Kissinger on Democracy in Chile

[Octafish]

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves... l don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."

-- Henry Kissinger on the US-backed coup d'etat in Chile.

And we wonder why the US keeps moving to the right, even when we vote in leaders who promise to move things to the left.

[djean111]

1. That's pretty m,uch the way things work in this country, too.

The donors decide, not the voters.

[Octafish]

6. Absolutely, djean111. Kissinger helped Nixon torpedo Vietnam peace talks in 1968...

...which is what Hubert Humphrey -- and most decent Americans -- wanted to see succeed.

New Study:

Nixon 'Wrecked Early Peace In Vietnam'

by Martin Kettle in Washington
Guardian, Aug. 9, 2000

On the eve of his election in 1968, Richard Nixon secretly conspired with the South Vietnamese government to wreck all-party Vietnam peace talks as part of a deliberate effort to prolong a conflict in which more than 20,000 Americans were still to die, along with tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians.

The devastating new charge against Nixon, which mirrors long-held suspicions among members of President Lyndon Johnson's administration about the Republican leader's actions in the autumn of 1968, is made by the authors of a new study of Nixon's secret world in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

"The greatest honour history can bestow," reads the inscription on Nixon's black granite tombstone in California, "is the title of peacemaker." But if the charges by authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan are correct, Nixon better deserves to be called a peacewrecker than peacemaker.

At the heart of the new account was Nixon's fear that Vietnam peace efforts by President Johnson in the run-up to the November 1968 US presidential election could wreck Nixon's bid to oust Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, and capture the White House.

Nixon's response to Johnson's efforts was to use a go-between, Anna Chennault, to urge the South Vietnam's president, Nguyen van Thieu, to resist efforts to force them to the peace table.

Nixon's efforts paid off spectacularly. On October 31, Johnson ordered a total halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, the precondition for getting the North and their Vietcong allies to join the talks. Two days later, under intense secret urgings from Nixon and his lieutenants, Thieu announced his government would not take part. Less than a week later, Nixon was elected president with less than a one-point margin in the popular vote over Humphrey.

SNIP...

In reality, however, Nixon used his campaign manager, John Mitchell, later his disgraced attorney general, to use go-betweens to encourage Thieu to believe he would get a better deal under a Nixon administration and to boycott the putative talks. Nixon constantly denied that he was conspiring with Thieu against the US government, but the release of previously classified FBI files used by the authors show this was exactly what he was doing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/080900-01.htm

At least 21,000 more Americans would go on to lose their lives in Vietnam and uncounted millions others there and in Cambodia and Laos, thanks to the Treason of 1968.

[hifiguy]

29. That Nixon monkeywrenched LBJ's peace overtures

via Chennault is an absolute historical fact.

And as for Kissinger, he should have been arrested as a war criminal, tried, and hanged or jailed for life 40 years ago. And now he's Hillary's new BFF. Jebus.

[Le Taz Hot]

32. This needs to be a seperate OP.

Some ignorant fuck on DU yesterday actually gave Kissinger credit for ending the Viet Nam war. I kid you not. Apparently, they're not studying history in the schools anymore.

[Octafish]

33. There are no X-Files in History as revealed by Texas School Books...

Here's some of why a pro-ignorance contingent works overtime to smear Robert Parry:

A Blind Eye to LBJ’s ‘X-File’

Exclusive: President Lyndon Johnson’s legacy is in the news – whether his many domestic achievements should outweigh his disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War – but no attention is being paid to evidence that LBJ might have ended the war if not for Richard Nixon’s sabotage, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews April 11, 2014

Many important officials and journalists have spent time at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, this past week celebrating the half-century anniversary of one of President Lyndon Johnson’s signature achievements, the Civil Rights Act. But no one, it seems, took time to look at what the library’s archivists call their “X-File,” documents that could change how history views Johnson’s legacy.

The “X-File” is the nickname that the archivists gave to Johnson’s secret file on what he considered Richard Nixon’s “treason” in sabotaging Vietnam War peace talks to gain an edge over Hubert Humphrey in the close 1968 election. The “X-File” is actually “The X envelope,” the words scribbled on the outside by Johnson’s national security adviser Walt Rostow.

