Che Guevara’s 80th birthday
In honour of the great Che Guevara’s 80th birthday (officially the 14th June), here’s a documentary on his life for those of you who have only heard the CIA propaganda and lies.
How The CIA Screwed Up Iran
I’ve been reading more from Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy Of Ashes: The History of the CIA” and have finished the story about how the CIA staged a covert coup d’état against the legitimate government of Iran in 1953. You can read the salient details in Wikipedia. Note: this isn’t a “conspiracy theory” – it was confirmed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, when she called it a “setback for democratic government” in Iran.
Basically what happened is this:
The Iranians wanted to nationalize their oil. They had done a deal with the British in 1901 to explore Iran for oil and just before WWI, Winston Churchill moved the British navy from coal-burning ships over to oil-burning ships and then basically took control of Iran’s oil production, leaving them with only 16% of the profits. The Iranians weren’t happy with the situation, to the British installed a Shah of their liking on the throne.
During WWII, Churchill invaded Iran, got rid of the Shah (who was thought to be too friendly with the Nazis) and installed his son on the throne.
After WWII, the Iranians decided to take control of their oil production back. And Churchill wasn’t happy. Britian took their case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague – and lost. So Churchill asked the American government to intervene. The President (Truman) said no. So MI6 turned to the CIA who said “sure that sounds like fun”.
They then spent millions of dollars undermining the government, spreading lies about them, hiring thugs to commit crimes around the country and then blaming it on communists, on propaganda accusing the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq of being a communist, etc. The BBC in Britian did their part, also broadcasting anti-Iranian propaganda to lend the events legitimacy.
Eventually US-backed troops stormed the Prime Minister’s offices, arrested him, and he spent the last years of his life in prison, replaced by a General Zahedi, picked by the US and Britian to be Mossadeq’s puppet successor.
What happened next? 25 years later the Iranian revolution happened, fueled by memories of the coup, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control and the country has hated the US and Britian ever since. Can you blame them?
Of course, the US and Britian denied all of this ever happened for almost 50 years until internal CIA documents were leaked in 2000.
So – the next time you hear about how Iran “hate our freedoms” or about the US trying to overthrow a country and other “conspiracy theories”, remember – Iran 1953.
Canadian TV Won’t Run Some Ads
Kalle Lasn’s Adbusters company has again been suing media companies who refuse to carry Adbuster’s TV commercials which attacks big corporate greed or consumerist behaviour. This time they sued CBC – and lost. The Canadian legal system decided the TV networks can choose which ads they run and which they don’t. Which basically means if the TV networks decide they don’t like your message or that your message might upset other advertisers, they can refuse to take your money.
Now – as a capitalist (surprised I’m still one of those?), I think that’s fair enough. Nobody should be able to force a business owner to accept money for a product they don’t think is a good fit for their business.
The key point for us to understand though is that this is another form of censorship and propaganda. This is how BIG MEDIA works in harmony with BIG CORPORATE and BIG GOVERNMENT to make sure you only get certain messages broadcast to you day in and day out.
So don’t tell me we have “free media” in the West. What we see on TV is very closely controlled by a small group of wealthy individuals and what they allow you to watch is only what they decide is in THEIR best interests, not yours.
From Adbusters:
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Religion and violence
This post “I Don’t Respect Your Religion” by Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks is right on the money.
Here’s an excerpt:
Read the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. They are all full of violent, bloody fantasies that teach you over and over to kill your enemies. Christians love to think they are the exception to this rule. They’ll say the Old Testament doesn’t really apply anymore because the New Testament overruled all the gory, masochistic violence of the earlier book. So, then I guess Genesis isn’t true either since that’s in the Old Testament? Oops.
Then, you’ll get the excuse that Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Yeah, I know, that’s why in Matthew 10:34 he says, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Sounds down right Christian of him.
But even if you can make up pathetic excuses for this obvious blood-lust and call to violence, it doesn’t matter. Because in the end Jesus murders almost all of us anyway. Jesus doesn’t just kill the “liars” and the “sexually immoral” and the eight other categories of people who get thrown in “fiery lake of burning sulfur.” He kills all of the “unbelieving” folks as well. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you get the lake of fire! What a swell guy.
Personally, though, I’m not convinced that Bhutto’s assassination had anything to do with religious fundamentalism. It seems to me to be a clean hit. I am amazed, though, at this video of her interview with Sir David Frost in early November, where, around the 6 minute mark, she clearly says that Osama Bin Laden was murdered, names his murderer, and Frost doesn’t even ask her to clarify the statement. She mentions it almost in passing. But then, according to Wikipedia, a week later, when she was placed under house arrest, she asked one of the policeman “Shouldn’t you be looking for Osama bin Laden?”
I’ve also been reading about the list of corruption charges again her and her husband on Wikipedia. Were they trumped up? Why did Musharraf drop the charges upon her recent return to the country? I would love to get some decent analysis of the situation.
