EMPIRE OF CHAOS
COUNTRIES
PAGE 3
CONGO
[Republic of the Congo 1960-1965]
[Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 1997-present]
"All during the length
of my fight for the independence of my country, I have never doubted
for a single instant the final triumph of the sacred cause to
which my companions and myself have consecrated our lives. But
what we wish for our country, its right to an honorable life,
to a spotless dignity, to an independence without restrictions,
Belgian colonialism and its Western allies - who have found direct
and indirect support, deliberate and not deliberate among certain
high officials of the United Nations, this organization in which
we placed all our confidence when we called for their assistance
- have not wished it.
... History will one day have its say, but it will not be the
history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations
will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated
from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history,
and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a
history of glory and dignity."
Patrice Lumumba's last letter to
his wife before his assassination, December 1960
"The CIA had developed
a program to assassinate the President of Zaire [later Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC)] Patrice Lumumba. The operation, didn't
work. It was to give poison to Lumumba. And they couldn't find
a setting in which to get the poison to him successfully in a
way that it wouldn't appear to be a CIA operation. Instead, the
CIA chief of station in Zaire talked to Lumumba aide and Belgian
security police informer Joseph Mobutu about the threat that Lumumba
posed, and Mobutu had his men kill Lumumba."
former CIA agent John Stockwell
"Congo's first elected
Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was killed by Belgian- and U.S.-backed
forces because of his growing ties to the Soviet Union."
John Perkins
"Congo President Kabila
was put in place by the Western powers because he was pliant leader.
He was going to facilitate access to Congo's vast geostrategic
resources. So that's the main reason why Kabila was put in power.
Western ambassadors were celebrating that Kabila won the elections,
because they now knew that they would have the access to the natural
resources of the Congo. "
Maurice Carney, Executive Director
of Friends of the Congo, 2008
"When the Belgian Congo
gained its independence on June 20, 1960, the new Prime Minister,
Patrice Lumumba, was viewed as a threat by the Eisenhower administration
because of his call for political and economic liberation. The
U.S. government's objective was to maintain access to the Congo's
rich resources. Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA under President
Eisenhower, ordered the assassination of Lumumba in August 1960.
Before the CIA could act, Mobutu Sese Seko, Lumumba's private
secretary, intervened militarily and removed Lumumba from power."
David Model
"A 2008 UN Security Council-commissioned
report describes Rwanda's 12-year occupation of a huge part of
the Congo. The UN report makes clear that President Paul Kagame's
Rwandan elites, and well-connected Ugandans in the north, are
getting rich on the resources of the Congo , while killing more
than 6 million Africans in the process."
Peter Erlinder
"Congo has been invaded
twice, first in 1996 primarily by Rwanda and Uganda, when they
installed Kabila in power, and they did this with the backing
of the United States. They could not have invaded the Congo without
the backing of the United States. Then, when Kabila did not serve
the interests of the Rwandans and the Ugandans and the US, he
was assassinated.
The Rwandans and Ugandans then invaded the Congo a second time
in 1998. And it was this second invasion where 5.4 million Congolese
have died. Fifty percent of those Congolese are less than five
years old. And the main cause of death is not so much of violent
conflict, but from treatable diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia,
all diseases that can be treated. So you have basically Rwanda
and Uganda playing a destructive role in the Congo.
... They left proxy forces in the Congo who were controlling areas
that were endowed with gold and tin and diamonds. So even though
the Rwandans and Ugandans backed out, and even though they profited
tremendously while the were in the Congo with their own forces,
they left proxy forces in the Congo. And this started in the Clinton
administration and extended into the Bush administration."
democracynow.org
"The West has a real stake
in keeping Africa poor. People in Western countries have sincere
feelings of charity and they have faith that aid works, but Western
governments and multi-national corporations reap enormous benefits
from the continued instability and destitution of African countries.
The successful manipulation of cheap labor and agricultural products,
smuggled resources, and arms trading, relies on corrupt politicians,
prolonged warfare, and an underdeveloped civil society that lacks
the capacity to stand up for its rights. If there were peace and
transparency in the Congo, it would be much more difficult - if
not impossible - for foreign corporations to exploit the mineral
resources; if there were no rebel groups or tribal conflicts,
there would be no market for small arms.
... if the West truly wanted to see a stable, developed Africa,
the continent would be well on its way. Instead, the situation
is worse after decades of Western involvement and billions of
dollars of aid money."
