Puppeters

Someone needs to get in there with a pair of sharp scissors...

Mumia Abu-Jamal:

Wherever we look in this world, we see the U. S. trying to install a network of puppets, who owe more to the us than to the people of their own countries. In simplistic terms, the corporate media pushes the idea of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'--silly symbols that take us back to mythic cowboy movies. In fact, any given leader can be a good guy and a bad guy depending on the time you're talking about. The late Saddam Hussein, now derided almost universally as a dictator, was an American ally just a brief time before--receiving a bounty of U. S. arms and, yes, weapons of mass destruction. As long as Saddam was using his weapons against Iran, all was well. Today, an Iraqi puppet sits on the national throne, a creation of us power, as surely as was the late Shah of Iran. Afghanistan presents an almost identical snapshot, a leader supported on a throne of U. S. bayonets--in a word, a puppet.

Why is it the business of the us to appoint the leaders of other nations? What's right about that? What's Democratic about that? We don't question it, because it's so deep in our national and international experience.

Why national?

Well, while many folks know about the FBI's harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., how many of us know that the government planned to replace him as a black leader with someone who was more malleable, and less committed to civil rights? The FBI wanted to replace King with Samuel Pierce, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Reagan, someone who Reagan incidentally greeted as a guest to the White House, not recognizing that he was a member of his own cabinet.

The imperial industry of placing puppets over other people didn't begin abroad, it didn't start when one crossed the border, it began in the U. S., in an attempt to control and channel a popular movement. That's because empires begin at home, in essence, they export the methods they use at home abroad.

Democracy Now!:

The United States yesterday has lifted its embargo on direct aid to the Palestinian government in an effort to support Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah's struggle against Hamas. Last week Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip. Abbas responded by dismissing the democratically-elected Hamas-led government and formed a new cabinet led by a prime minister who has the backing of Israel and the United States.

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in an interview with Amy Goodman:

Well, what we've done -- we use many techniques, but probably the most common is that we'll go to a country that has resources that our corporations covet, like oil, and we'll arrange a huge loan to that country from an organization like the World Bank or one of its sisters, but almost all of the money goes to the U.S. corporations, not to the country itself, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, General Motors, General Electric, these types of organizations, and they build huge infrastructure projects in that country: power plants, highways, ports, industrial parks, things that serve the very rich and seldom even reach the poor. In fact, the poor suffer, because the loans have to be repaid, and they're huge loans, and the repayment of them means that the poor won't get education, health, and other social services, and the country is left holding a huge debt, by intention. We go back, we economic hit men, to this country and say, “Look, you owe us a lot of money. You can't repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell our oil companies your oil real cheap or vote with us at the next U.N. vote or send troops in support of ours to some place in the world such as Iraq.” And in that way, we've managed to build a world empire with very few people actually knowing that we've done this.

I started off as economist, became chief economist, and my job really – I had a staff of several dozen people. My job was to get them, and for me to convince these countries to accept these very large loans, to get the banks to make the loans, to set up the deal so that the money went to big U.S. corporations. The country was left holding a huge debt, and then I would go in or one of my people would go in and say, “Look, you know, you owe us all this money. You can't pay your debts. Give us that pound of flesh.”

The other thing we do, Amy, and what's going on right now in Latin America is that as soon as one of these anti-American presidents is elected, such as Evo Morales, who you mentioned, in Bolivia, one of us goes in and says, “Hey, congratulations, Mr. President. Now that you're president, I just want to tell you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your family. We have several hundred million dollars in this pocket if you play the game our way. If you decide not to, over in this pocket, I've got a gun with a bullet with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your campaign promises and throw us out.”

I can make sure that this man makes a great deal of money, he and his family, through contracts, through various quasi-legal means, and I can also – if he doesn't accept this, you know, the same thing is going to happen to him that happened to Jaime Roldos in Ecuador and Omar Torrijos in Panama and Allende in Chile, and we tried to do it to Chavez in Venezuela and are still trying – that we will send in the people to try to overthrow him, as, in fact, we recently did with the President of Ecuador, or if we don't overthrow him, we'll assassinate him. And these people all know the history. They know that this has happened many, many, many times in the past.

The degree to which this nefariousness goes is pretty remarkable. I guess one can't underestimate the power and allure of cold hard cash and the power and influence that comes with it, but one has to consider the ramifications to one's soul, as I talked about here and here.