Tag Archives: Nicaragua

Cold War Butcher in Custody

21 Jan

CIA-trained ‘terrorist’ in US court

Margarita Morales Fernandez couldn’t be in court to see the former CIA agent who allegedly killed her father and 72 others aboard a Cuban airplane in one of the world’s worst airline attacks before September 11, 2001.

Fernandez and hundreds other victims are carefully watching the trial of former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles in US federal court.

His 11 charges include perjury for lying to US immigration officials, but terror-related offences are not on the docket.

“It will be 34 years since the terrorist attack that killed my father, but I remember it like it was yesterday, “Fernandez told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from Havana, Cuba. “I don’t think this trial takes us closer to justice.”

Victims of terrorism

On October 6, 1976 a bomb exploded on Cubana Airlines flight 455, blowing it out of the sky and into the waters off Barbados, killing everyone on board, including Fernandez’s father, the captain of Cuba’s national fencing team.

Posada, 82, a Cuban-born Venezuelan-citizen, was considered the mastermind— a CIA-trained explosives expert who would stop at nothing in his personal vendetta against Cuban president Fidel Castro. Planned in Venezuela, the attack killed mostly Cuban nationals.

“The terrorist activities of Posada Carriles are part of the [current US court] indictment, but they are not what he is being prosecuted for,” said José Pertierra, a Cuban-born Washington lawyer who is representing Venezuela’s interests at the trial. “He is only being prosecuted for lying about them [attacks]… to an immigration judge in a naturalisation hearing.”

Venezuela jailed Posada for the bombing, but the wily operative escaped from prison disguised as a priest and eventually fled to the US, stopping in other Latin American countries along the way where he continued his anti-Castro activities. Venezuela has repeatedly called for his extradition.

“For many years, the truth has been hidden,” Fernandez said. “But I want people to learn that there are a lot of victims of terrorism in Cuba as well as in the US and other countries.”

Fury and personal vendetta

To examine the life of Luis Posada Carriles is to re-live the worst periods of the Cold War – and beyond. Angry about Cuba’s 1959 revolution, he joined CIA Brigade 2506 in February 1961 to invade the island as part of the ill-fated attack known as the Bay of Pigs, declassified documents reveal.

While Posada himself did not fight at the Bay of Pigs, CIA officials thought he was promising and he joined US army in 1963 at their behest, training at Ft. Benning, Georgia. By 1965, he was a paid CIA operative stationed in Miami.

“The CIA taught us everything,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb trained us in acts of sabotage.”

He stayed with the agency in Miami until 1967, and later became a “paid asset” in Venezuela from 1968 to 1976, according to declassified documents.

CIA- trained and well- connected

After the Cuban attack, and his escape from prison, Posada returned to the CIA’s payroll in the 1980s, supervising arms shipments to the Contras in Nicaragua as part of what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, a murky scandal where the US government funneled money from arms sales to Iran—its official enemy- to right-wing militias in Nicaragua.

His history with the CIA and other clandestine operations means that Posada “has a lot of secrets to tell and friends in high places in Washington,” Pertierra, Venezuela’s lawyer, said in an interview with Al Jazeera outside the court-house.

Cold War history and imagery loomed large during the trial. At one point, a middle-aged man wearing all black clothing, a beret, combat boots and dark glasses, who said he was a member of the Black Panther Party, the iconic 1960s black-rights militant group, walked into the court room. He left soon after, looking bored with the proceedings.

But Posada’s crimes are not just a matter for historians, as Fernandez quickly points out. “Since our father died, our family has been so sad,” she said.

His attacks continued long after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2000, a Panamanian court convicted him of attempting to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro with 200 pounds of dynamite. He was pardoned by the country’s outgoing president four years later and set free.

Confession

During an interview with The New York Times in 1998, Posada admitted to organising a series of hotel bombings in Cuba a year earlier, injuring 11 people and killing Italian businessman Fabio diCelmo. “We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore,” Posada told the newspaper. “The Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I sleep like a baby.”

Understandably after comments like this, Posada’s attorneys wouldn’t let him speak to media during the trial. The author of the New York Times piece will be called as a witness during the case. Posada has since stated that he mis-spoke in the interview because he is not fluent in English.

Posada, 82, turned up in Miami in 2005 and gave a public news conference, angering some US officials. He claims to have arrived in Miami on a bus, after sneaking into the US by crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico. He was indicted by a Grand Jury in Texas for unlawfully entering the US in 2005, although the charges were later dismissed.

