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loneberry · 9 months

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September 11, 1973: On the 50th Anniversary of the Coup in Chile

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, when a fascist junta led by dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. For those of us who are on the left, the story should be familiar by now: Allende had charted a ‘Chilean way to socialism' ("La vía chilena al socialismo") quite distinct from the Soviet Union and communist China, a peaceful path to socialism that was fundamentally anti-authoritarian, combining worker power with respect for civil liberties, freedom of the press, and a principled commitment to democratic process. For leftists who had become disillusioned with the Soviet drift into authoritarianism, Chile was a bright spot on an otherwise gloomy Cold War map.

What happened in Chile was one of the darkest chapters in the history of US interventionism. In August 1970, Henry Kissinger, who was then Nixon’s national security adviser, commissioned a study on the consequences of a possible Allende victory in the upcoming Chilean presidential election. Kissinger, Nixon, and the CIA—all under the spell of Cold War derangement syndrome—determined the US should pursue a policy of blocking the ascent of Allende, lest a socialist Chile generate a “domino effect” in the region.

When Allende won the presidency, the US did everything in their power to destroy his government: they meddled in Chilean elections, leveraged their control of the international financial system to destroy the economy of Chile (which they also did through an economic boycott), and sowed social chaos through sponsoring terrorism and a shutdown of the transportation sector, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Particularly infuriating to the Americans was Allende’s nationalization of the copper mining industry, which was around 70% of Chile’s economy at the time and was controlled by US mining companies like Anaconda, Kennecott and the Cerro Corporation. When the CIA’s campaign of sabotage failed to destroy the socialist experiment in Chile, they resorted to assisting general Augusto Pinochet's plot to overthrow the democratically elected government. What followed was a gruesome campaign of repression against workers, leftists, poets, activists, students, and ordinary Chileans—stadiums were turned into concentration camps where supporters of Allende’s Popular Unity government were tortured and murdered. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror, 3,200 people were executed and 40,000 people were detained, tortured, or disappeared, 1,469 of whom remain unaccounted for. Chile was then used as a laboratory for neoliberal economic policies, where the Chicago boys and their ilk tested out their terrible ideas on a population forced to live under a military dictatorship.

It shatters my heart, thinking about this history. I feel a personal attachment to Chile, not only because my partner is Chilean (his father left during the dictatorship), but because I’ve always considered Chile to be a world capital of poetry and anti-authoritarian leftism. The filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky asks, “In how many countries does a real poetic atmosphere exist? Without a doubt, ancient China was a land of poetry. But I think, in the 1950s in Chile, we lived poetically like in no other country in the world.” (Poetry left China long ago — oh how I wish I’d been around to witness the poetic flowering of the Tang era!) Chile has one of the greatest literary traditions of the twentieth century, producing such giants as Bolaño and Neruda, and more recently, Cecilia Vicuña and Raúl Zurita, among others.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup, the Harvard Film Archive has been screening Patricio Guzmán’s magisterial trilogy, The Battle of Chile, along with a program of Chilean cinema. I watched part I and II the last two nights and will watch part III tonight. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Guzmán’s work, and even quoted his beautiful film Nostalgia for the Light in the conclusion of my book Carceral Capitalism, when I wrote about the Chilean political prisoners who studied astronomy while incarcerated in the Atacama Desert. Bless Patricio Guzmán. This man has devoted his life and filmmaking career to the excavation of the Chilean soul.

Parts I and II utterly destroyed me. I left the theater last night shaken to my core, my face covered in tears.

The films are all the more remarkable when you consider it was made by a scrappy team of six people using film stock provided by the great documentarian Chris Marker. After the coup, four of the filmmakers were arrested. The footage was smuggled out of Chile and the exiled filmmakers completed the films in Cuba. Sadly, in 1974, the Pinochet regime disappeared cameraman Jorge Müller Silva, who is assumed dead.

It’s one thing to know the macro-story of what happened in Chile and quite another to see the view from the ground: the footage of the upswell of support for radical transformation, the marches, the street battles, the internal debates on the left about how to stop the fascist creep, the descent into chaos, the face of the military officer as he aims his pistol at the Argentine cameraman Leonard Hendrickson during the failed putsch of June 1973 (an ominous prelude to the September coup), the audio recordings of Allende on the morning of September 11, the bombing of Palacio de La Moneda—the military is closing in. Allende is dead. The crumbling edifice of the presidential palace becomes the rubble of revolutionary dreams—the bombs, a dirge for what was never even given a chance to live.

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xtruss · 6 months

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Headed Straight to the Worst Part of Hell! Criminal Boak Bollocks Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State to Richard Nixon, Dead at 100. Stay, Rest, Rot and Burn 🔥 in Hell Forever.

A Republican party giant and Nobel peace prize winner, the former national security adviser was a key architect of US foreign policy

— Martin Pengelly in New York | The Guardian USA | November 29, 2023

Henry Kissinger after receiving an award at the Pentagon in 2016. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The War Criminal Henry Kissinger, who was national security adviser and secretary of state to Richard Nixon before becoming an eminence grise of world affairs, has died. He was 100.

His consulting firm Kissinger Associates announced his passing in a statement on Wednesday evening, but did not disclose a cause of death.

A giant of the Republican party, Kissinger remained influential until the end of his life, in large part thanks to his founding in 1982 of Kissinger Associates, a geopolitical consulting firm based in New York City, and the authorship of several books on international affairs.

He even made an appearance in Siege, Michael Wolff’s Trump exposé which was published in 2019. According to Wolff, Kissinger regularly advised Jared Kushner. At one point, the book said, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser even suggested that Kissinger, well into his 90s, should return as secretary of state.

Wolff also quoted Kissinger as being witheringly critical of a Trump foreign policy “based on a single unstable individual’s reaction to perceptions of slights or flattery”.

Kissinger was a Harvard academic before becoming national security adviser when Nixon won the White House in 1968. Working closely with the president, he was influential in momentous decisions regarding the Vietnam war including the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970. That was part of what Nixon called the “madman theory”, an attempt to make North Vietnam believe the US president would do absolutely anything to end the war.

As secretary of state, Kissinger did achieve peace in Vietnam, although not before initiating a heavy bombing campaign at Christmas 1972, while talks continued.

He survived Nixon’s downfall in the Watergate scandal and served Gerald Ford, leaving government after Jimmy Carter’s election win in 1976. Kissinger’s policy towards the Soviet Union was not confrontational enough for the Reagan administration, precluding any thought of a 1980s comeback.

Famously, the Singer-satirist Tom Lehrer Responded: “Political Satire Became Obsolete When Criminal Henry Kissinger Was Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

On the political and intellectual right and left, Kissinger’s legacy differs.

On the right, he is seen as a brilliant statesman, a master diplomat, an exponent of power politics deployed to the benefit of America, the country to which his family fled on leaving Germany in 1938.

On the left, hostility burns over his record on Chile, where the CIA instigated the overthrow of Salvatore Allende; on Pakistan, where he and Nixon turned a blind eye to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands; on the Middle East; on Cyprus; on East Timor and more.

In the early 2000s, Kissinger supported the administration of George W Bush in its invasion of Iraq.

Another supporter of that war, the Journalist Christopher Hitchens, famously wrote that Kissinger should be tried for war crimes.

In fact, for negotiating the Paris treaty which ended the Vietnam war, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded a shared Nobel prize, although the North Vietnamese negotiator refused to accept the honour.

Famously, the Singer-satirist Tom Lehrer responded: “Political Satire Became Obsolete When Henry Kissinger Was Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

#War Criminal #Henry Kissinger #Richard Nixon

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bandiera--rossa · 2 years

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Charles Horman was an American journalist and documentary filmmaker who discovered evidence of U.S. involvement in the events leading up to the overthrow of the socialist government of Chilean leader Salvador Allende. On September 19, 1973, he was executed in the Estadio Nacional in Santiago de Chile by the Chilean military with the support and assistance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. State Department.

Born on May 15, 1942 in New York City, Charles graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and later from Harvard University. Working as filmmaker at KING-TV in Portland, Oregon, Charles created the short documentary "Napalm," which won a Grand Prize at the Cracow Film Festival in 1967. He wrote articles as an investigative journalist for various magazines and newspapers. Charles protested against the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and was honorably discharged from the Air National Guard in 1969. Charles met Joyce Marie Hamren while both were visiting Europe in 1964. They were married four years later. In December 1971, Charles and Joyce embarked on a journey that eventually led them to Chile. They settled in Santiago, where Charles undertook various projects including the production of an animated film for children in conjunction with Chilean friends. He also collaborated with Pueblo Films and wrote the script for a documentary film on the social and economic history of Chile. In early 1973, Charles began editing and publishing a small non-profit news magazine, Fuente de Información Norteamericana (FIN), that focused on social and political issues.

