This is the tragic chronicle of how democracy was destroyed in Chile in the early 70’s by Kissinger, Nixon, the CIA and the corporatists, viz. IT & T and the copper mining companies owned by Anaconda and Kennecott.
But first in 1970 Salvador Allende, as head of the Popular Unity party, was elected President of Chile. Chile had been a democracy for 30 years and Allende, who was a democratic socialist, believed in the ballot box as the road to power rather than armed revolution. A significant plank in his platform was the nationalization of the phone company and the copper mines as well as a number of other well known companies. We have here an excellent example of the power of private corporations because as soon as it became clear that Allende had won the election, the private investors both in Chile and America began a concerted campaign to subvert and undermine Allende’s government.
Nixon became apoplectic when he was told that Allende had won. The CIA had been assigned the job of stopping him but had failed. Nixon’s instruction to Helms, the head of the CIA, was to do anything that caused the collapse of the Chilean economy. His expression was “make the economy scream”. It sounded a little like present day torture. In the meantime the US would stop lending money to the Chilean government and buying from Chile. Also the CIA funded mass anti-government strikes to no avail. Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” had an economic project in Chile opposed to Allende and in favor of continuing privatization of the important industries. But the public had moved so far in favor of Allende that the “Chicago Boys’” project was dead on arrival.
Before Allende was elected Kissinger made two statements both of which were hypocritically arrogant and ignored Chile’s sovereignty. First and I quote: “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves regarding Chile’s government.” Second: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist (sic) due to the irresponsibility of its people.” Kissinger took considerable bashing for these statements as patronizing and disparaging. His egomania, as resistant as Kevlar, prevented any attacks from making an impression.
Despite all the assaults against Allende in the three years that he managed to stay in power, he gained more support than the number that elected him in 1970.
But Nixon and Kissinger persisted in pressing for a coup and assigned the CIA chief of covert operations to push for a coup. It became the official policy of the US government (USG).During the three years that Allende was in office, the USG with the help of the incompetent CIA created havoc in the economy of Chile. But Allende managed through it all to become more popular. When the coup finally occurred in 1973 led by Pinochet, Allende was surrounded by the military and died either by his own hand or was killed. The official explanation was suicide. And that was the end of any semblance of democracy in Chile for 17 years.
Pinochet murdered, tortured or imprisoned any opposition to the military dictatorship. His repression was called the “Caravan of Death”. That was the CIA contribution to the Chilean people. Do you still wonder why we are hated? They have not forgotten. We were responsible for the death of the Chilean military commander in 1970 who refused to lead a coup against the legal government because he supported the Chilean constitution. Since he stood in the way, he was ambushed and fatally shot multiple times. His son today is still trying to seek justice in the courts for the murder of his father. Sometime after the coup a personal friend of Allende’s and his Ambassador to the US was killed by a car bomb in Washington D.C., 14 blocks from the White House. The bombing was planned by Pinochet and carried out by a paid CIA agent who was a Chilean national.
In 1975 the military intelligence leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met with the Chilean secret police to plan “Operation Condor”. Kissinger was aware of the plan. The members used assassination and covert intelligence to eliminate left of center opposition. The operation was intended to liquidate all dissidents in the so-called “Southern Cone” of South America. Its members were all right wing military dictatorships similar to Pinochet’s”. The USG provided support through consultation with both Nixon and Kissinger (Secty of State). Operation Condor organized the “death squads” that traveled throughout the country torturing and assassinating all who opposed the right wing governments. In Argentina alone 30,000 persons were tortured and murdered or just disappeared.
Kissinger as Secretary of State maintained diplomatic relations with the Southern Cone governments. He encouraged the atrocities committed by Argentina and Chile. In recent years he has been asked to answer questions by France, Brazil, Spain, Argentina and Chile regarding human rights abuses. He has refused. His personal papers are inaccessible until his death.
