Left Take - Recommended Diaries

The Shameful Side of US Foreign Policy - Pt 1 Guatemala

SuzeB1964 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:08:54 GMT

Guatemala is the consummate "Banana Republic". Few know how it came to be such a mess; how it was US foreign policy that established such an inhumane political system, guilty of some of the worst human rights violations in existence. And, it was all done, so we could have cheap bananas...
This article is taken from A "killing field" in the Americas: US policy in Guatemala

The reality of Guatemala
Guatemala, with 10 million people, is the most populous country in Central America. It is run by an oligarchy of wealthy landowners and big business interests that reap the country's agricultural and commercial rewards at the expense of the rest of the population. The country has been headed by military dictators and figurehead-presidents. Ultimate control belongs to the Army.

Guatemala is a country without social or economic justice, especially for the 6 million indigenous Mayan Indians who make up the majority of the population. There is a marked disparity in income distribution, and poverty is pervasive. On coffee plantations, peasants, descendants of the ancient Maya, live in concentration camp-like conditions, as de facto slaves. 40% of the indigenous people have no access to health care, and 60% have no access to safe drinking water. Education in rural areas is non-existent, with the result that 50% of the people are illiterate. Half of the country's children suffer from malnutrition. Every day in Guatemala, a country in which everything grows, people go hungry.

The real power in Guatemala is in the hands of the Army, and that power has been used to violently control the people, resulting in the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. During more than 30 years of civil war, over 150,000 Guatemalans have been killed or disappeared, tens-of-thousands have been forced to flee to Mexico, 1 million have been displaced inside the country, and more than 440 Indian villages have been destroyed. 75,000 widows and 250,000 orphans have been produced out of the carnage. And, for more than four decades, the United States government has consistently supported the Guatemalan Army and the ruling class in their policies of repression.

United Fruit Company
Under dictator Jorqe Ubico (1931-1944), American-owned United Fruit Company (UFC) gained control of forty-two percent of Guatemala's land, and was exempted from taxes and import duties. The three main enterprises in Guatemala -- United Fruit Company, International Railways of Central America, and Empress Electrica -- were American-owned (and controlled by United Fruit Company). Seventy-seven percent of all exports went to the US and sixty-five percent of imports came from the US.

"The 10 Years of Springtime"
Repressive governments have plagued Guatemala throughout its history, with alternating waves of dictators being the rule. But, between 1945 and 1954, there was a period of enlightenment -- an experiment with democracy called the "10 Years of Springtime" -- that started with the election of Juan Jose Arevalo to the presidency.

While in power from 1945 to 1951, Arevalo established the nation's social security and health systems and a government bureau to look after Mayan concerns. Arévalo's liberal regime experienced many coup attempts by conservative military forces, but the attempts were not successful.

Arévalo was followed by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán who became president in democratic elections in 1951. At the time, 2% of landowners owned 70% of the arable land and farm laborers were kept in debt slavery by these landowners. Arbenz continued to implement the liberal policies of Arevalo, and instituted an agrarian reform law to break up the large estates and foster individually owned small farms. The land reform program involved redistribution of 160,000 acres of uncultivated land owned by United Fruit Company. United Fruit was compensated for its land.

United Fruit, Eisenhower and the end of reform
United Fruit was a state within the Guatemalan state. It not only owned all of Guatemala's banana production and monopolized banana exports, it also owned the country's telephone and telegraph system, and almost all of the railroad track. In addition to redistributing United Fruit land, the government also began competing with United Fruit in the production and export of bananas.

Important people in the ruling circles of the US, involved with United Fruit Company, used their influence to convince the US government to step in. (Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' law firm had prepared United Fruit's contracts with Guatemala; his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, belonged to United Fruit's law firm; John Moors Cabot, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, was the brother of a former United Fruit president; President Eisenhower's personal secretary was married to the head of United Fruit's Public Relations Department.)

