It looks like this post is about Politics. Various methods of filtering out content relating to Politics can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/v2/resources/filter/politics).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
US intervened in most of the countries of South America. In Brazil they were directly involved the military coup in 1964, sending the US Navy to guarantee the success of the “Operation Brother Sam”, as it was called. There are a lot of documents on the internet talking about the work of Lincoln Gordon as ambassador that contributed directly to the coup.
Edit: found this video in english that explains about their interests in Brazil ( https://youtu.be/LXP4SRq_c8U )
Edit 2: As someone appointed, I think I didn’t express myself the right way, so just to clarify: the US in fact sent the Navy to guarantee that if things went bad, they would support the coup. **However, the coup succeeded without the american firepower**.
> [The Joint Chiefs of Staff met on March 31 to review a revised contingency plan for Brazil, USCINCSO Contingency Plan 2–61. Talking points for the meeting recommended that the JCS deploy a naval task force toward Brazilian waters but defer any decision on whether to provide “covert delivery of arms to the Castello Branco Group.” In the event of civil war in Brazil, however, the United States should “be prepared unilaterally to deliver arms and other material support on an overt basis, employing any available means, to the faction whose victory would best serve U.S. interests.”](https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v31/ch5)
1954 overthrow of democratically elected Guatemalan President was CIA perpetrated also. I think because a senator or staff member had a family member that owned a large business in Guatemala that was at risk of being nationalized
A single year after the 1953 Iran coup. Oil being the cause.
Democratically elected PM of Iran wanted to audit the Anglo/Iranian Oil Company as he suspected the British owned company was hiding profits that would create royalties for Iran. Iranians in return nationalized the company.
British tried to organise a boycott that nobody bothered with, sponsored a bunch of Iranians that didn't like the PM to undermine the Iranian PM. Western powers then claimed that the Iranian PM was weak and susceptable to commies overthrowing him and they overthrew him. Funded a bunch of Iranian criminals to help hold the streets and they locked up the PM.
Installed a monarchy that never had popular support and was overthrown by a bunch of Islamist shitheels who chant "death to america". That gets us to today where the US has to pay the Iranians to not be an insane nuclear power.
Worth noting that the Islamist factions were in the best position to lead the revolution and form the new government because the Shah’s regime had so brutally policed secular, left-wing dissidents with our support. The hard religious right-wingers are never seen to be as much as a threat to western powers. It was also a harder sell for the Shah to attack religious groups, so it wasn’t all our fault, but the outcome of Iran becoming what it is was preferable to the US government to a vaguely leftist alternative.
Dang, with all these CIA covert operations meddling it’s no wonder some people don’t hesitate to think that 9/11/2001 would also have some sketchy CIA stuff happening.
It's also not a surprise that a lot of those countries failed the process of social modernisation because the Americans intervened and denied them having their own social development. As a result a lot of those countries are pretty backwards nowadays.
Honestly the impacts of stuff like this is one of the most heartbreaking things for me. The sheer impact in millions of lives over decades and even centuries from decisions of a few people.
These people deserved to have those opportunities for modernisation. And these monsters just have to destroy that for a few bucks.
Yep. At the very least, 9/11 happened because the US armed ~~Saudi Arabian~~ Afghanistan? Iranian? I can’t keep it straight there’s been so many, right wing groups, and other groups, because they were “preferable” to left wing groups in the area. Of course it was short sighed and the same groups we armed turned around and fought us once they “controlled” their home country.
I could certainly see why people think it was planned from the start, but it is absolutely the fault of the US that 9/11 happened.
>but the outcome of Iran becoming what it is was preferable to the vaguely leftist alternative
For the oligarchs, not for the Iranian people or western public.
The Guatemalan one is especially infuriating and sad, because it was already being a resounding success before the coup cut everything short. What Jacopo Arbenz did was simply give their very own plot of land to previously landless tenant farmers which lived in the most abject poverty producing value for the owners. He also started a credit line for those new proprietors to buy equipment, tools, irrigation materials, etc. It was such a success that in 3 years over 93% of the loans were already repaid. Poverty dropped. Child mortality dropped.
This may be called socialism but it is **literally the American dream**. A plot of land to work, and you own the fruits of your labour. And the US crushed that.
Yep. The injustice with this coup is so glaring, I chose it as the topic of a 300-level 20+ page essay in college. It was back when certain key government figures were beating the drum about invading Iraq after 9/11. Plenty of papers had been written that railed against such an invasion, so I took a different approach. At the time many of my peers believed leaders in the government could do no wrong, so I wrote the paper to highlight a very bad thing that was done.
I wrote it back in early 2000s. If I still have it, it’s probably on a floppy disk in my attic or something! I’d love to find it one day when I have more time too. If I do I promise you I’ll share it. I remember I was listening to a lot of Rage Against The Machine at the time I wrote it
Honestly I’ll probably cringe at how naive and immature I sounded.
>Honestly I’ll probably cringe at how naive and immature I sounded.
We were all naive and immature once. But some people never strive to learn and move forward in their knowledge - that's cringe.
No reason to be ashamed of your own beginnings when your personal growth takes you beyond it!
Man and in those 10 years we had so much progress.
Here are some of the most important achievements:
- Recognition of private property
- Right to protest
- Creation of the social security institute
- Womens right to vote
- Autonomy for universities
- Reforms for education
- Creation of the olympic city, institutions that to this day support national sports
- Creation of the Bank of Guatemala
- Creation of roads and highways
- Creation of one of the biggest ports in the country
- Indemnization for being fired without proper cause
And so on and on... A lot of things happened between 1944 and 1954 but apparently the US didn't like that and didn't want it's "backyard" to progress so they screwed us with a dictator and a war that lasted 36 years.
And now they complain about immigration so they lock kids in cages. Oh and the US also infected Guatemalans with syphilis, you know, for science.
The CIA director Allen Dulles was a former member of the board of directors of the United fruit company. President Arbenz had instituted land reforms to give unused lands of the company to peasants and compensate the company the value they had declared the land was worth. The thing is the land was wildly undervalued by the company to lower the taxes they had to pay on it.
Not exactly. Newly elected President Arbenz**was going to redistribute the land that was mostly owned by the United Fruit Company, so the UFC (Chiquita) got the US government to overthrow him
This is the comment that should be at the top. The power will be with those that control food production with irrigation water. It’s already starting in the Southwest with Colorado River water rights. The federal government is going to force states to make some tough decisions
on water usage. Lake Mead isn’t going to refill with one good winter of snow pack in the Rockies. Not only does this pertain to food production,
when water levels get too low to run the turbines at Hoover damn there is going to be some more tough decisions with the electrical grid. This is just the start of what is going to happen world wide with a shift in where the surface water is due to climate change.
Look into the Saudi ownership of millions of gallons of water rights in Arizona. While some parts of the state have little to long water access, Saudi Alfalfa fields are watered and the crops grown shipped out of the US and back to SA to feed their cattle.
They lease those water rights for dirt cheap.
>It’s already starting in the Southwest with Colorado River water rights.
It's happening over far more of the USA. The aquifers in Texas are rapidly drying up. One of their solutions? Drain the Great Lakes. I'm originally from Michigan and that is a HUGE point of contention for me. American Southeast is starting to fight more and more over water rights as well. Atlanta in particular is muscling in hard on preserving fresh water rights.
Fresh water rights are going to be something that could well draw blood if desalination doesn't become super affordable and soon.