On September 17, 1973, six days after the U.S.-backed military takeover, Charles was kidnapped by CIA agent Ray Davis and the Chilean military and taken to the Estadio Nacional, which had been turned into a make-shift concentration camp. There he was interrogated, tortured and later executed on the orders of Pedro Espinoza. A second American journalist, Frank Terrugi, was killed in the same way. One month later, Charles' body was found in a morgue in the Chilean capital. The murders of Horman and Terrugi were later dramatized in the 1982 film Missing.

#charles horman #chile #Chilean dictature #1970s #pinochet

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kamlatheripemango · 14 days

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Political advocacy has rarely approached the single-minded tenacity of Jamaica's Daily Gleaner to unseat former Prime Minister Michael Manley during last autumn's national elections.

Only eight years earlier, the Gleaner's support helped vault Manley's People's National Party into office after a decade of rule by the Jamaica Labour Party. However, Manley's entente cordial with the pro-free enterprise Gleaner soon fell apart as the pell-mell growth of the 1960s gave way to global economic gloom in the 1970s. For Manley, the world-wide recession threw Jamaica's economic problems into bold relief. His solution was democratic socialism: more state-run businesses, better prices for essential commodity exports like sugar, bauxite, and bananas, land reform, and cooperation with other Third World countries demanding a New International Economic Order.

For the Gleaner, the Prime Minister's volte-face was tantamount to handing the country over to communism. Within a few short years of Manley's 1972 election, the newspaper's highly skilled columnists took daily potshots at the government's policies. There is nothing strange about that. Politicians change their stripes, and newspapers change their minds. Except in the island's highly charged political atmosphere, the Daily Gleaner is not just another newspaper. It is considered the voice of Jamaica - a 145-year-old cultural institution whose reach is so broad and authority so ingrained that traveling Jamaicans sometimes ask for a New York or Toronto 'gleaner.' Deserved or not, the Gleaner also has status outside the country. The newspaper's views and interpretations of events in Jamaica are accepted without question by major North American and British journals. Gleaner publisher Oliver Clarke has been an active US-based Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) member for years. The IAPA is also linked to the Cabot Prize Committee, which awarded the Gleaner a Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism extraordinary citation of merit in 1979. The award boosted the paper's public image and self-esteem just as it prepared for a full-fledged attack on Manley's administration. Publisher Clarke told New York Village Voice reporter Andrew Kopkind, 'The business community here feels it is under siege from the government, and it looks to the Gleaner to advocate for free enterprise and a Western style of life.'

In last October's election the Gleaner pulled out all the stops to protect those two pillars of Jamaica's middle and Upper class. Columnist John Hearne, one of the most vociferous Manley detractors, said. Kopkind: 'It would be idle to pretend that there has not been a systematic attack on the government by the Gleaner. For myself, my one intention is to get this man Manley out of office by any means at hand.' The 'systematic' aspect of the Gleaner's barrage began to rouse suspicions among Manley supporters and those to his left. Recalling revelations of the CIA's use of El Mercurio to create an atmosphere of fear and instability in Chile before the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende's government, critics looked at Gleaner's tactics.

At the invitation of the Press Association of Jamaica, analyst Fred Landis of the Washington-based Cover Action Information Bulletin pieced together a series of startling parallels with El Mercurio. Gruesome stories of murder and terror were featured prominently in the Daily Gleaner alongside pictures of Manley or his ministers illustrating another article. A typical Gleaner front page would include a four-column photograph of a blood-spattered policeman. The photo accompanied a story headed. 'Policeman slain by gunman'. To the left of the photo was a smaller one-column article entitled 'A Cadillac for the PM.' 'The idea,' said Landis, 'is that while all this mayhem is taking place, the most the Prime Minister can think of is to get himself a Cadillac, the theme of the PM fiddling while Rome burns.'

The presence of 200 Cuban doctors, engineers, teachers (and probably a few intelligence officers) was puffed up into a 5000-strong fifth column - brainwashing school children, threatening Jamaica's sovereignty and ready to fight to defend Manley's form of 'communism.' The Prime Minister's friendship with Fidel Castro was exploited whenever possible to back up the supposed Cuban threat. The Gleaner charged Manley with plotting to suspend elections under a state of emergency to maintain power. The Jamaican Labour Party leader Edward Seaga accused Manley of planning a 'military solution' to the polls.

Bottling it up in Kingston, Jamaica.

Photo: Peter Stalker

According to Dr. Landis, the similarity in style and method of attack between El Mercurio and the Gleaner was not just a coincidence. Behind it all, he saw the not-so-subtle machinations of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. At the same time, dissident ex-CIA staff revealed the names of 15 CIA members at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica. The station, they said, was 'undoubtedly the largest in the Caribbean and perhaps the third or fourth largest in Latin America.' The Gleaner was unflappable for its part, dismissing the charges as 'outrageous and unfounded allegations.' Taking the Gleaner's lead, the foreign press amplified the stories of creeping socialism,

economic chaos and unpredictable violence.

Liberal newspapers like the Washington Post made unsubstantiated claims of Manley's intention to 'declare a state of emergency and suspend elections. Linking Grenada, Cuba, and Jamaica, the Los Angeles Times warned of 'Socialist Trade' spreading chaos in the Caribbean. The Miami Herald, US News and World Report, the Journal of Commerce, the London Daily Telegraph, and other significant newspapers played up the disastrous consequences of Jamaica's flirtation with socialism. There was a certain amount of self-fulfillment in the Gleaner's denigration of Manley's government. The tourist trade plummeted during the 1979/80 season as news of the island's political violence spread. It was confined almost entirely to Kingston's squalid shanty towns, not the North Coast tourist strip. After the victory of Manley's landslide in the 1976 election, major multinational corporations, including the economy's linchpins and American and Canadian bauxite companies, refused to extend their investments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced strict conditions on loans to the Manley government, including wage controls and currency devaluation. By the time Manley repudiated the IMF, the economic damage was done - more grist for the Gleaner's mill.

The upshot of it all was Manley's thumping defeat last fall (1979) at the hands of Jamaica Labor Party leader Edward Seaga. What Manley's supporters referred to as the Gleaner's 'destabilization' tactics had turned the tide. Virtually overnight, Jamaica's pariah image was shed. Prime Minister Seaga was welcomed as a lost sheep back to the fold by corporate investors, multinational bankers, the IMF, and U.S. President Reagan. Seaga's first step after assuming the office was to order Cuban Ambassador Ulises Estrada to leave the island. His next was to visit Mr. Reagan in Washington. Talks with IMF officials were initiated even before the Jamaican Labor Party's victory. Rewards were quick to follow for the pro-American, pro-capitalist Seaga. The U.S. announced $60 million in new aid to Jamaica, including a $1.5 million military sales credit. A recently concluded IMF agreement requires neither wage controls nor currency devaluation. In addition, a $103 million foreign Debt with 100 commercial banks was successfully renegotiated - a year earlier, Manley was turned down flat by the same banks. According to the Washington Post, Jamaica's finance secretary Horace Barber says 'the whole atmosphere has changed. The business sector is more bullish'.

The alleged CIA manipulation of the Gleaner to destabilize the Manley government may never be proven. Apart from Dr. Landis's intriguing testimony, no hard facts have emerged. However, Gleaner's role in forming public opinion, both nationally and internationally, is not disputed. What seems evident is that some compelling people shared the paper's political assumptions with the ability to make or break the economy of a small Third World nation. It may be just a chance of convergence of interests. However, that seems unlikely.

http://www.newint.org/issue100/vendetta.html

"During George H. W. Bush's first months in Langley, the CIA, under orders from Henry Kissinger, launched a campaign of destabilization of Jamaica to prevent the re-election of Prime Minister Michael Manley. This included a large-scale campaign to incite violence during the election, and large amounts of illegal arms were shipped to the island. $10 million was spent on the attempt to overthrow Manley, and at least three assassination attempts took place with the connivance of the CIA. During his year at Langley, Bush was incredibly forthcoming towards Wall Street, above all, towards the family firm. On at least one occasion, Bush gave an exclusive private briefing, including forecasts on the future development of the world energy market, for partners and executives of Brown Brothers, Harriman. Such an incident, redundant to point out, entails the gravest questions of conflict of interest."

