Democracy Subversion
Before we roll on with my proofs, I need to get something off my chest:
I’ve been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist” and “America hater.” Here’s my response:
First, a question: What were you up to in April of 2001, six months before 9/11? I mean given that you must love America?
Here’s what I was doing, while taking care of my dying Mom and being broke and dealing with a demented editor while trying to make a book out of my Central America journey and not getting laid and worrying about all kinds of other personal stuff: I was trying to warn America that terrorists would strike via suicide pilots in commercial aircraft, that’s what I was doing. I wrote newsletter saying how Bush was lying to us all with his rationalization for Star Wars; Bush was claiming we needed it to protect America from terrorists (he was predicting they’d use ICBMs to attack us). Predictably, the media would not go near calling him on this utter horseshit – which was meant to make his corporate cronies richer (plus create an offensive weapon platform in space).
As I say, the media never challenges Bush on his motives.
So I wrote a press release and sent it to a couple hundred media outlets. Right: Six months prior to 9/11 I was trying to protect America from suicide terrorists in commercial jets; trying to protect America from a lying shitball motherfucker of a president. (As far as I know, only NPR picked it up — they used my exact words, although un-attributed.)
Again: What were you America lovers doing in April of 2001?
Too bad no one listened to me then, huh?
One more thing: When Bush attacked Iraq and said the Iraqis will welcome his liberating forces with “open arms,” I said to anyone who would listen: “He’s nuts. After what we’ve been doing to that country for the last 20 odd years, he’s going be in a shit storm like he’s never imagined.”
I’ve spelled out the inescapable logic here on this site, in States of Denial (Part Two).
So: I’ve beaten all the multi-billion dollar think tanks and intelligence organizations and Joint Chiefs and neo-con and liberal pundits in predicting the two most devastating catastrophes in recent American history. Haven’t I?
Yet I’m a “conspiracy theorist” and an “America hater.”
Maybe I’m just someone who pays attention to what’s going on around him. (Right: except when I fall in love with a sociopath.)
Democracy Subversion
Here’s the raw stuff my researcher came up with regarding democracy subversion by the U.S. government since WW II.
I’ll be refining and expanding this stuff as soon as I can get around to it.
A reminder: I’m not an “America hater.” I simply believe that in a (real) democracy people should know the truth about their government’s actions, not only the information provided by a non-adversarial, corporate-controlled media.
GREECE 1940s (Greek Civil War)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War
GUATEMALA 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBSUCCESS
CHILE 1973 (Chilean Coup)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973
IRAN 1953 (The Shah)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
Venezuela
Afghanistan
Bolivia
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/12/the_folly_of_exporting_democracy.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
http://members.aol.com/superogue/ned.htm
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_Democracy.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/bangla-hashmi200906.htm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/paki-a26.shtml
http://www.omnicenter.org/warpeacecollection/dictators.htm
http://www.apk2000.dk/netavisen/artikler/global_debat/2002-1126_us_imp_basic_stats.htm
http://wais.stanford.edu/USA/us_supportforladictators8303.html
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0511190166&ss=exc
Argentina
At first, the United States government was willing to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Argentina, though transcripts show U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the U.S. ambassador to Argentina in conflict over how the new regime should be treated, with Kissinger preferring to remain friendly based on anti-Communist interests despite talk of human rights abuses. This changed in 1977 with the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter, who implemented a strict stance against human rights abuses even when dealing with friendly governments. U.S.-Argentine relations remained lukewarm at best until Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. His administration sought the assistance of the Argentinean intelligence services in training the Contras for guerrilla warfare against the new Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Because of this, Videla maintained a relatively friendly relationship with the U.S. under the Reagan administration, though the junta later fell out of favor with the U.S. over the Falklands War after Videla had stepped down.
A Crusade
In a grander context, Videla and the other generals saw their mission as a crusade to defend Western Civilization against international communism. They worked closely with the Asian-based World Anti-Communist League and its Latin American affiliate, the Confederacion Anticomunista Latinoamericana [CAL].
Latin American militaries collaborated on projects such as the cross-border assassinations of political dissidents. Under one project, called Operation Condor, political leaders — centrist and leftist alike — were shot or bombed in Buenos Aires, Rome, Madrid, Santiago and Washington, D.C. Operation Condor often employed CIA-trained Cuban exiles as assassins.