Jenny Williams worked with NGOs
in Africa, 2006
"Congo's first elected
Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had been killed by Belgian- and
U.S.-backed opponents because of his growing ties to the Soviet
Union."
TIME magazine, 2006
"Although the real reasons
for the Congo War have been well-documented by UN Security Council
sources, as well as the fact that US/UK surrogates are getting
rich in the Congo, neither the United States nor Britain have
much of an interest in helping critics and Human Right activists
"connect the "dots" that link Yoweri Museveni/Paul
Kagame's 1986 military-takeover of Uganda or Paul Kagame's military-takeover
of Rwanda in 1994, with the horror that has engulfed the Congo
since the joint Rwanda/Uganda invasion of 1996."
Peter Erlinder
"The Kagame government
is immunized against prosecution thanks to their connections to
top former Clinton and Bush officials. Kagame, with its foreign
backers, has pursued an identical strategy in Congo as they did
in Rwanda, 1990-1994. The goal is to destabilize the region, manufacture
chaos, sue for peace while pursuing war, and use the UN 'peacekeeping'
mission to aid the predatory agenda. The final solution is to
permanently criminalize the Hutu majority and balkanize Congo."
Keith Harmon Snow
"Casual visitors to Uganda
and Rwanda can't help but notice that both Central African countries
are better off than their neighbors, both economically and in
terms of social organization. Compared to other African countries
that lack close relationships to wealthy sponsors, these two,
small, densely-populated nations appear to be outposts of calm
and relative prosperity on a continent. But, the fact is that
the relative prosperity and calm in Museveni's militarized Uganda
and Kagame's militarized Rwanda has come at the terrible price
of more than 5 million Congolese lives."
Peter Erlinder
"The Rwandan government
has invaded the Congo twice, first in 1996 and again in 1998,
with the full backing of the United States and other Western nations.
... What we see in the Congo is policies coming from the West
that prioritize profit over the people. Laurent Kabila was installed
in 2006 in order to provide unfettered access to Congo's vast
mineral resources to Western corporations."
Maurice Carney, Executive Director
of Friends of the Congo, 2008
"The Kagame military machine
is - backed by the US, U.K., Canada, Germany and Israel - is one
of Congo's greatest enemies. Kagame was one of the original 27
soldiers to launch the guerrilla war in Uganda, 1980, alongside
now President-for-life Yoweri Museveni. Kagame soon became the
head of Museveni's dreaded Internal Security Organization, and
he was directly involved in tortures, massacres and other human
rights atrocities during the Museveni regime's consolidation of
power.
In October 1990 Kagame returned from training at the US Army base
at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to lead the Ugandan People's Defense
Forces (UPDF) illegal invasion of Rwanda. The US military and
its partners backed the invasion, just as they backed the invasion
of Congo in 1996."
Keith Harmon Snow
"Corporations all around
the world are trading for minerals and are making a huge profit
off the warring factions in the Congo. If it wasn't for this trade
then it is extremely unlikely that the war would be able to continue.
But the profits made off minerals - especially colton which is
needed for electronics such as mobile phones, computers and televisions
- are too great for the corporations to ignore. In trading for
these minerals, a whole host of foreign corporations fund the
worst holocaust since World War II."
Robert Miller
"Patrice Lumumba was the
first elected Prime Minister and ascended to power in the Congo
on June 30, 1960, the date of Congo' s independence from Belgium.
Within ten weeks of being elected, Lumumba's government was deposed
in a coup. He was subsequently imprisoned and assassinated on
January 17, 1961 by Western powers (United States, Belgium, France,
England and the United Nations) in cahoots with local leaders
such as Moise Tshombe and Joseph Desire Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko)."
friendsofthecongo.org
"There's really four entities
that are involved in keeping the Congo dependent, and one of those
entities are international financial institutions, multinational
institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank. The International
Monetary Fund had set up financial rules that pretty much restrict
the Congolese government. At least they prevented the Congolese
government from having the necessary resources to pay its soldiers.
And as a result of the government not having the resources to
pay its soldiers, the soldiers then feast on the population -
by stealing, by raping.
... The World Bank went in after the conflict in 2002, established
the mining laws, and the mining laws provided the legal framework
for the multinational corporations to come in and establish contracts
with the government. Now, even though the mining laws were in
place and they required transparency and adherence to the OECD
laws, the mining companies came in, and the contracts were opaque.