That year, Venezuela again asked for his extradition. But officials denied extradition to Venezuela or Cuba, stating that Posada could be tortured in those countries.

“The only evidence I have seen of torture in Cuba comes from the US military base at Guantanamo Bay,” Pertierra said.

Pertierra, along with officials from the Department of Homeland Security, think the claim that Posada crossed into the US through Texas is preposterous, as the illegal journey across the border is too arduous for a man in his eighties facing health problems.

“I have to ask myself, did he really cross the desert?” Gina Garrett-Jackson, a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security, said while being questioned in the witness stand during court testimony on Tuesday.

Jackson faced cross-examination by Posada’s attorneys, who argued that she involved the Department of Justice and other branches of government in Posada’s initial immigration case in order to lay the groundwork for criminal charges related his to terrorist activity.

Mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks

Posada had initially presented a claim for political asylum in the US, before his legal team unilaterally withdrew that plan.

Jackson said Posada failed the requirements for political asylum in the US in 2005 due to his conviction for plotting the bombing in Panama and other mis-deeds.

In court, lawyers played audio recordings of the 2005 asylum hearing, when Jackson, who was working for the Department of Homeland Security, questioned Posada.

“This Cuba bombing campaign in 1997 was a very big event, would you agree?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t know, I have no opinion,” Posada responded.

A 2006 statement from the US Department of Justice states: “Luis Posada-Carriles is an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks … a flight risk … [and] a danger to the community.”

But the Justice Department’s view does not seem to be shared by other branches of the US government. The incriminating secrets Posada likely posses, tense relations between the US, Cuba and Venezuela and domestic political concerns—the anti-Castro Cuban population in Miami holds national electoral clout far beyond its numbers – mean that extradition or terrorism charges seem unlikely.

“This case illustrates the double face of the US war on terrorism,” Pertierra, who represents Venezuelan interests, said as court adjourned for lunch. “You can’t pick and choose which terrorists you prosecute and which ones you protect. You can’t have first class victims and second class victims; all victims must be mourned equally.”

Source

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cold War Killer File: Ronald Reagan

16 Aug

The Man & the Myth

“I’d like to harness their youthful energy with a strap.”–Concerning student demonstrations in California, 1966

“The entire graduated income tax structure was created by Karl Marx. It has no justification in getting government revenue.”–During the 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California

Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States, ruling from 1981-1989. The American media portrays him as a great leader and hero who single-handedly won the Cold War, fixed the economy and gave new spirit to the United States. Liberals and conservatives alike line up to sing his praises endlessly, worshipping him as some sort of God of Americanism. Conservatives try their best to imitate his campaign policies and invoke his name, spinning tales about how great the theory of “Reaganomics” worked. We are told over and over that he was the greatest President and world leader to ever walk the halls of the White House. It’s time to separate truth from myth regarding Reagan’s legacy—in this article we will examine Ronald Reagan’s presidency and give our readers the story that few ever hear from the corporate media. The Reality of Reaganism

“We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home by Christmas.”–1966

“Welfare recipients are a faceless mass waiting for a handout.”–1966

During the Reagan era, wages stagnated, worker benefits declined, working hours increased and employers were allowed to crack down violently on labor unions as well as ignore labor laws entirely. Contrary to the preachings of neo-liberals, Reagan’s “trickle-down economics” enriched the few and the privileged. The wealth trickled up and not down. Reagan’s vision of American democracy was that of the true capitalist—a twisted version of “democratic” society run by a small elite stratum of oligarchs over the working classes, women, the poor, the youth and the non-white. Reagan reinforced this dictatorship of the blackest reaction with the most violent foreign and domestic policy seen for decades in US history—Reagan did not hesitate to ally himself with vicious armies of fascist butchers to eliminate his enemies and maintain US hegemony worldwide. At home, his policy was much the same, overseeing massive debt and poverty, police crackdowns and a swell in the prison population. Mindless patriotism, support for the military, surges in religious extremism, 1980s decadence and yuppie culture, rigid reinforcement of traditional gender roles (including chauvinistic and homophobic policies) and “get rich” capitalist culture of the most blatant, dog-eat-dog and cutthroat-to-the-bone variety were promoted.