In 1954, Eisenhower and Dulles decided that Arbenz finally had to go, and the US State Department labeled Guatemala "communist". On this pretext, US aid and equipment were provided to the Guatemalan Army. The US also sent a CIA army and CIA planes. They bombed a military base and a government radio station, and overthrew Arbenz Guzmán, who fled to Cuba.

The coup restored the stranglehold on the Guatemalan economy of both the landed elite and US economic interests. President Eisenhower was willing to make the poor, illiterate Guatemalan peasants pay in hunger and torture for supporting land reform, and for trying to attain a better future for themselves and their families. In order to ensure ever-increasing profits for an American corporation, the US State Department, the CIA, and United Fruit Company had succeeded in taking freedom and land from Guatemala's peasants, unions from its workers, and hope for a democratic Guatemala from all of its people.

Aided by the US, Colonel Castillo Armas became the new president. The US Ambassador furnished Armas with lists of radical opponents to be eliminated, and the bloodletting promptly began. Under Armas, thousands were arrested and many were tortured and killed. United Fruit got all its land back. As an extra present, the Banana Worker's Union was banned. Armas disenfranchised one-third of the voters by barring illiterates from voting. He outlawed all political parties, labor confederations, and peasant organizations. He closed down opposition newspapers and burned "subversive" books. The "Springtime" had ended.

Dictators and repression
The coup in Guatemala inaugurated an era of military rule in Central America. Generals and Colonels acted with impunity to wipe out dissent and garner wealth for themselves and their friends. And, the killing of defenseless people became state policy in Guatemala. Between 1954 and 1981, more than 60,000 people were murdered. Guatemala continues to suffer the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America.

The Armas regime was followed by a succession of repressive military dictatorships. As both protest and repression became more violent, civil war emerged, especially in the highlands. Industrialization in the 1960s and '70s helped the rich get richer, while the cities became increasingly squalid as the rural dispossessed fled the countryside to find urban employment. The military continued its violent suppression of anti-government elements, especially in the countryside, among the indigenous Mayan population, resistance grew, and a guerrilla army began to form.

The Green Berets, the CIA, and death squads
During the 1960s and 70s, American military aid and training made Guatemala's army the strongest and most sophisticated in Central America. Between 1966 - 68, during the Johnson presidency, the Green Berets were sent to Guatemala to transform its Army into a modern counter-insurgency force and to conduct a Vietnam -style war there. This is the origin of the killing machine that operates in Guatemala today.

Death squads, never before seen in Latin America, were started during this period. Army leaders, government officials, and the businessmen who supported and often bankrolled the death squads, had close ties with many US administrations. The squads had lists of people that were suspected communists, or who opposed the existing system of elite-corporate-Army control. Those on the lists were hunted down and killed.

The US mission and its advisors prodded the military to take measures to establish a US base for counterinsurgency (counter-revolutionary) actions, in order to maintain cheap labor for the landowners and US corporations, and to preserve the System. Terror was the weapon, and the American CIA was the agent. Targeting guerrillas, peasants, students, labor leaders, and professionals, the Guatemalan military jailed thousands. And thousands more, struggling to overcome poverty and injustice, were murdered or disappeared by the police, the army, and the death squads, all armed and trained by the CIA.

Journalists, lawyers, teachers, members of opposition parties, and anyone who expressed sympathy for the anti-government cause were machine-gunned. Anyone attempting to organize a union or improve the lot of the peasants was subject to torture, mutilation, and death. Men were found decapitated or castrated. Some had their eyes gouged-out, their testicles cut off and put in their mouths, their hands or tongues cut off; women had their breasts cut off. Electric shock to the genitals was routinely used, with equipment and instructions supplied by the CIA. American planes and pilots, flying out of Panama, dropped napalm on suspected targets.

By the end of 1968, the guerrillas had been wiped out. For the Pentagon it had been a limited war; for the Guatemalans the war had been total.