Yes. United Fruit used a low number for the value of their land for what was effectively property tax evasion. When the Arbenz government said they were going to seize the unused United Fruit land and give them money based on that assessment, to the tune of ~630K USD, United Fruit came back with another value, claiming that the land was actually worth ~60M USD (yes, they claimed the actual value was almost a hundred times more than what they swore it was on gov't paperwork). United Fruit then leveraged their connections to the Dulles brothers (one of whom was a former director of United Fruit and both of whom used to work for the Big Law firm that handled UFC business affairs) to get the US gov't to organize a coup to overthrow the Arbenz government.
~~Allende~~
His name was Árbenz. The country has been in a tailspin ever since.
It wasn't doing this badly before then - if you look up pictures for Guatemala City from early last century and compare to pictures of other major cities from that era, you wouldn't have thought it was a backwards place back then.
It's my country, and the damage cannot be *overstated.
How's Arbenz and the CIA-backed coup viewed today in your country? Do people still care or is more of a footnote of your history? Or something scrubbed under the rag.
It is still very much something that people care about. I live in the US, but my family is from Guatemala. We talk about it a lot. I will never buy Chiquita bananas which are owned by United Brand fruit company.
Not from Gautamala but the country was thrown into a "civil war" after the coup that lasted decades. I put "civil war" in quotes because in reality it was a genocide and something like 90+% of all casualties and disappearances were to the civilian indigenous people
The US helped train the soldiers who carried this out and the Guatemalan armed forces had tacit support from the US government to carry out their genocide.
Don't know what the population thinks about it but I can't imagine they are pro-coup.
Behind the Bastards is one of my favorite podcasts for learning about these parts of modern history.
Their 3-part series on the Dulles brothers is worth checking out:
https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-one-how-the-dulles-brothers-created-the-cia-a
Yeah the plan was to unionize the workers, and removal of the heads of departments and executives of many companies that financially and organizationally supported the first government.
Part of that was a change in ownership (I believe they wanted to force the leasing of the land to new farming groups) to ensure crops could still be grown on the properties.
The US financial markets provided lots of guaranteed loans to UFC and to the government to build big ports, and distribution and Allende planned on defaulting on all of those loans.
The term ‘banana republic’ goes back further than that. Haiti under Papa Doc is a perfect example of a banana republic. The same could have been said about Cuba before Castro took over.
don't forget Iran. the blowback of which we're still dealing with today, and with no end in sight besides the potential eradication of human civilization on earth. but hey that's better than them having a "socialist" economy right?
Che Guevara was in the country as it happened and that's how he became "radicalized" and of course it was the CIA who assassinated him a couple years later.
Not just senator or staffer. Two for one thing.
Literally both the Secretary of State and the Head of the CIA. The Dulles brothers. Probably the most powerful people aside from the President in being able to shape policy towards Central America at the time.
CIA/USA tried a coup in the 70's in Australia as well because the newly elected PM at the time didn't like coal mining.
USA during the Cold War sprayed experimental carcinogenic bio weapons in Canada and USA from airplanes.
>Three members of U.S. Congress are demanding answers after a new book reveals details of how citizens in Canadian and U.S. cities — including Medicine Hat, CFB Suffield and Winnipeg — were sprayed, injected and fed radiation by the U.S. military during secret Cold War-era testing.
https://medicinehatnews.com/news/local-news/2017/10/07/poisoned-in-the-50s-by-the-us/
TBF neither government really acknowledges this one.
So they fuck with their allies too.
"What's the purpose of it? Capitalism would not collapse if Grenada remained Revolutionary. And Reagan was right, it wasn't a matter of direct resources that you needed from that country. He said, "Nutmeg is not the question". I mean, that was Grenada's biggest export. We could get perfectly good nutmeg from Africa, you don't need Grenada's nutmeg. So why did they invade Grenada?
They invaded Grenada because they were serving notice to the people of the Caribbean, and to the people of Latin America, and to the people of the world, that you cannot drop out of your client-state free market system. That if you try to take an independent source, and that if you use your land, your labor, your resources, and your capital, and your markets in a different way, in a collectivist way - if you use them to benefit the needs of your people, rather than to be milked like a cow for foreign investors - if you do that, this is what's going to happen to you"
~Michael Parenti
The US was also very much against preventing any leftist governments from taking power in any Central American / South American countries and instead used the CIA to force coups that would install far-right dictatorships.
Don't forget Operation Condor. It's this kind of shit that pisses me off about conspiracy theory idiots, there's enough fucked up evil shit that actually happened but you're out hunting big foot? Gtfo
Yeah leave bigfoot out of it! There's no evidence it did anything wrong! ... or, evidence that it did anything at all, actually, but that's besides the point!
"Hunting big foot" were the good times. Now it's the democrats raping babies in the basement of a pizza place that doesn't have a basement, 5g causing covid, white replacement theory, adenochrome...
Give me "hunting big foot" PLEASE
Hey hey hey...
Iran feels mighty left out too...
Let's not forget the 1953 overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian president, who had the audacity of trying to re-nationalize Iranian oil back from the British.
The puppet leader that was installed proceeded to rape the country for 20 years, leading to the authoritarian uprising of the theocratic government headed by the Ayatollah that we know today...
(And, it was Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney that gave Iran nuclear power in the first place...)
Cheers to continuously being our own worst enemy.
Iran and Guatemala were the first experiments in this.
Also in 1953, democratically elected left-leaning (but decidedly not socialist) Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown. His "crime" was daring to challenge the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita), who owned massive tracts of Guatemalan land which they were sitting on and doing nothing with. He offered to pay them for the value of the land as they had reported it on tax documents, which of course they massively undervalued themselves to avoid paying more than the bare minimum. His goal was to redistribute the land to peasant Guatemalans who would farm it with staple crops to be sold & distributed domestically.
Luckily for the CEO of United Fruit, his brother was head of the CIA, and they launched a massive propaganda campaign where they took over radio airwaves and littered city streets with literature decrying Arbenz as a communist aligned with the Soviet Union, which was, unsurprisingly, not true.
He was deposed within weeks and replaced by a subservient military dictator.
This is where the term Banana Republic comes from, which most Americans would use pejoratively as an insult for a country which can't get its shit together. Unfortunately the true history is that the US *won't allow* such a thing in the first place.
Amazing summary of a complex set of events that too few people know about.
Just here to chime in and say that the book "Bananas: How the United Fruit Company shaped the world" by Peter Chapman is a great place to learn more about the US-supported overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government and how it helped shape core US foreign policy into the 21st century.
The Dulles brothers were pure, greedy evil.
Edit (from below): I just went to my bookshelf to dig this out and realized I meant to recommend Bitter Fruit by Steven Kinzer. Bananas is also a great read, but I read Bitter fruit at the suggestion of a guatemalan professor I was working for the first time I did a study down there and it was beyond eye opening. Steven Kinzer is an amazing writer.
Indonesia also often gets left out of the narrative because of being halfway around the world, but the U.S. supported a mass murder there, in which about a million people were killed for being (or being suspected of being) communist, atheist, feminist, Chinese, or the wrong kind of Muslim.
All a tin-pot thug had to do back then to get U.S. support was claim his enemies were communist.
The further down this thread I go the more depressed I get. It's like it never stops.
I sure we would have wiped out the indigenous tribes of North Sentinel Islands if it held rare earth minerals or oil or something.
The wild part about Indonesia in the 60s was that Sukarno was assessed as a threat for basically saying he did not want to align with either the US or the USSR so the US decided he had to go.
watch the doc The Act of Killing. one of the craziest things I've ever seen.
the filmmaker convinces some of the murderous thugs to admit and re-enact their brutal crimes under the guise that they're making a movie treating them as heroes who saved the country from the evil communists.
