On this day in 1973, following the fascist coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende, American journalist and documentary filmmaker Charles Horman was executed in the National Stadium concentration camp in Santiago.
Horman was born in New York City on May 15th, 1942, graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1960 and Harvard in 1964. He was an active anti-war protester, present at the 1968 DNC protests and producing an award winning documentary titled "Napalm". He also worked as an investigative journalist for publications such as The Nation and The Christian Science Monitor.
In December 1971, Charles and his wife Joyce left the U.S. for Latin America, eventually settling down in Santiago, Chile, where he worked as a freelance writer.
On September 11th, 1973, fascists led by Augusto Pinochet and the CIA ousted democratically elected Marxist President Salvador Allende. In the following weeks, many prominent left-wing activists, such as Flora Sanhueza, Victor Jara, and Frank Teruggi, were arrested and killed.
Horman himself was arrested on September 16th, seized from his home by Chilean soldiers and taken to the National Stadium, which had been turned into a de facto concentration camp following the coup. There, Horman was executed on September 19th, 1973.
Documents declassified by the Clinton administration in 1999 indicate the U.S. knew of Horman's plight but initially obfuscated investigations into his death. They also indicated that it was unlikely Horman would have been killed without the knowledge and permission of the CIA.
In June 2014, a Chilean court ruled that U.S. authorities had played a "fundamental" role in Horman's murder. In January 2015, two former Chilean intelligence officials were sentenced to jail in Chile for the murders of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, another American activist who was also arrested, executed the following day.
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Theory:
It's wild to me how capitalists just have so much money that they can't use that they spend it on all these ridiculous flights of fancy.
They literally can't spend it or give it away fast enough, when I've talked to libs or family members about how billionaires are immoral as a concept I always use Makenzie Bezos. She got tons of money from the divorce and gave away huge sums of it but AFAIK she still has MORE than what she started with despite giving, spending, etc.
There's nothing to invest in because the rate of profit and profitability has declined so much. And they can't do anything about that except for literally destroying capital somewhere like they do with weapons. Financialization already got done between the 70s to 90s. Whence profit now? Just tulip bulb mania after tulip bulb mania, preferably without as little connection to the real world as possible. Metaverse, crypto, whatever.
And they don't even make cool stuff that would be a public tourist spot after the revolution. Like Versailles was the palace of monarchs, the colloseum was a place of execution by the empire and now people just go to see cool architecture. No one will be looking at bezos yachts as interesting in future generations.