The CIA, the Guatemalan G-2, and Israel
But, the war did not end with victory over the guerrillas. Since the 1960s, the CIA has had links with a Guatemalan Army unit -- the G-2 -- that maintains a network of torture centers and body dumps throughout Guatemala and has killed thousands of Guatemalan civilians. Operating out of the US Embassy, CIA undercover agents, secretly working with the G-2 -- a group of 2,000 elite Guatemalan Army Intelligence officers -- have trained, advised, armed, and equipped these officers to torture, assassinate and disappear thousands of Guatemalan dissidents. Some G-2 bases have their own crematoriums where the tortured and murdered are disposed of.

In the 1970s, international publicity revealed the pattern of torture and killing, and public reports exposed the Guatemalan Army as the most repressive in Latin America. This series of events resulted in a change in human rights sentiment in the US. In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter cut off overt military aid. However, money and arms still got to there -- through the CIA. When President Lucas Garcia began his fearsome regime in 1978, and set out to eliminate all the new popular leaders by either murdering or coopting them, and when death squads roamed the land and murdered at will, the CIA was there to help.

In addition to US and CIA support, Argentina, and Chile provided expertise and aid to Guatemala's military. And, Israel has played a very important role in Guatemala since 1977, supplying weapons, building munitions factories, and training soldiers.

Reagan and Rios Montt
The 1980s was marked by barbaric repression and the massacre of the indigenous population. A succession of elected dictators, supported by the US, left suffering in their wake. Because of the notoriety that again developed from reports of human rights violations by the Guatemalan Army, President Reagan changed the US policy of overt aid to the Guatemalan Army to a two- track policy. While government spokespersons made public pronouncements in support of human rights and the return to civilian rule, the Reagan Administration signaled to the Guatemalan Army its approval for winning the war, and it lobbied Congress for more aid. The CIA continued to work with Guatemala's security forces.

General Efrain Rios Montt, a graduate of the School of the Americas (SOA), at Fort Benning, Georgia, came to power in a 1982 coup. Praised as a "born-again" Christian reformer, in truth he was one of the most savage of Guatemalan dictators. His "Beans and Rifles" program was designed to keep guerrillas out of Indian villages -- beans for those who cooperated, rifles for those who didn't. He declared a "state of siege", and on television, he stated that he had "declared a state of siege so that we could kill legally". He banned public meetings, suspended the constitution, replaced elected officials, and censored the press. He also instituted Civil Defense Patrols (PACs) to control the population.

Rios Montt moved the war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As Guatemalans suffered torture, kidnappings, and massacres at the hands of the government, he presented himself as the savior of the population. Using the lessons he had learned at the SOA, he implemented a "pacification" program similar to that used by the US in Vietnam, intended to give the impression that the government wanted to reestablish democracy in the country. In reality, as the "pacification" program moved from village to village, it essentially established concentration camps populated by those who had been able to survive the massacres and political genocide which the government itself carried out.

During the 17 months of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign, 400 villages were destroyed, 10 - 20,000 Indians were killed, and over 100,000 fled to Mexico. Early in 1983, President Reagan resumed military shipments to Guatemala, claiming that Montt's program against the guerrilla insurgency was working. He said that Montt was given a "bum rap" on human rights.

Montt was overthrown in August, 1983. In December, 1985 Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, a civilian who campaigned as a populist reformer, was elected president. But, the Army continued to have the power. Cerezo disbanded the secret police (DIT), but assassinations of students, peasants, and human rights activists continued through the Army's G-2, with CIA assistance.

The Reagan administration and the death squads
Before his administration took office in 1980, President Reagan courted the Guatemalan right, whose views he shared. He promised then-president of Guatemala General Romeo Lucas Garcia and leaders of the right, a 180 degree turn in US policy toward their country. The agreement provided for the restoration of US weapons sales, the curtailment of State Department criticism of human rights violations, and the promise that the US would intervene militarily in the event of a popular uprising. The assurances by Reagan may have led the Guatemalan government officials who ran the death squads to feel confident that the US would support their activities. The death squads were staffed and directed by the Guatemalan Army and Police under the command of President Lucas. Private businessmen paid the salaries and often assisted in compiling lists of potential victims -- usually student, labor, professional, and political leaders.