As a bitter Johnson was leaving the White House in January 1969, he ordered Rostow to take the top-secret file which included national security wiretaps of Nixon’s representatives urging South Vietnamese officials to boycott Johnson’s Paris peace talks and offering a better deal if Nixon won.

Johnson had hoped he could bring the war to a close before his presidency ended, but in late October 1968, South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu balked at the peace talks as the Nixon team had requested. The failed negotiations gave a last-minute lift to Nixon who eked out a narrow victory over Humphrey.

Johnson chose to keep silent about what Nixon’s had done but wanted to keep the file out of Nixon’s hands. So LBJ entrusted it to Rostow who simply took the file home with him and kept it, as instructed, until after Johnson’s death on Jan. 22, 1973. For several months, Rostow struggled over what to do with the file before finally entrusting it to the LBJ Library with instructions to keep it secret for 50 years.

However, in 1994, library officials decided to open the file and began the work of declassifying the documents, a few of which remain classified to this day. I was given access to the file in 2012 and published a lengthy story at Consortiumnews.com. I also included the information in my latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative. After my reporting, the BBC published an account in 2013 recognizing the significance of the new evidence.

“The X-envelope” also played a role in two other controversies of the Nixon years: the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, offering insights into how the two events were tied together. The narrative goes this way:

After taking office in 1969, Nixon learned about LBJ’s wiretap file from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, but Nixon’s top aides, Henry Kissinger and H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, could not locate it. They had no idea that Rostow had taken the file home with him when he left the White House at the end of LBJ’s presidency.

Nixon’s concerns about the missing file became more urgent in June 1971 when the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War that had been leaked by former Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg. The Pentagon Papers chronicled many of the deceptions that had led the United States into the bloody Vietnam conflict, but the historical chronology stopped in 1967.

As the Pentagon Papers dominated the U.S. news in mid-June 1971, Nixon understood something that few others did – that there was a sequel somewhere that could have been even more explosive than the Pentagon Papers, the story of how Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign had conspired with South Vietnamese officials to extend the war.

If Rostow’s “X envelope” had surfaced then, Nixon’s reelection would not only have been put in jeopardy but he might well have faced impeachment. Just a month earlier, the May Day protests had brought hundreds of thousands of anti-war activists to Washington, government buildings had been surrounded, and thousands of people were arrested. It is hard to even imagine the fury that would have followed disclosure that Nixon had torpedoed peace talks for political gain.

With the May Day protests fresh in his mind and confronting the media frenzy over the Pentagon Papers, Nixon ordered Kissinger and Haldeman to resume their search for the missing file. In a tape-recorded conversation on June 17, 1971, Nixon even instructed his people to break into the Brookings Institution where he thought the file might be.

On June 30, 1971, Nixon returned to the topic, suggesting that ex-CIA officer E. Howard Hunt be brought in to put together a team to handle the job. “You talk to Hunt,” Nixon told Haldeman. “I want the break-in. Hell, they do that. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them in. … Just go in and take it. Go in around 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock.”

Haldeman: “Make an inspection of the safe.”

Nixon: “That’s right. You go in to inspect the safe. I mean, clean it up.”

For reasons that remain unclear, it appears that the planned Brookings break-in never took place, but Hunt did put together a team of burglars who conducted other operations, including breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate building where part of the team was captured on June 17, 1972. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Dark Continuum of Watergate.”]

Though Rostow’s “X envelope” contains information that could dramatically reshape history’s understanding of both the Johnson and Nixon presidencies, it continues to attract very little attention even when groups of very important people visit the LBJ Library seeking to put President Johnson’s legacy in clearer focus.

Despite the visit by President Barack Obama and the traveling press corps on Thursday, Rostow’s documents still remain as mysterious as the spooky “X-Files” series that the archivists were referencing when they dubbed the papers their “X-File.” On Friday, when I ran a Google news search for “Johnson, Nixon, Rostow, Vietnam War,” nothing came up.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

SOURCE: http://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/11/a-blind-eye-to-lbjs-x-file/

MODS: Reprinted with permission of the author for use by DU.

[Le Taz Hot]

34. A fascinating read.

However, the interruption of the Paris Peace talks is common knowledge and documented elsewhere so even though the "X-files" have not yet been released, other sources do exist. Further, I can remember rumors of a Nixon/Kissinger intervention in 1968.

