If you were Iranian and learned that U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton wanted to attack your country, wouldn\u2019t you feel terrified?<\/p>\n
But we\u2019re taught to dismiss that.<\/p>\n
The training begins early:\u00a0 Complete the assignment. Get good grades.\u00a0 Insulate your life. Automate your soul.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t worry about U.S. bombs pulverizing Baghdad or U.S.-funded death squads mutilating peasants in Latin America.<\/p>\n
Ignore how the CIA, Agency for International Development, and National Endowment for Democracy subvert foreign societies through coups and pre-coup planting of false propaganda, riot instigation, character assassination, bribery, campaign funding, and economic sabotage.<\/p>\n
In 1953, the Eisenhower administration, with the Rockefeller Foundation\u2019s former chair, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and CIA Director Allen Dulles, engineered a coup that replaced Iran\u2019s Mohammad Mossadegh with the Shah, who reigned over more than two decades of poverty, torture, and oppression.\u00a0 In violation of Iran\u2019s sovereignty and neutrality, the Allies previously had invaded Iran during both World Wars for oil and railroads.<\/p>\n
The democratically-elected Mossadegh had led the popular campaign to nationalize Britain\u2019s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose bank was a client of Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles brothers\u2019 law firm.\u00a0 Now with the Shah reinstated, Rockefeller\u2019s descendant Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon) arrived, another Sullivan & Cromwell client. Rockefeller\u2019s Chase Manhattan Bank arrived to protect the Shah\u2019s fortune.\u00a0 Northrop Aircraft arrived, and the Shah obsessively imported US arms. The CIA trained SAVAK, the Shah\u2019s brutal internal security.<\/p>\n
In 1954, a Eisenhower-engineered coup replaced Guatemala\u2019s Jacobo \u00c1rbenz with Castillo Armas, whose regime tortured, murdered, banned labor unions, and halted agrarian reform.\u00a0 Four decades later, thanks to US funding and weaponry, 200,000 had been killed. U.S. policymakers disliked \u00c1rbenz because he\u2019d taken land from a Sullivan & Cromwell client, United Fruit Company, for distribution to peasants.\u00a0 Previously, the US-supported dictator Jorge Ubico had cruelly subjugated peasants while giving United Fruit financial concessions and free land.<\/p>\n
In 1961, a Kennedy-instigated coup murdered and replaced the Congo\u2019s nationalist Patrice Lumumba with Mo\u00efse Tshombe, leader of Congo\u2019s province, Katanga.\u00a0 U.S. policymakers, craving Katanga\u2019s minerals, wanted their man Tshombe to either rule the Congo or help Katanga secede. By 1965, the U.S. was supporting Mobutu Sese Seko, whose terrifying repression spanned more than three decades.<\/p>\n
In 1964, a Johnson-engineered coup replaced Brazil\u2019s Jo\u00e3o Goulart, later killed, with a military dictatorship that took over labor unions, brutalized priests, and perpetrated widespread atrocities for two decades.\u00a0 Goulart, neutral in the Cold War, had allowed Communists to participate in government and had nationalized an International Telephone and Telegraph Company subsidiary. ITT\u2019s president was friends with CIA Director John McCone, who later worked for ITT.<\/p>\n
In 1965, after a botched 1958 Eisenhower-instigated coup against Indonesia\u2019s Sukarno, another coup installed Suharto, whose regime murdered between 500,000 and 1 million Indonesians.\u00a0 The CIA provided lists of thousands of suspected Communists for Indonesia\u2019s army to kill. Appalled at Sukarno\u2019s Cold War non-alignment, the CIA had been concocting a pornographic video of Sukarno to discredit him.<\/p>\n
In 1971, a Nixon-Kissinger-instigated coup replaced Bolivia\u2019s Juan Torres, later killed, with Hugo B\u00e1nzer, who arrested thousands and routinely violated human rights.\u00a0 Nixon and Kissinger, a Rockefeller associate, feared Torres would make Gulf Oil Company (later Chevron) share profits with Bolivians.<\/p>\n
In 1973, a Nixon-Kissinger-engineered coup replaced Chile\u2019s Salvador Allende, who was killed, with Augusto Pinochet, whose reign of terror murdered thousands for more than a decade.\u00a0 The Rockefeller-organized Business Group for Latin America, including ITT, PepsiCo, and Anaconda Mining Company, covertly supported anti-Allende campaigns.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re taught the U.S. brings freedom to the world.\u00a0 But what freedom is this? The freedom to live without your parents who\u2019ve been murdered?\u00a0 The freedom to be tortured for caring about the poor?<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re not being brainwashed that all this is in honor of the secular god Freedom, we\u2019re being brainwashed that it\u2019s for Jesus himself.\u00a0 U.S. troops preparing to invade Fallujah, Iraq were blessed by their Navy chaplain who dared to parallel their impending assault with Jesus\u2019 entry into Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
So why is Iran, rather than the U.S., considered dangerous?\u00a0 Why is Venezuela an enemy? Because they\u2019ve broken the Four Commandments of the benighted clique who crafts U.S. foreign policy:<\/p>\n
Look what befell Ecuador\u2019s former President Correa.\u00a0 He sued Chevron, reduced poverty, joined Venezuela and Cuba\u2019s regional economic group, granted asylum to Julian Assange, and refused to renew the U.S. military\u2019s 10-year lease on a base in 2009.\u00a0 In 2010, this popular president was nearly killed by rioting police. And we\u2019re to believe the U.S. clique was uninvolved?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re ruled by a mentally ill breed whose consciousness is in their wallets, not in their hearts, and who deny us what\u2019s needed most to nurture world peace:\u00a0 the freedom to care.<\/p>\n
UPDATE <\/strong>(8 Sep 2019): Kristin Christman: I offer my apologies for a mistake. I wrote that a Kennedy-instigated coup murdered Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, when, in fact, it was Eisenhower who circumlocuitously gave the order for the assassination. The charismatic Lumumba, determined to keep the mineral-rich Congo neutral in the Cold War, was brutally killed on January 17, 1961, three days prior to Kennedy’s inauguration. The murder was not made public until a month later. Kennedy was greatly shocked by the news, for he had even suggested the possibility of supporting the release of Lumumba and integrating him into the Congolese government. The Kennedy administration, however, ended up supporting the cruel and repressive Mobutu, who had been present during Lumumba’s beatings. Worldwide demonstrations condemned the assassination of this inspiring and courageous leader, and in 2002, the Belgian government apologized for its major part in the murder and set up a fund to promote democracy in the Congo. The CIA has never admitted to its own lead role.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
________________________________________________<\/p>\n
This article was first published July 21, 2019 in the<\/em> Albany Times Union.<\/p>\n
Kristin Y. Christman is a contributing author to the forthcoming anthology <\/em>Bending the Arc (SUNY Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you were Iranian and learned that U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton wanted to attack your country, wouldn\u2019t you feel terrified? But we\u2019re taught to dismiss that. The training begins early: Complete the assignment. Get good grades. Insulate your life. Automate your soul. Don\u2019t worry about U.S. bombs pulverizing Baghdad or U.S.-funded death squads mutilating peasants in Latin America. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":124780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[120,267,504,291,109,287,70,126,118],"class_list":["post-138434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-conflict","tag-geopolitics","tag-international-relations","tag-military","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}