They weren't transparent. And World Bank studies clearly document
this, but they have refused to publish those studies which demonstrate
how the mining contracts that's been established by multinational
corporations are actually odious contracts and absolutely do not
serve the interests of the Congolese people, but serve the interest
of investors from the West."
Maurice Carney, Co-Founder and
Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, 2008
"A UN report of October
2002 cited an estimate that "more than 3.5 million excess
deaths" had occurred in the DRCongo between August 1998 and
September 2002; the report concluded that "These deaths are
a direct result of the occupation by Rwanda and Uganda. A mortality
study published in January 2009 estimated the "excess death
toll in DR Congo since 1998 to be 5.4 million."
Edward S. Herman
"Congo has coltan - every
cell phone and laptop computer has coltan in it. And several million
people in the last few years in the Congo have been killed over
coltan, because all of us in the G8 countries want to see our
computers inexpensive and our cell phones inexpensive. But in
order to do that, these people in the Congo are being enslaved.
The miners, the people mining coltan, they're being killed. There
are vast wars going on to provide us with cheap coltan."
John Perkins
"Between 1990 and 1994,
the RPA [Rwandan Patriot Army] waged a systematic, pre-planned,
secretive but highly organized terrorist war aimed at eliminating
the largest number of Rwandan people possible-bodies were hacked
to pieces and incinerated en masse. From 1994, once the RPA violently
seized power, a terror regime was created, and developed, and
a criminal structure parallel to the state was set up to pursue
pre-determined kidnappings; torturing and raping of women and
young girls; terrorist attacks (both directly and by simulating
that the same had been perpetrated by the enemy); illegal detention
of thousands of civilians; selective murdering; systematic elimination
of corpses either by mass incineration or by throwing them into
lakes and rivers; indiscriminate attacks against civilians based
on pre-determined ethnic categories for the elimination of the
predominant ethnic group; and also to carry out acts of war in
Rwanda and Congo."
Keith Harmon Snow
"Because President Paul
Kagame's Rwanda crimes were covered-up by the U.S. in 1994, and
because he was not prosecuted at the ICTR (International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda) for the assassination of the previous president
in 1997, he has been free to rape the Congo of its riches and
to massacre millions."
Peter Erlinder
CUBA
"Cuba's move away from
a free-market system dominated by U.S. firms and toward a not-for-profit
socialist economy caused it to become the target of an unremitting
series of attacks perpetrated by the U.S. national security state.
These attacks included U.S.-sponsored sabotage, espionage, terrorism,
hijackings, trade sanctions, embargo, and outright invasion. The
purpose behind this aggression was to undermine the Revolution
and deliver Cuba safely back to the tender mercies of global capitalism."
Michael Parenti
"In spite of the U.S. embargo,
Cuba has managed to provide its citizens with what the United
States so far has not: free top-notch health care, free university
and graduate school education, and subsidized food and utilities.
Cuba compares favorably to the United States on a number of basic
social factors:
*Housing: There is virtually no homelessness in Cuba. Thanks to
the 1960 Urban Reform law, 85% of Cubans own their own homes and
pay no property taxes or interest on their mortgages. Mortgage
payments can't exceed 10% of the combined household income.
* Employment: Cuba's unemployment rate is only 1.8% according
to CIA data, compared with 7.6% (and rising) in the United States.
One factor contributing to Cuba's low unemployment is undoubtedly
the 350,000 jobs that have been recently created by the burgeoning
sustainable urban agriculture program, one of the most successful
in the world, according to U.S.-based economist Sinan Koont.
* Literacy: The adult literacy rate in Cuba (99.8%) is higher
than the United States' rate (97%), according to the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).
* Infant mortality: Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate (4.7
per 1000 live births) than the United States' (6.0).
* Prisons: Cuba even does better on prisons. Its rate of incarceration
- estimated at around 487 per 100,000 by the UNDP - is among the
highest in the world, yet it is considerably lower than the U.S.
rate of 738 per 100,000."
Margot Pepper, 2009
"During the late 1970s
& 1980s and continuing to the present, the most visible, the
most vocal, the most active terrorists in the United States have
been a small group of Cuban exiles, based primarily in southern
Florida and in New Jersey, operating under several names and generally
well known to local authorities. This group originally was dedicated
to the overthrow of the Cuban Government and concentrated its
efforts in hundreds of attacks against Cuba and Cuban-related
offices and personnel around the world. They were all involved
in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They were all trained, supplied and
encouraged by the CIA."
Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap,
2003
"The U.S. policy toward
Cuba has been consistent with its longstanding policy of trying
to subvert any country that pursues an alternative path in the
use of its land, labor, capital, markets, and natural resources.
Any nation or political movement that emphasizes self-development,
egalitarian human services, and public ownership is condemned
as an enemy and targeted for sanctions or other forms of attack.
In contrast, the countries deemed "friendly toward America"
and "pro-West" are those that leave themselves at the
disposal of large U.S. investors on terms that are totally favorable
to the moneyed corporate interests."
Michael Parenti
"The majority of Cubans
support Castro. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal
support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic
dissatisfaction and hardship... Every possible means should be
undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. We should
take a line of action which makes the greatest inroads in denying
money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages,
to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, in a memorandum,
April 1960
"The clearest case of a
media-inspired war - the 1898 Spanish-American War to get the
Spanish out of Cuba - was pretty much an invention of William
Randolph Hearst, aided and abetted by Joseph Pulitzer."
Ben Bagdikian
"The United States remained
Cuba's main supplier of food and farm products in 2007, selling
the communist-run island more than $600 million in agricultural
exports despite its trade embargo.
... Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo prevents U.S.
tourists from visiting Cuba and prohibits nearly all trade. But
a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000 allows the Cuban government
to buy U.S. food and agricultural products with direct cash payments.
... The U.S. has been the island's top food source since 2003."
Will Weissert, Associated Press,
2008
"Cuban life expectancy
rose from fifty-five years in 1959 to seventy-three years by 1984.
Infant mortality has dropped to the lowest in Latin America, on
a par with developed countries. Cuba's per capita food consumption
is the second highest in Latin America. It has a free public-health
system... The literacy rate is over 95 percent, the highest in
Latin America and higher than in the USA; almost all children
under sixteen are attending school. In Cuba, the paint may be
peeling off some of the buildings, but unlike so many other Latin
American countries, there are no hungry children begging in the
streets."
Michael Parenti
"In spite of the U.S. embargo,
Cuba has managed to provide its citizens with what the United
States so far has not: free top-notch health care, free university
and graduate school education, and subsidized food and utilities.
Cuba compares favorably to the United States on a number of basic
social factors:
*Housing: There is virtually no homelessness in Cuba. Thanks to
the 1960 Urban Reform law, 85% of Cubans own their own homes and
pay no property taxes or interest on their mortgages. Mortgage
payments can't exceed 10% of the combined household income.
* Employment: Cuba's unemployment rate is only 1.8% according
to CIA data, compared with 7.6% (and rising) in the United States.
One factor contributing to Cuba's low unemployment is undoubtedly
the 350,000 jobs that have been recently created by the burgeoning
sustainable urban agriculture program, one of the most successful
in the world, according to U.S.-based economist Sinan Koont.
* Literacy: The adult literacy rate in Cuba (99.8%) is higher
than the United States' rate (97%), according to the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).
* Infant mortality: Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate (4.7
per 1000 live births) than the United States' (6.0).
* Prisons: Cuba even does better on prisons. Its rate of incarceration
- estimated at around 487 per 100,000 by the UNDP - is among the
highest in the world, yet it is considerably lower than the U.S.
rate of 738 per 100,000."
Margot Pepper, 2009
"That Cuba has survived
at all under these circumstances [total U.S. economic embargo]
is an achievement in itself. That it registered the highest per
capita increase in gross social product (wages and social benefits)
of any economy in Latin America-and almost double that of the
next highest country-over the period 1981-1990 is quite remarkable.
Moreover, despite the economic difficulties, the average Cuban
is still better fed, housed, educated and provided for medically
than other Latin Americans, and-again atypically-the Cuban Government
has sought to spread the burden of the new austerity measures
equally among its people."
Noam Chomsky
"Cuba's move away from
a free-market system dominated by U.S. firms and toward a not-for-profit
socialist economy caused it to become the target of an unremitting
series of attacks perpetrated by the U.S. national security state.