Thanks for the article and the links -- provided information I never knew.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. Or they are, onliy it's not the history we older folks remember

[scarletwoman]

2. Ah, yes. Those "American Values" for which Hillary praised Kissinger. (nt)

[Octafish]

9. Operation CONDOR

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/

Few Americans today remember a most heinous terrorist act: The assassinations of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and American Ronnie Karpen Moffit.



Ms. Moffit was an American citizen murdered by agents of a foreign government on U.S. soil. Her only crime was being with Orlando Letelier, whose crime was to speak out against the military coup that toppled the democratically elected Chilean government he served. Because he refused to turn over the Chilean secret police and their American contacts, these assassinations were allowed, if not sanctioned, by George Bush, then director of central intelligence and head of the CIA.

As with all things having to do with the BFEE, the world get worse. So, a reminder:

October will mark the anniversary of another most heinous terrorist act: The bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 passengers and crew. The pilots reported the blast caused their aircraft to catch fire and they were burning up as they attempted an emergency landing. The plane crashed into the Caribbean, a few miles west of Barbados. All aboard perished, including a close friend of the Great DUer malaise.



Cubana Airlines DC-8 like the one bombed by BFEE members Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both turds have been protected by Poppy and Baby Doc Bush and the CIA, which strangely has been loyal to them rather than to various presidencies before and in-between.

Here’s an excellent essay based on the facts:

The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

Posada Carriles and Bush's Anti-Terror Hoax

By SAUL LANDAU
Counterpunch June 9, 2005

President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.

But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel Castro, these rules don't apply.

Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba, receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the president's commitment to fight terrorism.

For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada in mid May. But the arresting officers didn't even handcuff the Western Hemisphere's most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush's pal Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay ­ ENRON's CEO ­ got handcuffed?) Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with "illegal entry into the United States."

The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called "Bambi" by his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was "up to his eyeballs" in the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick's statement, but also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.

SNIP…

One wonders: Did Posada announce his illegal presence in the United States with the idea that U.S. government complicity in aiding and abetting his past acts of terrorism would protect him? U.S. authorities didn't inform Cuba or try to stop the 1976 air-bombing plot, and in 1971, as Veciana stated, the CIA made the gun that Posada's agents placed inside the camera to assassinate Castro. And Ollie North has knowledge of Posada's covert activities for U.S. intelligence as well.

CONTINUED…

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html

[font color="red"]What ties these two events together is the involvement of George Herbert Walker Bush, as then-CIA director, in their cover-up as crimes and in the protection of their perpetrators, as in the person of one Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and their colleagues-in-terror.[/font color]

Think about it: A murder-forgiving CIA director Bush went on to become President of the United States. Today, Bush’s son, George, acts as president. The younger Bush has used his office from Day One to protect and cover-up the crimes of his father.

That’s what Hugo Chavez was talking about when he smelled the sulfur and called Bush “The Devil.”

America needs to wake up and smell the sulfur, too. Here’s some background on the above:

LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD

CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153 /

Don’t forget to check out Orlando Bosch, while you’re at it. GOOGLE with Jeb Bush for some interesting connections to the present day.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed National Security Archive’s Peter Kornbluh and Letelier’s son, Francisco:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/153...

Another important point to remember, is Kissinger's close association with Operation CONDOR, the assassination program run out of "The Cone" to silence democrats, liberals, union leaders, progressives, socialists, communists or anyone who stood for justice and equality.

Chile security chief was CIA informer

BBC Tuesday, 19 September, 2000, 23:24 GMT 00:24 UK

Recently declassified documents in the United States show that the former head of the secret police in Chile, Manuel Contreras, was a paid informant for the US intelligence agency, the CIA.

The report, comprising CIA documents requested by the US Congress, show that contact with Contreras began in 1974 - a year after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.

Contreras oversaw the much-feared security service DINA

The report adds that the contact was maintained until 1977 - a year after Contreras plotted the killing of the then Chilean Foreign Minister and foe of General Pinochet, Orlando Letelier, in Washington.

A BBC correspondent in Washington, Nick Bryant, says the documents reinforce the view that the US turned a blind eye towards political repression in Chile during the Pinochet era and that the CIA was complicit in many human rights abuses.

Pinochet's confidant

As head of the security service, DINA, Contreras became the one of the most feared men in Chile, second only to General Pinochet.