Al-qaida has supposedly claimed responsibility for the assassination but it still isn’t clear to me WHO is behind Al-qaida. We know for a fact that the Afghani mujahideen were armed, trained and funded by the USA in the 80s. Hell, evenRambo liked them. It isn’t clear to me if or when the USA actually stopped funding them. And if it isn’t the USA, then what is the involvement of the USA’s ally, Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban?
The only thing I know is that when I read simplistic descriptions of her assassination thrown about in the media with the propaganda words “terrorism” and “al-qaida” I am drawn into looking deeper. Superficial explanations don’t seem to do her or her legacy justice.
UPDATE 31 December, 2007: There are now reports that the BBC edited out Bhutto’s comments about Bin Laden’s murder. What I don’t understand though is where the original video, the one where Bhutto names the murderer, comes from if the BBC edited it out before broadcast?
G’Day World Book Club Recommends: Fidel Castro “My Life”
Yesterday I was presented with an early Xmas gift from Nick Hodge – Fidel Castro’s “My Life”, a recently published volume of interviews conducted by Ignacio Ramonet, the long-time editor of the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique, professor of communication at the University Denis Diderot in Paris and founder of Media Watch Global.
This has jumped to the very top of my reading list.
Ramonet spent one hundred hours interviewing Castro between 2003 and 2005. Castro then reviewed the entire manuscript in 2006. This, then, is the closest we will ever get to having Fidel Castro’s autobiography.
Ramonet says he wrote it because young people around the world know little of the truth about Castro. After 48 years of American negative propaganda against him and the Cuban Revolution, the perception of Castro is mostly negative. He is perceived as a brutal dictator, a relic from the Cold War. Ramonet, however, paints a very different picture of the man. He describes him as “shy, a polite, affable man who pays attention to each person he talks to and speaks without affectation, yet with the manners and gestures of a somewhat old-fashioned courtesy that has earned him the title of ‘the last Spanish gentleman’.” He is also “indefatigable” – in his eighties, he still sleeps on average 4 hours a night, working through until five or six am every day, with his entourage of young assistants asleep on their feet. He lives frugally, with no luxury spent on himself – no palaces for Fidel. He is a man with a never-ending series of Big Ideas.
Ramonet writes of Castro:
“Moved by humanitarian compassion and internationalist solidarity, he has a dream, which he has spoken about a thousand times, of bringing health and knowledge, medicines and education, to every corner of the planet.
As for Cuba itself, Ramonet writes:
“Although the face of Fidel is often in the press, on television and in the street, there is no official portrait, nor is there a statue or coin or avenue or building or monument dedicated to Fidel Castro or any other living leader of the Revolution.
Despite the unceasing harassment from abroad, this little country, clinging to its sovereignty, has achieved undeniably admirable results in the area of human development: the abolition of racism, the emancipation of women, the eradication of illiteracy, a drastic reduction in infant mortality rates, a higher level of general knowledge…. In questions of education, health, medical research and sports, Cuba has achieved results that nany developed nations would envy.
Despite the persistent attacks by the United States and the 600 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, Cuba has never responded with violence. For forty-eight years, not a single act of violence encouraged or sponsored by Cuba has occurred in the United States.”
Cuba gets (and deserves) criticism from Amnesty International for some of its policies which deny it’s citizens civil freedoms, such as the freedom of association, freedom of opinion, freedom of movement, and the use of the death penalty. However there are no reported cases of torture in Cuba or ‘disappearances’, the murder of journalists or political assassinations or protest marchers beaten by police. There has NEVER been a popular uprising against the regime – in nearly fifty years. To understand why Cuba has some of those civil freedom restrictions, you have to understand the forces trying to destroy Cuba.
The Unites States government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in this decade alone trying to oust Castro, through NGO’s such as the “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED) and the “United States Agency for International Development” (USAID), which alone has delivered over $65 million to anti-Castro groups since 1996. According to Ramonet, hundreds of journalists around the world are paid to spread negative propaganda about Castro. Funding is provided by the USA to terrorist organisations hostile to the Cuban government such as Alpha 66 and to the now-perhaps-disbanded Omega 7.
Cuba has been under a devastating and evil economic embargo from the USA since 1960, severely crippling its economy, and yet Castro continues to defy their attempts to destroy the Revolution. He has survived relentless attacks on his person and his country by the most powerful economic and military superpower on the planet for 48 years while continuing to improve the living conditions of the 11 million citizens of Cuba.
The key to understanding Cuba and Castro is that you have to understand what life was like back before the Revolution when Cuba was governed by a series of corrupt and brutal regimes directly supported by the US government and US corporations. The quality of life for the citizens of Cuba was terrible. Castro changed all of that. He ousted Bastista’s corrupt regime and the US interests that backed it. He has significantly improved the living conditions of the Cuban people, all while fighting off the US government’s continued attempts on his life.
Please – read this book.