These attacks included U.S.-sponsored sabotage, espionage, terrorism,
hijackings, trade sanctions, embargo, and outright invasion. The
purpose behind this aggression was to undermine the Revolution
and deliver Cuba safely back to the tender mercies of global capitalism.
The U.S. policy toward Cuba has been consistent with its longstanding
policy of trying to subvert any country that pursues an alternative
path in the use of its land, labor, capital, markets, and natural
resources. Any nation or political movement that emphasizes self-development,
egalitarian human services, and public ownership is condemned
as an enemy and targeted for sanctions or other forms of attack.
In contrast, the countries deemed "friendly toward America"
and "pro-West" are those that leave themselves at the
disposal of large U.S. investors on terms that are totally favorable
to the moneyed corporate interests."
Michael Parenti
"During the late 1970s
& 1980s and continuing to the present, the most visible, the
most vocal, the most active terrorists in the United States have
been a small group of Cuban exiles, based primarily in southern
Florida and in New Jersey, operating under several names and generally
well known to local authorities. This group originally was dedicated
to the overthrow of the Cuban Government and concentrated its
efforts in hundreds of attacks against Cuba and Cuban-related
offices and personnel around the world. They were all involved
in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They were all trained, supplied and
encouraged by the CIA."
Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap,
2003
"The majority of Cubans
support Castro. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal
support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic
dissatisfaction and hardship... Every possible means should be
undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. We should
take a line of action which makes the greatest inroads in denying
money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages,
to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, in a memorandum,
April 1960
"The clearest case of a
media-inspired war - the 1898 Spanish-American War to get the
Spanish out of Cuba - was pretty much an invention of William
Randolph Hearst, aided and abetted by Joseph Pulitzer."
Ben Bagdikian
"Cuba is one of the poorest
countries in the world and it has approximately the same quality
of life index, in terms of health and so on, that the United States
has."
Noam Chomsky
"There is no question that
Cuba has the best health statistics in Latin America. Cuba is
the only country on a par with developed nations."
World Health Organization's representative
in Cuba, 1980
"Cuban life expectancy
rose from fifty-five years in 1959 to seventy-three years by 1984.
Infant mortality has dropped to the lowest in Latin America, on
a par with developed countries. Cuba's per capita food consumption
is the second highest in Latin America. It has a free public-health
system... The literacy rate is over 95 percent, the highest in
Latin America and higher than in the USA; almost all children
under sixteen are attending school. In Cuba, the paint may be
peeling off some of the buildings, but unlike so many other Latin
American countries, there are no hungry children begging in the
streets."
Michael Parenti
"The U.S. travel ban and
the distorted portrayal of Cuba in both popular and scholarly
media ensure that the majority of North Americans do not learn
that a poor, Third World country, gripped by economic crisis,
and under constant attack from the most powerful nation in the
world, is still able to achieve health standards higher than those
in the capital of that powerful nation, Washington, DC."
Aviva Chomsky
"The U.S. embargo against
Cuba, one of the few that includes both food and medicine, has
been described as a war against public health with high human
costs."
Brian Cloughley, 2010
"Cuba registered the highest
per capita increase in gross social product (wages and social
benefits) of any economy in Latin America - and almost double
that of the next highest country - over the period 1981-1990.
Despite the economic difficulties, the average Cuban is still
better fed, housed, educated and provided for medically than other
Latin Americans."
Noam Chomsky
ECUADOR
"Jaime Roldós, president
of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both died
in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were
assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate,
government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We
EHMs failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the
other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always
right behind us, stepped in."
Michael Parenti
"Ecuador's President Rafael
Correa is hated, because in the second year of his first term
he repudiated the $3 billion dollar foreign debt that corrupt
and despotic prior regimes had been paid to contract with international
finance. Correa's default threat forced the international financial
gangsters to write down the debt by 60 percent.
Washington also hates Correa because he has been successful in
reducing the high rates of poverty in Ecuador, thus building public
support that makes if difficult for Washington to overthrow him
from within.
Yet another reason Washington hates Correa is because he took
steps against the multinational oil companies' exploitation of
Ecuador's oil resources and limited the amount of offshore deposits
in the country's banks in order to block Washington's ability
to destabilize Ecuador's financial system.
Washington also hates Correa for refusing to renew Washington's
lease of the air base in Manta.
Essentially, Correa has fought to take control of Ecuador's government,
media and national resources out of Washington's hands and the
hands of the small rich elite allied with Washington. It is a
David vs. Goliath story.