The general's iron rule was underpinned by the tactics of brutal repression that saw thousands die and thousands more flee into exile. Others disappeared or were tortured.

CONTINUED…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/932897.stm

Of course, there are even more sulferous friends than these…

Bush s Longstanding Criminal Mexican Amigos

The disturbing ties of some of George W. Bush's Latino advisors

More on Bush-Amigos links in PBS Frontline interview with Gary Jacobs

By Julie Reynolds
Research assistance by Victor Almazán and Ana Leonor Rojo

LOS AMIGOS DE BUSH

“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. (Tell me who you side with and I will tell you who you are.)” – “George W. Bush for President” web site

Those who say that George W. Bush has scant knowledge of foreign affairs don't understand his family's relationship with Mexico.

If one event could be said to make that relationship visible, it had to be the state dinner given eleven years ago by President Bush for Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas. It was an elegant yet boisterous gala, where the biggest movers and shakers in Texas and Mexico congregated and celebrated. This group was to become W's Mexican legacy, a gift of ties and connections passed on from the father to his son.

SNIP…

The Mexican president had spent a long day with President Bush signing trade pacts, the precursors of NAFTA. Salinas brought his so-called Dream Team: his commerce secretary, finance minister, and his personal Machiavelli, Jose Córdoba. It would later be astounding to see, as the decade unfolded, how many of that administration's proud men and women fell shamefully from grace - some exiled, some imprisoned and some assassinated.

No one knew it then, but many at that banquet would survive to one day help young W beat a path back to the White House. There were loyal "Bushfellas" who were old friends of the family: Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher Sr., General Colin Powell, and George Bush Senior's ever-present friend, Secretary of State James Baker. Gary Jacobs, whose Texas bank was about to be bought by the son of Mexico's billionaire-politico Carlos Hank González, was also a guest. Tony Garza, then a young judge, is now a Bush cabinet contender. Today, all are advisors or contributors to W's campaign.

Hidden among the glitterati were two relative unknowns. They were, however, familiar to the group at hand. They were the loyal "Amigos de Bush" from San Antonio: criminal defense lawyer Roy Barrera Jr. and car dealer Ernesto Ancira Jr. In contrast to the Salinas group, the ties of Barrera and Ancira to drug cartels would remain unnoticed for another decade. Their ties to George W. would grow stronger.

CONTINUED…

GOOGLE cache:

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Th5_dq9beuYJ:www.el...

May also be at:

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/contents10,2,00.htm

Henry Kissinger and Agusto Pinochet

Why would anyone want to be friends with fascists?

[whathehell]

16. Thanks for all of this, Octafish...

You are a treasure in this place (DU).

[hifiguy]

30. Posada was a CIA asset from around the time of

the Bay of Pigs planning, which was initiated by, who else, Richard M. Nixon.

[whathehell]

11. Not "American values" and Hillary's statement should probably disqualify her for office. n/t

[Karmadillo]

3. It would be wrong to allow America to move to the left because of

the irresponsibility of its own people.

[Octafish]

12. And so they bought the Media, lock, stock, and every smoking barrel of ink, airwave and electron.

To help prevent the United States from becoming a "Socialist Democracy" like Norway or Sweden, the Big Money types magically transformed the Press from watchdogs to lapdogs:

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”[/font color]

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)

So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

CONTINUED...

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

Things, of course, are worse today. We have the sociopathic Chief Justice John Roberts shepherding corporate friendly law through the court and hand-appointing nothing but BFEE-friendly pukes to the FISA Court as the presstitutes work mightily to move rightward and on to the next shiny object. Of course, Congress and the Administration also do their fair share to advance the interests of Corporate America, Wall Street, and War Inc -- all unchecked by public awareness.

[whathehell]

15. What was Kissinger's occupation/ background before he came to the U.S.?

He certainly sounds like an imperialist, if not an all out fascist.

My understanding, in fact, is that he is considered a "war criminal" in Europe

and other places, so he has to stay in the US for fear of being arrested.

That may be true or not, but it's what I've heard.

[hifiguy]

31. History professor at Harvard,

and adviser to Nelson Rockefeller. IIRC he worked for US intelligence of some sort during WW II but on that I could be mistaken.

[Octafish]

48. His family emigrated from Germany...

...he served as an enlisted man in World War II -- he was an Army specialist, a translator. There are reports he did translation work for for Army, interviewing prisoners and crossing paths with the PAPERCLIP fascists.

The great John Judge explained:

Henry Kissinger — Worked with General Lucius Clay at Oberammergau, and then with key stateside Army Intelligence and CIA units responsible for bringing in the Nazi spies.(45) Kissinger, who came from Germany to join U.S. Army Intelligence during World War II, had as his "mentor" the mysterious Fritz Kraemer.(46) Kraemer's 30-year silent career in the Pentagon plans division includes the prepping of Alexander Haig.(47) It may also conceal his real identity – prisoner #33 in the dockets at Dachau, the special Lieutenant to Hitler, Fritz Kraemer.(48) Mr. Kissinger still relies on his advice, and did so while Secretary of State.

SOURCE: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/GoodAmericans.html

Going from memory and the GOOGLE: Henry doesn't bring this up in his public statements.

[whathehell]

49. Thanks, Octafish..

I'm checking out that link.

His connections sound as creepty as one might expect.

[KG]

4. kiissinger gives less than a shit about democracy.

[Octafish]

14. You may enjoy hearing the late Christopher Hitchens talk about the fellow...

Mariah Galardin archived a talk he gave on his then-new book, "The Trials of Henry Kissinger":

http://www.tucradio.org/new.html

(Scroll down or find "Hitchens&quot

Hitchens was ashamed of his profession and mine.

[Karmadillo]

20. Thank you for posting this. Listening now. I guess your post at #12 explains

why the terrible FACTS Hitchens listed about this supreme criminal are not part of general discourse. Hard to imagine Hillary Clinton isn't aware of this suppressed history and even harder to imagine why she felt the need to join the Orwellian campaign to burnish Kissinger's reputation.

[Octafish]

21. It may be her signal that she has sided with the Oligarchs.

Where she was exactly one year ago:

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provides clear message of support to Ukraine at 10th Annual Meeting of YES

Hillary Clinton welcomes unanimity of government and opposition in Ukraine as the country gets close to signing the Association Agreement with the European Union

21 September 2013
Yalta European Seminar

The former US Secretary of State (2009-2013), Hillary Clinton, welcomes the unanimity shown by the Ukrainian government and those in opposition on the issue of the country’s proposed integration with Europe.

“I was glad to hear the news that the Cabinet of Ministers has already approved the wording of the Association Agreement – this is a very important procedural document. Political leaders representing very different political views, and very different regions have united under the guidance of the President to achieve this important goal”, said the US ex-Secretary of State at the 10th Annual Meeting of YES “Changing Ukraine in a Changing World: Factors of Success” on Friday evening in Yalta.

The forum’s special guest also noted that the USA is willing to remain a friend and partner of Ukraine.

The integration of Ukraine into Europe will benefit the entire world – Hillary Clinton

Signing the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement will benefit not only the parties but the rest of the world too, stated former US Secretary of State (2009-2013), Hillary Clinton, at the 10th Annual Meeting of YES “Changing Ukraine in a Changing World: Factors of Success” on Friday evening in Yalta, Crimea.

“We, the USA, are for Ukraine’s integration into Europe. Closer relations between Ukraine and the European Union will be of benefit both for Ukraine and Europe, and the whole world. The Association and Free Trade Agreement will mean modernization of trade relations between Ukraine and the huge global market”, said the special guest at the forum.

Hillary Clinton also noted that Ukraine possesses enormous economic potential. “The list of natural resources which Ukraine is rich in includes, the natural and shale gas that provides it with the opportunity to move forward and become an energy independent country, its agricultural products and its excellent chocolate sweets which could, and should, be exported to many countries all over the world. These huge resources say a lot for Ukraine’s great future”, she said.

CONTINUED...

http://yes-ukraine.org/en/news/klyuchovi-mesedzhi-derzhavnogo-sekretarya-ssha-2009-2013-hillari-klinton-shcho-prozvuchali-na-10-iy-yaltinskiy-shchorichniy-zustrichi

Bill was there, too. This year's YES is next week. I'm sure the concern for Ukraine is all about democracy as in property belongs to them who can afford it.

[arcane1]

26. Oh, this is going to be good. Bookmarking for later listening

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Criminals.

[Octafish]

36. And, when in office, ''Traitors.''

East Timor

excerpts from the book

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

by Christopher Hitchins
Verso Press, 2001

EXCERPT...