References:
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine. 2007
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. 2007
Wikipedia
Monday, July 28, 2008
Bloodbath
A perceptive observer once characterized the world as a slaughterhouse. And if you think that is a cynical overstatement, let’s look at the carnage of the 20th century, the worst bloodletting in history. The First World War destroyed the lives of 10 million people and the Second World War, which was the result of the first, destroyed the lives of 50 million.
Most of us poor and middle class are deluded into thinking that we live in a democracy and, on the other hand, the rich chronically fear that we might get it. It’s the people in power who make the decisions, pile up the profits and take us to war. The power brokers and corporatists run the show. You may vote but you are powerless. We recently voted to get out of Iraq. You went to the polls and exercised your so-called democratic right to vote to get out of Iraq. Did it happen? The people in power instead did the opposite. They sent more troops and kept the troops already there longer, as the suicides increased and more families were broken. Political campaigns in this country are bullshit on a grand scale.
George Carlin (RIP) may have been right – Why vote? If you don’t vote for a candidate who wins and he does something stupid, you can always look innocent and say, I didn’t vote for him. However, if you do vote for him and he does something stupid—Well, Ralph, you voted for him. So whether you vote or not, you’re screwed.
Let’s now consider how real power handles war. But first, real power no longer resides with governments but rather with private corporations, corrupt, mafia-style private interests. That’s why your vote doesn’t mean much. And the secret powerful few use the politicians as a front to lie and spin us into war. Why? Because war is profitable. It makes the rich richer while the poor die. The tragedy is that the poor believe the spin. It’s good to die for your country. Yeah, right.
In almost every case the paranoia of the Executive Branch and the State Department forced them, for example, to invade the following countries: Dominican Republic (Johnson), Grenada (Reagan), Panama (Bush, Sr.). The fear of popular revolt, land redistribution and assistance to the poor was basic to the decision to send the marines. The successful Cuban revolution frightened the very rich corporatists into believing they might lose their investments. But the excuse for invading in every case was the lie: protection of American lives and in every case there was no danger to American lives.
As for Noriega in Panama, he was a paid CIA agent and a well known drug trafficker, but now he was refusing to support the Nicaraguan contras with drug money and arms. So we had to invade to “protect American lives”. The lives that were lost were innocent Panamanians in very large numbers. And to this day the anniversary of the invasion is remembered as a day of mourning. Do you wonder why they hate us?
References:
Keegan, John. The First World War. 2000.
Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy. 2005.
Most of us poor and middle class are deluded into thinking that we live in a democracy and, on the other hand, the rich chronically fear that we might get it. It’s the people in power who make the decisions, pile up the profits and take us to war. The power brokers and corporatists run the show. You may vote but you are powerless. We recently voted to get out of Iraq. You went to the polls and exercised your so-called democratic right to vote to get out of Iraq. Did it happen? The people in power instead did the opposite. They sent more troops and kept the troops already there longer, as the suicides increased and more families were broken. Political campaigns in this country are bullshit on a grand scale.
George Carlin (RIP) may have been right – Why vote? If you don’t vote for a candidate who wins and he does something stupid, you can always look innocent and say, I didn’t vote for him. However, if you do vote for him and he does something stupid—Well, Ralph, you voted for him. So whether you vote or not, you’re screwed.
Let’s now consider how real power handles war. But first, real power no longer resides with governments but rather with private corporations, corrupt, mafia-style private interests. That’s why your vote doesn’t mean much. And the secret powerful few use the politicians as a front to lie and spin us into war. Why? Because war is profitable. It makes the rich richer while the poor die. The tragedy is that the poor believe the spin. It’s good to die for your country. Yeah, right.
In almost every case the paranoia of the Executive Branch and the State Department forced them, for example, to invade the following countries: Dominican Republic (Johnson), Grenada (Reagan), Panama (Bush, Sr.). The fear of popular revolt, land redistribution and assistance to the poor was basic to the decision to send the marines. The successful Cuban revolution frightened the very rich corporatists into believing they might lose their investments. But the excuse for invading in every case was the lie: protection of American lives and in every case there was no danger to American lives.