The significant increase in the number of death squad assassinations -- including the assassination of 34 of the top leadership of the moderate Christian Democratic Party -- that took place after Reagan took office, may have been a direct result of his assurances to the Guatemalan right. In February 1981, Amnesty International, reporting on massive human rights violations in Guatemala, attributed nearly 6,000 deaths to the Lucas Gracia government in less than three years, many of them at the hands of death squads. The attendance of Mario Sandoval Alarcon, considered to be the high commander of the Guatemalan death squads, at the Reagan inauguration, reveals the close relationship that existed between the Guatemalan rulers and the Reagan administration.

The war on drugs, the US National Guard, and the indigenous people
Near the end of the Reagan administration, another technique for repression was used -- the war on drugs. While the program had no significant impact on drug production and trafficking, it had serious consequences for indigenous Guatemalans. The spraying of lethal herbicides by anti-drug helicopters and planes caused widespread damage, poisoning large numbers of people, animals, fish, and plants. To escape government violence, some of the tens-of-thousands of indigenous internal refugees in Guatemala at that time, banded together in remote areas. In the name of its anti-drug policy, the government bombed these areas, captured much of the population, and tortured and killed many of them.

In 1989, the Bush administration, under the guise of humanitarian aid, sent National Guard units to Guatemala to provide medical services. They served in areas where the guerrilla movement was the strongest. According to villagers, a visit from the National Guard units sometimes bore more of a resemblance to police interrogations than to medical examinations. As villagers were getting "humanitarian" help, they were questioned about the type of organizations they had, who their leaders were, and what type of people visited their community.

The DeVine case
In 1990, MIchael DeVine, an American businessman living in Guatemala, apparently stumbled upon the Guatemalan Army's drug-trafficking activities. He was kidnapped and murdered. In response, President George Bush cut off military aid to Guatemala and publicly criticized the Army. But, Reagan's two-track policy was still in effect, so Bush continued to send CIA funds to the military to allow them to continue their war, and strengthened the ties between the CIA and the Guatemalan Army.

Under recent presidents, Guatemala's Civil Defense Patrols (PACs) continued a campaign of domination and terror against civilians, especially the indigenous population. Forced military conscription, kidnappings, death threats, and assassinations continued with impunity.

Ralph Reed Decides Against House Run

Libertas — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:03:56 GMT

We have one less Republican running for a House seat. His name is Ralph Reed, a former Christian Coalition executive director and chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.

That's a relief. But wait...what's he going to be doing instead?

In a statement, Reed said Wednesday he could be more influential leading a new conservative grassroots organization he started, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, than by serving in Congress.

“In 2010 and 2012, [the Faith and Freedom Coalition] will register an estimated one million new faith-based voters and make tens of millions of voter contacts in what may be the largest conservative get-out-the-vote effort in modern political history,” he said. “These nationwide efforts offer a much better prospect for changing the direction of the country than winning a Congressional race myself.”

How many more of these groups are going to pop up on the right side? I'm not sure whether to be upset or not about this. It could end up splitting the votes if some of them are also Tea Party members. But it could also put a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate.

The worst part is that he's got a great idea here. Just round up a large group of people who all believe in the same thing and get them to vote in every election possible. I can see him being very successful if he can get people all across the nation to join forces and that scares the living daylights out of me.

But he's mostly concentrating on evangelical christians.

Reed launched the Faith and Freedom Coalition following the 2008 election as a way of getting more evangelicals involved in politics. The group has attracted little public attention, but quietly helped mobilize Christian conservatives in last fall's gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Reed is working to establish state-based branches of the group and was in Iowa Tuesday night speaking to evangelical activists about his plans.

