US in Central and South America
By Larry
Romanoff, July 01, 2023
Panama
Nicaragua
Cuba
The US, so eager today to push
China to a multi-party electoral system, has for almost two centuries destroyed
every multi-party government that refused to permit US corporate plundering,
and invariably installed a one-party dictatorship that would permit full US
control. In most cases, a populist president is elected who wants to implement
socialist reforms and remove control of the nation and its economy from the US
and its corporations. Inevitably, he is replaced, usually by assassination,
with someone more amenable to US plundering of the nation. Newspapers and
other media critical of US interference and of the US-installed dictator, are
closed down and their owners killed.
Operation Condor was a campaign of
political repression by the US government and its CIA that involved state-sponsored
assassinations and much else. The US planned, financed, coordinated and
supported with arms, these brutal civilian repressions that were implemented
during many years from about 1970 to the present day, by their right-wing
dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru
and Brazil. The US has destroyed the governments and the economies of the two
dozen countries in Central and South America, leaving a trail of insurrections,
revolutions, torture, massacre, misery and poverty. It is widely accepted in
the West that the CIA alone, doing the bidding of successive US
administrations, is directly responsible for at least 6 million civilian deaths
in these regions. The deliberate savagery of US policy and actions is sometimes
almost impossible to believe at first reading, as is the American arrogance and
sense of entitlement to nations of the world as their property. In
describing the US destruction of Nicaragua, a US official said, "Children
shouldn't disobey their parents".
The US doesn't only expend
political, military and terrorist pressure on a domestic government and the
local population. There is almost nothing the Americans won't do to malign
these unwilling nations in the eyes of the world, often mounting intense and
prolonged media campaigns intended to both create domestic pressure for change
on a local government but also to build a case to justify open military
aggression against small countries unwilling to be colonised. Listen to US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton preaching to her staff on Bolivia and
Venezuela: "The Bush administration tried to isolate them, tried to
support opposition to them, tried to turn them into international pariahs. It
didn’t work. We are going to see what other approaches might work." Democracy
and non-interference, American-style.
The US will often terrorise a
small government to adopt the American moral and Christian "value" of
a free press, at which point the CIA will immediately purchase some of the most
prominent media outlets in a nation and begin a campaign of slander and
destabilisation from inside the nation. Truth is not a consideration here. In
Venezuela, when trying to prevent the election of an anti-American president,
the US produced TV and radio ads that featured the sound of a machine gun
followed by a woman crying, "They (the anti-US candidates) killed my
children. They offer only blood and pain. I can't vote for them because they
will take my child and he will belong to the state." The US paid for full
two-page spreads in prominent local newspapers that claimed, "If you
are a mother, you will lose your house, your family and your children. Your
child will belong to the state." Many of the people involved in these
despicable propaganda campaigns were staff of the local US embassies and
consulates, local staff of US corporations, and a great many people employed by
various American Christian missionary groups.
In all of these cases I have
researched, the US history books and US government websites list US military
and other belligerent incursions as simply a move "to protect American
interests" somewhere, with almost never any details of the actual
interests being protected or the need for the protection. In many cases from
the early 1900s, as with the Honduras as an example, the US invasion was done
protect American interests by controlling the outcome of an election, activity
that was always against both US and domestic law in every case. But truly to
the Americans, the "rule of law" is a restriction only for lesser
beings. The American government and its agencies have never paid attention
to either domestic or international law.
Panama and the Canal
Panama is a tiny country in
the transition area from Central to South America, where the continental link
becomes only about 50 kms. wide, and contains the Panama Canal which permits
passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans without having to make the long
and dangerous voyage around the Southern tip of South America.
Few Americans appear to know
that Panama became a separate country only relatively recently, that it had
always been the Panama province of Columbia. About 100 years
ago the US government wanted to build a transportation canal across the narrow
isthmus, but Columbia declined the proposal when the US demanded that the
canal and surrounding land would be owned by the US as sovereign American soil
in perpetuity. So President Roosevelt sent in the US military,
"liberated" the isthmus, declared a new country named Panama,
appointed a compliant local President, and took ownership of its new
"country".