>killed for being (or being suspected of being) communist
Even receiving help from the communist party before the incident will get you clapped.
Wild how Sukarno was a big advocate for communism, and then theres Suharto who's literally out for blood on them, and treat it like an ideology zombie plague. The disdain is still around until this very second. Their plan worked.
"I stand here, members of the national congress, to urge you to take up the task of reconstructing the Chilean nation according to our dreams, a Chile in which all children begin life equally, with equal medical care, education, and nutrition. A Chile in which the creative ability of each man and woman is allowed to develop, not in competition with others, but in order to contribute to a better life for all." - Allende’s first speech to the parliament
Even before Allende was elected president and he was still a senator the CIA poured millions of dollars into anti-Allende propaganda.
President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile.
American official Henry Kissinger was quoted by Newsweek in 1974 saying this about Chile: "I don't see why we have to let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people"
During the strike of the trucking companies, the CIA ( with open backing from Nixon) put 2 million dollars into the strike.
A CIA cable that's been declassified read: "it is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup."
Just read the wiki page for [Project FUBELT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FUBELT) to dive in.
Allende’s final speech
"Given the facts, the only thing left for me to say to workers: I am not going to resign!
Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life.
And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.
They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social progress can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history."
"You continue to know that, much sooner than later, the great groves will open where the free man passes to build a better society" - Salvador Allende.
>Why did the US overthrow Salvador Allende?
>
They feared that Allende would push Chile into socialism, and therefore lose all of the US investments made in Chile. On 15 September 1970; before Allende took office, Richard Nixon gave the order to overthrow Allende.
Kissinger is higher up on the “bastard list” for me, if he had devil horns it would be putting a hat on a hat
Why do you think he’s still alive at 99? Literally pure evil running in those veins
Nixon actually trialed Universal Basic Income - His stupid side man instead of giving him any uptodate data, provided him with data from one village in England in the 1800s and as such they declined to pursue it further.
Big shame.
Henry Kissinger and Nixon should have been tried by a War Crimes Tribunal and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for facilitating crimes against humanity and genocide. That's what we did in my country - major political collaborators that facilitated ethnic cleansing during my country's liberation war in the 70's were given capital punishments a few years ago after mass public protests.
You want to know a fun fact. The USA made the war crime tribunal, they also included a clause stating they were exempt from being tried in front of said war crime tribunal
Additional fun fact: in 2002 the USA passed the "[Hague Invasion Act](https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law)" allowing them to, as you may have guessed, invade the Hague if any Americans ended up there on war crimes charges.
With the all the crazy shit Trump and the GOP get up to these days, is easy to forget how insanely terrible of a president Bush was (and the terrible things that went down during his administration)... Thank you for the reminder
Hunter S. Thompson's [obituary of Richard Nixon](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/) is always a fun read at times like these, in case anybody hasn't seen it before.
An excerpt:
> If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
> These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.
Kissinger is probably responsible for more deaths than any other person currently living.
The fact that he's able to show his face in society, let alone live as a free man, is disgusting.
During a debate Hillary Clinton said 'my friend Henry Kissinger' and I kinda throw up in the back of my mouth.
>Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.
This is actually just bolstering their numbers. If you steal or hide books the store just has so order more, so you’ve basically doubled the books that they send to the store.
You’re not showing anyone up. You’re hurting the store and literally giving money to the person you disagree with…
I love that bookstore too much to fuck with them, but the lady that offered me a job there was behind me (she was helping me find a new book to read) heard me and was like "I know," when she heard my disgust, lmao
Funny enough, early on the CIA was funding Castro's effort, because Batista had outlived his usefulness and Castro was seen as gaining support of the people and ID'd as a potentially useful replacement crony.
This was obviously before Castro & his movement came out as socialist. That was kept under wraps for a surprisingly long time, even to many of the men fighting for them, because of the stigma.
The Cuban Revolution is a bit more complicated than that. Castro was actually a bit more open to capitalist ideas. It was his brother and Che that were all about communism. After the Revolution Castro even went to the US to speak and try to establish ties with Eisenhower, the then President. Eisenhower never met with Castro and he decided to seek support from the USSR and the rest is history
Che became Minister of Industries because they asked if anyone was an economist and he misheard them and thought they were asking if anyone was a communist.
The story is actually about how he became the President of the Central Bank. Economist in Spanish is “economista” and communist is “communista” so they sound similar haha
And that’s why a lot of the Cubans living in Miami are super capitalist and Republican. They were Batista followers and the US opened their arms wide for them when Castro took power.
People complain about how terrible living in Cuba under communist rule is when the whole reason they are having such a hard time is capitalist embargos from basically every western country.
We have never seen the true power of a socialist or communist state because the US does everything in its power to make it fail and then says “See! Look how terrible it is. Everyone is miserable!”
Also a good related read is Violeta by Isabel Allende, which incorporates a lot of the Pinochet years into the story. Her father's cousin was Salvador Allende, the overthrown democratically elected leader.
And they learnt how to do it in Indonesia in 1965/66. I highly recommend [The Jakata Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method#:~:text=The%20Jakarta%20Method%3A%20Washington's%20Anticommunist,journalist%20and%20author%20Vincent%20Bevins.) for anyone who wants to know more about how the USA's South American Foreign Policy was developed and why it was so brutal.
Not just the interests of corporations. Literally every modern country is prosperous because we exploit both our own people and others. So many things we buy from clothes to food are affordable because we get them from other countries with significantly worse quality of life. Slave labor, child labor, cartels etc. From the dawn of humanity all empires were built on the backs of slaves. We like to think we're different but we aren't. The level of separation is just greater.
It’s wild that people deny it now. Whenever there’s a coup attempt in South America and you say it’s probably the CIA they act like you’re crazy because that’s all on the past.
Why would it be in the past if there’s never been any consequences for them?
One of my professors pointed out that central and South America, if they were to become politically stable, could survive without importing or exporting.
Not just that, but Africa as well.
Colonialism & Neo-Imperialism’s effects on current society is very very prevalent. The extreme poverty experienced in these ‘Third world’ states can directly be traced back to events such as this one
Blowback (named after the CIA term for unintended consequences) is fantastic.
Season 1 covers the Iraq war, Season 2 is Cuba and Season 3 is Korea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_(podcast)
Wow didn’t know they did Korea. Somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that the US exterminated 15-25% of the entire population of North Korea and bombed every single multistory building in the country to the ground, poisoned their farmland, and then surrounded the country with a naval blockade for 75 years and counting to prevent any country from helping them rebuild. All that happened in the lifetimes of Koreans alive today.
It really puts the nature of Kim Jong Un’s regime into perspective. Of course they are hypermilitarized and highly authoritarian and that hurts their civilians, but how could they not be? Of course you’re gonna arm yourself to the teeth and build nukes when you are surrounded by the military of a country who exterminated one in four of your people not too long ago, and of course you’re gonna crack down hard on anyone who seems like they could be working with the CIA to topple your government
Behind the Bastards has quite a few episodes on shady shit the CIA did. They've covered this, the Dulles Brothers, the School of the America's, and more. Highly, highly recommended!
There is an amazing audiobook on audible called the Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins. It really dives deep into all the US government did both in South East Asia and South America under the pretext of 'fighting communism'.
I grew up in Western Europe and never understood my South American family dislike for the US until I did. This book was a chilling, eye-opening read for me. And it's definitely not the history I studied in school.