"George Bush: The Unauthorized

Biography" by Webster G.

Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

See

http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/chia/

Caribbean/NTTHresearchproj/michael_manley.htm

Bob Marley himself was viewed as a Rastafarian messianic figure by some fans, particularly throughout the Caribbean, Africa, and among Native Americans and Australian Aborigines. His lyrics on love, redemption, and natural beauty captivated audiences, and he gained headlines for negotiating truces between rival gangs and, later, two violently warring

Jamaican political parties (at the One Love Concert), led by Michael Manley (PNP) and Edward Seaga (JLP).

http://www.jamaicas.co.uk/Inform

NationOnJamaica/

CIA -- BUSH

1976: JAMAICA. Military coup to overthrow the government of Michael Manley. Unsuccessful.

1979-1980: JAMAICA. Financial pressure to destabilize the government of Michael Manley and campaign propaganda and demonstrations to defeat it in elections. Successful American involvement

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sep01/jamaica.html

During the 1972 election campaign, the United States ambassador, Vincent de Roulet, warned Manley not to make the US-owned bauxite industry a nationalization issue. Otherwise, he would "oblige" the opposition Labor Party to take up the issue. Manley kept quiet. He had, however, upset the American government by supporting the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which the United States government was attempting to destroy and had established diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. In December 1975, U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, arrived in Jamaica to "suggest" that unless Manley changed his policies, Jamaica's request for a $100 million trade credit "would be reviewed." The Jamaican Prime Minister chose not to toe the Kissinger line and continued to support the Cuban army presence in Angola. The Americans moved into action. By 1976, before the election in Jamaica, the CIA station chief in Kingston, Norman Descoteaux, drew up a destabilization program. Covert shipments of arms were sent to the Jamaica Labor Party. In one shipment alone, which was aborted by the Manley government, there were 500 submachine guns. Pro-Labor gangs began to use such

tactics such as arson, bombing, and assassinations. A wave of strikes in the transport, electrical, and telephone industries hit the island, provoked mainly by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the CIA's principal labor "front" in Latin America and the Caribbean. The AIFLD also provided covert financial support to the Labor Party, as well as infiltrating the Jamaican government's security service.

Propagandists also arrived from the United States, including evangelists. Moreover, faith healers preach against the "evils of communism." Locally, the Daily Gleaner poured out a stream of anti-Manley propaganda, who, in the October 1980 elections, was defeated mainly due to the continuing deterioration in the workers' standard of living, but, in no short measure, due to the intervention by the United States. Jamaica has been uncovered to thousands of tourists; it is the happy island of rum, reggae, and sunshine. However, a new film reveals how rich countries and the IMF keep the Caribbean poor. By Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Friday, February 28, 2003

The Guardian

"The issue is to make globalization work for all. There will be no good future for the rich if there is no prospect for a better future for the poor." That glib, cynical statement from the International Monetary Fund Director Horst Köhler is brilliantly exposed for the platitude it is in Stephanie Black's engaging documentary Life and Debt. Black's film is intelligent in its examination of how IMF and World Bank policies, determined by the G7 countries, led by the U.S., impact on poor developing countries. Life and Debt focuses on Jamaica as a typical example of a small developing country that has taken the IMF medicine. Having made modest strides in shaking off the legacy of slavery and colonialism on the road toward self-reliance during the first decade of independence, Jamaica was suddenly plunged into a deep financial crisis by the rise in the price of oil in 1973. The late Michael Manley, then the leftwing leader of the People's National Party, which served two terms as prime minister in the 1970s was rudely awoken to the realities of international finance.

"In Washington, they just looked at us and said, 'No. Your inflation last year was 18%, and we are not allowing you to lend to your farmers at 12%. You must charge 23%.'" The IMF told Manley he could get a short-term loan under their conditions but would not entertain discussing long-term solutions. At first, the Manley government was defiant. Manley's espousal of "democratic socialism," his friendship with Fidel Castro, and his activism in the Non-Aligned movement did not endear him well to Washington. The CIA deepened Jamaica's financial crisis with destabilization, which dissident CIA agent Philip Agee exposed. In the end, the Manley government had to go back to the IMF cap in hand for a loan, and Jamaica has been swallowing the IMF medicine ever since.

Jamaica's continuing financial crises, high unemployment, lawlessness, and social turmoil have to be seen against the background of IMF/World Bank policies that governments of both the left and the right have been forced to pursue for well over two decades. Life and Debt graphically illustrates how those policies have impacted workers, small businesses, farmers, and Jamaican society. We visit the local farmer whose enterprise is no longer viable because, like his neighbors, he cannot compete with the cheap imported onions and carrots from the U.S. Local farmers were able to make a decent living selling their produce to the local market before the IMF insisted on the removal of tariffs on imported goods. When the farmer tried to diversify to honeydew melons for export, he was told by his prospective American client that the produce did not meet their specifications. "We use machetes for farming -- can Machete compete with the machine," asks the farmer. The dairy tells the same story of the farmer who has to pour his milk down the drain because he cannot compete with the cheap imported subsidized milk powder from the U.S.

We hear from the chicken farmer whose business is no longer viable. After all, his 50-cents-a-pound chicken cannot compete with the 20-cents-a-pound chicken parts from the U.S. At a Rasta camp; we encounter three dreadlocked elders reasoning about the state of the Jamaican economy. One of the elders says that he never saw chicken backs in any supermarket when he visited the U.S., yet they are exported to Jamaica. His bredrin explains that, from the days of slavery, the master kept the best for himself, and the scraps were left for the enslaved people. There are also testimonies from banana farmers whose industry has been devastated by the US-instigated WTO ruling that robs them of their secured tariff-free markets in Europe. The furniture maker who shifted to making coffins is doing good business. In Life and Debt, we see Jamaica through the eyes of the tourist. We also see the Jamaica that the tourist rarely encounters slum dwellers watch themselves on news footage of riots, political violence, and industrial unrest. The Antiguan novelist Jamaica Kincaid's essay "A Small Place" is aptly adopted to provide a poetic narrative. Footage of the slums of Kingston is underscored by reggae and ragga music and dub poetry, as well as lyrical meditations on the nation's state. "I and I want to rule I destiny," chants Buju Banton. Anecdotes from Manley about his "bitter, traumatic" experience with the IMF, World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank are juxtaposed with the IMF deputy director Stanley Fischer's diagnosis of and prescription for the Jamaican patient.

Women working in unregulated, tariff-free sweatshops called "free zones" talk about their struggle to make ends meet on their weekly salaries of US$30. Black's film shows the spectacular failure of the IMF "remedy." After the structural adjustments, the cuts in public expenditure, the removal of tariffs on imports, privatizations, and devaluations, Jamaica is still plagued by the financial crisis. Development plans have been abandoned as the vision of independence recedes. Life and Debt is a potent weapon in the arsenal of the global movement for a more equitable economic order.

©️ Linton Kwesi Johnson.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,46

14650-3181,00.html

In 1981, I visited a friend working in the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica, and she told me that on the night of the election, after Manley had conceded to the CIA favored candidate Edward Seaga, the CIA station chief, had invited the Embassy staff to a champagne party. He proudly opened his monster-sized safe on whose walls he had pasted the hundreds of articles, editorials, and cartoons written or suggested by the CIA personnel that had appeared in the Jamaica press.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/200

2/12/49161.html

SEE

http://www.expedia.co.uk/lonelyplanet/Jamaica/historyandculture.aspx

EDWARD SEAGA: anthropologist, folklorist, and former record producer.

Jamaica looks forward after violence

Susan Candiotti

CNN Correspondent

KINGSTON, Jamaica (CNN) --

More than a week after bullets flew in and around Kingston, Jamaicans were wondering if the deadly violence could spark actual reforms in a political system some say has been plagued with problems for decades. At least 22 people were killed and 40 wounded in the violence that began July 8 during a police weapon sweep in a neighborhood considered a stronghold of government opposition groups. Police said snipers fired first, launching the battle, but residents claimed it was the other way around and accused authorities of shooting indiscriminately into crowded residential areas. The Jamaican military moved in on July 10 to quell the disturbance. Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson took to the national airwaves and announced -- under pressure from the opposition -- the formation of a commission of inquiry to look into the causes of the gun battles. However, many Jamaicans on both sides of the political fence are becoming increasingly weary of a situation that appears to be worsening. The latest trouble in the Caribbean Island had been brewing for months -- the opposition Jamaica Labor Party was calling for an early election and gaining in the polls, ongoing investigations were going on too slowly for some, and rival gang members had been gunned down in separate incidents. Gang violence has plagued Jamaica for years. In the 1970s and 1980s, politicians used gangs as a powerful tool to drum up votes. When Jamaica became a trans-shipment point for drugs, gangs became linked to that lucrative Trade.