For a very long time it was
almost impossible to learn the real truth about the creation of Panama and the
story of the canal. US history texts boasted effusively about American
ingenuity and prowess in building the canal, but nowhere did they mention the
military aggression and hijacking of a country. A typical US history text tells
us without further detail, "In 1903 the United States secured the right,
by treaty, to build a canal across Panama". On the repeated occasions when
Columbia sent troops in unsuccessful attempts to un-liberate its province,
American history books and even US government websites list these events as
"putting down a local insurrection" or, sometimes, "protecting
American interests". One US university history textbook claimed the US
sent troops into Panama "to mediate a border dispute", the
dispute of course being that there was no border, that Panama was a province of
Columbia. The 'new' Panamanian constitution granted the United States the right
to "intervene in any part of Panama, to reestablish public peace and
constitutional order", and the US did so on numerous occasions,
generally to ensure a favorable outcome in Panama's "democratic"
elections. Several Panamanian presidents or candidates "died
unexpectedly" during an election campaign, and on more than one
occasion the US military had to intervene to protect their installed puppet
president from lynching by angry mobs.
Of course, the canal was every
bit as advantageous in economic and military terms as the Americans had hoped.
It saved American vessels countless billions in extra fuel costs and brought in
hundreds of billions of dollars in transit fees for the US treasury. The
canal also provided enormous political advantages since it permitted the US
military easier access to both Oceans and the Americans could control access by
the military and commercial vessels of other nations, becoming a prized tool of
US imperialism for the extortion of compliance and submission. Most
Westerners have an image of the Panama Canal as a kind of non-partisan
transportation route available to all the world's shipping, but that has never
been true. The US has repeatedly used the Canal as a negotiating tool for
Imperial compliance, and to its own military and commercial advantage. US
military vessels regularly transit through the canal, but does the world
imagine Russian vessels do the same, or that an Iranian ship, if permitted
passage at all, will pay the same transit fee as an American vessel? In fact,
one of major tools the US used to provoke Japan to attack the fleet at Pearl
Harbor was the closing of the canal to all Japanese shipping, and to all
vessels, especially those carrying oil, that were headed to Japan. When we
add the financial gains and the enormous political and military gains, the
value of the Panama Canal to America's rise, was beyond estimation.
Just so it doesn't go unsaid,
almost no benefit accrued to the Panamanian population or economy. Panama's
share of canal revenues was a pittance, and Panamanian businesses were
explicitly prohibited from providing services to the Canal Zone or ships
transiting through the Zone. The American presence and control have always been
bitterly resented by the local population, and still are today. The country has
experienced repeated riots and massive civil disruption due to American
arrogance and overt control of elections, with the locals repeatedly revolting
to overthrow the US-imposed "president". Wikipedia tells us,
"United States officials supervised elections at the request of incumbent
governments". Uh huh. But that's not their version.
The new US imperial territory
of Panama had other uses that were not widely publicised and that remained
unknown for many decades. One of these was that Panama became the location of
the world's largest and most notorious terrorist and torture training facility,
the famous US-operated "School of the Americas" where the CIA and
US military instructed and trained almost all of the world's brutal dictators
and terrorist governments in all the fine arts of torture, acts of terrorism,
sabotage, revolutions, suppression of civilian populations. Panama was also
used as a staging base for the illegal invasions of other nations in Central
and South America, as well as by the CIA for its activities in the political
destabilisation of other nations in the region. Due to Panama's location and US
control, it was also of inestimable value to the CIA for its international narcotics
trafficking operations.
The Panama Canal was built by
the US, but was financed by Jewish bankers from The City of London, and they
(or their friends) also supplied most of the labor. It isn’t widely-known, but
the Jews abducted tens of thousands of Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong to
build the canal, and the Panama railroad. This is why even today about 10% of
the population of Panama is Chinese. The Jews did the
same for the construction of the trans-continental railroads in both Canada and
the US, as well as for their mining of Guano in Peru and to work Rothschild’s
diamond and gold mines in Africa. This is why we have Chinese all over the
world today. "... the project, which employed more than 40,000 laborers,
also took immense liberties with human life. Thousands of workers were killed.
The official number is 5,609, but many historians think the real toll was
several times higher.[1]
In both Panama and North
America, many of the Chinese laborers were simply killed when the work was
completed. In Canada and the US, there are persistent tales of the Chinese
being put into small boats and pushed out into the Pacific Ocean. In Panama,
the “official story” is that the Chinese laborers, no longer having a supply of
opium after completion of the project, decided to kill themselves, primarily by
hanging themselves with their long hair, or alternatively using swords to cut
off their own heads. As James Bond would say,
“Well, that’s a neat trick”.