Ronald Reagan brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in his ceaseless expansion of US Empire, focusing on aggressive expansion by use of force. Reagan’s policies slashed all progressive social programs while at the same time ushering in the new age of the United States military-industrial machine by setting a yearly 1.5 trillion dollar military budget, a number unprecedented in world history. Anything that was opposed to the most merciless free market policies, anything that opposed the domination of the United States, anything that was progressive or even vaguely humanitarian or liberal became a target for the Reaganites. Homelessness, national debt, inflation, unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketed, the brunt of it being born by poor people, Latinos and African-Americans.

Ronald Reagan remains perhaps the most famous “Cold Warrior” for his brutal global policies, which put weapons in the hands of anyone who opposed the Soviet Union. To this end, Reagan recruited vicious legions of right-wing death squads, fascists, drug-running kingpins, killers, religious fanatics and CIA puppets to his cause. Augusto Pinochet, Mobutu Sese Seko, P.W. Botha of apartheid South Africa, Ferdinand Marcos, the Nicaraguan Contras and many other unsavory characters became “champions of democracy” and “freedom fighters.”

Ronald Reagan unleashed armies of genocideres, dictators, gangsters, torturers and spies abroad and had them trained and funded in a manner unforeseen. His Administration targeted countries like Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Cambodia, Angola, Laos, Ethiopia and Afghanistan for military intervention and takeover, regardless of the popularity of democratic or leftist governments or the wishes of the people of those countries.

Strong popular movements of peasants and workers that rose in the Third World in response to massive preventable death from malnutrition, disease such as malaria and lack of human services in their countries were denounced as “communist” and put down with violence. Civilian and military targets alike were annihilated by Reagan’s cronies. In response to strikes in places like the farming plantations in El Salvador where the workers demanded an extra 40 cents a day, or the Coca-Cola plant in Guatemala where they called for a minimum wage, right-wing militias supported by the Reagan Administration would crush these attempts at reform.

In the Court of the Nuclear-Armed Warlord

“The time has come to stop being our brother’s keeper.”–Concerning welfare budget cuts in California, 1967

“If it’s a bloodbath they want, let’s get it over with.”–Concerning student demonstrations, 1970

To this day, the mentality of the Reagan era, of the predatory, corrupt culture of greed and heartless accumulation, of the psychotic faith in the absolute virtue of the free market, continues to poison the globe. Human compassion was cast aside for animal hungers and naked self-interest; ruthless colonialist ambition became the hallmark of American foreign policy. Reagan was a mouthpiece for the wealthy, the lucky, the elite and the power-hungry, an intentionally banal and wise-cracking speaker with a “folksy” crudity and passion for sound bites that managed to pass for logical arguments and sound philosophy. Understanding Reagan’s savagery is important for understanding the nature of the imperial capitalist system we live in.

US Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the former for escalating mass murder in Vietnam and the latter for the same activities, plus illegal wiretapping. Both were subjected to the wrath of protesting Americans in the 60s and 70s. Reagan, however, would oversee the end of all that. Reagan was a known to purposefully instigate violent conflicts with student movements who opposed his policies—on May 15, 1969, Reagan sent in police to crush protests in Berkeley Park in a confrontation known as “Bloody Thursday.” 2,200 National Guard troops then occupied the city of Berkeley for two weeks on Reagan’s orders.

Reagan signed NSD 52, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to round up hundreds of thousands of people and place them into military concentration camps. With help from Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who would later become infamous due to the Iran-Contra Scandal, Reagan organized an operation entitled “Rex 84 Bravo.” This contingency plan contained blueprints and authorization for the federal government to declare martial law in the United States, abolish the Constitution, place the military in charge of state and local governments and give them unlimited power to move and execute citizens and imprison Americans viewed as security threats. When the air traffic controllers’ labor union, known as Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), organized a strike in 1981, Reagan ordered the 11,345 striking controllers fired. For years after the first cases of AIDS were documented, Reagan refused to use state resources or social mobilization to help contain the virus which primarily affected homosexuals. By the time he acknowledged its existence, 30,000 people had died of the disease, the epidemic of which still plagues the United States.

Due to draconian cuts in social programs, a proposed directive by the United States Department of Agriculture in Reagan’s Administration tried to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable, which would have allowed public schools to cut out servings of vegetables for school lunches. The Office of Management and Budget reported eliminating nutritional requirements for subsidized meals for low-income students netted a potential $1 billion a year.

Some statistics regarding the era of Ronald Reagan are also relevant for analyzing his policies:

- The top one percent’s share of household wealth had dropped from 1929 to 1981 from 44% to 27%. By 1998 it was back up to 39%.