In 1980, four years after the coup, the Argentine military exported its terror tactics into neighboring Bolivia. There, Argentine intelligence operatives helped Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and major drug lords mount a brutal putsch, known as the Cocaine Coup. The bloody operation turned Bolivia into the first modern drug state and expanded cocaine smuggling into the United States.
Videla’s anything-goes anti-communism struck a responsive chord with the Reagan administration which came to power in 1981. President Reagan quickly reversed President Carter’s condemnation of the Argentine junta’s record on human rights. Reagan’s U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick even hosted the urbane Argentine generals at an elegant state dinner.
More substantively, Reagan authorized CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service for training and arming the Nicaraguan contras. The contras were soon implicated in human rights atrocities and drug smuggling of their own. But the contras benefitted from the Reagan administration’s "perception management" operation which portrayed them as "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers."
In 1982, however, the Argentine military went a step too far. Possibly deluded by its new coziness with Washington, the army invaded the British-controlled Falkland Islands. Given the even-closer Washington-London alliance, the Reagan administration sided with Margaret Thatcher’s government, which crushed the Argentine invaders in a brief war.
The humiliated generals relinquished power in 1983. Then, after democratic elections, the new president Raul Alfonsin created a truth commission to collect evidence about the Dirty War crimes. The grisly details shocked Argentines and the world.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human_Rights/VidelaArgentinaTerror.html
Bolivia
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A83682
Our Bolivian Friends
Just in case you’ve lost your handy itemized list of CIA-backed insurrections in South America, in 1971 — when David Dewhurst was (as he told me this week) "a 26-year-old CIA case officer assigned to the U.S. embassy in La Paz" — Bolivian Gen. Hugo Banzer Suárez carried out a successful military coup against the elected government of Gen. Juan José Torres. (Torres had nationalized the mineral holdings of Gulf Oil and done other things that offended the U.S. government.) Banzer received (unofficially, of course) both CIA and U.S. Air Force support in the coup — not surprisingly, since he was trained at Fort Hunt and the notorious U.S. School of the Americas. The general quickly took the kind of actions for which SOA graduates are so renowned, as summarized recently in Whiteout, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair’s book on the CIA: "Even in Bolivia, the overthrow of the Torres government became known for its extreme violence and the lengths the new regime took to eradicate leftist elements in the country. Universities were shut down as ‘hotbeds’ of radicalism, tin miners were once again violently suppressed, more than 3,000 leftists and union organizers were hauled in for interrogations and ‘disappeared.’"
Of course, by the dismal standards of CIA-sustained regimes like Somoza’s Nicaragua or United Fruit’s Guatemala, Banzer’s 1971-78 dictatorship was rather small beer. To paraphrase Mercutio, it did suffice. In addition to the CIA, Banzer had other helpful cronies — most notably Klaus Barbie, the notorious Gestapo "Butcher of Lyons," spirited out of France and into Bolivia by the U.S. in 1951. Over the years Barbie provided regular "intelligence" and other assistance to the CIA and was particularly useful to the Banzer government. According to a Bolivian government report, he provided advice on "how to adapt the military effectively for internal repression rather than external aggression. … The system of concentration camps [developed by Barbie] became standard for important military and political prisoners." The report also recounts Barbie’s helpful counsel to the secret police in methods of interrogation, including professionally supervised electrical torture designed to extract the maximum amount of information before the subject expired.
On August 18, 1971, General Banzer Suárez, at long last, masterminded a successful military uprising that erupted in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where he had many supporters. Eventually, the plotters gained control over the La Paz garrisons, although not without considerable bloodshed. The roles of the United States and Brazil in supporting the coup have been debated.
Brazil – list of presidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_Brazil
Brunei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassanal_Bolkiah
Cambodia
For U.S. support to Pol Pot and his genocide:
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgerpolpotnus.pdf
The U.S. opposed the Vietnamese military occupation of Cambodia, and in the mid-1980s supported insurgents opposed to the regime of Heng Samrin, approving $5 million in aid to the KPNLF of former prime minister Son Sann and the pro-Sihanouk ANS in 1985. Despite this, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge remained the best-trained and most capable of the three insurgent groups who, despite sharply divergent ideologies, had formed the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) alliance three years earlier. China continued to funnel extensive military aid to the Khmer Rouge, and critics of U.S. foreign policy claimed that the U.S. was indirectly sponsoring the Khmer Rouge due to U.S. assistance given the CGDK in keeping control of the United Nations "seat" of Cambodia. [3] [4] [5] The U.S. refused to recognize the Cambodian government installed by the army of Vietnam or to recognize any Cambodian government operating while Cambodia was under the military occupation of Vietnam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_pot
Chile
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/09/19/us.cia.chile.ap/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
Pinochet and allende
Cuba
http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6012/6012_27.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista
The Dominican Republic suffered under the brutal dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo for thirty one years. With support of the United States General Rafael Molino Trujillo took control of the Dominican Republic in 1930 and ruled until his assassination in 1961. Trujillo amassed a huge fortune at the expense of his people while repressing all opposition. A movement of young Dominicans tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the dictatorship. However his rule was finally ended in 1961 when wealthy Dominicans unhappy with the dictator had him killed. In the twentieth century the Dominican Republic has not been able to establish a stable democratic government due several interventions by the US and the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
El Salvador
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/HIS135/Events/ElSalvador80/Salvador80.html
Need a better link: this one is wishy washy
Greece
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch26gr.htm
However much or little the plotters had been encouraged by the United States, they were men with strong wills responding to what was happening in Greece. But there were some who saw the coup as an imperialist CIA plot. It was when the CIA was enjoying a lot of freedom of action. The CIA has been described as reporting on January 23, 1967, that a group that included Andreas Papandreou was plotting a coup. The coup leaders are described as having had contacts with the CIA. It alleged that Lyndon Johnson, prior to the coup, speaking to Greece’s ambassador to the United States regarding Cyprus:
We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitutions, he, his parliament and his constitution, may not last very long.
Guatemala
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan_Guatemala.html
Ronald Reagan’s election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America.
After four years of Jimmy Carter’s human rights nagging, the region’s anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.
In the late 1970s, when Carter’s human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" — tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.
The death toll was staggering — an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.
The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part from Ronald Reagan’s White House.
Yet, as the world community moves to punish war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, no substantive discussion has occurred in the United States about facing up to this horrendous record of the 1980s.
Rather than a debate about Reagan as a potential war criminal, the ailing ex-president is honored as a conservative icon with his name attached to Washington National Airport and with an active legislative push to have his face carved into Mount Rushmore.
When the national news media does briefly acknowledge the barbarities of the 1980s in Central America, it is in the context of one-day stories about the little countries bravely facing up to their violent pasts.
At times, the CIA is fingered abstractly as a bad supporting actor in the violent dramas. But never does the national press lay blame on individual American officials.
The grisly reality of Central America was most recently revisited on Feb. 25 when a Guatemalan truth commission issued a report on the staggering human rights crimes that occurred during a 34-year civil war.
The Historical Clarification Commission, an independent human rights body, estimated that the conflict claimed the lives of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980s.
Bitter Fruit
Indonesia
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/East_Timor_RSChom.html
One gruesome illustration was the coup that brought General Suharto to power in 1965. Army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds of thousands, mostly landless peasants, in a few months, destroying the mass-based political party of the left, the PKI. The achievement elicited unrestrained euphoria in the West and fulsome praise for the Indonesian "moderates," Suharto and his military accomplices, who had cleansed the society and opened it to foreign plunder. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara informed Congress that US military aid and training had "paid dividends"-including half a million corpses-"enormous dividends," a congressional report concluded. McNamara informed President Johnson that US military assistance "encouraged [the army] to move against the PKI when the opportunity was presented." Contacts with Indonesian military officers, including university programs, were "very significant factors in determining the favorable orientation of the new Indonesian political elite" (the army).
The degree of cooperation between Washington and Jakarta is impressive. US weapons sales to Indonesia amount to over $1 billion since the 1975 invasion. Military aid during the Clinton years is at about $150 million.
Through the 1990s, the US continued support for "our kind of guy," as General Suharto was described by the Clinton administration before he fell from grace by losing control and failing to implement harsh IMF orders with sufficient ardor. After the 1991 Dili massacre, Congress restricted arms sales and banned US training of the Indonesian military, but Clinton found devious ways to evade the ban. Congress expressed its "outrage," reiterating that "it was and is the intent of Congress to prohibit US military training for Indonesia," as readers of the Far Eastern Economic Review and dissident publications here could learn. But to no avail.