In other words, Correa, like Venezuela's Chevez, is the rare foreign
leader who represents the interests of his own country instead
of Washington's interest.
Washington uses the various corrupt NGOs and the puppet government
in Colombia as weapons against President Rafael Correa and the
Ecuadoran government. Many believe that it is only a matter of
time before Washington succeeds in assassinating Correa. "
Paul Craig Roberts
"Jaime Roldós, president
of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just
died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They
were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate,
government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. "
John Perkins
"Hugo Chavez nationalized
the oil and natural gas industries that had mostly been controlled
by American corporations. The last Latin American president to
nationalize his country's oil industry was Ecuador's Jamie Roldós.
Taking over from a long line of U.S. backed dictators, Roldós
was a nationalist who believed that his country's national resources
should benefit his country's people. In early 1981, he introduced
a policy that ensured that, in the future, profits from Ecuador's
oil resources would benefit the largest percentage of the population
of Ecuador. In May of 1981, President Roldós died in a
plane crash."
Ted Snider
EL SALVADOR
"In El Salvador, a small
number of super-rich families control the bulk of its domestic
wealth, while most of its people live on subsistence diets and
have no access to medical care.
... Of the more than 60,000 Salvadorans killed in the war between
1979 and 1987, many thousands are believed to have been murdered
by rightwing death squads. Another 540,000 have fled into exile,
and another 250,000 have been displaced or forced into resettlement
camps within El Salvador, a country of only 4 million people.
The Salvadoran army massacred whole villages suspected of being
sympathetic to the guerrillas. On December 11, 1981, a US-trained
elite battalion killed more than 1,000 people in the village of
Mozote and some nearby hamlets."
Michael Parenti
"The Salvadoran tragedy
includes uncontrolled military violence against civilians, the
ability of the wealthy to procure official violence, and the presence
of United States military advisers, working with the Salvadoran
military responsible for these monstrous practices. After 30,000
unpunished murders by security and military forces and over 10,000
"disappearances" of civilians in custody, the killing
goes on. "
New York City Bar Association representatives
visiting El Salvador in 1983
"There is a single theme
behind all our work-we must reduce population levels. Either governments
do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the
kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut.
Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control,
it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce
it.
... Our program in El Salvador didn't work. The infrastructure
was not there to support it. There were just too goddamned many
people. To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull
all the males into the fighting and you have to kill significant
numbers of fertile age females." The quickest way to reduce
population is through famine, like in Africa, or through disease
like the Black Death."
Thomas Ferguson, State Department
Office of Population Affairs
"Israeli advisors taught
El Salvador's major landowners how to organize criminals into
vigilante death squads. The death squads used intelligence from
El Salvador's military and security forces to target and murder
labor leaders and other opponents of the oligarchy. But they were
deniable.
... El Salvador's landowners and the fascist military formed a
political front called Arena, to which the CIA channeled funds.
Major Roberto d'Aubuisson was chosen to head Arena... Operating
out of Guatemala, under CIA supervision, D'Aubuisson's death squads
murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero and El Salvador's attorney general
in early 1980. "
Douglas Valentine
"U.S. commanders in Iraq,
attempting to quell the Sunni insurgency in 2004, reached back
to the terror tactics used in El Salvador. They formulated a plan
called "The Salvador Option" to train and arm Shiite
paramilitary units.
... These Shiite paramilitary units were accused of widespread
death-squad killings and running a network of clandestine detention
centers that carried out torture. The Shiite paramilitary units,
which were given money from a $2 billion fund controlled directly
by Gen. David Petraeus, terrorized and enraged the Sunni population.
The abuse, torture, assassinations and network of clandestine
prisons fueled Iraq's sectarian civil war and led to the creation
of radical Sunni groups such as Islamic State. "
Allan Nairn
"El Salvador suffered from
a US induced civil war from 1980 to 1992. Infamous death squads
financed, armed and trained by US Special Operations forces murdered
nearly 40,000 people... With the US policy re-militarizing El
Salvador's national security forces ostensibly to fight drug cartels
and gangs, a reactivation of the ruthless killing of citizens
en masse once again has become the norm. The current homicide
rates are even more than during the civil war, and that assault,
rape, disappearance and extortion are at higher rates than ever
before. El Salvador murder rate ranks at number two in the world
behind Honduras."