- “The Congressional Budget Office says the income gap in the United States is now the widest in 75 years. While the richest one percent of the U.S. population saw its financial wealth grow 109 percent from 1983 to 2001, the bottom two-fifths watched as its wealth fell 46 percent” – CBS

- Meanwhile, for households of all ages, between 1983 and 1998 the average household net worth of the poorest 40% in the U.S. declined 76%.

- “The biggest indicator of a healthy society – average life expectancy – dropped. People in the U.S. now don’t live even as long as people in Costa Rica. Meanwhile the U.S. infant mortality rate has risen […]” – CBS

- In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the news media in America. By 2002, six corporations did.

- The number of Americans without health insurance climbed 33 percent during the 1990′s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

- Farmers in 1999 were getting 36% less for their products in real dollars than in 1984.

- In 1980 there were less than 500,000 people in prison in the U.S. By 2000 there were two million. In 1980, 8% of the prisoners were there for drug offenses; by 1998, 28% were.

- Ninety percent of young white male workers are now doing worse than they would have 20 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, the income of a recent male high school graduate declined 28% between 1973 and 1997.

- Wages for the bottom 10% of all wage earners fell by 9.3% between 1979 and 1999

- Median student-loan debt, 1977: $2,000. 1997: $15,000

- Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1980: 42 to 1. Ratio of executive pay to that of a factory worker in 1998: 419 to 1. Annual pay of a factory worker if it had kept pace with executive salaries: $110,000

- In 1977, the disclosed wealth of the top ten senators was $133 million. In 2001 it was $1.83 billion.

- In 1982, U.S. foreign debt was less than 5% of GDP; by 2002 it was almost 25%

- Between 1973 and 2001, the incomes of the poorest 20% went up 14%, that of the 20% in the middle went up 19%, but the richest 5% went up 87%.

- The real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1969 at over $7 an hour. Its real value is now at $5 an hour.

- Eighty-six percent of stock market gains between 1989 and 1997 flowed to the top ten percent of households while 42 percent went to the most well-to-do one percent.

- In 1998 the top-earning one percent had as much income as the 100 million Americans with the lowest earnings.

- Two-thirds of American households headed by a person between the ages of 47 and 64 in 1998 had the same pension wealth or less in real dollars than they did in 1983. Almost 20% of all near-retiree households could expect to retire in poverty.

- By the turn of the century poor black families were working 190 hours more a year – and poor white families 22 hours more — than in 1979 for roughly the same pay.

Since Ronald Reagan:

- The two richest men in America — Bill Gates and Warren Buffet — own more assets than the bottom 45% of the country.

- Anti-trust laws, once considered the great mediator of commercial excess, have been steadily eroded.

- Organized labor has become a mere shadow of its former self [...].

- Between 1980 and 2000, the U.S. per capita spending on schools increased 32%. The per capita spending on prisons grew 189%

- California built 21 prisons between 1980 and 1998; it built just one college.

- From the inauguration of a full-scale war on drugs in 1985 to 1998, the number of deaths per 100,000 for drug-induced causes almost doubled. In other words, having a drug war proved twice as deadly as not having one.

- There has been a massive shift towards the language of capitalism in all aspects of our conversation and speech, making our words more clichéd, less meaningful, less enjoyable, and less human. To an extraordinary degree we now speak to each as salesmen rather than as fellow citizens. This makes for a pretty seedy culture, full of insincerity and deceit while short on cooperation, individual creativity and shared goals.

- The age of Social Security coverage is rising as the public is being taught not to expect that either Social Security or Medicare will continue to serve as they do at present.

- There has been a dramatic increase in homelessness.

- Efforts to control individual rebellions against the banal and life-draining culture of extreme capitalism have produced increasingly authoritarian, militaristic and punitive tactics such as the war on drugs, zero tolerance, and the conversion of public schools into quasi-detention centers [...].

- Advertising has invaded every aspect of our life, making existence increasingly one long commercial.

- Our environment has steadily and dangerously deteriorated [...].

- Medicine has been converted from a public service to a corporate exploitive enterprise.

- [The United States] increasingly use corporatized prisons without adequate public supervision and prison slave labor to serve corporate interests.

- [V]oting turnout has declined.

- Corruption, both corporate and political, has increased to the point that it is no longer deviation but an assumed part of our culture. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now.

Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan\’sExtremeCapitalism.html

A Dark Legacy

“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”–California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966

“It’s just too bad we can’t have an epidemic of botulism.”–In response to the Hearst family’s free food giveaway to the poor as partial ransom for their daughter Patricia (kidnapped by the SLA) 1974

The “Reagan Doctrine” was akin to the “Bush Doctrine” in saying that Washington had the right to attack and destroy any state, government or movement that interfered with US corporate or state interests. In the 1980s, the United States under Reagan supported forces and governments that committed widespread atrocities.

The most famous example were the Contras in Nicaragua, who fought against the leftist policies of the Sandinistas. The Contras murdered, tortured, and terrorized the population. Human Rights groups reported “murder, rape, torture, maiming children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, and amputating genitals.” The CIA provided the Contras with a manual instructing them how to perform sabotage and terrorism. Tens of thousands of civilians died, many of them elderly and children. The Contras routinely raped women before executing them. These actions were widely reported by human rights organizations, church groups, Latin American scholars and many others.

Reagan’s administration claimed the Nicaraguan Sandinistas wanted to conquer the world because they once used the phrase “revolution without borders.” What Nicaragua really wanted was to inspire other countries with their accomplishments. Since that was against US hegemony, they had to go. The World Court and many members of the international community condemned the crimes Reagan was committing in Nicaragua, but he ignored this. When Nicaragua took its case to the World Court, the Court ruled against the US and condemned its use of international terrorism. They said the Reagan administration’s actions were illegal.

Under Reagan, the CIA used the funds from global drug trafficking for arms purchases, flying United States planes full of cocaine from Central America into military bases on the mainland and flying back with arms. The spreading of cocaine helped to create the epidemic of crack-cocaine in the ghettos of America. This if course, happened while Reagan’s wife pushed her “Just Say No!” campaign and the expression “War On Drugs” began to be a household phrase.

In 1981, Reagan sent a United States aircraft carrier into waters in oil-rich Libya’s territory where they shot down two Libyan planes, an open declaration of war. Later, in 1986, Reagan would bomb the home of Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in an attempt to assassinate him in his bed. The attempt on Qaddafi’s life failed, but claimed the lives of 30 people, including Qaddafi’s infant daughter.

In 1982, Reagan supported the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which killed over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people. It was during this war that the Israeli massacres and mass rapes in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were committed. Reagan unleashed “Operation Urgent Fury” against Grenada, occupying the country with 2,000 troops. In the Persian Gulf, Reagan backed the government of Saddam Hussein, funneling billions in funds, arms and chemical weapons.

Conclusion

Now Reagan is finally dead. For a monster with the blood of so many on his hands, Reagan, like Francisco Franco in Spain, would die safely in his bed many years later, unpunished for his innumerable crimes. The tragedy of history is that he is remembered a hero and not the tyrant he truly was.

For More Information:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/RonaldReagan_page.html

Invasion of Grenada:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/25966.html

Thoughts of Central Americans:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29546-2004Jun9.html

Massacre at El Mozote:

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz01.html

“On Reagan’s Legacy”:

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20040607.htm

Reagan and Saddam:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0609-01.htm

Reagan and South African apartheid:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0609-03.htm

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On the Day of American Independence

4 Jul

Today is the 4th of July, a holiday celebrated all over the nation as the date of American Independence from the British crown. I was considering burning an American flag to protest US foreign policy, imperial aggression, indigenous holocaust, sponsorship of terrorism, slavery and discrimination of minorities, etc., and promptly began wondering if flag-burning on public property is considered to be a fire hazard. Today is a holiday that is spent trying to spread patriotic feelings among our people, and thus in effect to try and goad them into flag-waving, chauvinism, jingoism and xenophobia. Patriotism, the way the imperialists see it, means love for their government and love for their class of oppressors. It means love for the police, the prison complex, the courts, the army and the ruling class dictatorship. It means love for the exploitive system of capitalism and the settler-fascists that have run it from the start.

On this celebrated day of the creation of the American state, it is time to take a look back at our long, star-crossed history, and it is time to present a challenge to ourselves—what has American really been about all this time? As Frederick Douglass famously said about this particular holiday in 1852:


 “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

He continues,
“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”
There are those who might say that Douglass’s words no longer ring true because of the Obama presidency, and then there are those who know that a change in the ruler’s skin color does not abolish racism and oppression overnight. In addition, Major General Smedley Butler from the US Marines speaks about what real role the US military has been playing over the years:
“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps… And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect money in. I helped in the raping of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”
These revelations are by no means new, since they have been given by many anti-imperialist and anti-colonialists since the beginning of the domination of American imperialism, which started after World War II and strengthened itself through the selling-out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the collapse of socialist Albania.