Inquiries about Clinton’s programs received the routine response from the State Department: US military training serves the positive function of exposing foreign militaries to US values. These values were exhibited as military aid to Indonesia flowed and government-licensed sales of armaments increased fivefold from fiscal year 1997 to 1998. In April 1999, shortly after the massacre of dozens of refugees who had taken shelter in a church in Liquica, Admiral Dennis Blair, US Pacific commander, assured TNI commander General Wiranto of US support and assistance, proposing a new US training mission.
Iran
http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe41.html
In 1951, the control of Iran’s oil fields by a British company (the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, or AIOC) became a hot political topic. The Iranian people believed, with some justification, that the existing deal between the Iranian government and AIOC unfairly benefited the company. Muhammad Mossadeq, then a member of the Iranian parliament, took the lead in demanding a renegotiation of the pact. The masses of the Iranian people rallied to his standard and quickly made him the most revered leader in the land. The Shah, who then ruled as an authoritarian monarch, lost control of events as his previously powerless parliament (the Majlis) took on a life of its own.
As Mackay notes:
With Mossadeq leading the charge against Iran’s economic master, the Majlis, on March 15, boldly nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company…On April 29, the same Majlis elected Muhammad Mossadeq prime minister. While the shah sat on the throne as a mere shadow, Muhammad Mossadeq basked in the acclaim of the vast majority of Iranians, who for the first time in decades gave their genuine respect, devotion, and loyalty to their recognized leader.
While I certainly don’t condone his socialistic tendencies or his seizure of the oilfields, it is undeniable that by the time of his elevation to prime minister, Mossadeq had the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Iranian population. For the first time in its long history, Iran had a democratically elected leader.
By 1953, Mossadeq was in an increasingly difficult situation. Oil revenues had plummeted due to a boycott of Iranian oil and the economy slumped. The Soviet-backed Iranian communist party was becoming increasingly aggressive, and Washington began to worry. Iran was a vital chess piece in the Cold War and the American oil companies had their eyes on future concessions there. Mossadeq had become an "issue" for some very powerful people.
Eventually, the decision was made in Washington that Mossadeq had to go. Brigadier General Norman Schwarzkopf (father of the Gulf War commander) and CIA guru Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Teddy) were ordered to begin a covert operation designed to remove Mossadeq and restore the Shah to absolute authority. A complex plot, codenamed Operation Ajax, was conceived and executed from the US Embassy in Tehran.
Using CIA assets in the Iranian military and various minor political parties, an uprising was staged.
Congo
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Congo_KH.html
The Eisenhower administration supported the Belgian military intervention on behalf of Katanga; indeed, the American embassy had previously requested such intervention. Influencing this policy, in addition to Washington’s ideological aversion to Lumumba, was the fact that a number of prominent administration officials had financial ties to the Katanga wealth.
The UN force entered Katanga province and replaced the Belgian troops, but made no effort to end the secession. Unable to put down this uprising on his own, as well as one in another province, Lumumba had appealed to the United Nations as well as the United States to supply him with transport for his troops. When they both refused, he turned to the Soviet Union for aid, and received it, though military success still eluded him.
The Congo was in turmoil in many places. In the midst of it, on 5 September, president Joseph Kasavubu suddenly dismissed Lumumba as prime minister-a step of very debatable legality, taken with much American encouragement and assistance, as Kasavubu "sat at the feet of the CIA men". …
…Even during this period, with Lumumba not really in power, "CIA and high Administration officials continued to view him as a threat" …
In late September, the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying "lethal biological material" (a virus) specifically intended for use in Lumumba’s assassination. The virus, which was supposed to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa, was transported via diplomatic pouch.
In 1975, the Church committee went on record with the conclusion that Allen Dulles had ordered Lumumba’s assassination as "an urgent and prime objective" (Dulles’s words). After hearing the testimony of several officials who believed that the order to kill the African leader had emanated originally from President Eisenhower, the committee decided that there was a "reasonable inference" that this was indeed the case…
…The Church committee observed, however, that the CIA station in Leopoldville continued to maintain close contact with Congolese who expressed a desire to assassinate Lumumba. CIA officers encouraged and offered to aid these Congolese in their efforts against Lumumba, although there is no evidence that aid was ever provided for the specific purpose of assassination…
…The United States had also been involved in the takeover of government by Mobutu-
whom author and CIA-confidant Andrew Tully described as having been "discovered by the CIA." Mobutu detained Lumumba until 17 January 1961 when he transferred his prisoner into the hands of Moise Tshombe of Katanga province, Lumumba’s bitter enemy. Lumumba was assassinated the same day.
Turkey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgut_Ozal