Trampling tourism

Jamaica's long battle with political violence has complicated its efforts to improve a struggling economy, in part on a lucrative tourism industry. Drawn to the island's inviting beaches and lush landscapes, tourists bring in more than $2.5 billion per year. However, news of sniper attacks and the military patrolling the streets -- although mainly confined to the capital, Kingston, far from popular tourist attractions -- has image-makers worried. "There are so many other things that Jamaica does well," said Patterson, "so many other positive facets of Jamaican life -- our music, our culture, our sports." But the opposition charges that Patterson's ruling People's National Party, the government has failed to provide answers for poverty, unemployment, and alleged police abuses -- according to Amnesty International, Jamaica has one of the world's highest rates of civilians killed by police. Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga of the opposition Jamaica Labor Party, a charge that Patterson's government incited the recent violence to flex its muscle and show it is still in command. "It is a political device in the circumstances that the government has no other answers to put before the people for the forthcoming general elections," Seaga said. Patterson, who has held the Prime Minister's office since 1992, categorically denies that the government fomented the recent gun battles, limited mainly to Kingston. "It is my view that the police were reacting to the fire which they encountered hostile forces and nothing less," he said. There is no turning back, but long-standing hostility between government party loyalists and the opposition is palpable, particularly in well-defined neighborhoods around Kingston.

Bishop Blair helped lead a recent prayer vigil to unite the warring factions. "I do not know how we have gotten to where we have divided our people to this end, where a mother can cross the road, and her son can be on the other side, and she cannot come down and talk to him," Blair said. After touring the hardest-hit areas, private-sector business leaders met with the prime minister amid talk of renewed efforts to work together. "We will be able to develop a further forum within which both political parties, the government party, and the opposition party can sit together and look at the fundamental issues ... to see if we can develop a fundamental plan that deals with the infrastructure problems," said business leader Peter Moses. Patterson has promised to carry out an ambitious urban renewal plan. He said he remains willing to work with the opposition, despite increasing pressure for early elections that could put his leadership on the line. "We have established levels of dialogue and contacts, which have worked very well in the past," he told CNN. The Jamaica Labor Party leader said that the outlook for Jamaica is good -- despite the problems. "This country has every reason to have a glowing future," he said. Bishop Blair said there is no turning back. "Civil society has said they can take it no more; the private sector has said we can take it no more; tourism industry has said we can take it no more," he said. "I guarantee political leaders will have to listen this time." Changes, many say, are long overdue.

NY CARIB NEWS FEATURED ARTICLES

Topic - International Trade and Investment and Caribbean Regional Economic Development

On Agenda For 11th Annual Caribbean Multinational Business Conference In Panama

By Tony Best

Mention such issues as business partnerships between the U.S. and the Caribbean firms, economic integration, and technology that drives development and executives, entrepreneurs, and elected lawmakers immediately think of the Caribbean Multinational Business Conference. In the decade since the idea of bringing together top managers of some of America's largest middle-size and small firms, together with executives and owners of Caribbean enterprises were first transformed into the annual conference, thousands of decision-makers from the U.S. and the Caribbean examined the vital questions of Trade and Investment, established profitable businesses and enterprises, and moved to dismantle any remaining barriers to joint ventures. Just as important, they have exchanged ideas with elected officials at the federal, state, and local government levels in the U.S. and senior government officials of Caribbean nations and territories.

The upshot: public-private sector policies have emerged and have benefited U.S. and Caribbean cities, towns or villages. That highly successful pattern will continue when the 11th annual Caribbean Business Conference is held in Panama City, November 9-12. It will be the first time the sessions are held in a predominantly Spanish-speaking Central American and Caribbean country with a long history of relations with English-speaking Caribbean countries. "This year's conference to be attended by about 300 participants from the United States and the Caribbean is helping us to branch out into new frontiers that offer exciting possibilities," said Karl Rodney, publisher of New York Carib News, a driving force behind the annual exercise. "The decision to expand our horizons by accepting Panama's invitation was based in large measure on the warmth of Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro of Panama City and the President of the country, Martin Torrijos, and on the country's success as a magnet for foreign investment. Just as important were the interest of Panama's business community and the enthusiasm of the hundreds of immigrants from that country who now call the United States home-away-from-home." With "Panama -Providing the Linkage" is the theme of this year's meeting, a wide range of economic and social issues dominate the agenda. Everything from Western Hemispheric Collaboration;

Unlocking New Regional

Opportunities in Trade and Investment, Expanding Business Horizons, and Technology, the engine of Innovation to regional challenges globalization, security, and travel; to opportunities for Western Hemispheric health collaboration; micro-financing and enterprises, a part of the "Big Picture;" and "doing business in Panama" are to be discussed by the executives, business owners, and government official in joint public sessions. Almost 20 U.S. House of Representatives members, most of them belonging to the Congressional Black Caucus and several Caribbean cabinet ministers, are also to attend. "We believe the conference in Panama adds a new and exciting dimension to the conference," said U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, one of the longest-serving elected officials on Capitol Hill in Washington. "We in the Congressional Black Caucus consider the conference an effective vehicle that drives closer collaboration between our members and the nations of the Caribbean, our country's close neighbors." Dr. Marco Mason, a Panamanian and prominent member of the Caribbean immigrant community in New York, thinks the decision to go to his birthplace would be an outstanding success. "Panama offers businesses in the U.S. and the rest of the Caribbean prospects for economic growth," he said. "It will also enable people from the rest of the Caribbean to interface with the children and grandchildren of those pioneers who went from Jamaica, Barbados, and other countries at the turn of the 20th century to build the Canal but who have remained in Panama for most of their lives." The conference is being held at the Caesar Park Hotel in Panama City.

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stephen-barry · 9 months

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USA v. Chile; Sept. 11, 1973

September 11, 1973: USA versus Chile

Imagine a 9/11 "style" of attack - but one done *by* America *to* another sovereign Nation...

What did the CIA do in Chile in 1973? When the coup attempt failed, and Allende was inaugurated President, the CIA was authorized by the 40 Committee to fund groups in opposition to Allende in Chile. The effort was massive. Eight million dollars was spent in the three years between the 1970 election and the military coup in September 1973...

When Chile elected socialist Salvador Allende as president in 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixonoriginally wanted to block him from taking office, or else mount a coup soon after Allende became president. On Nixon’s orders, the CIA began supporting different Chilean groups plotting to overthrow the new socialist president. In 1973, military leader Augusto Pinochet staged a coup that ousted Allende. Pinochet assumed his dictatorship the following year, ruling as Chile’s president until 1990.

Whether the CIA was directly involved in Pinochet’s coup is still contested. However, the agency’s support of earlier coup plots contributed topolitical instability that Pinochet took advantage of to seize power. In a transcribed phone conversation between Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger about Pinochet’s coup, Kissinger complained that the U.S. media wasn’t celebrating the coup, complaining that “in the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes.”

“Well, we didn't—as you know—our hand doesn't show on this one,” Nixon responded. Kissinger clarified, “I mean we helped them…created the conditions as great as possible.”

Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was unacceptable to the president of the United States. The attitude in the White House seemed to be, "If in the wake of Vietnam I can no longer send in the Marines, then I will send in the CIA."—Senator Frank Church, 1976[49][50] The Secret Government - The Constitution In Crisis -Bill Moyers (PBS TV in 1987)

The 1987 PBS documentary The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis analyzes the threats to constitutional government posed by an illegitimate network of spies, profiteers, mercenaries, ex-generals and "superpatriots" who have tried, at various times, to take foreign policy into their own hands... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eDTcGkOJj4

#politics #overthrow #cia #controversial

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bravesonnets · 4 years

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—salvador allende’s final speech, 9/11/73

this week marks the 47th anniversary of the US-backed overthrow of salvador allende. allende was the first latin american marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy. under allende, universal healthcare, tuition-free education, minimum wage, worker safety protections, free school lunches for children, and other socialist programs were implemented. according to the national bureau of economic research, blue collar wages rose 56% in 1971.

after allende moved to nationalize chile’s US owned industries and align with socialist cuba, nixon (who’d already been carefully monitoring allende’s rise) gave direct orders to the CIA and the US state department to “put pressure” on allende’s government. while the US publicly worked to sabotage chile’s economy with trade restrictions and aid denial, the CIA secretly collaborated with reactionary forces in the country to undermine allende’s credibility and ultimately overthrow him in a bloody coup.

in allende’s place, the US helped install military leader augusto pinochet who returned “freedom” to chile through re-privatization and the extra-judicial murder of an estimated 3,197 chileans. despite pinochet’s reputation as one of latin america’s most brutal fascists, the US supported his regime without issue. “i would say they are dictatorial,” nixon later conceded, “i would also have to, on the other side, indicate that they are non-communist and that they are not enemies of the united states.”