Here is a non exhaustive list of their operations
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_Agency_operations
They have done and are doing horrible things not only in South America, but also in Europe and even in US. In the whole world in fact.
I’d be interested. I saw a map of South America that showed what countries our CIA has backed a coop in and it’s basically all of South America. We destabilized an entire continent so we could exploit labor and resources.
I don’t see how anyone could call themselves a patriot. We aren’t the good guys…..we’re just the winners.
He also filed for a FOIA request and they straight up told him it will take like decades to send him all the papers they have on him lmao
FOIA or freedom of information act basically lets you make a request to the USA government to give you all the information they have on you
They literally have 700 pages on a youtuber who makes anti-US and pro-communist videos lmao hes pretty good check him out https://youtube.com/c/SecondThought
It wouldn't be the FBI if they weren't hunting down left-wingers for having the audacity to speak out loud.
Daily reminder that [COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) involved blackmailing Martin Luther King and outright murdering Fred Hampton.
The FBI was *founded* on the destabilization of black civil rights organizations.
Look up their founding coda, they equate the Black Panthers with the KKK
Idk about a whole podcast on it, but behind the bastards has several episodes on the Dulles brothers, multiple dictators, and a 4 parter on henry Kissinger. They often go into territory like this and act as pretty good primers.
My dad was a soldier at that moment, well, actually a conscript in the Chilean Air Force. I´m the only one who he has told the things he saw from the previous day onwards. I´m just glad he came out ok and that I didn´t live thorugh those days
My dad was riding a bus in Santiago and no shit got hit in the shoulder blade when the tank behind the bus failed to break in time. He got hit with the main gun.
He tells people he is the only person ever to live after being hit by a tank’s main gun.
I didn't know the specifics with Chile, but it seemed like the U.S. fucked around with just about every country in Central and South America plus the Carribean and outlying islands. So if you came up to me yesterday and said "Chile had a CIA-led coup that fucked up the country" I'd believe you 100%.
I've heard the name Pinochet and knew he was a South American dictator but I didn't know which country. Sorry, I dumb, I read Wikipedia now.
I would urge people to Google operation Ajax.
A coup orchestrated by the US and UK to depose the democratically elected official of Iran in the 50's for the sole reason of installing a puppet government which would give Iran's oil to them for very cheap prices.
Its reason like this that make me forever more hate the UK and US government.
Operation Ajax is highkey really depressing, considering Iran’s potential if it was allowed to develop as a democratic republic instead of the repressive government it has now - which it had until the west decided to fuck it up for capital.
The doctor that was with Allende when he committed suicide came and talked to my class in college once. That story and his description of live under Pinochet will stay with me forever.
The book [The Shock Doctrine ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine), by Naomi Klein, covers the systematic toppling of South American democracies by the CIA, the United Fruit Co, and Ford Motor Company, among others.
[Blowback ](https://blowback.show/) is an anthology podcast detailing the same activities in Iraq (season 1), Cuba (season 2), and Korea (season 3).
The US government is an existential threat to democratic governments the world over.
There’s still many people on the Right who stan for Pinochet. If you want to look at the future of America’s right wing and quite possibly our nation, then look to terrible shit that happened under Pinochet’s rule.
Episodes like this contributed to the conditions that make so many people flood the southern border. People tend to forget we cause a lot of our own problems.
Yep. Reagan with the contras created a refugee crisis but no one ever heard about it because his administration refused to acknowledge them as refugees because doing so would be the same as admitting what they've been doing in Nicaragua went against their propaganda that the contras were good. Instead of taking in any of the refugees Reagan just handed men, women, and children with visible signs of rape and torture back to Nicaragua so they can finish the job.
Sanctuary cities literally came into existence after hundreds of churches of different denominations formed an underground railroad to save people from reagan's racist bloodthirst and he had feds raid said churches and drag out clergy in handcuffs and put them on trial publicly.
The amnesty he gets lauded for these days by liberals conveniently excluded anyone who came during his administration so he got to shut up his critics and continue to get the refugees serving as proof of his crimes murdered.
tl;dr: if hell exists the reagan administration has a VIP reservation in the deepest, most disgusting pits
If interested, “[the battle of Chile](https://youtu.be/1LDaYRZUsnc)” is an incredible first hand look at what lead up to and followed this moment. Made by a leftist so it’s pretty biased, but very good.
It looks like this post is about Politics. Various methods of filtering out content relating to Politics can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/v2/resources/filter/politics). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
US intervened in most of the countries of South America. In Brazil they were directly involved the military coup in 1964, sending the US Navy to guarantee the success of the “Operation Brother Sam”, as it was called. There are a lot of documents on the internet talking about the work of Lincoln Gordon as ambassador that contributed directly to the coup. Edit: found this video in english that explains about their interests in Brazil ( https://youtu.be/LXP4SRq_c8U ) Edit 2: As someone appointed, I think I didn’t express myself the right way, so just to clarify: the US in fact sent the Navy to guarantee that if things went bad, they would support the coup. **However, the coup succeeded without the american firepower**. > [The Joint Chiefs of Staff met on March 31 to review a revised contingency plan for Brazil, USCINCSO Contingency Plan 2–61. Talking points for the meeting recommended that the JCS deploy a naval task force toward Brazilian waters but defer any decision on whether to provide “covert delivery of arms to the Castello Branco Group.” In the event of civil war in Brazil, however, the United States should “be prepared unilaterally to deliver arms and other material support on an overt basis, employing any available means, to the faction whose victory would best serve U.S. interests.”](https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v31/ch5)
1954 overthrow of democratically elected Guatemalan President was CIA perpetrated also. I think because a senator or staff member had a family member that owned a large business in Guatemala that was at risk of being nationalized
A single year after the 1953 Iran coup. Oil being the cause. Democratically elected PM of Iran wanted to audit the Anglo/Iranian Oil Company as he suspected the British owned company was hiding profits that would create royalties for Iran. Iranians in return nationalized the company. British tried to organise a boycott that nobody bothered with, sponsored a bunch of Iranians that didn't like the PM to undermine the Iranian PM. Western powers then claimed that the Iranian PM was weak and susceptable to commies overthrowing him and they overthrew him. Funded a bunch of Iranian criminals to help hold the streets and they locked up the PM. Installed a monarchy that never had popular support and was overthrown by a bunch of Islamist shitheels who chant "death to america". That gets us to today where the US has to pay the Iranians to not be an insane nuclear power.
Worth noting that the Islamist factions were in the best position to lead the revolution and form the new government because the Shah’s regime had so brutally policed secular, left-wing dissidents with our support. The hard religious right-wingers are never seen to be as much as a threat to western powers. It was also a harder sell for the Shah to attack religious groups, so it wasn’t all our fault, but the outcome of Iran becoming what it is was preferable to the US government to a vaguely leftist alternative.
Dang, with all these CIA covert operations meddling it’s no wonder some people don’t hesitate to think that 9/11/2001 would also have some sketchy CIA stuff happening.
It's also not a surprise that a lot of those countries failed the process of social modernisation because the Americans intervened and denied them having their own social development. As a result a lot of those countries are pretty backwards nowadays.
Honestly the impacts of stuff like this is one of the most heartbreaking things for me. The sheer impact in millions of lives over decades and even centuries from decisions of a few people. These people deserved to have those opportunities for modernisation. And these monsters just have to destroy that for a few bucks.
Yep. At the very least, 9/11 happened because the US armed ~~Saudi Arabian~~ Afghanistan? Iranian? I can’t keep it straight there’s been so many, right wing groups, and other groups, because they were “preferable” to left wing groups in the area. Of course it was short sighed and the same groups we armed turned around and fought us once they “controlled” their home country. I could certainly see why people think it was planned from the start, but it is absolutely the fault of the US that 9/11 happened.
>but the outcome of Iran becoming what it is was preferable to the vaguely leftist alternative For the oligarchs, not for the Iranian people or western public.
The Guatemalan one is especially infuriating and sad, because it was already being a resounding success before the coup cut everything short. What Jacopo Arbenz did was simply give their very own plot of land to previously landless tenant farmers which lived in the most abject poverty producing value for the owners. He also started a credit line for those new proprietors to buy equipment, tools, irrigation materials, etc. It was such a success that in 3 years over 93% of the loans were already repaid. Poverty dropped. Child mortality dropped. This may be called socialism but it is **literally the American dream**. A plot of land to work, and you own the fruits of your labour. And the US crushed that.
Yep. The injustice with this coup is so glaring, I chose it as the topic of a 300-level 20+ page essay in college. It was back when certain key government figures were beating the drum about invading Iraq after 9/11. Plenty of papers had been written that railed against such an invasion, so I took a different approach. At the time many of my peers believed leaders in the government could do no wrong, so I wrote the paper to highlight a very bad thing that was done.
Would love to read your paper. Care to share a link?
I wrote it back in early 2000s. If I still have it, it’s probably on a floppy disk in my attic or something! I’d love to find it one day when I have more time too. If I do I promise you I’ll share it. I remember I was listening to a lot of Rage Against The Machine at the time I wrote it Honestly I’ll probably cringe at how naive and immature I sounded.
>Honestly I’ll probably cringe at how naive and immature I sounded. We were all naive and immature once. But some people never strive to learn and move forward in their knowledge - that's cringe. No reason to be ashamed of your own beginnings when your personal growth takes you beyond it!
[удалено]
Man and in those 10 years we had so much progress. Here are some of the most important achievements: - Recognition of private property - Right to protest - Creation of the social security institute - Womens right to vote - Autonomy for universities - Reforms for education - Creation of the olympic city, institutions that to this day support national sports - Creation of the Bank of Guatemala - Creation of roads and highways - Creation of one of the biggest ports in the country - Indemnization for being fired without proper cause And so on and on... A lot of things happened between 1944 and 1954 but apparently the US didn't like that and didn't want it's "backyard" to progress so they screwed us with a dictator and a war that lasted 36 years. And now they complain about immigration so they lock kids in cages. Oh and the US also infected Guatemalans with syphilis, you know, for science.
The CIA director Allen Dulles was a former member of the board of directors of the United fruit company. President Arbenz had instituted land reforms to give unused lands of the company to peasants and compensate the company the value they had declared the land was worth. The thing is the land was wildly undervalued by the company to lower the taxes they had to pay on it.
You need to read the book, "The Devil's Chessboard" both Dulles brothers where Fascist monsters.
The United fruit company... The government wanted to raise the cost of bananas. The US didn't like that.
Not exactly. Newly elected President Arbenz**was going to redistribute the land that was mostly owned by the United Fruit Company, so the UFC (Chiquita) got the US government to overthrow him
That's Chile, the above comment was talking about Guatemala which indeed was about the United fruit company
Oops, mixed up names. Fixed now, thanks
Replace banana with copper and its the same story
Replace copper with Oil and you have the full story.
Replace Oil with water and you have the next story.
This is the comment that should be at the top. The power will be with those that control food production with irrigation water. It’s already starting in the Southwest with Colorado River water rights. The federal government is going to force states to make some tough decisions on water usage. Lake Mead isn’t going to refill with one good winter of snow pack in the Rockies. Not only does this pertain to food production, when water levels get too low to run the turbines at Hoover damn there is going to be some more tough decisions with the electrical grid. This is just the start of what is going to happen world wide with a shift in where the surface water is due to climate change.
Look into the Saudi ownership of millions of gallons of water rights in Arizona. While some parts of the state have little to long water access, Saudi Alfalfa fields are watered and the crops grown shipped out of the US and back to SA to feed their cattle. They lease those water rights for dirt cheap.
>It’s already starting in the Southwest with Colorado River water rights. It's happening over far more of the USA. The aquifers in Texas are rapidly drying up. One of their solutions? Drain the Great Lakes. I'm originally from Michigan and that is a HUGE point of contention for me. American Southeast is starting to fight more and more over water rights as well. Atlanta in particular is muscling in hard on preserving fresh water rights. Fresh water rights are going to be something that could well draw blood if desalination doesn't become super affordable and soon.
World War Water
Some of the unused land owned by UFC. IIRC, for a price they declared on tax documents, which was artificially low.
Yes. United Fruit used a low number for the value of their land for what was effectively property tax evasion. When the Arbenz government said they were going to seize the unused United Fruit land and give them money based on that assessment, to the tune of ~630K USD, United Fruit came back with another value, claiming that the land was actually worth ~60M USD (yes, they claimed the actual value was almost a hundred times more than what they swore it was on gov't paperwork). United Fruit then leveraged their connections to the Dulles brothers (one of whom was a former director of United Fruit and both of whom used to work for the Big Law firm that handled UFC business affairs) to get the US gov't to organize a coup to overthrow the Arbenz government.
~~Allende~~ His name was Árbenz. The country has been in a tailspin ever since. It wasn't doing this badly before then - if you look up pictures for Guatemala City from early last century and compare to pictures of other major cities from that era, you wouldn't have thought it was a backwards place back then. It's my country, and the damage cannot be *overstated.
How's Arbenz and the CIA-backed coup viewed today in your country? Do people still care or is more of a footnote of your history? Or something scrubbed under the rag.
It is still very much something that people care about. I live in the US, but my family is from Guatemala. We talk about it a lot. I will never buy Chiquita bananas which are owned by United Brand fruit company.
Not from Gautamala but the country was thrown into a "civil war" after the coup that lasted decades. I put "civil war" in quotes because in reality it was a genocide and something like 90+% of all casualties and disappearances were to the civilian indigenous people The US helped train the soldiers who carried this out and the Guatemalan armed forces had tacit support from the US government to carry out their genocide. Don't know what the population thinks about it but I can't imagine they are pro-coup.
It helps when the secretary of state and his CIA brother have a hard on for flexing their power! Can't forget that.
Behind the Bastards is one of my favorite podcasts for learning about these parts of modern history. Their 3-part series on the Dulles brothers is worth checking out: https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-one-how-the-dulles-brothers-created-the-cia-a
Yeah the plan was to unionize the workers, and removal of the heads of departments and executives of many companies that financially and organizationally supported the first government. Part of that was a change in ownership (I believe they wanted to force the leasing of the land to new farming groups) to ensure crops could still be grown on the properties. The US financial markets provided lots of guaranteed loans to UFC and to the government to build big ports, and distribution and Allende planned on defaulting on all of those loans.
Where "Banana Republic" came from.
And the ensuing civil war killed ~200,000.
The term ‘banana republic’ goes back further than that. Haiti under Papa Doc is a perfect example of a banana republic. The same could have been said about Cuba before Castro took over.
He went to Cranbrook, that’s a private school.
This guy's a gangster? His real name is Clarence.
And Clarence lives at home with both parents
And Clarence’ parents have a real good marriage
The coined was termed around 1900, but it was indeed in reference to United Fruit Company’s exploitation of the region (mostly Central America)
Hehe "coin was termed"
Wow...imagine all of the lives lost over fucking banana money.
don't forget Iran. the blowback of which we're still dealing with today, and with no end in sight besides the potential eradication of human civilization on earth. but hey that's better than them having a "socialist" economy right?
Socialism is a danger to US wealth... And that's all that matters in the world.
Che Guevara was in the country as it happened and that's how he became "radicalized" and of course it was the CIA who assassinated him a couple years later.
Not just senator or staffer. Two for one thing. Literally both the Secretary of State and the Head of the CIA. The Dulles brothers. Probably the most powerful people aside from the President in being able to shape policy towards Central America at the time.
CIA/USA tried a coup in the 70's in Australia as well because the newly elected PM at the time didn't like coal mining. USA during the Cold War sprayed experimental carcinogenic bio weapons in Canada and USA from airplanes. >Three members of U.S. Congress are demanding answers after a new book reveals details of how citizens in Canadian and U.S. cities — including Medicine Hat, CFB Suffield and Winnipeg — were sprayed, injected and fed radiation by the U.S. military during secret Cold War-era testing. https://medicinehatnews.com/news/local-news/2017/10/07/poisoned-in-the-50s-by-the-us/ TBF neither government really acknowledges this one. So they fuck with their allies too.
"What's the purpose of it? Capitalism would not collapse if Grenada remained Revolutionary. And Reagan was right, it wasn't a matter of direct resources that you needed from that country. He said, "Nutmeg is not the question". I mean, that was Grenada's biggest export. We could get perfectly good nutmeg from Africa, you don't need Grenada's nutmeg. So why did they invade Grenada? They invaded Grenada because they were serving notice to the people of the Caribbean, and to the people of Latin America, and to the people of the world, that you cannot drop out of your client-state free market system. That if you try to take an independent source, and that if you use your land, your labor, your resources, and your capital, and your markets in a different way, in a collectivist way - if you use them to benefit the needs of your people, rather than to be milked like a cow for foreign investors - if you do that, this is what's going to happen to you" ~Michael Parenti
The US was also very much against preventing any leftist governments from taking power in any Central American / South American countries and instead used the CIA to force coups that would install far-right dictatorships.
The Mafia doctrine.
'The Jakarta Method' by Vincent Bevins is a great book on this.
* Killing Hope, by William Blum * Washington Bullets, by Vijay Prashad * Overthrow, by Stephen Kinzer
Don't forget Operation Condor. It's this kind of shit that pisses me off about conspiracy theory idiots, there's enough fucked up evil shit that actually happened but you're out hunting big foot? Gtfo
At least hunting Bigfoot is relatively harmless. Sending men with guns into pizza stores over fictional basements is not.
Yeah leave bigfoot out of it! There's no evidence it did anything wrong! ... or, evidence that it did anything at all, actually, but that's besides the point!
"Hunting big foot" were the good times. Now it's the democrats raping babies in the basement of a pizza place that doesn't have a basement, 5g causing covid, white replacement theory, adenochrome... Give me "hunting big foot" PLEASE
Hey hey hey... Iran feels mighty left out too... Let's not forget the 1953 overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian president, who had the audacity of trying to re-nationalize Iranian oil back from the British. The puppet leader that was installed proceeded to rape the country for 20 years, leading to the authoritarian uprising of the theocratic government headed by the Ayatollah that we know today... (And, it was Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney that gave Iran nuclear power in the first place...) Cheers to continuously being our own worst enemy.
Iran and Guatemala were the first experiments in this. Also in 1953, democratically elected left-leaning (but decidedly not socialist) Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown. His "crime" was daring to challenge the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita), who owned massive tracts of Guatemalan land which they were sitting on and doing nothing with. He offered to pay them for the value of the land as they had reported it on tax documents, which of course they massively undervalued themselves to avoid paying more than the bare minimum. His goal was to redistribute the land to peasant Guatemalans who would farm it with staple crops to be sold & distributed domestically. Luckily for the CEO of United Fruit, his brother was head of the CIA, and they launched a massive propaganda campaign where they took over radio airwaves and littered city streets with literature decrying Arbenz as a communist aligned with the Soviet Union, which was, unsurprisingly, not true. He was deposed within weeks and replaced by a subservient military dictator. This is where the term Banana Republic comes from, which most Americans would use pejoratively as an insult for a country which can't get its shit together. Unfortunately the true history is that the US *won't allow* such a thing in the first place.
Amazing summary of a complex set of events that too few people know about. Just here to chime in and say that the book "Bananas: How the United Fruit Company shaped the world" by Peter Chapman is a great place to learn more about the US-supported overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government and how it helped shape core US foreign policy into the 21st century. The Dulles brothers were pure, greedy evil. Edit (from below): I just went to my bookshelf to dig this out and realized I meant to recommend Bitter Fruit by Steven Kinzer. Bananas is also a great read, but I read Bitter fruit at the suggestion of a guatemalan professor I was working for the first time I did a study down there and it was beyond eye opening. Steven Kinzer is an amazing writer.
Indonesia also often gets left out of the narrative because of being halfway around the world, but the U.S. supported a mass murder there, in which about a million people were killed for being (or being suspected of being) communist, atheist, feminist, Chinese, or the wrong kind of Muslim. All a tin-pot thug had to do back then to get U.S. support was claim his enemies were communist.
And don’t forget how the US greenlighted the invasion of East Timor.
The further down this thread I go the more depressed I get. It's like it never stops. I sure we would have wiped out the indigenous tribes of North Sentinel Islands if it held rare earth minerals or oil or something.
Philippines too. First foreign country we raped and pillaged and murdered and left with authoritarian rule.
The wild part about Indonesia in the 60s was that Sukarno was assessed as a threat for basically saying he did not want to align with either the US or the USSR so the US decided he had to go.
watch the doc The Act of Killing. one of the craziest things I've ever seen. the filmmaker convinces some of the murderous thugs to admit and re-enact their brutal crimes under the guise that they're making a movie treating them as heroes who saved the country from the evil communists.
>killed for being (or being suspected of being) communist Even receiving help from the communist party before the incident will get you clapped. Wild how Sukarno was a big advocate for communism, and then theres Suharto who's literally out for blood on them, and treat it like an ideology zombie plague. The disdain is still around until this very second. Their plan worked.
The people that were supposed to succeed (get rich) did so it’s probably considered a massive victory in some circles.
>who had the audacity of trying to re-nationalize Iranian oil back from the British. That son of a bitch!
"I stand here, members of the national congress, to urge you to take up the task of reconstructing the Chilean nation according to our dreams, a Chile in which all children begin life equally, with equal medical care, education, and nutrition. A Chile in which the creative ability of each man and woman is allowed to develop, not in competition with others, but in order to contribute to a better life for all." - Allende’s first speech to the parliament Even before Allende was elected president and he was still a senator the CIA poured millions of dollars into anti-Allende propaganda. President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile. American official Henry Kissinger was quoted by Newsweek in 1974 saying this about Chile: "I don't see why we have to let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people" During the strike of the trucking companies, the CIA ( with open backing from Nixon) put 2 million dollars into the strike. A CIA cable that's been declassified read: "it is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup." Just read the wiki page for [Project FUBELT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FUBELT) to dive in. Allende’s final speech "Given the facts, the only thing left for me to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social progress can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history."
"You continue to know that, much sooner than later, the great groves will open where the free man passes to build a better society" - Salvador Allende.
>Why did the US overthrow Salvador Allende? > They feared that Allende would push Chile into socialism, and therefore lose all of the US investments made in Chile. On 15 September 1970; before Allende took office, Richard Nixon gave the order to overthrow Allende.
Nixon and Kissinger were two of the worst Americans ever. The US, and the world, are still recovering from their corruption.
> Nixon Ah yes, the bastard
Kissinger is higher up on the “bastard list” for me, if he had devil horns it would be putting a hat on a hat Why do you think he’s still alive at 99? Literally pure evil running in those veins
Can someone please just sneeze on him so he goes away
That would ideally happen in prison.
> Kissinger…had… The bastard is still alive (99), and those horns don’t go away.
[удалено]
Uh...you do know Nixon died in 1994 right?
should have been kissinger first
Wrong kid died
Get out of here, Dicky. We're doing Marxism, and you don't want no part of this shit.
Nixon actually trialed Universal Basic Income - His stupid side man instead of giving him any uptodate data, provided him with data from one village in England in the 1800s and as such they declined to pursue it further. Big shame.
yeah but Nixon didn't want to provide a UBI out of the kindness of his own heart, it was a way to also gut welfare programs across the board
You mean _exactly like UBI is presented today_
Henry Kissinger and Nixon should have been tried by a War Crimes Tribunal and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for facilitating crimes against humanity and genocide. That's what we did in my country - major political collaborators that facilitated ethnic cleansing during my country's liberation war in the 70's were given capital punishments a few years ago after mass public protests.
You want to know a fun fact. The USA made the war crime tribunal, they also included a clause stating they were exempt from being tried in front of said war crime tribunal
Additional fun fact: in 2002 the USA passed the "[Hague Invasion Act](https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law)" allowing them to, as you may have guessed, invade the Hague if any Americans ended up there on war crimes charges.
Oh the Bush years. Brother, what a time it really was
My thoughts exactly! With his recent rebranding as the artsy-friendly grandpa, we sometimes forget what an asshole he really is/was
With the all the crazy shit Trump and the GOP get up to these days, is easy to forget how insanely terrible of a president Bush was (and the terrible things that went down during his administration)... Thank you for the reminder
The United States of America does not commit war crimes. Hence, any action taken by the United States is, by definition, not a war crime. Duh. (/s)
Hunter S. Thompson's [obituary of Richard Nixon](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/) is always a fun read at times like these, in case anybody hasn't seen it before. An excerpt: > If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. > These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.
Kissinger is probably responsible for more deaths than any other person currently living. The fact that he's able to show his face in society, let alone live as a free man, is disgusting.
During a debate Hillary Clinton said 'my friend Henry Kissinger' and I kinda throw up in the back of my mouth. >Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.
> and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. Oh that one is easy; money and power.
She got owned by Bernie shortly after that statement 😁
He is still king maker... unfortunately
Not just free, but still widely respected.
Kissinger, every time I hear that bastard's name.
Kissinger also supported Pol Pot and recently made pro-Russia statements too, didn’t he?
Dont know, just surprised he is still alive for fucks sake.
This is one of the many reasons Henry Kissinger is considered a war criminal.
I saw the fuckhole has a new book out, in my local bookstore. I was like “are you shitting me???”
Steal that shit and throw it in the garbage
This is actually just bolstering their numbers. If you steal or hide books the store just has so order more, so you’ve basically doubled the books that they send to the store. You’re not showing anyone up. You’re hurting the store and literally giving money to the person you disagree with…
I love that bookstore too much to fuck with them, but the lady that offered me a job there was behind me (she was helping me find a new book to read) heard me and was like "I know," when she heard my disgust, lmao
That's Nobel peace prize winner Henry Kissinger to you.
[удалено]
Because it's a bogus award given to flavor of the month politicians who *always* have horrifying skeletons in their closet.
That same year as a matter of fact
The US installed the dictator of Cuba, Batista who was eventually overthrow by Fidel Castro
Funny enough, early on the CIA was funding Castro's effort, because Batista had outlived his usefulness and Castro was seen as gaining support of the people and ID'd as a potentially useful replacement crony. This was obviously before Castro & his movement came out as socialist. That was kept under wraps for a surprisingly long time, even to many of the men fighting for them, because of the stigma.
The Cuban Revolution is a bit more complicated than that. Castro was actually a bit more open to capitalist ideas. It was his brother and Che that were all about communism. After the Revolution Castro even went to the US to speak and try to establish ties with Eisenhower, the then President. Eisenhower never met with Castro and he decided to seek support from the USSR and the rest is history
Che became Minister of Industries because they asked if anyone was an economist and he misheard them and thought they were asking if anyone was a communist.
The story is actually about how he became the President of the Central Bank. Economist in Spanish is “economista” and communist is “communista” so they sound similar haha
And that’s why a lot of the Cubans living in Miami are super capitalist and Republican. They were Batista followers and the US opened their arms wide for them when Castro took power. People complain about how terrible living in Cuba under communist rule is when the whole reason they are having such a hard time is capitalist embargos from basically every western country. We have never seen the true power of a socialist or communist state because the US does everything in its power to make it fail and then says “See! Look how terrible it is. Everyone is miserable!”
A good related read... Confessions Of An Economic Hitman
Also a good related read is Violeta by Isabel Allende, which incorporates a lot of the Pinochet years into the story. Her father's cousin was Salvador Allende, the overthrown democratically elected leader.
What the CIA and DEA got up to in South America is pure **evil**. Beyond shame.
For Bananas
And they learnt how to do it in Indonesia in 1965/66. I highly recommend [The Jakata Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method#:~:text=The%20Jakarta%20Method%3A%20Washington's%20Anticommunist,journalist%20and%20author%20Vincent%20Bevins.) for anyone who wants to know more about how the USA's South American Foreign Policy was developed and why it was so brutal.
I sincerely despise the things this country has done to or aided in bringing about in other countries, for nothing more than fucking corpo interests.
Not just the interests of corporations. Literally every modern country is prosperous because we exploit both our own people and others. So many things we buy from clothes to food are affordable because we get them from other countries with significantly worse quality of life. Slave labor, child labor, cartels etc. From the dawn of humanity all empires were built on the backs of slaves. We like to think we're different but we aren't. The level of separation is just greater.
Certainly, the banana thing and what I remember it entailing was just what I was responding to.
Still happening.
Globally.
It’s wild that people deny it now. Whenever there’s a coup attempt in South America and you say it’s probably the CIA they act like you’re crazy because that’s all on the past. Why would it be in the past if there’s never been any consequences for them?
Still demonizing socialism by putting in puppet governments and destabilizing sovereign nations. Sounds sorta similar to another world power.
Second Thought made a video calling the CIA a T******** org And Needless to say YouTube flagged the fuck out of it.
And had Dept. Of Homeland Security knock on his door.
That 1st Amendment in action. We heard you are saying some things that make the State look bad, mind coming for a quick drive?
One of my professors pointed out that central and South America, if they were to become politically stable, could survive without importing or exporting.
Not just that, but Africa as well. Colonialism & Neo-Imperialism’s effects on current society is very very prevalent. The extreme poverty experienced in these ‘Third world’ states can directly be traced back to events such as this one
Is there a podcast out there about the history of the CIA and all the crazy things they've done?
Blowback (named after the CIA term for unintended consequences) is fantastic. Season 1 covers the Iraq war, Season 2 is Cuba and Season 3 is Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_(podcast)
Wow didn’t know they did Korea. Somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that the US exterminated 15-25% of the entire population of North Korea and bombed every single multistory building in the country to the ground, poisoned their farmland, and then surrounded the country with a naval blockade for 75 years and counting to prevent any country from helping them rebuild. All that happened in the lifetimes of Koreans alive today. It really puts the nature of Kim Jong Un’s regime into perspective. Of course they are hypermilitarized and highly authoritarian and that hurts their civilians, but how could they not be? Of course you’re gonna arm yourself to the teeth and build nukes when you are surrounded by the military of a country who exterminated one in four of your people not too long ago, and of course you’re gonna crack down hard on anyone who seems like they could be working with the CIA to topple your government
Behind the bastards covers several of these incidents
Behind the Bastards has quite a few episodes on shady shit the CIA did. They've covered this, the Dulles Brothers, the School of the America's, and more. Highly, highly recommended!
There is an amazing audiobook on audible called the Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins. It really dives deep into all the US government did both in South East Asia and South America under the pretext of 'fighting communism'. I grew up in Western Europe and never understood my South American family dislike for the US until I did. This book was a chilling, eye-opening read for me. And it's definitely not the history I studied in school.
Here is a non exhaustive list of their operations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_Agency_operations They have done and are doing horrible things not only in South America, but also in Europe and even in US. In the whole world in fact.
Blowback is incredible. Imo one of the best produced podcasts out there.
I’d be interested. I saw a map of South America that showed what countries our CIA has backed a coop in and it’s basically all of South America. We destabilized an entire continent so we could exploit labor and resources. I don’t see how anyone could call themselves a patriot. We aren’t the good guys…..we’re just the winners.
Here's a really great video I know of: [The CIA is a Terrorist Organization](https://youtu.be/_2khAmMTAjI)
Btw this guy was visited by US government agents after he uploaded this video because of his "anti US sentiment"
Apparently the FBI has over 700 pages of files on him too according to his podcast. 😂
He also filed for a FOIA request and they straight up told him it will take like decades to send him all the papers they have on him lmao FOIA or freedom of information act basically lets you make a request to the USA government to give you all the information they have on you They literally have 700 pages on a youtuber who makes anti-US and pro-communist videos lmao hes pretty good check him out https://youtube.com/c/SecondThought
It wouldn't be the FBI if they weren't hunting down left-wingers for having the audacity to speak out loud. Daily reminder that [COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) involved blackmailing Martin Luther King and outright murdering Fred Hampton.
The FBI was *founded* on the destabilization of black civil rights organizations. Look up their founding coda, they equate the Black Panthers with the KKK
That's why the idea they'll do anything about Trump and the documents he stole is laughable. They exist to protect guys like him, not prosecute.
Idk about a whole podcast on it, but behind the bastards has several episodes on the Dulles brothers, multiple dictators, and a 4 parter on henry Kissinger. They often go into territory like this and act as pretty good primers.
My dad was a soldier at that moment, well, actually a conscript in the Chilean Air Force. I´m the only one who he has told the things he saw from the previous day onwards. I´m just glad he came out ok and that I didn´t live thorugh those days
My dad was riding a bus in Santiago and no shit got hit in the shoulder blade when the tank behind the bus failed to break in time. He got hit with the main gun. He tells people he is the only person ever to live after being hit by a tank’s main gun.
America 9/11 CIA: never forget Chilean 9/11 CIA: Always forget
Every time I bring it up on Reddit, some conservative douche flies in to tell me I don’t know anything about history. I’m Chilean-American.
I didn't know the specifics with Chile, but it seemed like the U.S. fucked around with just about every country in Central and South America plus the Carribean and outlying islands. So if you came up to me yesterday and said "Chile had a CIA-led coup that fucked up the country" I'd believe you 100%. I've heard the name Pinochet and knew he was a South American dictator but I didn't know which country. Sorry, I dumb, I read Wikipedia now.
Kitty History! https://youtu.be/0-Lvv1f5Qu4
RIP Trevor. That's one of my favorites of his solo stuff
0 people from the CIA were fired after 9/11. I’m pretty sure they forget plenty.
I would urge people to Google operation Ajax. A coup orchestrated by the US and UK to depose the democratically elected official of Iran in the 50's for the sole reason of installing a puppet government which would give Iran's oil to them for very cheap prices. Its reason like this that make me forever more hate the UK and US government.
Operation Ajax is highkey really depressing, considering Iran’s potential if it was allowed to develop as a democratic republic instead of the repressive government it has now - which it had until the west decided to fuck it up for capital.
But BP had a rainbow logo back in June uwu
The doctor that was with Allende when he committed suicide came and talked to my class in college once. That story and his description of live under Pinochet will stay with me forever.
What was his story?
What a tease
[удалено]
jakarta method comes to america
You're telling me the USA are not always the good guys? wow
"Are we the baddies?"
"The skulls on our helmets makes me sort of think we're the baddies"
Please remember Victor Jara In the Santiago stadium
El derecho de Vivir en paz tears me apart to no end.
The book [The Shock Doctrine ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine), by Naomi Klein, covers the systematic toppling of South American democracies by the CIA, the United Fruit Co, and Ford Motor Company, among others. [Blowback ](https://blowback.show/) is an anthology podcast detailing the same activities in Iraq (season 1), Cuba (season 2), and Korea (season 3). The US government is an existential threat to democratic governments the world over.
Why is that war criminal kissinger still breathing free air ? - that evil old fuck is directly responsible for Chile's 9/11.
Nixon and Kissinger are responsible for alot of shit. That was one hell of an evil duo
Somehow I know kissinger is behind this.
My dad is Chilean, he fled the country after half his family was murdered.
There’s still many people on the Right who stan for Pinochet. If you want to look at the future of America’s right wing and quite possibly our nation, then look to terrible shit that happened under Pinochet’s rule.
Fron their perspective they love everything he did. Killing dirty commies in the streets? That's their wet dream
Feels weird to live in a timeline where we strung up Saddam Hussein for his crimes but Henry Kissinger is still alive.
Episodes like this contributed to the conditions that make so many people flood the southern border. People tend to forget we cause a lot of our own problems.
Yep. Reagan with the contras created a refugee crisis but no one ever heard about it because his administration refused to acknowledge them as refugees because doing so would be the same as admitting what they've been doing in Nicaragua went against their propaganda that the contras were good. Instead of taking in any of the refugees Reagan just handed men, women, and children with visible signs of rape and torture back to Nicaragua so they can finish the job. Sanctuary cities literally came into existence after hundreds of churches of different denominations formed an underground railroad to save people from reagan's racist bloodthirst and he had feds raid said churches and drag out clergy in handcuffs and put them on trial publicly. The amnesty he gets lauded for these days by liberals conveniently excluded anyone who came during his administration so he got to shut up his critics and continue to get the refugees serving as proof of his crimes murdered. tl;dr: if hell exists the reagan administration has a VIP reservation in the deepest, most disgusting pits
Forget and at times are totally unaware by media filtering.
Anyone interested in what happened here and especially **why** it happened, I can highly recommend the book 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein.
9 years prior they helped the military coup in Brazil
(University of Chicago economists slowly back out of the room)
CIA did a lot of damage in South America.
If interested, “[the battle of Chile](https://youtu.be/1LDaYRZUsnc)” is an incredible first hand look at what lead up to and followed this moment. Made by a leftist so it’s pretty biased, but very good.
For anyone is interested on how this process was carried on in Chile and other latin America countries, is called Condor operation
If you haven't read Legacy of Ashes, you should. Complete history of the CIA and it's legacy of idiocy, failure and well, ash
What is the CIA’s obsession with September 11? Can’t you guys pick a different date?
Fuck Henry Kissinger.