As for Noriega in Panama, he was a paid CIA agent and a well known drug trafficker, but now he was refusing to support the Nicaraguan contras with drug money and arms. So we had to invade to “protect American lives”. The lives that were lost were innocent Panamanians in very large numbers. And to this day the anniversary of the invasion is remembered as a day of mourning. Do you wonder why they hate us?
References:
Keegan, John. The First World War. 2000.
Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy. 2005.
He Makes War Gladly
Henry Kissinger began his career of human rights abuse in 1968 as a Nixon emissary before Nixon’s election. Johnson who was still President had decided not to run again and Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic nominee. Nixon won the election and Humphrey was out of the picture. During the election campaign Johnson’s emissaries were involved in the Vietnam peace negotiations in Paris. Nixon and his team had decided to subvert the negotiations by spinning the South Vietnamese into believing that they would get a better deal from the Republicans and so right before the election they pulled out of the conference. Thus was Humphrey’s peace plank splintered. Nixon won. As it turned out the war lasted another 4 years and the Vietnamese did not get any better deal than what the Democrats had offered.
The duplicitous Dr. Kissinger made himself welcome on the Johnson negotiating team and was secretly passing information to Nixon and his coterie. Thus they were able to keep the pressure on the South Vietnamese team by staying one step ahead. This may sound incredible but it has all been documented. The tragedy, of course, was that 20,000 more Americans died as well as thousands more of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians.
The secretive Kissinger became Nixon’s National Security Advisor and he alone benefited from all the killing. Nixon, on the other hand, was secretly and illegally, as a private citizen, (he had not been elected as yet), interfering in Executive branch negotiations with the Vietnamese through Kissinger’s presence on the team. So we had Kissinger “leaking” information from the negotiations to Nixon and in effect “playing both ends against the middle”. If Humphrey had won, Kissinger would have been hired as Humphrey’s National Security Advisor.
But the whole point of the duplicity was to defeat Humphrey and elect Nixon by means of an illegal “private foreign policy”. Kissinger played the unscrupulous role of slyly assisting Nixon in getting elected. Nixon had a history of mental illness not widely known. He showed intermittent symptoms of paranoid psychosis and he believed that Jews were plotting against him. Nixon and Kissinger made an infamous team. Nixon was treacherous and Kissinger colluded in mass murder, making him potentially guilty of war crimes.
References:
Heller, Joseph. Good As Gold. 1976
Hitchens, Christopher. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. 2001.
The duplicitous Dr. Kissinger made himself welcome on the Johnson negotiating team and was secretly passing information to Nixon and his coterie. Thus they were able to keep the pressure on the South Vietnamese team by staying one step ahead. This may sound incredible but it has all been documented. The tragedy, of course, was that 20,000 more Americans died as well as thousands more of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians.
The secretive Kissinger became Nixon’s National Security Advisor and he alone benefited from all the killing. Nixon, on the other hand, was secretly and illegally, as a private citizen, (he had not been elected as yet), interfering in Executive branch negotiations with the Vietnamese through Kissinger’s presence on the team. So we had Kissinger “leaking” information from the negotiations to Nixon and in effect “playing both ends against the middle”. If Humphrey had won, Kissinger would have been hired as Humphrey’s National Security Advisor.
But the whole point of the duplicity was to defeat Humphrey and elect Nixon by means of an illegal “private foreign policy”. Kissinger played the unscrupulous role of slyly assisting Nixon in getting elected. Nixon had a history of mental illness not widely known. He showed intermittent symptoms of paranoid psychosis and he believed that Jews were plotting against him. Nixon and Kissinger made an infamous team. Nixon was treacherous and Kissinger colluded in mass murder, making him potentially guilty of war crimes.
References:
Heller, Joseph. Good As Gold. 1976
Hitchens, Christopher. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. 2001.
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