#salvador allende #allende #marxism leninism #anti imperialism #mine

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blackpoetry · 3 years

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Somebody Blew Up America They say its some terrorist, some barbaric A Rab, in Afghanistan It wasn't our American terrorists It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads Or the them that blows up nigger Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row It wasn't Trent Lott Or David Duke or Giuliani Or Schundler, Helms retiring

It wasn't The gonorrhea in costume The white sheet diseases That have murdered black people Terrorized reason and sanity Most of humanity, as they pleases

They say (who say?) Who do the saying Who is them paying Who tell the lies Who in disguise Who had the slaves Who got the bux out the Bucks

Who got fat from plantations Who genocided Indians Tried to waste the Black nation

Who live on Wall Street The first plantation Who cut your nuts off Who rape your ma Who lynched your pa

Who got the tar, who got the feathers Who had the match, who set the fires Who killed and hired Who say they God & still be the Devil

Who the biggest only Who the most goodest Who do Jesus resemble

Who created everything Who the smartest Who the greatest Who the richest Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest

Who define art Who define science

Who made the bombs Who made the guns

Who bought the slaves, who sold them

Who called you them names Who say Dahmer wasn't insane

Who? Who? Who?

Who stole Puerto Rico Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan Australia & The Hebrides Who forced opium on the Chinese

Who own them buildings Who got the money Who think you funny Who locked you up Who own the papers

Who owned the slave ship

Who run the army

Who the fake president Who the ruler Who the banker

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the mine Who twist your mind Who got bread Who need peace Who you think need war

Who own the oil Who do no toil Who own the soil Who is not a nigger Who is so great ain't nobody bigger

Who own this city

Who own the air Who own the water

Who own your crib Who rob and steal and cheat and murder and make lies the truth Who call you uncouth

Who live in the biggest house Who do the biggest crime Who go on vacation anytime

Who killed the most niggers Who killed the most Jews Who killed the most Italians Who killed the most Irish Who killed the most Africans Who killed the most Japanese Who killed the most Latinos

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the ocean Who own the airplanes Who own the malls Who own television Who own radio

Who own what ain't even known to be owned Who own the owners that ain't the real owners

Who own the suburbs Who suck the cities Who make the laws

Who made Bush president Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying Who talk about democracy and be lying

Who the Beast in Revelations Who 666 Who know who decide Jesus get crucified

Who the Devil on the real side Who got rich from Armenian genocide

Who the biggest terrorist Who change the bible Who killed the most people Who do the most evil Who don't worry about survival

Who have the colonies Who stole the most land Who rule the world Who say they good but only do evil Who the biggest executioner

Who? Who? Who?

Who own the oil Who want more oil Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie

Who? Who? Who?

Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan Who pay the CIA, Who knew the bomb was gonna blow Who know why the terrorists Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego

Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion And cracking they sides at the notion

Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere

Who make the credit cards Who get the biggest tax cut Who walked out of the Conference Against Racism Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing? Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?

Who invaded Grenada Who made money from apartheid Who keep the Irish a colony Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later

Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani, the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral, Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,

Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane, Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone, Little Bobby

Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo, Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton

Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney, Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed

Who put a price on Lenin's head

Who put the Jews in ovens, and who helped them do it Who said "America First" and ok'd the yellow stars

Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt Who murdered the Rosenbergs And all the good people iced, tortured, assassinated, vanished

Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,

Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo Who invented Aids Who put the germs In the Indians' blankets Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"

Who blew up the Maine & started the Spanish American War Who got Sharon back in Power Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo, Chiang kai Chek

Who decided Affirmative Action had to go Reconstruction, The New Deal, The New Frontier, The Great Society,

Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus Subsidere

Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop, Who poison Robeson, who try to put DuBois in Jail Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs, Garvey, The Scottsboro Boys, The Hollywood Ten

Who set the Reichstag Fire

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away?

Who? Who? Who?

Explosion of Owl the newspaper say The devil face cd be seen

Who make money from war Who make dough from fear and lies Who want the world like it is Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.

Who is the ruler of Hell? Who is the most powerful

Who you know ever Seen God?

But everybody seen The Devil

Like an Owl exploding In your life in your brain in your self Like an Owl who know the devil All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog

Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell Who and Who and WHO who who Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo! Courtesy of; http://www.afropoets.net/amiribaraka.html

#black poems #black poets society #black writers #poetry #america

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against-a-dark-background · 4 years

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Lithium in Australia

Australia has 2803 thousand tonnes of lithium reserves so far discovered, ranking third in the world, behind China (2nd), and Chile (1st).

In 2017 these were the figures for mined and processed lithium:

Year: 2017

Proved and Probable Ore Reserves (kt Li): 1662

Production (kt Li): 21.3

Reserve Life (Years): 78

https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/minerals/mineral-resources-and-advice/australian-resource-reviews/lithium

Elon Musk is trying his hardest to provide electric cars, free internet for the entire world, and a permanent colony on Mars. AMONGST OTHER THINGS. He can get his lithium from Australia, fairly and without coups.

We will gladly provide him with as much lithium as he needs, from a democratic, sovereign nation, which has free and fair elections - and which the USA is not going to invade anytime soon, nor will the CIA overthrow the government. We will try to do that next year, when we vote, thank you.

I do not understand the hate. Is it because he is rich? Is it because he’s doing something beneficial for humanity, and people are so fucken butthurt that they just cannot stand to see someone go from success to failure X10 to sucess after sucess?

Let me clear: I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW, and I will block you if you start spamming me with obscene reblogs, or hate reblogs.

His company built a solar powered battery farm in the state of South Australia, after S.A. had an energy crisis. Now S.A. gets the bulk of its electricity from renewable resources and Elon Musk said he would get it built within one hundred days or it would be free.

As it turned out - his company managed to complete the storage farm within one hundred days, and it cost $90 million AUD. Now the storage farm and its associated infrastructure are being offered up for an IPO as a cash injection for South Australia. I’m dead set against that. Energy infrastructure should remain in the hands of the government, and thereby, the people.

Musk’s company has helped spur that on. So just speak softly and carry a small leaf.

Falcon 9 Heavy Lauch.

I love it!

#Australian Lithium #SpaceX #Elon Musk #Tesla Powerwall #Electric cars are the future #End use of petroleum #Falcon 9 Heavy #ISS #Astronauts #Dragon Capsule #Starship Super Heavy #Mars Colony

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 4 years

Link

Under the conditions of the growing conflict between the main geopolitical players, the story of the poisoning of the opposition blogger Alexey Navalny has found a big public resonance and can be used by various political actors as a bargaining chip. The accusations that are made by high ranking officials and politicians adversely affect the relations between the European countries and USA on the one hand, and Russia on the other hand.

Will Europe accept the investigation findings if, as their result, the version of the poisoning by a warfare toxic agent will be disproved? Or the stakes are so high that nobody can be bothered with these results? On this and some other issues to Greg Butterfield, an editor of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper and activist of the Socialist Unity Party (U.S.)

– The Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that opposition blogger Alexei Navalny could work with Western security services, in particular, that during his treatment in Berlin, he was working with “CIA specialists”. Is this possible?

Certainly. We know the CIA and other Western war agencies have a long history of working with “oppositionists” who are friendly to imperialist aims against governments that are considered the enemy. From the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, Sukarno in Indonesia, Allende in Chile, right up to the present day. Washington was directly involved by various means in the Maidan movement in Ukraine in 2013-2014, and the current front-runner in the presidential election, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, served as the “colonial governor” of Kiev after the coup. Many suspect U.S. involvement today in the events of Belarus and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Navalny is just another pawn in their chess game.

It’s important also to understand that the U.S. billionaire class has its own overarching aims regardless of which political faction is in power at the moment. So while Trump may be more focused on building up for war against China and Iran, it doesn’t mean that U.S. “intelligence” is any less interested in Russia and other former Soviet republics. Breaking up the Russian Federation has been a long-term goal of the U.S. rulers, under both Democrats and Republicans, since the fall of the USSR.