"The Sea Witch, owned by
Howland and Aspinwall, was 192 feet long with towering masts and a black dragon
as figurehead. Launched in 1846 for the China trade, by 1854 she was a famous
ship. The Sea Witch was the first vessel to sail from New York to San Francisco
around Cape Horn in less than 100 days. ... Many of the sea wall strollers,
eager to relieve their boredom, rowed out for a closer look at the beautiful
vessel and thereby suffered disillusionment. The Witch was filthy and stank
like a slaver. She had made the run from Canton to Panama with her holds packed
with Chinese coolies. Soon she was joined in the harbor by two other sailing
ships, equally filthy and odorous, also loaded with the Orientals. The railroad
company had purchased the services of the coolies from "a Canton labor
contractor" under a system similar to that of the British "indentured
servants" sent to Virginia and Georgia during the seventeenth century. ...
The onlookers on the sea wall noticed with amazement the great number of
Chinese discharged from each vessel “They must have been stowed in every
available nook and cranny,” reported Dr. H. D. Van Lewen.
... After being deprived of
opium, acute melancholia had struck the Chinese, Their work gradually slowed to
a halt and this morning the mass suicides had begun. “Should I live to be as
old as Methuselah, I shall never forget the sight that met my eyes that
morning,” Totten wrote. “More than a hundred of the coolies hung from the
trees, their loose pantaloons flapping in the hot wind. Some had hung
themselves with bits of rope and tough vines. Most, however, used their own
hair, looping the long queue around the neck and tying the end to a tree limb.
Crumpled Chinese bodies were scattered about everywhere on the ground like
broken dolls. Some had thrown themselves violently on their machetes. Others,
in the words of Totten, had “cut ugly crutch-shaped sticks, sharpened the ends
to a point, and thrust their necks upon them.” Still others, obviously, had
been aided in their self-destruction, their heads being almost blown off or
severed from their bodies."[2] This excerpt
applies only to the Panama railroad.
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is one of the
loveliest countries in the Americas, small, fertile and friendly. It
unfortunately also had resources of interest to US corporations, primarily
minerals including gold, silver and copper, which resulted in yet another
CIA-induced regime change and the installation of a dynasty of savage dictators
- the Somozas, father and son - who brutalised their nation for 40 years with
the approval, financing and support of the US government. Then the people
finally organised their revolution, carried out largely without arms, using
shovels and pitchforks in many cases, making Somoza flee for his life and
executing many of his Generals.
Daniel Ortega was elected
president and turned his attention to the development of his nation. The US of
course was not pleased at this tiny nation that dared to defy the great
colonial master, and for a decade or more waged one of the most inhumane and
repugnant wars of aggression ever seen. The CIA was sent in with unlimited
funding to destabilise the nation, to destroy everything Ortega tried to build,
and to bring the nation to its knees. American agents derailed trains and other
means of transporting goods, bombed energy installations and electricity
plants, destroyed communications, and much more. When Nicaragua turned to Russia
for aid in rebuilding, the CIA mined the nation's harbors so all ships would
encounter the mines, explode and sink.
The US secretly and illegally
financed the remnants of Somoza's escaped Generals - the so-called
"Contras", and the CIA trained them as a guerilla army to wreak
increased havoc on an already struggling nation. For 10 years the Americans
carried out a reprehensible and brutal campaign against this little nation.
They murdered, massacred, raped, slaughtered, countless civilians, keeping the
nation in terror to the great pleasure of President Reagan. The assault was
primarily economic, a deliberate attempt to destroy the entire economy of the
country as punishment for disobedience. It was successful; Nicaragua's standard
of living fell by 90% during that decade, and countless thousands starved to
death due to the effective US embargo. I have lost the source for the following
quotation:
"The contras' brutality
earned them a wide notoriety. They regularly destroyed health centers, schools,
agricultural cooperatives, and community centers-symbols of the Sandinistas'
social programs in rural areas. People caught in these assaults were often
tortured and killed in the most gruesome ways. One example, reported by The
Guardian of London, suffices. In the words of a survivor of a raid in Jinotega
province, which borders on Honduras: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then
they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken,
their testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out they were killed by slitting
their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit. After many contra
atrocity stories had been reported in the world press, it was disclosed in
October 1984 that the CIA had prepared a manual of instruction for its clients,
entitled 'Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare' which, amongst
other things, encouraged the use of violence against civilians. Congressional
intelligence committees were informed by the CIA, by present and former contra
leaders, and by other witnesses that the contras indeed "raped, tortured
and killed unarmed civilians, including children" and that "groups of
civilians, including women and children, were burned, dismembered, blinded and
beheaded". These were the same rebels whom Ronald Reagan, with his strange
mirror language, called "freedom fighters" and the "moral equal
of our founding fathers". (The rebels in El Salvador, in the president's
studied opinion, were "murderers and terrorists".)'