Joachim Hagopian
"Pope Ratzinger brought
the Inquisition back, and he didn't do it alone. His boss, John
Paul II gave him carte blanche to do it.
... They destroyed liberation theology which was the most vibrant
and justice oriented movement on the planet, after the civil rights
movement, and they replaced the heroic bishops, like Oscar Romero
of El Salvador, with an Opus Dei bishop. They did this all over
South America. Opus Dei is a fascist right-wing movement. "
Matthew Fox , former Catholic priest
"In 1932, a coup in El
Salvador - with United Fruit sponsorship - exterminated 300,000
peasants who had risen up in revolt against the conditions in
which they were forced to live. For forty years, the United Fruit
Company stood behind the regime of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua."
DOPE, INC
"If there's a single person
responsible for the death squad apparatus in El Salvador that
pursued many of our family members that pursued some of us, and
that killed 70,000 to 80,000 people - it is Ronald Reagan. "
Roberto Lovato
"After Oscar Romero, who
was the archbishop of San Salvador, in 1980 sent a letter to Jimmy
Carter asking him to cut off aid to that country, he was assassinated.
And Jimmy Carter turned on the aid very shortly thereafter. And
the US church women who were also assassinated in that same year,
the aid was cut off for a couple of weeks, and then it was turned
back on.
So the problem is that the United States sends these mixed messages.
On one hand, they condemn a coup, or they condemn the assassination
of Bishop Romero, but it's sort of like a wink and a nod. The
aid continues, and the training continued, as it did in El Salvador
in the 1980s."
James Hodge
"In Iraq, the US adopted
what they called the El Salvador option, which is a reference
back to the El Salvadoran death squads of the 1960s and '70s.
These were basically sponsored and run by the US for decades."
Allan Nairn
GHANA
"The result of neo-colonialism
is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than
for the development of the less developed parts of the world.
Investment, under neo-colonialism, increases, rather than decreases,
the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world.
The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding
the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed
countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the
developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish
the less developed."
Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana
1957-1966
"The tacticians in the
George H W Bush State Department want to undermine countries with
progressive legacies, countries such as Tanzania with a legacy
of Julius Nyerere, countries such as Ghana, where there is still
some legacy of Kwame Nkrumah. "
Africa analyst Horace Campbell
"John Foster Dulles and
Allen Dulles considered themselves anti-colonialist and believed
that the nations of Africa should become independent. Two of the
first that did so in the late 1950s, however, produced strongly
nationalist leaders: Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Ahmed Sékou
Touré in Guinea. They considered themselves socialists
and refused to ally their countries with Washington."
Stephen Kinzer
"From Iran in 1953 to Indonesia
in 1965 and Ghana in 1966 the CIA was involved in the covert overthrow
of governments around the world that had threatened to nationalize
their oil industries."
Peter Dale Scott
"John Foster Dulles and
Allen Dulles considered themselves anti-colonialist and believed
that the nations of Africa should become independent. Two of the
first that did so in the late 1950s, however, produced strongly
nationalist leaders: Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Ahmed Sékou
Touré in Guinea. They considered themselves socialists
and refused to ally their countries with Washington."
The Saker/unz.com
GUATEMALA
"In March 1982, General
Efrain Rios Montt seized power in Guatemala in a military coup.
An avowed fundamentalist Christian, he immediately impressed Washington
where President Reagan hailed Rios Montt as "a man of great
personal integrity." But under Rios Montt, the slaughter
in the countryside and selective assassinations in the cities
only grew worse.
By July 1982, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign
called his "rifles and beans" policy. The slogan meant
that pacified Indians would get "beans," while all others
could expect to be the target of army "rifles." In October,
he secretly gave carte blanche to the feared "Archivos"
intelligence unit to expand "death squad" operations.
Based at the Presidential Palace, the "Archivos" masterminded
many of Guatemala's most notorious assassinations.
The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army conducting
Indian massacres. However, during a swing through Latin America,
Reagan discounted the mounting reports of hundreds of Mayan villages
being eradicated. On December 4, 1982, after meeting with dictator
Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as "totally dedicated
to democracy" and asserted that Rios Montt's government was
"getting a bum rap."