#Navalny #poisoning #Russia #imperialism #CIA #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #sanctions #antiwar #Ukraine #Indonesia #Iran #Chile #redguard #Struggle La Lucha

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gregor-samsung · 5 years

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A number of analysts have observed that bin Laden won major successes in his war against the United States. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the US from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” the journalist Eric Margolis writes. “The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap.… Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction … may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States.” A report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates that the final bill will be $3.2–4 trillion. Quite an impressive achievement by bin Laden. That Washington was intent on rushing into bin Laden’s trap was evident at once. Michael Scheuer, the senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, wrote, “Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us.” The al-Qaeda leader, Scheuer continued, was “out to drastically alter US and Western policies toward the Islamic world.” And, as Scheuer explains, bin Laden largely succeeded. “US forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” Arguably, it remains so even after his death. There is good reason to believe that the jihadi movement could have been split and undermined after the 9/11 attack, which was criticized harshly within the movement. Furthermore, that “crime against humanity,” as it was rightly called, could have been approached as a crime, with an international operation to apprehend the likely suspects. That was recognized in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but no such idea was even considered by decision makers in Washington. It seems no thought was given to the Taliban’s tentative offer—how serious an offer we cannot know—to present the al-Qaeda leaders for a judicial proceeding. At the time, I quoted Robert Fisk’s conclusion that the horrendous crime of 9/11 was committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty”—an accurate judgment. The crimes could have been even worse: Suppose that Flight 93, downed by courageous passengers in Pennsylvania, had hit the White House, killing the president. Suppose that the perpetrators of the crime planned to, and did, impose a military dictatorship that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands. Suppose the new dictatorship established, with the support of the criminals, an international terror center that helped install similar torture-and-terror states elsewhere, and, as the icing on the cake, brought in a team of economists—call them “the Kandahar Boys”—who quickly drove the economy into one of the worst depressions in its history. That, plainly, would have been a lot worse than 9/11. As we all should know, this is not a thought experiment. It happened. I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the United States succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile via the military coup that placed General Augusto Pinochet’s ghastly regime in office. The dictatorship then installed the Chicago Boys—economists trained at the University of Chicago—to reshape Chile’s economy. Consider the economic destruction and the torture and kidnappings, and multiply the numbers killed by twenty-five to yield per-capita equivalents, and you will see just how much more devastating the first 9/11 was.

Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & C. New York, 2016

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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Somebody who I wrote about in that Intercept piece was a New York Times reporter, John Crewdson in late 70s, 80s wrote these series of heartbreaking reports about sexual violence and torture and murder that are just wrenching and it was largely ignored. He won a Pulitzer for it, but it didn’t lead to larger calls for the reformation of the border patrol.

JS: Talk about some of the tactics that were used by the border patrol and also Operation Wetback.

GG: Operation Wetback was what might be called the modernization of deportation — deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrant workers mostly from California, but also from other states in the Southwest. One of the things that it did was it was an upscaling of intelligence and [an] increase in coordination of the border patrol with other law enforcement agencies, local police agencies, and even the FBI. And they put into place mechanisms that could analyze data information tips, including data about harvests and employment, act on that information, and then turn it into more intelligence that they can act again.

One of the agents in charge of that intelligence gathering, John Longan, then moved on to work for the State Department’s Public Safety Agency, which was really a front for the CIA, where he would work with intelligence agencies in third world hotspots. Longan, in particular, worked in Thailand, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Guatemala. And basically, he did in those countries what he did in California was he professionalized the intelligence agency and when I say professionalized I mean increase its capacity to gather information mostly through brutal interrogations including torture, act on that information, meaning go out and capture more people, get more information through more torture, and then act on it again. The Central Intelligence Agency, that’s exactly what it does. It centralizes the activity of many of these different branches. And so, you see a direct relationship between these very brutal tactics that were worked out at Operation Wetback and then exported abroad during the Cold War.

JS: One of the things that you point out is that in the early 70s, the U.S. was training Latin American security forces. A majority of them in countries run by military governments, and they were training them at the Border Patrol Academy in Texas and the Los Angeles Times, at the time, points out that CIA instructors trained them in the design, manufacture, and potential use of bombs and incendiary devices. So, talk about that connection between the CIA and regime change in Central and Latin America and also, the training of law enforcement military intelligence by the U.S. in some of these countries.

GG: In Latin America, after the Cuban revolution in 1959, but even after the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, the U.S. through its various foreign policy agencies — the State Department, the CIA — begin to focus on upscaling the internal defense capacity of security forces of its allied countries. The idea was to avoid getting into another Korean War where the United States was committed to military containment of communism and train their local allies to be able to root out what they call the internal enemy. This was the heart of the National Security Doctrine and that entailed, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, spending [an] increasing amount of money and resources and technology on professionalizing the intelligence agencies of its allied countries.

This all culminates in what becomes known as Operation Condor after the overthrow of Allende, Salvador Allende, in Chile in 1973 where the U.S. helps preside and coordinate the work of the intelligence agencies in its allied countries. Interestingly enough, the border patrol is involved in this. Who would have thought? Most critics of the border patrol, even those who criticize its brutality, tend to think of it as this kind of sleepy backwater federal agency, but it turns out that it was sending a number of its agents to allied countries as part of this police training. And in addition to bringing up police and soldiers to learn these torture techniques and bomb-building techniques and interrogation techniques in places like the Panama Canal and the School of the Americas, they were also bringing up these police officers to the Border Patrol Academy in Fresno, California.

JS: You also write: “There have been contradictory judicial rulings, but historically, agent power has been limited by no constitutional clause. There are few places patrollers can’t search, no property belonging to migrants, they can’t seize, and there’s hardly anybody they can’t kill provided that the victims are poor Mexican or Central American migrants. Between ’85 and ’90, federal agents shot 40 migrants around San Diego alone killing 22 of them. Since 2003, border patrol agents have killed at least 97 people including six children. Few agents were prosecuted.” How powerful have these agencies become — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol — and what would it look like to even hold them accountable?

GG: They are incredibly powerful and they operate with near complete impunity. Those are the deaths and killings that we know of. It’s really a kind of lawless region, the borderlands. I would argue based on my reading of the sources is that the vast majority of abuse and brutality just went under the radar, that we just don’t know about it. Again, John Crewdson, that New York Times reporter would just offhandedly talk about border patrol agents telling him that they threw “illegals off the cliff” and made it look like an accident. They would seize their property. They would seize the documents — the birth certificate of citizens, U.S. citizens. But if they were poor and Latino, they would have to spend an enormous amount of resources trying to get their birth certificates re-issued. So, there was no, there’s no accountability. Their power is practically limitless.

JS: And this issue of separating migrant families, there wasn’t really an official government policy on this but isn’t it the case that these agents still were doing it just sort of freelance?

GG: Yeah, they would target children and migrant crossings as a way of using them as bargaining chips with their families — forcing them to confess, forcing them to turn themselves in. There’s cases of children who were U.S. citizens who were captured by the border patrol and then just released in Mexico with little recourse or means for how they can return. The practice that’s been reported on now of placing migrants in extremely cold holding centers that dates back at least to the 1980s. Crewdson reports on INS officials trading young Mexican women to Los Angeles Rams for season tickets. I mean, this is a level abuse and impunity and horror that’s hard to wrap one’s mind around.

JS: We know that thousands of children have been separated from their parents and held in prisons, camps, but at the same time, we’ve had several deaths that seem to have been preventable of children who were then taken into U.S. custody. What do you see that has happened there and is it different than deaths that happened under the Obama administration or previous presidencies?

GG: No, I think that what Trump has done is by politicizing the issue rather than making it about pragmatic or technocratic policy concern about border security, he’s pulled the curtains back to reveal the horror of the border. This has been going on — certainly, the deportations under Obama increased — and with the same intent to create a deterrent. So, in many ways, it’s a continuation. I think what Trump does is he turns it into spectacle and obviously, it’s related to maintaining his own political base right of 35, 38 percent.

JS: Trump loves to, you know, he says, “Oh, I just had you know, Nancy and Chuck —” referring to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer “— in the White House,” or their representatives. And you know, there’s all this fanfare on Twitter about how he told them to get lost, you know because they weren’t agreeing to his border. But we don’t really have an effective opposition coming from the leadership of the Democratic Party on this. Break down what we’re sort of, seeing the elites of the Democratic Party staking out as their position right now.