This could be good or bad since not all evangelical christians are conservative. But they'll probably attract more than just evangelicals right now.

This leaves me to wonder why isn't our side as vocal. I always see news articles about the right having protests and big grassroots movements. What about us? Do we need to start a movement? Or do we need to revamp a movement? Because I never hear about a big liberal group going around like the right does.

Do we need to start a movement to expose their lies and reverse the brainwashing that has been going on for years and years?

I think we do. And we may have some already. But we need to get the attention the Tea Party has gotten. We need to get more people on our side voting more.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34198.html

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics.html

I LOVE THIS! No Really, this is Truly an Inspired Thing "Smut for Smut!"

spiral115 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:05:09 GMT

I have been critical of Texas... often. Usually they are a lot like Florida because it seems all of the shit of the USA rolled down hill and filled up those two states. Today however my hat goes off to the University of Texas Atheist Group in San Antonio. They had a campaign to bring your Bible and trade it for some porn. BEEE YOOO TA FULL!

Now before hitting me with your hate comments let me advise you to go read your Bible. No really, I'll wait. The Bible is one of the nastiest pieces of filth I have ever seen, well besides the thing with the Japanese folks in the bath tub... never mind.

This is exactly the kind of attention that should be given religion in general. I am so happy! Someone pinch me!

Now Beck Has Done It!

spiral115 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:40:14 GMT

I called his Red Phone! Don't ask me how I got the number, just know I have sources. Can you believe this outrage? I am about to spit I am so mad. Well I guess you can just call me NERGAL!

Watch the video VERY closely. How did he know about this blog? The folks on it? Just how powerful is Fox?!!!

Stupid evil Beck!

Part 2.. Pivotal moments in US history changed by the courageous actions of 1.

LawandEng — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:14:55 GMT

It was something that was going to change the world! The internal combustion engine was not only going to allow everyday citizens to have personal transportation, but also was going to replace the more hazardous steam power.

The only problem was the fuel. When the engines were made more efficient and more powerful with higher compression, this horrible problem kept revealing its ugly side. A ominous sound would start up from the very bowels of the engine cylinders when put under stress. This sound was discovered to be "Pinging" or sometimes called engine knocking. The sound was like somebody had put gravel rocks in the cylinders!

Besides the very undesirable sounds that were produced from the relatively new technology, it was discovered that pinging caused damage to the internal workings of the engine itself. Some solution had to be found or this technology would never be accepted!

So in 1916 a chemist, named Thomas Midgley, was given the job of finding a solution to this particular nasty problem. He was told that not only was it bad for the automobiles being produced, but the newly developed flying machines and the associated aviation engine development was being hampered.

So working for General Motors Research, he tried several schemes to prevent this engine knock. Since Thomas thought that too much heat might be the problem, he tried different dyes in the gas. Perhaps different colors would absorb less heat. This didn't work out so well.

They then accumulated almost every element they could think of based on the Periodic Chart of the elements and started going down the list. By trial and error, they stumbled upon a substance called Tetra-Ethyl-Tin that showed some promise. Further investigation showed that it was the lead in the Tetra-Ethyl-Tin that stopped the knock completely. Lead was extremely cheap so if this substance worked out, a lot of money could be made.

The chemist cooked up a batch of Tetra-Ethyl-Lead and tried it out. The knock went away completely like magic! But by this time, other researchers had discovered that lead had some very bad properties like brain damage, strange skin reactions, difficulties in walking, etc.

The League of Nations was already recommending to ban all lead in paint to which Europe complied. The United States, for whatever reason, did not regulate lead in paint until a much later date. Thomas Midgley was by then receiving all sorts of reports and letters telling about the hazards of lead. In 1922, the surgeon general wrote a letter to the president of General Motors with concerns that lead would become a serious health issue to the public. In spite of these warnings, the president of General Motors had too much invested in this magical liquid solution.