After the election of Ortega,
the US tried their best to sabotage the nation's elections, spending huge sums
of money in the country and threatening violence if Ortega were re-elected.
Officials of the US Embassy, the NED, The International Republican Institute
and many more US departments and NGOs were active in the country, looking to
re-take control. US ambassadors and State Department officials publicly and
explicitly campaigned for anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening all kinds of
economic and diplomatic punishment if Ortega were to win another election. The
US Ambassador even said that if Ortega were to win again, the concept of
governments recognizing governments wouldn’t exist anymore and that it was just
an old 19th century concept anyway. Finally, the US openly told the nation,
"You are suffering and your nation is dying. Elect a different President,
and it will all stop. We will even assist in the reconstruction". The US
government offered two candidates acceptable to them, either American or pro-American,
and Ortega stepped down for the US candidate, at which point the US quickly
moved in to rewrite the nation's history books to omit the bad parts. But after
one session under 'American management', the people elected Ortega again, and
the US is still trying to destroy or re-colonise Nicaragua for the sake of its
corporations.
Cuba
For a great many years, Cuba
was a happy and prosperous little nation with a stable elected government. But
then the US had a better idea, in the form of a pathological killer named
Fulgencio Batista whom it wanted to install as puppet dictator. Batista failed
in a bid to be elected as president, so in 1952 the US sponsored a coup,
overthrew Cuba's elected government and installed him as President. The US
immediately recognized Batista's new regime and, until he was deposed by the
revolution in 1959, he received millions in financial, military, and logistical
support from the US. He was supplied with planes, ships, tanks, and all the
latest military technology which included chemical warfare items such as
napalm, which Batista used freely against his own people.
The man was as brutal a
dictator as the US had ever installed anywhere. Upon his US-backed appointment
he immediately suspended Cuba's constitution and all political liberties,
closed the university, fired thousands of teachers and government officials and
turned the country into an instant police state. The CIA instructed and aided
Batista in establishing death squads that kidnapped, tortured and murdered more
than 20,000 Cubans under America's patient direction. Under Batista, Cuba and
her citizens were subjected to wide-scale violence, torture and public
executions. Young people especially were publicly executed, and hundreds of
mangled bodies were left hanging from lamp posts or dumped in the streets as a
warning to others.
The US had no illusions about
the character of the man they had installed and were supporting. Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr. said "The corruption of the government, the brutality of
the police, the regime's indifference to the needs of the people for education,
medical care, housing, for social justice and economic justice is an open
invitation to revolution". John F. Kennedy, in his campaign for the US
Presidency, said that Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in only a few years and
described Batista's rule as "one of the most bloody and repressive
dictatorships in the long history of Latin American repression", ignoring
the fact that it was entirely due to the US that Batista was put into power in
the first place, and was US money and weapons that kept him there. Kennedy
further claimed that the US government publicly praised Batista as a good
friend, at a time when he was "murdering thousands, destroying the last
vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the
Cuban people."
But it was nevertheless very
commercially successful for US multinationals in Cuba, which was the entire
purpose of American support. The new Cuba was designed from the beginning for
plundering by US multinationals. Batista freely turned over most Cuban
businesses to US firms, beginning with the criminal organisations of DuPont and
the United Fruit Company. Very quickly, almost every industry sector worthy of
the name was taken over without cost by large American firms. US President
Kennedy stated that only seven years after they installed Batista in power,
"US companies owned about 40% of the Cuban sugar, almost all the cattle
ranches, 90% of the mines and mineral concessions, 80% of the utilities,
practically all the oil industry, and also supplied two-thirds of Cuba's
imports".
Even worse, FBI Director J.
Edgar Hoover brought in his organised-crime Mafia friends from New York and
Chicago, and Cuba rapidly became one of the world's havens for narcotics,
gambling and prostitution. Havana, Cuba's capital city, was suddenly filled
with Mafia-owned hotels and casinos. The country was virtually owned and run by
international gangsters and killers. Cubans brave enough to object to the
destruction of their country were tracked down and killed without discussion.
In 1959 a young lawyer named
Fidel Castro led a citizen's revolution, defeated Batista's army and took
control of the country. Batista immediately fled Cuba with the contents of the
nation's treasury as well as a personal fortune gained from his dealings with
the US Mafia that was estimated as high as $700 million in cash and fine art.
Castro's first actions were to
evict the Americans and their Mafia crime bosses - and the Jews, to close the
casinos and brothels, and to nationalise all the Cuban industry that had been
given to American corporations. Castro took back all of Cuba
from the Americans and returned it to the Cubans. And in spite of President
Kennedy's fine and sympathetic words, the US government and its corporations
were not at all pleased to have lost their looting privileges because of the
young Castro. The US attitude toward Cuba became almost instantly hostile and
the US government immediately began looking for ways to remove him from power
and reclaim Cuba for themselves.
From one US government
document that became available, a US State Department official named Lester Mallory
wrote, "The majority of Cubans support Castro. The only foreseeable means
of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based
on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. Every possible means should be
undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba". He proposed
implementing economic sanctions - a US favorite in punishing disobedience -
claiming this as "a line of action which makes the greatest inroads in
denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to
bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government." And
the US immediately commenced what would become for more than 50 years a
criminal embargo intended to suffocate little Cuba - one of America's
"greatest enemies".
If it weren’t bad enough that
the US has imposed an illegal blockade against Cuba for over 50 years, it has
also tried to prevent people from obtaining information about it. Contrary to
the myths of free speech and press, the US government commonly censors articles
and seizes books on Cuba but also confiscates money remitted to pay for them.
The US embargo against Cuba not only cancelled Cuban exports to the US, but
blockaded all oil shipments to Cuba as well as prohibiting the export to Cuba
of all medicines and pharmaceutical supplies by US firms or where US firms
control the patents - as they do for about 80% of the medical sector. When
the UN allocated funds to help Cuba's health care system, the US government
seized the money. From 1960 onward the US has maintained a blacklist of all
ships that landed in Cuba and, regardless of their country of origin, banned
them from docking in a US port. There is almost nothing the US won't do, to
destroy a nation that refuses to surrender to US imperialism.
The US still mercilessly
enforces these sanctions with military and economic threats against all
countries and corporations. Any nation dealing with Cuba will lose any US aid,
will be cut off from any financing from the IMF or World Bank, will have its US
assets confiscated (illegally, of course), and may very well itself become a
target of "regime change", an American specialty when dealing with
disobedience. The same is true for corporations. No US company may
deal with Cuba under pain of fines and prison sentences. Foreign companies
resident in the US risk having their entire assets confiscated, and other
foreign firms will lose their access to the US market. A Cuban stamp in your
passport can put you in prison. In addition to the sanctions, American
civilians are prohibited from travel to Cuba and it is illegal for Americans to
purchase any Cuban products anywhere. If an American travels to Canada or
Europe and buys and smokes a Cuban cigar there, he will be arrested on his
return to the US - for "aiding the enemy". The US has no sense of
humor when dealing with nations on its "list of countries we hate".
The US didn't stop with the
implementation of sanctions. In 2013, Castro became the first person ever to be
listed in the Guinness Book of Records for surviving murder attempts against
him - 638 in total - all by the US, and all unsuccessful. Many of these were
quite clever and even sophisticated, including poisoned cigars, poisoned toilet
paper, exploding baseballs, a ballpoint hypodermic syringe, a gift of a poisoned
wetsuit, a bacteria-infected hankie, an aerosol can filled with LSD. On several
occasions, the US tried to infect Castro with cancerous cells among many other
ingenious attempts. A documentary film has even been made, titled "638 Ways to Kill Castro", that was aired
on BBC public television. There must be, within the CIA, at least 100 people
whose only job is to imagine yet more ways to try to kill this man. Since 1959,
eleven US presidents have come and gone, all having done their part in the
assassination plots, but Castro recently celebrated his 87th birthday. May he
have many more.
The US tried an invasion of
Cuba - the pathetic Bay of Pigs fiasco, and then concocted what they called
"Operation Northwoods", which was a series of false-flag
operation proposals by the US government for the CIA to commit acts of
terrorism in US cities and elsewhere, that would be blamed on Cuba and create
public support for a war of invasion. One of the more ingenious proposals, and
typical of the CIA mentality, involved filling a passenger plane with US
college students, sending it off-course over Cuba, then shooting it down,
blaming the Cubans for this atrocity and using it to justify an invasion. The
CIA had another plan that came within a hair of being approved to shoot down a
US space launch, sacrificing the American astronauts in the space capsule, then
blaming Cuba for "electronic interference" and using that as
an excuse to invade Cuba. The CIA may claim it meant to substitute an empty
aircraft for that filled with students, but there was no plan to substitute an
empty space capsule, and it has been widely reported that NASA astronauts have
been driven to tears in discussing the revelation of this plan during public
speeches. The CIA also proposed multiple terrorist acts, setting off bombs in
shopping malls and other locations - killing innocent Americans in the
process - and blaming the acts on Cuba. It is not for nothing that the
CIA is widely known as the largest terrorist organisation in the world - worse
than even the FBI.
In addition to the blockade,
the US government organised a paramilitary force and established a campaign of
terrorism and sabotage designed to disrupt and eventually destroy Cuba and its
government. The CIA, the NED and USAID funnel millions of dollars into Cuba
every year, to be spent in programs designed to destabilise the government and
propagandise the population. Besides the economic war and all the propaganda,
there are media campaigns, plans of destabilization and terrorist attacks. As
a result of 681 separate CIA-sponsored terrorist attacks, all proven and
documented, more than 3,500 Cubans have been killed and more than 2,000
permanently disabled - the vast majority of these casualties being women and
children.
In October 1976 the well-known
terrorist Orlando Bosch organised - with the help of the CIA - the explosion of
a bomb on a Cuban civil airliner, killing all 73 people on board. The US
government refused to extradite Bosch to stand trial and a Miami TV station
aired a live interview where Bosch not only admitted responsibility for the
aircraft bombing, but revealed intentions of continuing terrorist activities
against Cuba. Five Cubans travelled to the US to investigate this and other
acts of sabotage and terrorism originating from the US, and obtained positive
proof of not only the aircraft bombing but many other terrorist acts. Upon
presenting this evidence to the US government, the FBI arrested the five Cubans
on charges of terrorism (!) and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 15
years to life. The convictions were unique in the world of law, having
been obtained by the US government without presenting any evidence whatever in
court of the mens' guilt of anything.
Every year there is a proposal
made at the United Nations to end the US embargo on Cuba, and every year the
US, with its veto power, votes against the resolution. Of all the nations in
the world only the US and Israel - the world's other democracy-loving nation -
vote "No", though they are sometimes aided by one or two almost-countries
like Palau or the Marshall Islands.
The Americans don't give up
easily and, at least in the areas of sedition and subversion, are enviably
innovative. The Argentina media published an article by Jean-Guy Allard titled,
"US Invests in Video Games in Attempt to Destabilize Cuba". In it,
Mr. Allard stated that the US, the country that "democratized" Libya
by bombing it to rubble and that still operates its infamous torture prison at
Guantanamo Bay, has recently found a way to teach Cuban youth the virtues of
their civilization. He documents that the US State Department will award
$700,000 for the production of a video game that will encourage "critical
thinking" among the Cuban youth with the purpose of causing "changes
in society". Another $700,000 will go to corporations and NGOs that will
teach Cubans the beauty of the so called "free market", where rich
people do not have to lose their houses to the banks. Another $750,000 will be
spent to provide "tools to detect and denounce human rights abuses and
corruption" to US journalists who concoct and propagate stories that
defame Cuba. As always, the US government will search out
"dissidents", then use vast amounts of money to bribe these citizens
to betray their country. As you will learn in Volume 2, this is precisely the
American approach in China today.
For all these years, the US
government and the compliant US media propagate stories of Cuba as "an
international pariah" responsible for a multitude of human rights
violations and much other nonsense. But the simple truth is that Cuba has
always been a fine little country at peace with everyone but, like every other
bully, the Americans will never forgive the ant for defeating the elephant. The
negative stories are all fabricated and meant for domestic consumption so that
Americans, ignorant and simple-minded as they are, can sleep peacefully at
night knowing their government is saving the world from evil and really good
cigars.