GG: They’re staking out the position that they’ve had basically since the late 1970s with Jimmy Carter, the idea that you can trade border security for some kind of limited reform whether it be a one-time amnesty. Bush tried this, George W. Bush, Barack Obama tried this. The idea that you can give the border brutalists, the nativists whatever they want in terms of security, in terms of billions and billions of dollars to turn the border into, what Chuck Schumer in 2013 called, “tough as nails” in exchange for some kind of one-off reform. Now we’re talking about DACA, the deferred, which would legalize the status of undocumented residents who came here as children. It’s a devil’s bargain and it can’t work.

What the Democrats need to do is that they need to seize on the migration issue as a moral issue — something equivalent of the Civil Rights issue. Just as you couldn’t have Bull Connor police departments and Jim Crow laws and call yourself a democracy in the 1960s and 1970s, you can’t have a country where over more than 10 million people live completely vulnerable in the shadows and call yourself a democracy. But the Democrats constantly trim on the issue and they’re constantly trying to — I mean, look when Schumer and Pelosi sat down with Trump, Trump said, “Well, we all agree on that border security is important” and Schumer said, “Yes, we agree on that,” and then Trump said “Well, we agree. Well, we agree on that.” So you’re seeing the Democratic leadership at least caught in the contradiction of policy impasse that’s three or four decades in the making.

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starfleetisapromise · 5 years

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Section 31 - a few thoughts

I’ve been wanting to talk about Section 31 for a while, because it ties into some work I did a couple of years ago on Star Trek and geopolitical hegemony – these are just a few random thoughts generated from this week’s episode. It’s long so tl;dr - many of the current “hater” fans don’t like the grittier, darker Trek because it forces them to recognize that the US may not be the flawless beacon of freedom and democracy that they like to think it is.

There’s been some interesting fan reaction to the appearance of Section 31 in Discovery and, at least outside of Tumblr, a lot of it has been largely negative. Negative along the lines of “the Federation would never be involved in anything that shady”. When it’s pointed out that Section 31 is obviously based on the CIA, the reaction is to double down and claim that, because the CIA is a US organization and subject to congressional oversight, they aren’t shady either. Which is, frankly, fucking hilarious – or it would be if so many people hadn’t died as a result of the CIA being shady as fuck.

It’s no coincidence that Section 31 first appears in the latter half of DS9. By the early 1990s the Cold War was over and we were finally allowed to acknowledge all the shit that the West, and the US in particular, had pulled in the interests of “defeating communism” or, as it turned out, “making the world safe for American corporations”.

DS9 is also the first iteration of Star Trek to come out from under the shadow of Roddenberry’s idealist vision of the world – idealism that is rooted very firmly in his belief in an early 20thcentury Wilsonian world order where the US was the shining beacon on the hill, a light for other nations to emulate. Both TOS and TNG are firmly entrenched in the idea that the Federation is some kind of benign hegemon (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and that’s one reason those captains are always relatively comfortable trashing General Order One. If your morality is superior to everyone else’s then it’s no great tragedy to set a lesser civilization on the right path. Roddenberry isn’t even subtle about it with his whole “wagon train to the stars” mentality. But the dark side of that hegemony is really nicely explored in DS9 – we even get this fabulous quote from Edington in Season Four:

Everybody should want to be in the Federation. Nobody leaves paradise. In some ways, you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You assimilate people and they don’t even know it. Edington ST:DS9 4:21

With DS9 and the appearance of Section 31 we get the first acknowledgement of what lurks in the shadows of that shining beacon on the hill. That there is a reality where ideals are often a cover for a much darker agenda. In the case of the US and the 20th century, that agenda was promoting and protecting American capital.

This is my favorite picture of Kennedy. He was determined to support the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba’s government, but the CIA covertly undermined him. In this photo he received the news that Lumumba had been assassinated.

In the process the CIA was directly responsible for hundreds of acts of subterfuge and deception, ranging from assassination (Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Patrice Lumumba, Ngô Đình Diệm, among others) to medical experiments (MKULTRA and the Cameron experiments at McGill) the training of death squads and torture teams (at the various Schools of the Americas in the US and Panama); and the overthrow of governments deemed unfriendly to US interests (Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, the Congo…etc. etc.) Hell, they even got peripherally involved in the French army plot to overthrow De Gaulle in 1961 and maintained “stay behind” operations in European countries that armed and funded right wing paramilitaries to “fight” communism.

Section 31 has the potential to be all of that; and certainly the books that accompany ST:Enterprise talk a lot about Section 31’s “nation building” and interference in multiple non-Federation political systems. And this seems to be pissing people off in exactly the same way that DS9, ST:Enterprise and the reboot movies – all of which acknowledged that there was a dark side to the Federation – and by extension, since the Federation is just an alter ego for the US, a dark side to American foreign relations.

These fans (and they aren’t all old white guys, a lot of them seem to be young white guys) who complain about the new Trek not being “real” Trek because it’s darker and grittier; who prefer the juvenile humor and bright shiny colors of “The Orville”; who long for the nostalgia of TOS and TNG, and complain about the direction ST has taken, simply don’t like the way in which their conception of themselves, and their conception of the US, is challenged by this darker reality. Of course, they also don’t like not being able to see themselves as central to the narrative, in a cast that is much more diverse than anything seen in any other Star Trek series – but that’s a whole other discussion.

Which brings us to this week’s episode and Pike’s encounter with Leland. Clearly, they were friends, possibly still are friends, but Pike firmly believes that Section 31 crosses lines that shouldn’t be crossed (and he probably doesn’t know the half of what they do). While it’s possible that Leland is still one of the good guys (there certainly were and are, good moral people in the CIA) Georgiou’s comment about cover ups and things happening to the wrong ambassador, indicate that he’s personally crossed some of those lines somewhere along the way. He’s right that Section 31 does what they do so that the rest of Starfleet can do what they do; but Pike is right too, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, no matter the stakes. Which circles back nicely to the end of Season One and Burnham’s speech about principles being all that matter. And gives us a nice point of congruence between Pike and his new crew. Personally, I like this more complex Federation, I’ve liked it since DS9; no country is exceptional, they are all flawed and our media needs to illuminate that so we can reflect on it, not bury it under false rhetoric.

Further reading:

Owning the Future: Manifest Destiny and the Vision of American Hegemony in Star Trek

https://gammathetaupsilon.org/the-geographical-bulletin/2010s/volume58-1/article2.pdf

Naomi Klein The Shock Doctrine

Stephen Kinzer Overthrow

David Talbot The Devil’s Chessboard

#Section 31 #Section 31 aka the CIA #Star Trek Discovery #Star Trek and geopolitics

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katchwreck · 5 years

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u.$ imperialist interventionism:

U.S. Interventions in Latin America

Just thought you should know about this.

Key:

Military incursions

Covert or indirect operations

! Other events of note

1846

The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory.

1850, 1853, 1854, 1857

U.S. interventions in Nicaragua.

1855

Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.

"Los yankis... have burst their way like a fertilizing torrent through the barriers of barbarism." --N.Y. Daily News

He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.

"The enemies of American civilization-- for such are the enemies of slavery-- seem to be more on the alert than its friends." --William Walker

1856

First of five U.S. interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.

1898

U.S. declares war on Spain, blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

1903

The Platt Amendment inserted into the Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit.

1903

When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution.

1904

U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt.

1905

U.S. Marines help Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora.

1905

U.S. troops land in Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years.

1906

Marines occupy Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war.

1907

Marines intervene in Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua.

1908

U.S. troops intervene in Panama for first of 4 times in next decade.

1909

Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company.

1910

U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime.

1911

The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army.

1912

U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers.

1912

Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925.

1914

U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns.

1915

U.S. Marines occupy Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.

"Think of it-- niggers speaking French!" --secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, briefed on the Haitian situation

1916

Marines occupy the Dominican Republic, staying till 1924.

! 1916

Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

"Am sure Villa's attacks are made in Germany." --James Gerard, U.S. ambassador to Berlin

1917

U.S. troops enter Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him.

1917

Marines intervene again in Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI.

1918

U.S. Marines occupy Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order.

1921

President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply.

1925

U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order.

1926

Marines, out of Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.

"That intervention is not now, never was, and never will be a set policy of the United States is one of the most important facts President-elect Hoover has made clear." --NYT, 1928

1929

U.S. establishes a military academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

"There is no room for any outside influence other than ours in this region. We could not tolerate such a thing without incurring grave risks... Until now Central America has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not recognize and support fall. Nicaragua has become a test case. It is difficult to see how we can afford to be defeated." --Undersecretary of State Robert Olds

1930

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the Dominican Republic.

1932

The U.S. rushes warships to El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100).

! 1933

President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy.

1933

Marines finally leave Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.

