U.S. dominance of lesser nations

[This old piece popped up as I was closing down. Reading it again, I think it is worth reposting. Ed]

If one looks into the history of U.S. dominance of lesser nations during
the 19th and 20th centuries -- particularly in Latin America, but also
in other scattered areas where rich resources are to be discovered (the
Middle East and African oil-producing countries particularly) one finds
a pattern of 'democracy' in which wealthy elites dominated and
controlled resources in conjunction with their U.S. patrons.

I recall particularly meeting the children of such elites in my American
(and British) prep schools. One particularly unattractive crew derived
from Batista's Cuba before his overthrow by Castro. Sugar was the
primary resource down there, I guess. These guys were (as most teen
males in isolation from females) obsessed with sex. They invited some
Americans home with them during a vacation to Cuba and these returned
all atwitter -- a kindly Cuban uncle had staked them to their first
sexual encounter in a Cuban whore house with 'virgin' thirteen-year-olds
(before Castro Cuba was beset with great poverty, illiteracy, minimal
medical care and education apart from what might be provided by the
Catholic church to the poor).

Had these guys left things at that, this would be only a Cuban story,
but they proceeded to con our single parent school telephone operator
into introducing them to local high school girls whom they proceeded to
date rape -- the school was a sanctuary from local police authorities
who were minimal in a small town anyway. When word of these doings got
out, our poor telephone operator (with whom I worked as a scholarship
student) -- not the Cubans -- was expelled. This was my first encounter
with the ravages of American capitalism south of the border -- to which
my junior year history teacher had also alerted us.

Check out the record of U.S. exploitation of South American countries
and you will find that we trained the military juntas that 'disappeared'
thousands down there in our School of the Americas:

http://pangaea.org/street_children/latin/soa.htm

We systematically drove out democratically elected leaders -- Salvador
Allende in Chile, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala among the most disastrous
-- to replace them with murderous junta leaders such as Pinochet in
Chile who has just died before he could be finally tried for the
thousands that he tortured and killed. Guatemala has seen hundreds of
thousands murdered in a small country since the Arbenz expulsion under
Eisenhower.

Our CIA/corporate approach now well publicized has been to use three
tactics to get rid of democracy to enable corporate grabs of indigenous
resources:

1) destabilization of a government by covert intrusion and/or
economic manipulation.

2) assassination of leaders if #1 does not work,

3) direct military intervention as a last resort.

We have done this more than a hundred times -- sometimes many times over
to the same resistant country (e.g. Haiti, Cuba). Here are some of the
listings for Latin America:

http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/interventions.html

Currently Shell oil and the people of Nigeria are at war with each
other. Nigeria was barely liberated from British colonial status before
our oil companies moved in to support a long, brutal series of military
juntas. Ken Saro-Wiwa was the victim who might have rescued Nigeria
from such exploitation, but he was executed by the junta in 1995:

http://africanhistory.about.com/od/countrieswest/a/SaroWiwa.htm

Currently the people in his region are attacking Shell oil facilities in
hopes of expelling this corporate monster which is polluting their land,
extracting their resources, and leaving them in desperate poverty.

One could go on at great length. But two concluding comments:

1) What we are seeing in Latin America is the spreading rebellion
at last against American corporate exploitation of any and all resources
there, ranging from natural gas and oil to basic food products (sugar,
bananas) for which American corporations have been willing to kill
people and sabotage democratic governments to maintain their
exploitative dominance.

2) The Bush family notion of democracy for 'THEM' is not majority
rule and the rule of law. It is domination by American corporate
interests. Let us not forget that grand daddy Bush (Prescott), whom I
met while he was our Connecticut Senator, was playing footsie with the
Nazi corporate interests prior to WW2. Prescott was also a glad-handing
wannabe charmer type, none too bright either.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1006-08.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush

The above are a few of the web sites that spell out U.S. conniving on
behalf of fascist/Nazi corporate interests.

Back to my prep school days -- I went to school with U.S. types who also
hoped to join this corporate world of exploitation of the world's
resources to the detriment of the vast numbers of poor people yearning
for better things. The whole anti-communist routine was exploited by
our corporate crooks on the march -- a good number of whom had been in
their earlier years "America Firsters," i.e. supporters of the Nazis:

http://libraryautomation.com/nymas/americafirst.html

One subsequent president of Yale had been one in his college days.

My British public school experience exposed me to a more benign version
of capitalist exploitation. Some of my classmates were specialists in
the classics (there were 3 areas of specialized study that one selected
at about age 12: science and math, modern languages and history, the
classics). Those heading for the British foreign service took the third
for its training in Greek and Roman modes of imperialism. A few years
later when I returned for studies at Oxford, I met one of my friends who
was in a state of shock in that the Brits were rapidly discarding the
empire which he had planned to serve as a colonial administrator -- so
it goes. I mention this because it is pretty clear that Blair had high
hopes of reestablishing the empire once again in the Middle East -- as
the little brother of Bush's endeavor.

The one good thing that has come out of this late empire building fiasco
is that it has liberated dominated ones elsewhere, e.g. in Latin America
and parts of Africa such as Nigeria now rising up against the
corporations! Let us not leave out Papa Bush who among other things took
over Panama with U.S. troops and the deaths of hundreds there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama

Noriega, also once our guy, still sits in an American jail in Florida --
a precedent for the treatment of those who resist American capitalistic
ventures -- Guantanamo and all that? Guess he is fortunate compared
with Hussein.

Those who do not know this history are bound to be conned by those who
know it all too well. Hopefully both Americans and Brits are now
awakening from this latter day Iraq colonial nightmare. And may the
Israelis wake up, too, before it is too late! They are now entangled
with us!

I must admit that the foreign service was once a career that I
contemplated. But I learned of the above fortunately in time to avoid
what for me would have been an impossible role to play -- as hired gun
in diplomatic guise for my nation.

--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]