To give a more detailed or complete account of American foreign policy, which has always been driven by nothing more and nothing less than the capitalist system’s desire for global hegemony under American leadership, would take many pages and several lifetimes of research into the history of the modern-day Roman Empire. But this 4th of July, and keeping with our challenge to ourselves, a few examples taken from the recent history of the United States alone should serve to give an idea of what this class dictatorship has really been about since the beginnings of its foundation.


A History Lesson
 In 1945, the US invades the Korean peninsula and declares a “temporary” partition of Korea. America installs an illegitimate American-friendly regime in the South, backed by a force of 50,000 troops. After 2,617 troop incursions in the Northern Pro-Soviet half, sometimes with as many as a few thousand troops, a war ensues when North Korea finally invades South Korea in response. A three-year war takes place and millions are killed. Thousands of American troops remain in South Korea to this day.


 In 1966, a US-backed coup ousted President Sukarno of Indonesia and replaced him with the fascist butcher Suharto. Over a million people were hunted down and killed, including thousands of popular leftist leaders, whose names were given to the military by the American Embassy. Suharto would go on to rule Indonesia with an iron fist for two decades. Newly-liberated East Timor was then invaded by Suharto’s Indonesia the day after President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (both butchers of the Vietnam War) gave them permission. By 1989, over one-third of East Timor’s 700,000 people had been killed. Indonesia had US backing, including armaments, throughout its 24-year occupation.


 In 1967, a US-backed military coup took place to prevent Greek politician George Papandreou being elected Prime Minister. The colonels declared martial law, implemented torture, beatings, arrests, leaving 8,000 dead in the first month. The coup leaders were fiercely anti-communist and pro-American, working closely with the CIA. The colonels held power until 1974.


 In 1970, Marxist reformist Salvador Allende was elected as President of Chile. He nationalized the giant US companies. Soon, the right-wing, backed by the CIA and US foreign policy, engineered a 1973 coup lead by the infamous General Augusto Pinochet. Allende was overthrown and replaced by a fascist military dictatorship that used mass executions and torture. Thousands were murdered and disappeared. Chile became an economic experiment that led to economic growth for the richest while leaving many homeless and greatly decreasing economic equality.


 In 1978 in Nicaragua, the popular and progressive Sandinista movement overthrows the US-backed dictator Anastasio Samoza. The US then launches a military occupation in order to prevent “another Cuba.” A program of terrorism and economic sabotage is begun, which leads to the US support of the infamous Contra death squads. The Contras prove to be one of the most brutal fighting forces Latin America has ever seen, infamous for burning down schools, churches and hospitals as well as using mass murder, rape and torture. The Contras massacre whole villages though to be sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Over 60,000 die. President Reagan labels them as “freedom fighters.”

Summation
 From these examples alone—Korea, Indonesia, East Timor, Greece, Chile and Nicaragua, which are merely the most prominent of many dozens more ready-made examples including the Vietnam War—we can see that United States foreign policy has never been driven by a devotion to any kind of morality, nor by any kind of longing for freedom or democracy. From the start, the United States has been driven by the necessity to make the world safe for investment by capitalism, to enrich US armaments who contribute generously to Congress members, to prevent the development of any society which becomes an example of an independent alternative to the capitalist model and to extend its political and economic control over as much of the globe as possible.
 Everyone alive today remembers the media immediately after the events of 9/11. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” the newspapers asked. Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps dropping bombs really pisses some “less civilized” people off. This is a simple list of the nations bombed since World War II:

China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1965-73, Vietnam 1961-73. Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-2002, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003 (1).

It is worth noting that violence and exploitation are also not limited to outside the US borders, either. Of all western nations, the US has the greatest income inequality. 40% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. The US has the greatest discrepancy in the world between the wealthy and the poor when it comes to health care, and also when it comes to life expectancy.

Finally, the Land of the Free has the highest number of its population in prison than any other state in the world (2). And all this is without mentioning the minute details of the oppressive structure of the class society as it exists for us every day. These sorts of atrocities will continue until this capitalist system is done away with through struggle and revolution in the US.

On the day of American Independence, among all other days, this is a fact for all of us to remember.
(1) Taken from Australian Options Quarterly No. 31, Summer 2002.
 (2) From Scientific American, Dec. 2005

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 144 other followers

%d bloggers like this: