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Minnesota who was assasinated before the
2002 election by the conservative white trash
that rules this country so they could take
control of the senate and ram their agenda
down the throats of the american people
(who will transfer it back to him after he leaves
office) defrauded the government billions of
dollars via Tenet Healthcare. I meant to say HCA
Healthcare. See article below. After pulling off
such a successful scam the senate criminals
decided he was worthy to be their fearless leader.
Missouri who was assasinated right
before the 2000 election on behalf of
criminal conservatives who have taken
over our government in order to pass
legislation on behalf of criminals in the
energy, healthcare and Tobacco
industries and force their ideology on the
world. Their agenda is to have an
income distribution like Latin America.
Watch the movie Seven Days in May.
country the past twenty years he would win in a landslide. But of course the US totalitarian keepers of the empire wouldn't
allow him to do that.
Now the conservative criminals via the EU are forcing the Landesbanken in Germany to fuction as privatized banks for
ideological reasons. They might admit that the key to sucess of German industry is due to the low interest loads and the
special relationship they have with the government owned banking system. They don't care. These sick fuckers just want to
fuck everything up they can get their hands on. The sooner these sick fucks are exterminated the better we will all be.
Democracy inaction
If U.S. officials who are complaining about election fraud in Ukraine applied the same standards in Ohio, then our own
presidential election certainly was stolen.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James K. Galbraith
Nov. 30, 2004 | The election was stolen. That's not in doubt. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted it. The National
Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute both admitted it. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana -- a
Republican -- was emphatic; there had been "a concerted and forceful program of Election Day fraud and abuse"; he "had
heard" of employers telling their workers how to vote; yet he had also seen the fire of the resisting young, "not prepared to
be intimidated."
In Washington, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski demanded that the results be set aside and a new vote
taken, under the eye -- no less -- of the United Nations. In the New York Times, Steven Lee Myers decried "the use of
government resources on behalf of loyal candidates and the state's control over the media" -- practices, he said, that were
akin to those in "Putin's Russia."
Personally, I don't know whether the Ukrainian election was really stolen. I don't trust Lugar, Powell or the National
Democratic Institute. It's obvious that U.S. foreign policy interests, rather than love of democracy for its own sake, are behind
this outcry. Russia backed the other candidate in Ukraine. For Brzezinski, doing damage to Russia is a hobby.
But if the Ukraine standard were applied in Ohio -- as it should be -- then the late lamented U.S. election certainly was
stolen. In Ohio, the secretary of state in charge of the elections process was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in the state.
He obstructed the vote count systematically -- for instance, by demanding that provisional ballots without birth dates on their
envelopes be thrown out, even though there is no requirement for that in state law. He also required that provisional ballots
be cast in a voter's home precinct, ensuring that there would be no escape from long lines. Republicans fielded thousands
of election challengers to Democratic precincts, mainly to try to intimidate black voters and to slow down the voting process.
A recount, demanded and paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties, has been stalled in court, so that it won't possibly
upset the certification of Ohio's electoral votes.
In Franklin County, Ohio, there was rampant abuse, with voting machines added in Republican precincts and taken away in
Democratic ones, as documented by the Columbus Dispatch. The result was a crippling pileup at the polls; many thousands
did not vote because they simply could not afford to wait. I witnessed this with my own eyes. And Sen. Lugar could have, too,
for much less than the price of airfare to Kiev.
According to an article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: "The man running the show in Franklin County was Board of
Elections Director Matt Damschroder, former head of the county's Republican Party ... Damschroder's official records also
show that while desperate poll workers called his office throughout the day, at least 125 machines were held back at the
opening of the polls and an additional 68 were never deployed. Thus while thousands of inner city voters stood in the rain,
were told their cars would be towed, and were then forced to vote in five minutes or less, Damschroder sat on machines that
could have significantly sped the process."
These are the established facts. Eyewitness reports of other forms of abuse include malfunctioning voting machines in
Youngstown, a mysterious lockdown of the vote count in Warren County and lesser incidents that run into the thousands.
And then there are allegations of irregularities in the count -- how solid these are, one does not know. Taken together, are
these enough to change the outcome? No one can say. But the same is true in Kiev. And there, allegations by the defeated
opposition are taken in good faith, and are quite enough to satisfy international observers and the government of the United
States.
So where is the press? Why aren't there more stories on Ohio? Why is there no national pressure for a prompt statewide
recount? Why no continuing outcry? Why no demand -- as our friends are making with strong American support in Ukraine
-- that the election results in Ohio be set aside and a new vote held? Why has our election, with all its thuggery, been
forgotten just three weeks after it occurred?
One reason, of course, is that the U.S. government gives direction in these matters, here at home as well as around the
world. And our press, like that in "Putin's Russia," follows suit. Our political leaders, if one could call them that, stay silent
and move on. They are terrified of being mocked and bullied by the press.
Another reason is that in Ohio, pissed-off voters are well behaved. They are working the hearings process, the recount
process and the unhearing, unseeing courts. In Kiev, by contrast, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are on the
streets, staying there overnight in the bitter cold, bringing the government to a halt and the world to attention.
We'll get our democracy back, one of these days, when the Democratic Party has a mass base and is prepared to use it in
the same way.
Good Things Happening in Venezuela
By Michael Parenti
printer friendly version
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Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered the great class divide in that country. On my connecting
flight from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her
prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chavez.
Unfortunately, I was right.
Our conversation moved along famously until we got to the political struggle going on in Venezuela. “Chavez,” she hissed,
“is terrible, terrible.” He is “a liar.” He “fools the people” and is “ruining the country.”
She owns an upscale women’s fashion company with links to prominent firms in the United States. When I asked how Chavez
has hurt her business, she said, “Not at all.” But many other businesses, she quickly added, have been irreparably
damaged as has the whole economy. She went on denouncing Chavez in sweeping terms, warning me of the national
disaster to come if this demon continued to have his way.
Other critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of attack: weak on specifics, but strong in venom, voiced
with all the ferocity of those who fear that their birthright (that is, their class advantage) is under siege because others below
them on the social ladder are now getting a slightly larger slice of the pie.
In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Before Chavez, most of the poor had never
seen a doctor or dentist. Their children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The neoliberal
market “adjustments” of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in
consumer goods. Successive Administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and nothing about the growing gap
between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation.
Far from ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:
A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been instituted—this past March a large
landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes
Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school enrollment
The government has set up a marine conservation program and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of
indigenous peoples
Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers
Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry—80 percent of which is still publicly owned—have been halted and
limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration
Chavez kicked out U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in
Colombia
“Bolivarian Circles” have been organized throughout the nation, neighborhood committees designed to activate citizens at
the community level to assist in literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and other public services
The government hires unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair streets and neglected drainage and water systems
in poor neighborhoods
Then there is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in Chavez’s home state of Barinas. The staff consisted of four
dentists, two of whom were young Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men who were there on a one-year
program. The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not have enough work. There were millions of
people who needed treatment, but care was severely rationed by one’s ability to pay. Dental care was distributed like any
other commodity, not to everyone who needed it, but only to those who could afford it.
When the free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with people seeking dental care. No one was turned away. Even
opponents of the Chavez government availed themselves of the free service, temporarily putting aside their political
aversions.
Many of the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along with some of the clinical supplies and
pharmaceuticals) come from Cuba. Chavez has also put Venezuelan military doctors and dentists to work in the free clinics.
Meanwhile, much of the Venezuelan medical establishment is vehemently opposed to the free clinic program, seeing it as a
Cuban communist campaign to undermine medical standards and physicians’ earnings. That low-income people are
receiving medical and dental care for the first time in their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries much
weight among the more “professionally minded” practitioners.
I visited one of the government-supported community food stores that are located around the country, mostly in low income
areas. These modest establishments sell canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some produce and fruits at well below
market price, a blessing in a society with widespread malnutrition.
Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlepeople and made staples more affordable for residents. Most of
these markets are run by women. The government also created a state-financed bank whose function is to provide low-
income women with funds to start cooperatives in their communities.
There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in Caracas was started by turning a waste dump into a shoe factory
and a T-shirt factory. Financed with money from the Petroleum Ministry, the coop has put about 1,000 people to work. The
workers seem enthusiastic and hopeful.
Surprisingly, many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker cooperatives. Or perhaps it’s not surprising, given the
near monopoly that private capital has over the print and broadcast media. The wealthy media moguls, all vehemently anti-
Chavez, own four of the five television stations and all the major newspapers.
The person most responsible for Venezuela’s revolutionary developments, Hugo Chavez, has been accorded the usual ad
hominem treatment in the U.S. news media. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle described him as “Venezuela’s
pugnacious president.” An earlier Chronicle report (November 30, 2001) quotes a political opponent who calls Chavez “a
psychopath, a terribly aggressive guy.” The London Financial Times sees him as “increasingly autocratic” and presiding
over something called a “rogue democracy.”
In the Nation (May 6, 2002), Marc Cooper—one of those Cold War liberals who nowadays regularly defends the U.S.
empire—writes that the democratically-elected Chavez speaks “often as a thug,” who “flirts with megalomania.” Chavez’s
behavior, Cooper rattles on, “borders on the paranoiac,” is “ham-fisted demagogy” acted out with an “increasingly autocratic
style.” Like so many critics, Cooper downplays Chavez’s accomplishments and uses name-calling in place of informed
analysis.
Other media mouthpieces have labeled Chavez “mercurial,” “besieged,” “heavy-handed,” “incompetent,” and “dictatorial,” a
“barracks populist,” a “strongman,” a “firebrand,” and, above all, a “leftist.” It is never explained what “leftist” means.
A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of social resources and human services and who supports
the kinds of programs that the Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a rightist is someone who opposes such
programs and seeks to advance the insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.) The term “leftist” is
frequently bandied about in the U.S. media, but seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined,
allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact, which precludes rational examination of its political content.
Meanwhile Chavez’s opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional coup in April 2002 against the democratically
elected government, are depicted in the U.S. media as champions of “pro-democratic” and “pro-West” governance. We are
talking about the free-market plutocrats and corporate-military leaders of the privileged social order who killed more people
in the 48 hours they held power in 2002 than were ever harmed by Chavez in his years of rule.
When one of these perpetrators, General Carlos Alfonzo, was hit with charges for the role he had played, the New York
Times chose to call him a “dissident” whose rights were being suppressed by the Chavez government. Four other top
military officers charged with leading the 2002 coup were also likely to face legal action. No doubt, they too will be described
not as plotters or traitors who tried to destroy a democratic government, but as “dissidents,” decent individuals who are
being denied their right to disagree with the government.
President Hugo Chavez, whose public talks I attended on three occasions, proved to be an educated, articulate, remarkably
well-informed and well-read individual. He manifests a sincere dedication to effecting some salutary changes for the great
mass of his people, a person who in every aspect seems worthy of the decent and peaceful democratic revolution he is
leading. Millions of his compatriots correctly perceive him as being the only president who has ever paid attention to the
nation’s poorest areas. No wonder he is the target of calumny and coup from the upper echelons in his own country and
from ruling circles up north.
Chavez charges that the United States government is plotting to assassinate him. I can believe it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Parenti’s recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights) and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press),
which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, The Culture Struggle will be published by Seven Stories
Press in the fall of 2005.
By FRANK RICH
Published: July 24, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH'S new Supreme Court nominee was a historic first after all: the first to be announced on TV dead center
in prime time, smack in the cross hairs of "I Want to Be a Hilton." It was also one of the hastiest court announcements in
memory, abruptly sprung a week ahead of the White House's original timetable. The agenda of this rushed showmanship -
to change the subject in Washington - could not have been more naked. But the president would have had to nominate Bill
Clinton to change this subject.
Barry Blitt
When a conspiracy is unraveling, and it's every liar and his lawyer for themselves, the story takes on a momentum of its
own. When the conspiracy is, at its heart, about the White House's twisting of the intelligence used to sell the American
people a war - and its desperate efforts to cover up that flimflam once the W.M.D. cupboard proved bare and the war went
south - the story will not end until the war really is in its "last throes."
Only 36 hours after the John Roberts unveiling, The Washington Post nudged him aside to second position on its front
page. Leading the paper instead was a scoop concerning a State Department memo circulated the week before the outing
of Joseph Wilson's wife, the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame, in literally the loftiest reaches of the Bush administration - on Air
Force One. The memo, The Post reported, marked the paragraph containing information about Ms. Plame with an S for
secret. So much for the cover story that no one knew that her identity was covert.
But the scandal has metastasized so much at this point that the forgotten man Mr. Bush did not nominate to the Supreme
Court is as much a window into the White House's panic and stonewalling as its haste to put forward the man he did. When
the president decided not to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman, why did he pick a white guy and not nominate the
first Hispanic justice, his friend Alberto Gonzales? Mr. Bush was surely not scared off by Gonzales critics on the right (who
find him soft on abortion) or left (who find him soft on the Geneva Conventions). It's Mr. Gonzales's proximity to this scandal
that inspires real fear.
As White House counsel, he was the one first notified that the Justice Department, at the request of the C.I.A., had opened
an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife. That notification came at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, but it took Mr.
Gonzales 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must "preserve all materials" relevant to the investigation.
This 12-hour delay, he has said, was sanctioned by the Justice Department, but since the department was then run by John
Ashcroft, a Bush loyalist who refused to recuse himself from the Plame case, inquiring Senate Democrats would examine this
12-hour delay as closely as an 18½-minute tape gap. "Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time
to destroy the evidence," said Senator Charles Schumer, correctly, back when the missing 12 hours was first revealed
almost two years ago. A new Gonzales confirmation process now would have quickly devolved into a neo-Watergate
hearing. Mr. Gonzales was in the thick of the Plame investigation, all told, for 16 months.
Thus is Mr. Gonzales's Supreme Court aspiration the first White House casualty of this affair. It won't be the last. When you
look at the early timeline of this case, rather than the latest investigatory scraps, two damning story lines emerge and both
have legs.
The first: for half a year White House hands made the fatal mistake of thinking they could get away with trashing the Wilsons
scot-free. They thought so because for nearly three months after the July 6, 2003, publication of Mr. Wilson's New York
Times Op-Ed article and the outing of his wife in a Robert Novak column, there was no investigation at all. Once the
unthreatening Ashcroft-controlled investigation began, there was another comfy three months.
Only after that did Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel, take over and put the heat on. Only after that did investigators
hustle to seek Air Force One phone logs and did Mr. Bush feel compelled to hire a private lawyer. But by then the
conspirators, drunk with the hubris characteristic of this administration, had already been quite careless.
It was during that pre-Fitzgerald honeymoon that Scott McClellan declared that both Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of
staff, Lewis Libby, had personally told him they were "not involved in this" - neither leaking any classified information nor
even telling any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the C.I.A. Matt Cooper has now written in Time that it was through his
"conversation with Rove" that he "learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A." Maybe it all depends on
what the meaning of "telling," "involved" or "this" is. If these people were similarly cute with F.B.I. agents and the grand jury,
they've got an obstruction-of-justice problem possibly more grave than the hard-to-prosecute original charge of knowingly
outing a covert agent.
The Clinton Vision
Noam Chomsky
Z Magazine, December 1993
At the end of September, the Clinton Administration finally addressed "the vision thing" in the domain of foreign policy, with
major addresses by the President and Secretary of State, and of particular significance, by National Security Adviser
Anthony Lake, who laid forth the intellectual foundations of the new Clinton doctrine at the Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies. A new National Export Strategy was announced that set guidelines for international
economic policy, and a White House panel on intervention applied the doctrine in this particular sphere, all within a few
days. The seriousness of the enterprise was duly recorded with such headlines as "U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed"
(Thomas Friedman, New York Times), implying a dramatic policy change.1
The new vision is based on a picture of the contemporary world that has risen well beyond opinion, to the heights of truism.
The picture is sketched eloquently by the Times chief diplomatic correspondent, Thomas Friedman: "America's victory in the
cold war," Friedman wrote a year ago, was "a victory for a set of political and economic principles: democracy and the free
market." At last, the world is coming to understand that "the free market is the wave of the future -- a future for which
America is both the gatekeeper and the model."2
The term "gatekeeper" has an ominous ring. The whole affair merits some thoughts about how we keep the gates, who we
let in, and what kind of model we are to offer to the world. We begin with Anthony Lake's address, recognized to be the
centerpiece of the new vision.
1. "From Containment to Enlargement"
A long-time liberal dove, Lake explained that "Throughout the cold war, we contained a global threat to market democracies:
now we should seek to enlarge their reach." Containment having succeeded, we can now go on to "enlargement --
enlargement of the world's free community of market democracies." The title of his address is: "From Containment to
Enlargement." That is the new vision that replaces the defensive stance of the past half century. People everywhere can
only hail this new departure, realizing that "of course" the US is unlike any other nation past or present, Lake observes, in
that "we do not seek to expand the reach of our institutions by force, subversion or repression." Commentators were duly
impressed by this enlightened stance.
A rational person who wanted to know what Russia (pre-Gorbachev) was trying to do in world affairs would, naturally, look at
what Russia did do where its influence reached, specifically, in the East European satellites. Undertaking that exercise, sane
people -- assuming that they did not simply collapse in ridicule -- would have known how to evaluate an announcement by
Leonid Brezhnev that the USSR would no longer be content with containing the Evil Empire, but would now move on to
"enlargement" of the community of free and democratic societies. Similarly, sane people who wanted to know what the US is
trying to do in world affairs would look at what it has done where its influence reached, and would evaluate the
announcement of the new vision in these terms -- again, assuming that they did not simply collapse in ridicule. It is
interesting that the questions that would occur to a moderately intelligent 10 year old do not seem to have been raised.
This stance might be justified by the argument often voiced in sophisticated circles that in the special case of the United
States, facts are irrelevant. Thus in the prestigious journal International Security, the Eaton Professor of the Science of
Government at Harvard instructs us that the United States must maintain its "international primacy" for the benefit of the
world, because its "national identity is defined by a set of universal political and economic values," namely "liberty,
democracy, equality, private property, and markets" (Samuel Huntington). Since this is a matter of definition, so the Science
of Government teaches, it would be an error of logic to bring up the factual record, and we would simply be illustrating our
silliness by doing so, as if Orwell's Winston Smith had experimented with objects scattered on a table top to test Big
Brother's denial that 2+2 = 4.3
Lacking sophistication, let us proceed nonetheless.
We might also tarry briefly on Orwell's core concerns, not given quite the prominence of his critique of the official enemy. In
an unpublished introduction to Animal Farm, Orwell wrote that "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it
is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for any official
ban." The desired outcome is attained in part by the "general tacit agreement that `it wouldn't do' to mention that particular
fact," in part as a consequence of media concentration in the hands of "wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest
on certain important topics." As a result, "Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with
surprising effectiveness."
Orwell believed that the United States was different, more free and open. That error was not made by John Dewey, more
familiar with US intellectual culture. Speaking of "our un-free press," he observed that critique of "specific abuses" is of
limited value: "The only really fundamental approach to the problem is to inquire concerning the necessary effect of the
present economic system upon the whole system of publicity; upon the judgment of what news is, upon the selection and
elimination of matter that is published, upon the treatment of news in both editorial and news columns." We should ask "how
far genuine intellectual freedom and social responsibility are possible on any large scale under the existing economic
regime." Not very far, he judged.4
The reaction to Clinton's new vision falls well within these strictures, though to document the (virtually exceptionless) pattern
of which this is a typical instance is something of a waste of time, as Orwell and Dewey recognized. The more firmly
conclusions are established that challenge system-supportive doctrine, the more they must be suppressed; if the
conclusions were established by the standards of physics, they would have to be buried so deep in the memory hole as to
be completely beyond recovery. Those who fail to grasp these simple requirements would be well advised to seek a trade
outside of the respectable intellectual culture, where the gatekeepers understand what "it wouldn't do" to say or think.
Returning to the questions that would at once occur to a naive ten year old, to evaluate the announcement of the new
vision, we turn to US behavior in regions where its influence reached. There are many choices, the US being a global power.
But the most illuminating will surely be the Western Hemisphere, where the US has long run the show virtually without
interference, so its deepest values and convictions are revealed with great clarity.
According to the doctrine that we are to accept as unquestioned truth, "throughout the Cold War we contained a global
threat to market democracies" in the Western hemisphere, never having sought to expand our power "by force, subversion,
or repression," from the days when we were "exterminating...that hapless race of native Americans...with such merciless and
perfidious cruelty" (John Quincy Adams), until the present. To put the best possible face on the higher truths that it is
unthinkable to question, let us select the peak moments of American liberalism, the days of JFK and LBJ (who far surpassed
his predecessor in his commitment to liberal ideals). Taking just the most important case of the many that come to mind, the
higher truth entails, then, that at the peak of modern liberalism, JFK and LBJ dedicated themselves to the violent overthrow
of the parliamentary government in Brazil in favor of a National Security State in order to contain a global threat to market
democracy.
So, indeed, the matter was perceived. Kennedy's Ambassador Lincoln Gordon, who moved on to Washington after helping
lay the groundwork for the coup, lauded the "democratic rebellion" of the neo-Nazi Generals as "a great victory for the free
world," "one of the major turning points in world history." "The principal purpose for the Brazilian revolution was to preserve
and not destroy Brazil's democracy," the respected liberal democratic statesman informed Congress two years later, while
the torturers and murderers were -- very visibly -- at work. It was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-
twentieth century," he testified, and should "create a greatly improved climate for private investments" -- a comment we may
file away for later reference. After leaving the State Department, Gordon went on to become the President of Johns Hopkins
University, where Lake announced the new revolution in foreign policy.
As the Generals instituted a regime of fascist terror, Brazil became "the Latin American darling of the international business
community," the business press reported. It was also hailed by the leading academic apostles of the free market, much
impressed by the purity of doctrine of the technocrats and the "miracle" they had wrought -- though in fairness, it should be
added that there were occasional reservations about the sadistic violence by which the miracle was instituted. The euphoria
persisted through the 1980s, until the fortunes of the rich began to be affected by the economic disaster, at which point the
methods that had been hailed as a "real American success story," yielding "impressive economic growth based solidly on
capitalism," were suddenly transmuted to a proof of the failure of statist interference with our market ideals; the self-
adulation, not untypical, is quoted from a highly regarded 1989 scholarly monograph by Gerald Haines, senior historian of
the CIA.5
Brazil is a highly illuminating case, perhaps the reason why "it wouldn't do" to reflect on the obvious lessons. Brazil is far and
away the most important country in Latin America, firmly under US control since 1945, when it became a "testing area for
modern scientific methods of industrial development" applied by US experts, Haines observes with pride. It is a country with
enormous resources that should be the "Colossus of the South," ranking alongside the "Colossus of the North," as predicted
early in the century. It has had no foreign enemies, and benefited not only from careful US tutelage but also from substantial
investment. It therefore shows with great clarity just what the US can achieve in "enlarging the free community of market
democracies" under conditions that are near ideal.
The successes are real enough. Brazil has enjoyed a very high growth rate, which conferred enormous wealth on everyone
except its population -- apart from the top few percent, who live at the standards of the wealthiest Westerners. It is a sharply
two-tiered society. Much of the population live at a level reminiscent of Central Africa. As Haines was hailing the success
story of American style capitalism, the UN Report on Human Development ranked this rich and privileged country in 80th
place, alongside of Albania and Paraguay. In the northeast, Brazilian medical researchers describe a new subspecies:
"pygmies," with 40% the brain capacity of humans, thanks to severe malnutrition in a region with fertile lands, owned by
large plantations that produce export crops in accord with the doctrines preached by their expert advisers. Hundreds of
thousands of children die of starvation every year in this success story, which also wins world prizes for child slavery and
murder of street children -- in some cases for export of organs for transplant, according to respected Brazilian sources.
Perhaps Brazil was unusual. We might therefore look elsewhere, perhaps Guatemala, turned into a "showcase for
capitalism" in 1954 when Washington overthrew the democratic capitalist government and soon to celebrate the fortieth year
of our achievements in exterminating another "hapless race of native Americans with such merciless and perfidious cruelty,"
along with others who were in the way. Or El Salvador, the recipient of some $6 billion in "aid" from the US in the 1980s. The
results, always well known outside of Orwell's "prevailing orthodoxy," were recently reviewed by the UN Truth Commission,
which attributed 85% of the horrendous record of atrocities to the security forces trained, armed, and advised by the US,
and another 10% to the death squads linked to them and to the wealthy business sector that the US expects to keep firmly
in power. The media meanwhile professed shock at the revelation of what they had chosen to suppress when it mattered.
The Clinton Administration responded by establishing a Commission to inquire into this grim history; its mandate was to
improve procedures, nothing more, because "We don't want to refight the battles of the 80's. We're not a house-cleaning
Adminstration." The Salvadoran government agreed, issuing an amnesty for the killers and torturers in gross violation of the
peace accords that established the Truth Commission, which stated that the guilty must be punished, and rejecting the
Truth Commission demand that the Supreme Court be dismantled in view of its record of complicity in atrocities.
Immediately after the Truth Commission report appeared, the political party of the killers (Arena), which the US continues to
support, held its convention to nominate its candidate for the coming election, Armando Calderon Sol. The party dedicated
itself anew to defending the memory of the founder, Roberto d'Aubuisson, one of Central America's great murderers, trained
at the School of the Americas, now at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Calderon Sol declared that the party is united "more than ever
to defend [d'Aubuisson's] memory," while the convention hall echoed with the Arena theme song, which pledges to make "El
Salvador the tomb where the Reds will end up" -- the term "Reds" being understood quite broadly, as events have shown.6
In El Salvador too our defense of market democracy has spared its beneficiaries no horror. The Salvadoran government
procurator for the defense of children, Victoria de Aviles, recently acknowledged that the "big trade in children in El
Salvador" involves not only kidnapping and a gratifying improvement in exports, but also their use "for pornographic videos,
for organ transplants, for adoption and for prostitution." Hardly a secret, veteran British Latin America correspondent Hugh
O'Shaughnessy observes, recalling his direct observation of an operation of the Salvadoran army in June 1982 near the
River Lempa, where the US-trained troops "had a very successful day's baby-hunting," loading their helicopters with 50
babies whose "parents have never seen them since." O'Shaughnessy's report on "Takeaway babies farmed to order"
appeared in the London Observer the same day that the Times featured Anthony Lake's uplifting and admired remarks on
"enlargement" of our traditional mission of mercy and benevolence.7
There is no need to review further how we have "contained a global threat to market democracy" in "our little region over
here," as FDR's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, described the Western hemisphere. It is enough to recall a warning
issued by Simon Bolivar in 1822, as he sought to liberate Latin America from Spanish rule: "There is at the head of this
great continent a very powerful country, very rich, very warlike, and capable of anything" -- including the evasion of
"inconvenient fact."
US power has of course reached far beyond the Western hemisphere. The obvious example that our hypothetical ten year
old would look at to evaluate the presupposed higher truth is the Philippines, which has benefited from almost a century of
US rule, tutelage, and assistance since its liberation-through-slaughter. The country is situated in the world's leading growth
area, in which it remains the sole basket case, very much on the Latin American model. Could that tell us something about
our role in advancing market democracy? One could write a revealing article reviewing how the question has been
addressed in the respectable literature; a very brief article.
We learn more about our role as "gatekeeper and model" from a World Bank study reported in the London Financial Times
just as the new vision of foreign policy was released here.8 The World Bank found that Latin America has "the most unequal
income distribution in the world," and predicted "chaos" unless governments "act aggressively against poverty," which is
truly appalling in its depth and scale. Why should Latin America win this glorious record too? Another obvious question, lying
well beyond the horizons of respectability.
Those interested in an answer might look back to 1945, when the US was setting out on its crusade to "contain the global
threat to market democracies" -- or as the senior historian of the CIA puts it, when "the United States assumed, out of self-
interest, responsibility for the welfare of the world capitalist system." In "our little region over here," our foreign enemies --
France and Britain -- were to be displaced, so we would have a free hand. That was simple enough, but another problem
arose: Latin Americans had not taken the right graduate courses and didn't understand the fundamental principles of
economic rationality, which required that their development be "complementary" to the US economy, in accord with the
sacred principle of comparative advantage. The Latin American countries advocated what a State Department officer
described as "The philosophy of the New Nationalism," which "embraces policies designed to bring about a broader
distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses." Another State Department expert reported that
"Economic nationalism is the common denominator of the new aspirations for industrialization. Latin Americans are
convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country."
These mistaken priorities ran directly counter to Washington's plans. The issue came to a head in a February 1945
hemispheric conference, where the US put forth its "Economic Charter of the Americas," which called for an end to economic
nationalism "in all its forms." The first beneficiaries of a country's resources must be US investors and their local associates,
not "the people of that country." There can be no "broader distribution of wealth" or improvement in "the standard of living of
the masses," unless, by unlikely accident, that happens to result from policies designed to serve the interests of those with
first priority.
Given US power, economic rationality prevailed, with the consequences that the World Bank now fears. All happily invisible
to the triumphalists.
Perhaps something changed in more recent years, say the 1980s, when the yearning for democracy became a leading
principle of our foreign policy, right-thinking people know. Instead of rendering my judgment, let me cite that of Reagan
insider Thomas Carothers, a State Department official in the Latin American Bureau who "worked on a variety of assistance
projects designed to promote democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean," he reports, and has written extensively on
the consequences; he has no doubts about the "sincerity" of the efforts, though even his own account suffices to show that
they were utterly cynical in conception.
Carothers finds a correlation between US influence and the rise of democracy in the hemisphere: a negative correlation.
Where US influence was least, in the southern cone, steps towards democracy took place, opposed by the Reagan
Administration, which later hastened to take credit for them. Where US influence was greatest, the effects were worst, in fact
far worse than Carothers recognizes given his crabbed conventional conception of "democracy," though he clearly
articulates the main point. Washington adopted "prodemocracy policies as a means of relieving pressure for more radical
change," he writes, "but inevitably sought only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the
traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied." Its "impulse is to promote democratic
change, but the underlying objective is to maintain the basic order of what, historically at least, are quite undemocratic
societies." The US keeps to "very limited, controlled forms of democratic change" because of its "deep fear...of populist-
based change in Latin America -- with all its implications for upsetting established economic and political orders and heading
off in a leftist direction."9
Washington's allies, therefore, are "the existing power structures," not those who work "from the bottom up to spread the
ideas and principles of a democratic society among the citizenries." These miscreants, in fact, are the ones left in ditches,
tortured and mutilated, dismissed to their proper place by the security forces we train, arm, and advise -- though awareness
of that decisive truth is too much to expect.
What of the "global threat" to the "market democracies" we were defending in Latin America? Take Brazil, where US
intelligence could find no hint of Soviet intrusion, even if that were imaginable. In fact, in "our little region" there have been
no Russians in sight, unless we virtually invited them in. It is perfectly true that targets of US attack sought help from
somewhere, and since they were not going to get it from the subordinates of the Enforcer, they ultimately turned to the
Russians, who were sometimes willing to help, for their own cynical reasons, in which case the US victims became tentacles
of the Evil Empire, whom we must destroy in self-defense.
By similar logic, a Soviet Anthony Lake could have argued that the USSR was defending freedom and democracy in
Afghanistan from the "global threat" of American imperialism and its terrorist forces -- who, since liberation from Soviet rule,
have been destroying and massacring with great zeal and success, another "inconvenient fact" that merits little notice.
There would, for example, be little utility in focusing on the exploits of the CIA favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the
world's most extreme Islamic fundamentalist fanatics, who bears primary responsibility for 30,000 deaths in the capital city of
Kabul alone according to the London Economist, surpassing Pol Pot in Phnom Penh, it appears.
Perhaps the "global threat" refers to indigenous Communists. Here there is much to say, including some reflections on the
familiar doctrine that democracy requires exclusion of "Communists" from the political system, by violence if necessary. Thus
when the US-backed terror regime was doing its work in Iran after the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup that overthrew the conservative
parliamentary government, the New York Times praised the US clients for their "long record of success in defeating
subversion without suppressing democracy," noting with pleasure the suppression of the "pro-Soviet Tudeh party," formerly
"a real menace" but "considered now to have been completely liquidated," and the "extreme nationalists" who had been
almost as subversive as the Communists -- all liquidated without suppressing "democracy." The practice is, again, standard,
and passes with little comment, given the prevailing concept of "democracy."
Still more interesting, perhaps, is the way the concept "Communist" is understood. Here the record is voluminous and
consistent: to gain the title "Communist," it is enough to work "from the bottom up," appealing to the "poor people" who "have
always wanted to plunder the rich," as John Foster Dulles described the plague. That is precisely why the US terror war in
Central America, motivated by the "sincere impulse" to bring democracy, was in large measure a war against the Church --
"Communists," in the technical sense, once the Bishops had adopted "the preferential option for the poor." Nothing changes
in this regard as new visions replace the old.
The Bush-Clinton approach to Haiti reveals the pattern of continuity with only tactical modifications. The matter requires
much more careful treatment, but a close look will show that since the military coup that overthrew President Aristide, the
basic goal has been to impose a settlement that will deny more than a figurehead role to the elected President, much
disliked in Washington and New York because of his remarkable base of support in popular organizations that threaten to
bring about functioning democracy. If Aristide can be returned alive, fine; it will offer opportunities for pieties about our
dedication to democracy. But the bottom line is that effective power must remain with the "moderate" and "progressive"
sectors of the business classes -- meaning those who do not see massacre and torture as the optimal means to dominate
and marginalize the poor majority. In the interests of "democracy," the ruling sectors will have to be "broadened" to include
the torturers and murderers as well -- "conservative critics close to the military," as the New York Times prefers to call them.
10 No problem, because the military will be professionalized by US trainers, that is, by the same people who have already
civilized the top command in Ft. Benning, including those now orchestrating the bloodbath -- facts quietly omitted from the
standard resumes.
But the government will not be "broadened" to include the overwhelming majority of the population, who are to be reduced to
traditional passivity by the effective use of terror, their organizations decimated and their leaders either killed or placed in
remote cubicles. We will then be told that this is the best form of "democracy" for backward peoples lacking our
sophistication, democratic culture, civility and respect for others, and our traditions of freedom and justice.
An important fact about our intellectual culture is that people can read and write about our long-term policies of defending
market democracy from the Communist threat without laughing. That takes no little talent. It is real tribute to the educational
institutions and the information system.
2. Defending Market Economies
Let us drop the drivel about our love of democracy and look at the market, thus at least approaching the real world. Recall
the one quoted statement of Lincoln Gordon's that does not simply send shivers up the spine: the neo-Nazi triumph should
"create a greatly improved climate for private investments," as indeed it did. It is quite true that we seek to impose market
discipline on the Third World, now including the large regions of Eastern Europe that are to return to their Third World
origins. But the odes to the market are carefully crafted to conceal two important facts. First, market discipline in the Third
World is attractive because it will leave the societies open to Western plunder. Second, the wonders of the market are for
them, not us, and have always been: every successful developed society, from Britain to the East Asian Tigers and
dramatically including the US, gained this status by radical violation of the doctrines we impose on the poor and keeps that
status in the same way.
The second prong of the new vision, Clinton's new international economic program, reflects the understanding of these
truisms. While Administration rhetoric on the marvels of free trade boomed on the front pages as part of the PR campaign to
ram through an unpopular (and in fact, highly protectionist) version of a North American "free trade" agreement (NAFTA),
the business sections reported the new National Export Strategy that is to go far beyond the "less coordinated efforts" of
Reagan and Bush, with a planned expansion of Export-Import Bank lending, which as the Reaganites had conceded in their
day, already violated GATT rules. The Clinton Administration opposes the measures it is implementing, the press reported,
because "they amount to government subsidies that distort international markets." But there is no contradiction. As
explained by Ex-Im Bank President Kenneth Brody, "by creating such a program in the United States, the Clinton
Administration would have more influence in seeking international limits on such lending." The President also approved an
independent program that would release $3 billion in loan guarantees to domestic and foreign buyers of US-built ships --
again, for the purpose of inducing others to end such gross interferences in the market, the Wall Street Journal explained.
The logic will be recognized instantly: war brings peace, crime brings law, arms production and sales bring arms reduction
and nonproliferation, overthrowing democratic governments brings "showcases for democracy," etc. In simple words,
anything goes, as long as there is a good answer to the question: "What is in it for us?"
The simple truths were underscored by Clinton's Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen: "I'm tired of a level playing field," he
said: "We should tilt the playing field for U.S. businesses. We should have done it 20 years ago." In fact, "we" (meaning
state-corporate power) have been doing it for two centuries, dramatically so in the past 50 years, even more under the
Reaganites. But that is the wrong image to convey. It is preferable to speak warmly of Carter-Reagan achievements in
moving "toward a defense buildup and less government intervention in the economy" -- Harvard economist and Wall Street
Journal contributing editor Robert Barro, pretending (it has to be a pretense) that he does not know that the Pentagon is,
and has been explicitly designed to be, a massive form of government interference in the economy to ensure that high-tech
industry feeds at the public trough.11
As I discussed here in February, the Reaganites had forged new paths in violating market orthodoxy for the benefit of US-
based corporations, but they did not go far enough to satisfy the business community, one reason for the substantial
corporate-financial support for Clinton's program as a New Democrat. And the new programs, like the old, are described in
the business press, renowned for its devotion to the needs of working people, as aimed at increasing "jobs," a term that has
taken on the meaning of the unpronounceable word "profits" in conventional Newspeak.
The phrase "What is in it for us?" is not mine. I stole it from the third component of the new Clinton vision, the decisions of
the White House panel on intervention. The Clinton panel determined to put an end to the era of altruism. No more "nice
guy," as in the days when we turned much of the world into graveyards and deserts. Henceforth the guiding consideration
will be "What is in it for us?," the words that the New York Times highlighted in its report.
Thomas Friedman's full report on the new "enlargement" doctrine fills in the picture. The National Security Adviser, he
observed, had focused on the fact "that in a world in which the United States no longer has to worry daily about a Soviet
nuclear threat, where and how it intervenes abroad is increasingly a matter of choice." That is the "essence" of the new
doctrine, Friedman emphasized, a doctrine that clearly and explicitly reflects the understanding that the "nuclear threat" was
the Soviet deterrent to US intervention. Now that the deterrent is gone, intervention can b