him to incriminate Jackson. The full amount of the settlement was (subject to a non-disclosure agreement) was covered by Jackson’s insurance.

Following his acquittal, Jackson successfully defended a second lawsuit (for child sexual abuse) in 1995. He also won a $2.7 million defamation suit against Victor Gutierrez, for his 2007 Michael Jackson Was My Lover.

Following his death in 2009, there would be two further lawsuits filed against his estate. They were dismissed in 2017.

 

 

60 Minutes Australia: Jeffrey Epstein’s International Sex Trafficking Ring

Exposing Jeffrey Epstein’s International Sex Trafficking Ring

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2019)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring and their years’ long battle to bring him and his enablers to justice. The film specifically profiles Virginia Roberts DuFray and Courtney Wild and the New York lawyer assisting them.

Both Dufray and Wild talk about Epstein and his partner Ghislane Maxwell deliberately targeting low income with promises of masseuse training and glamorous new lives. Both women were  flown around the world in Epstein’s private plane (the Lolita Express) to have sex with Epstein’s billionaire friends, politicians and “royalty.”* Both describe threats against their families, ensuring their loyalty and silence. Wild states that Epstein forced her to have sex with other men to “blackmail them so people would owe him favors.**

The documentary goes on to explore charges the State of Florida filed against Epstein in 2005. Despite detailed affidavits from 40 victims, extensive message and flight logs documenting that Epstein was trafficking 13 to 16-year olds to the rich and famous, and the seizure of numerous sexually explicit CDs and photos from his Florida home, prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge of “soliciting minors for prostitution.”

Instead of serving 45 years in prison on rape and sex trafficking charges, he spent 13 months in a private prison wing. His sentence included work release of 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

The plea deal also granted Epstein full immunity against criminal charges from other, unidentified victims.

It was largely to Wild’s 14-year battle to overturn this immunity provision that pressured federal prosecutors to bring charges against him in 2019. Owing to all the unfortunate “coincidences” that enabled him to commit suicide in a high security prison, the victims’ legal team believes he was murdered. “He knew too much about the wrong people.”

At present the mean legal focus is ongoing victim lawsuits against the Epstein estate, Brislaine Maxwell and French model agent Jean-Luc Brunel (who reportedly procured more than 1,000 girls for Maxwell). Both Maxwell and Brunel have gone into hiding.

The film closes with DuFray describing her 2002 rescue from the trafficking ring by an Australian she subsequently married. She tells her story to ABC Sixty Minutes from her new home in Australia.

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*DuFray has provided names of all her abusers in court, but except for Prince Andrew name (already publicly identifying), ongoing litigation prevents her from identifying them in the broadcast..

**The ABC documentary makes no mention of Epstein’s role in a long-established CIA scheme to entrap and blackmail politicians, ambassadors, etc by luring them into embarrassing sexual escapades and secretly videotaping them. See

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case

Decadence: The Meaninglessness of Modern Life

Decadence: The Meaninglessness of Modern Life

Pria Viswalingam

Review

Decadence is a 2006 Australian TV series examining the plummeting quality of Australian life, which director and narrator Pria Viswalingam blames on a global economic system based on frenetic consumption, fueled by debt and ridiculously long hours of work. The cinematography choreographs to perfection the self-indulgent moral degradation of a culture that has been subsumed by US political and cultural norms that reward narcissism and the vacuous idolization of celebrity.

The only critique I would have is the absence class perspective. I have a problem with Viswalingam’s blanket assertion that all Australians are working ridiculously long hours because they value the accumulation of luxuries more than family time or friendships. I think this criticism applies chiefly to the shrinking Australian middle class – which I estimate at around 20-30% of the population. From my experience, the majority of Aussies – like their Kiwi and American counterparts – work ridiculously long hours because this is the only way they can put food on the table.

The series consists of six episodes:

Episode 1 Money – describes the MacDonaldization of Australian society, where workers work longer hours than Germany, Japan or even the US and are plagued by debt, depression, drugs and high suicide rates. Viswalingam makes the assertion that greed and ignorance are a far bigger threat to civilization than terrorism. I agree.

Episode 2 Sex – describes how the commodification of sex has led to a situation where more “sex” occurs in the street than in bedroom. Viswalingam especially deplores the sexualization of children for commercial reasons, the alarming increase in culturally driven misogyny and the epidemic of pedophilia in the church.

Episode 3 Democracy – explores America’s zeal in exporting “democracy” to the rest of the world and the undermining of Australia’s parliamentary democracy by wealthy business interests.

Episode 4 Education – explores the decline of Australia’s educational system, which focuses more on fast tracking students into lucrative jobs than on teaching ideas and critical thinking.

Episode 5 Family – explores statistics showing Aussies are marrying less, breaking up more and increasingly opting to remain childless. Viswalingam blames this partly on the absence of good paying jobs (forcing mothers into the work place) and the failure of the feminist movement to win support for women in their struggle to balance  work and family responsibilities.

Episode 6 Religion – describes how organized religion sowed the seeds of its own destruction through centuries of justifying wealth accumulation and genocidal western expansion. Here Viswalingam makes some fuzzy, poorly supported assertions about the fundamental importance of spirituality in facilitating human connection.