Third-World Finance,
American-Style
In related news, few people are
aware of the so-called "financial protection arrangements"
that the US government forcibly imposed on many nations in the Americas,
agreements whereby US banks would "manage" the cash and finances of
these smaller nations, always to the great benefit of the bankers and to the
detriment of the victims. In the case of Panama for example, the US refused
to pay Panama directly the annual rent payments for land use related to the
Panama Canal, instead giving the money to the Jewish bankers at J. P. Morgan
who were to invest the money on Panama's behalf but who invested the funds in
New York real estate, making billions in profits over a century, while paying
Panama only a small annual interest. Most countries in Central and South
America have been subject to these peculiarly American financial contracts.
These financial controls so commonly imposed on poorer nations in the Americas
provided the US with overwhelming political power and massive financial profits
as well as the desired income disparity, since a nation's funds would not be
released for social purposes incurring the displeasure of the Americans. Any of
these nations attempting expenditures on social services or infrastructure
development without the express permission of the US, would automatically activate
an "obligation to intervene" by the US military. In total, the
profits realised by a few American bankers and elite industrialists from these
arrangements, were astronomical over a century. For well over 100 years, the
entire Southern continent was treated as a lucrative, if reluctant and
troublesome, divisional profit center for American bankers and industrialists.
But that wasn't all. To use Haiti
as an example, the US has constantly interfered in Haiti's internal affairs for
well over 100 years, overthrowing elected governments and replacing them with
dictators, invading Haiti six or seven times to seize government revenue on
behalf what is now Citibank. More than once, US Marines invaded the country,
broke into the nation's central bank, and stole all its money, including all
Haiti's gold deposits. When Haiti refused to turn over its banks to Citibank
and its railroads to an American company, the US launched an overwhelming
military invasion during which it re-wrote Haiti's constitution, turned over
almost all industry to American firms, disbanded the country's army and
replaced it with a US military police force, slaughtered tens of thousands of
civilians and enslaved hundreds of thousands of others to build a railroad that
would carry Haiti's resources to American ships. The US ran the country as a
military dictatorship for decades and viciously suppressed all local
resistance. In American history books and US government propaganda, the
military was there only "to maintain order during threatened
insurrection" and, of course, "to protect American interests".
Little Haiti and many poor countries like it, have contributed enormously to
American wealth.
The CIA organized the
overthrow of Guatemala's elected government to install Ríos Montt,
another US-financed pathological killer, and supported him during 40 years of
CIA-trained and sponsored death squads. Montt specialised in torture,
disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, resulting in more
than 200,000 victims. This was one of the most inhumane events of the entire
20th century, much of it sponsored by US President Reagan. And not only
sponsored, but praised; Montt attended Reagan's Presidential Inauguration and
was one of his good friends. But the US-supported dictator had given virtually
all of his nation to the US Bankers and corporations. At that time, the
Rockefellers alone owned more than 40% of the arable land in Guatemala as well
as the entire railroad network and telegraph system, and also the country's
only port. Earlier, when the US was preparing for its invasion of
Guatemala, many of the planning documents were passed on to the Guatemalan
government who published them in the media and demanded an explanation from the
US. Of course, the State Department claimed the accusations were
"ridiculous", and added further, "It is the policy of the United
States not to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. This policy
has repeatedly been reaffirmed." And Time Magazine, always helpful,
claimed that those documents were just a Russian plot to embarrass the US.
And then the CIA continued with its plans, assassinating the President and
overthrowing the government as if nothing had ever happened. Americans are
not easily embarrassed.
However, not to lose the main
point, all of these nations in South and Central America were subject to more
or less the same political, military and financial pressures as were Panama,
Haiti and Guatemala. That is why they are still poor today, after more than 100
years of American assistance. All of these nations collectively have made an
enormous contribution to the US treasury and the accumulation of wealth of the
American elite, a history both inhumane and despicable that has been entirely
deleted from the Western historical record. Americans have never known, and the
local populations will never forget.
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has
been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150
foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well
as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired
management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions
in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export
business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University,
presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr.
Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books
generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors
to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen
at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
*
NOTES
[1] The Panama Canal’s
forgotten casualties
https://theconversation.com/the-panama-canals-forgotten-casualties-93536
[2] The Tragedy of the
Chinese:
http://www.panamarailroad.org/chinesetragedy.html
*
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