"The Nicaraguans are better fighters than the Haitians, being of Indian blood, and as warriors similar to the aborigines who resisted the advance of civilization in this country." --NYT correspondent Harold Denny

1933

Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman.

! 1934

Platt Amendment repealed.

1934

Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua.

! 1936

U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in Panama.

1941

Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.

It was "a great relief to us, because Arias had been very troublesome and very pro-Nazi." --Secretary of War Henry Stimson

1943

The editor of the Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government.

1944

The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans.

1946

U.S. Army School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere.

1948

José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica.

1954

Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.

Guatemala is "openly and diligently toiling to create a Communist state in Central America... only two hours' bombing time from the Panama Canal." --Life

The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.

"This is the first instance in history where a Communist government has been replaced by a free one." --Richard Nixon

1957

Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces.

! 1959

Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.

"Castro's continued tawdry little melodrama of invasion." --Time, of Castro's warnings of an imminent U.S. invasion

1960

Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment.

1960

The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training.

1960

A new junta in El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.

"Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing communist penetration in Latin America." --John F. Kennedy, after the coup

1960

Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.]

1960s

U.S. Green Berets train Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."

"If it is necessary to turn the country into a cemetary in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so." --President Carlos Arana Osorio

1961

U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it.

1961

CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba.

1962

CIA engages in campaign in Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress.

1963

CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic.

1963

A far-right-wing coup in Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.

"It is difficult to develop stable and democratic government [in Guatemala], because so many of the nation's Indians are illiterate and superstitious." --School textbook, 1964

1964

João Goulart of Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup.

! 1964

The free market in Nicaragua:

The Somoza family controls "about one-tenth of the cultivable land in Nicaragua, and just about everything else worth owning, the country's only airline, one television station, a newspaper, a cement plant, textile mill, several sugar refineries, half-a-dozen breweries and distilleries, and a Mercedes-Benz agency." --Life World Library

1965

A coup in the Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

"Representative democracy cannot work in a country such as the Dominican Republic," Bosch declares later. Now why would he say that?

1966

U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.

"To eliminate a few hundred guerrillas, the government killed perhaps 10,000 Guatemalan peasants." --State Dept. report on the program

1967

A team of Green Berets is sent to Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara.

1968

Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of El Salvador's death squads.

! 1970

In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million.

1970

Salvador Allende Gossens elected in Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election.

1972

U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.)

1973

U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms.

1973

Military takes power in Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons.

1974

Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques.

! 1976

Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to El Salvador.

! 1979

Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to Panama by 1999.

"Once again, Uncle Sam put his tail between his legs and crept away rather than face trouble." --Ronald Reagan

1980

A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.

The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.

"The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on." --Ronald Reagan

1980

U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.

Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state.

1981

The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua.

1981

Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba.

1982

A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign.

1983

Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities.

1983

U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism.

1983

Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates.

1984

CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case.

1984

U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president.

1989

U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs.

1996

The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.

SOURCE

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96thdayofrage · 5 years

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Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer, but most of all he is an anti-imperialist and an author of three books. Kovalik’s first two books tackled the specific US war drives against Russia and Iran. His third installment, The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, addresses the broad scope of US election meddling abroad. The book provides much needed political and ideological life support to an anti-war movement in the U.S that has been rendered nearly invisible to the naked eye.

The Plot to Control the World is as detailed in its critique of U.S. imperialism as it is concise. In just over 160 pages, Kovalik manages to analyze the various ways that the U.S. political and military apparatus interferes in the affairs of nations abroad to achieve global hegemony. He wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism, beginning appropriately with the U.S. imperialist occupations of Haiti and the Philippines at the end of the 19thcentury and beginning of the 20th. The U.S. would murder millions of Filipinos and send both nations into a spiral of violence, instability, and poverty that continues to this day. As Kovalik explains regarding Haiti, “While the specific, claimed justifications for [U.S.] intervention changed over time- e.g., opposing the end of slavery, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, fighting Communism, fighting drugs, restoring law and order -- the fact is that the interventions never stopped and the results for the Haitian people have been invariably disastrous.”

“Kovalik wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism.”

US expansionism has relied upon the ideology of American exceptionalism to silence criticism and weaken anti-war forces in the United States. American exceptionalism claims that the U.S. is a force for good in the world and completely justified in its wars of conquest draped in the cover of spreading “democracy and freedom” around the world. Kovalik challenges American exceptionalism by showing readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.Russia, Honduras, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Vietnam and many other nations have seen their societies devastated by U.S. “election meddling.” In Honduras, for example, a U.S.-backed coup of left-wing President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 made the nation one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, indigenous person, or trade-union/environmental activist. Thousands of Hondurans have been displaced, disappeared, or assassinated since the coup.

Another important aspect of The Plot to Control the World is its exposure of U.S hypocrisy surrounding the subject of “election meddling.” Since the end of the 2016 Presidential elections, the U.S. military, political, and media branches of the imperialist state have accused Russia of virtually implanting Donald Trump into the Oval office. The U.S. public has been fed a steady dose of anti-Russia talking points in an apparent effort on the part of the elites to beat the drums of war with the nuclear-armed state. No evidence has been presented to prove the conspiracy, as a recent National Public Radio (NPR) analysis states plainly. However, there is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.

“The author shows readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.”

Just ask the much-vaunted Russians. Kovalik devotes an entire chapter to the 1996 Presidential election in Russia that re-elected the wildly unpopular Boris Yeltsin. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 began an era of “shock therapy” in the newly erected Russian Federation, a euphemism for the wholesale theft and transfer of socialized wealth into the hands of oligarchs and multinational corporations. Millions would perish in Russia from an early death due to the sudden loss of healthcare, housing, jobs, and other basic services. In 1996, President Bill Clinton ensured that Yeltsin maintained his near total grip on state power in Russia by providing the Russian President with a team of U.S. political consultants and over a billion dollars’ worth of IMF monies directly to the campaign. U.S. political and monetary support allowed Yeltsin to rig the election in his favor despite his dwindling popularity. Kovalik shows that if anyone should worry about election meddling, it should be the people of Russia and not the US elites that control Washington.

The Plot to Control the World takes readers into the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the CIA’s coup of revolutionary Patrice Lumumba continues to haunt the resource rich nation in the form of endless US-backed genocide. It travels to Guatemala, where the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz led to a U.S.-backed slaughter of a quarter million Guatemalans under the auspices of several military dictatorships. Kovalik shows us that the election of the fascistic Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil was no aberration, as the U.S. was primarily responsible for the rise in fascism in Brazilthrough its direct role in placing the nation under the control of a military dictatorship in 1964. The military dictatorship predated the CIA’s ouster of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, which handed the once socialist state to Augusto Pinochet’s murderous and repressive leadership.

“The mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.”

The entire skeleton of the U.S. military state is on full display in The Plot to Control the World. The U.S. military state utilizes an array of tools to overthrow democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests. These tools include the U.S. intelligence agencies, so-called Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the National Endowment for Democracy, and the various branches of the military itself, to name a few. Regardless of the tools employed, the mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.Thus, while Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Vietnam may possess unique histories, their economic and political development has been shaped by the destructive interference of the United States.

Dan Kovalik is not likely to be reviewed in the New York Timesor other corporate outlets. That’s because Kovalik unapologetically speaks out against U.S. empire and all that upholds it. In doing so, Kovalik’s The Plot to Control the World walks in the footsteps of anti-imperialists such as Michael Parenti and William Blum. Blum, a former State Department employee, spent his post-State Department life providing humanity with knowledge about how US imperialism operates on the global stage. The New York Timeswasted no time in slandering Blum in their obituary . This showed the great lengths that the ruling elites will go to discredit, defame, and condemn critics of the military industrial complex and how important it is for those who oppose war let go of any expectation that the corporate media will cover Kovalik’s work or anyone else who speaks out against war.

“White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism.”

With that said, one of the reasons that the left in the U.S. is so weak is because it has been numerically and politically isolated by the lies of the Empire. White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism. Despite the ruthlessness of the austerity and incarceration regimes, many Americans continue to be convinced that the U.S. is the most exceptional nation in the world and do not balk when its military wages wars abroad at the expense of U.S. tax dollars and civilian lives. U.S. imperialism has made sure that Americans feel that they are special colonizers who see the victims of the U.S. military state as savages worthy of slaughter. The Plot to Control the World is based on a different premise: internationalism. The book links the struggle against US imperialism to the needs of the oppressed and working class living in the heart of empire, making it an essential read for those who are sick and tired of the prevailing narrative of American exceptionalism and want to be armed with knowledge that is essential toward changing it.

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