On January 7, 1983, Reagan lifted the ban on military aid to Guatemala
and authorized the sale of $6 million in military hardware. Approval
covered spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and A-37 aircraft used
in counterinsurgency operations. Radios, batteries and battery
chargers were also in the package. State Department spokesman
John Hughes said political violence in the cities had "declined
dramatically" and that rural conditions had improved, too.
In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in
"suspect right-wing violence" with kidnappings of students
and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and
gullies. CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt's
order to the "Archivos" in October to "apprehend,
hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they
saw fit."
Despite these grisly facts on the ground, the annual State Department
human rights survey praised the supposedly improved human rights
situation in Guatemala. "The overall conduct of the armed
forces had improved by late in the year" 1982, the report
stated."
Robert Parry in his book "Secrecy
& Privilege"
"At the time of the Rios
Montt coup d'etat in Guatemala in March 1982, the Israeli press
referred to the Montt coup as "the Israeli connection"
because that group was "trained and equipped by Israel"
... Rios Montt himself told ABC News reporters that his coup had
been successful because "many of our soldiers were trained
by the Israelis."
Bishara Bahbah in her book "Israel
and Latin America: The Military Connection"
"In Guatemala, United Fruit
supported the CIA-backed 1954 military coup against President
Jacobo Arbenz, a reformer who had carried out a land reform package.
Arbenz' overthrow led to more than thirty years of unrest and
civil war in Guatemala."
Nikolas Kozloff, 2009
"Why should we worry about
the death squads? They're bumping off the commies, our enemies.
I'd give them more power. Hell, I'd give them some cartridges
if I could, and everyone else would too. Why should we criticize
them? The death squad - I'm for it."
Fred Sherwood, the former president
of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala, September 1980
"In 1954, the United States
intervened in Guatemala against Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz
on behalf of United Fruit - advocated within the Council on Foreign
Relations."
Peter Dale Scott
"The moment of President
Arbenz's fall is the moment history stopped in Guatemala or took
another course, the army withdrawing support for an elected government
that had relied upon it, joining in a CIA-supported coup replacing
democrat with dictator, and beginning forty years of military
repression."
Kate Millett in her book "Politics
of Cruelty"
"Over 440 villages were
totally destroyed and well over 100,000 civilians were killed
or "disappeared" in Guatemala, all with the enthusiastic
support of the Reagan Administration. The toll is estimated at
about 200,000 unarmed civilians killed or disappeared."
Noam Chomsky
"Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán,
a young military officer swept to victory in the 1951 Guatemalan
elections. Guatemala had no industry to speak of, with more than
70 percent of the population illiterate, and with 80 percent barely
eking out survival in the countryside, ownership and control of
land was Guatemala's fundamental economic issue. The county's
soil was immensely fertile, but only 2 percent of the landholders
owned 72 percent of the arable land, and only a tiny part of their
holdings was under cultivation.
The following year, Arbenz got the Guatemalan Congress to pass
a new law ordering the expropriation of all property that was
larger than six hundred acres and not in cultivation. The confiscated
lands were to be divided up among the landless. The owners were
to receive compensation based on the land's assessed tax value
and they were to be paid with twenty-five-year government bonds,
while the peasants would get low-interest loans from the government
to buy their plots. Of 341,000 landowners, only 1,700 holdings
came under the provisions. But those holdings represented half
the private land in the country. More importantly, it covered
the vast holdings of the United Fruit Company, which owned some
600,000 acres-most of it unused.
Arbenz confiscated a huge chunk of the company's land and offered
$1.2 million as compensation, a figure that was based on the tax
value of the company's own accountants. United Fruit and the U.S.
State Department countered with a demand for $16 million. When
Arbenz refused, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA
Director Allen Dulles convinced President Eisenhower that Arbenz
had to go. The Dulles brothers were hardly neutral parties. Both
were former partners of United Fruit's main law firm in Washington.
On their advice, Eisenhower authorized the CIA to organize a plan
for the armed overthrow of Arbenz, which took place in June 1954.
The agency selected Guatemalan colonel Carlos Castillo Armas to
lead the coup, it financed and trained Castillo's rebels in Somoza's
Nicaragua.
Washington promptly recognized Castillo's government and showered
it with foreign aid. Castillo quickly outlawed more than five
hundred trade unions and returned more than 1.5 million acres
to United Fruit and the country's other big landowners. Guatemala's
brief experiment with democracy was over. For the next four decades,
its people suffered from government terror without equal in the
modern history of Latin America."
Juan González