General Motors president, Pierre DuPont, partnered with Standard Oil to form Ethyl Gasoline Company naming Mr. Charles Kettering as president and Thomas Midgley, the chemist, as Vice-President. The product went on sale in 1923. Additional public advertising was helped by the fact that they sponsored Ethyl fueled cars that won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place at the Indianapolis Raceway in 1923.

But problems started to show up. At the Ethyl production facility in Deepwater, the workers became disoriented, had a strange gait, and couldn't seem to think clearly. The Deepwater Ethyl plant started to be called the "House of Butterflies" for the strange effects to the workers.

The companies leaders excused the effects as the workers are "working too hard" and that was causing the slow insanity. "We are going to have to protect the workers against themselves" stated Mr Kettering. The public took these statements as a clean bill of health and soon the Ethyl lead additive started taking over the market.

By 1963, over 98 percent of all gasoline contained the additive. But all this lead was also coming out of the exhausts of all those cars across the country. Thousands of tons of lead per year at its peak. But because of political muscle, Ethyl lead gasoline enjoyed the protection of the government.

One instance, when a competitor came up with a nonlead additive, the US government actually sued them into bankruptcy. The US Federal Trade Commission came out with a report that stated that leaded gas was not a narcotic, poisonous dope, or dangerous to human health in any way. Ethyl Gasoline was here to stay........except for one person who just wouldn't go along.

This one geochemist graduate student, Clair Patterson, was trying some new ways of measuring how old rocks were with the goal of finding out how old the earth was. His new method was by measuring the isotopes of uranium and lead naturally found in rocks samples.

But something was wrong! All of the rock samples he tested contained about 200 times the amount of lead they should have naturally. He just couldn't figure out where the contamination was coming from! He set up a strict contamination procedure in his lab. Still he was coming up with the same results. Where was all the lead coming from?

He found out that the lead contamination was from the atmosphere and spoiling the samples. He then discovered that it was from the gasoline additive, Tetra-Ethyl-Lead, and started publishing his findings. Dr Patterson came up with an experiment in which he would take core samples from pack ice in Greenland and from the different layers, be able to determine lead contamination throughout past years. The experiment worked and it show that lead levels started increasing in 1923 and that the last tested year of 1965, the lead levels were 1000 times what they had been before 1923. He also started testing human bones and found that modern human bone lead level were many times greater than pre-1923 bone lead tests.

When these results were published, the proverbial "crap hit the fan". First the Ethyl corporation offered him lucrative contracts for more favorable results. He refused. They then started a public smear campaign designed to destroy his credibility. Even the US government got into the campaign with the National Research Council disputing the findings.

The Ethyl Corporation had many friends on their side including a Supreme Court Justice, members of the US Public Health Service, and the American Petroleum Institute. But Dr. Patterson would not relent on his campaign to inform the general public. Eventually Congress passed the Clean Air act of 1970 which demanded that leaded gasoline was to be phased out because of research that Dr Patterson published.

DuPont and the Ethyl Corporation were able to delay the death of Ethyl based additives for 10 more years in court, but eventually all gasoline became lead free in 1986. In the 63 years of Ethyl additives existence, 6 million tons of lead was released in the atmosphere.

What happened to the chemist, Thomas Midgley, who ignored all the warnings about lead and came up with Ethyl additives? Well, he was not totally out of the creative process when Tetra-Ethyl-Lead ceased to exist. He later went on to invent ChloroFluroCarbons, otherwise known as CFC'S. What a guy!!

Resources:

The Nation: The Secret History of Lead by Jamie Kitman

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra-ethyl_lead

Damn Interesting: The Ethyl Poison Earth by Alan Bellows

http://www.chemcases.com/tel/tel-13.htm Kenneshaw University "How the best known Poison on Earth remained in the Gasoline Supply for 60 Years"