Henry Kissinger on a lecture tour for his book Diplomacy, August 11, 1995, Park Central Hotel in New York, questioned by investigative reporters Allan Nairn and Amy Goodman:

Allan Nairn: Mr Kissinger, my name is Allan Nairn. I'm a journalist in the United States. I'm one of the Americans who survived the massacre in East Timor on November 12, 1991, a massacre during which Indonesian troops armed with American M-16s gunned down at least 271 Timorese civilians in front of the Santa Cruz Catholic cemetery as they were gathered in the act of peaceful mourning and protest. Now you just said that in your meeting with Suharto on the afternoon of December 6, 1975, you did not discuss Timor, you did not discuss it until you came to the airport. Well, I have here the official State Department transcript of your and President Ford's conversation with General Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia. It was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It has been edited under the Freedom of Information Act so the whole text isn't there. It's clear from the portion of the text that is here, that in fact you did discuss the impending invasion of Timor with Suharto, a fact which was confirmed to me by President Ford himself in an interview I had with him. President Ford told me that in fact you discussed the impending invasion of Timor with Suharto and that you gave the US . . .

Kissinger: Who? I or he?

Nairn: That you and President Ford together gave US approval for the invasion of East Timor. There is another internal State Department memo which is printed in an extensive excerpt here which I'll give to anyone in your audience that's interested. This is a memo of a December 18, 1975, meeting held at the State Department. This was held right after your return from that trip and you were berating your staff for having put on paper a finding by the State Department legal advisor Mr Leigh that the Indonesian invasion was illegal, that it not only violated international law, it violated a treaty with the US because US weapons were used and it's clear from this transcript which I invite anyone in the audience to peruse that you were angry at them first because you feared this memo would leak, and second because you were supporting the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and you did not want it known that you were doing this contrary to the advice of your own people in the State Department. If one looks at the public actions, sixteen hours after you left that meeting with Suharto the Indonesian troops began parachuting over Dili, the capital of East Timor. They came ashore and began the massacres that culminated in a third of the Timorese population. You announced an immediate doubling of US military aid to Indonesia at the time, and in the meantime at the United Nations, the instruction given to Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as he wrote in his memoirs, was to, as he put it, see to it that the UN be highly ineffective in any actions it might undertake on East Timor . . .

(shouts from the audience) Kissinger: Look, I think we all got the point now . . .

Nairn: My question, Mr Kissinger, my question, Dr Kissinger, is twofold. First will you give a waiver under the Privacy Act to support full declassification of this memo so we can see exactly what you and President Ford said to Suharto? Secondly, would you support the convening of an international war crimes tribunal under UN supervision on the subject of East Timor and would you agree to abide by its verdict in regard to your own conduct?

Kissinger I mean, uh, really, this sort of comment is one of the reasons why the conduct of foreign policy is becoming nearly impossible under these conditions. Here is a fellow who's got one obsession, he's got one problem, he collects a bunch of documents, you don't know what is in these documents . ..

Nairn: I invite your audience to read them.

Kissinger: Well, read them. Uh, the fact is essentially as I described them [thumps podium]. Timor was not a significant American policy problem. If Suharto raised it, if Ford said something that sounded encouraging, it was not a significant American foreign policy problem. It seemed to us to be an anti-colonial problem in which the Indonesians were taking over Timor and we had absolutely no reason at that time to pay any huge attention to it.

Secondly you have to understand these things in the context of the period. Vietnam had just collapsed. Nobody yet knew what effect the domino theory would have. Indonesia was . . . is a country of a population of 160 million and the key, a key country in Southeast Asia. We were not looking for trouble with Indonesia and the reason I objected in the State Department to putting this thing on paper; it wasn't that it was put on paper. It was that it was circulated to embassies because it was guaranteed to leak out. It was guaranteed then to lead to some public confrontation and for better or worse our fundamental position on these human rights issues was always to try to see if we could discuss them first, quietly, before they turned into a public confrontation. This was our policy with respect to emigration from Russia, in which we turned out to be right, and this was the policy which we tried to pursue in respect to Indonesia and anybody can go and find some document and take out one sentence and try to prove something fundamental and now I think we've heard enough about Timor. Let's have some questions on some other subject. (applause from audience)

Amy Goodman: Dr Kissinger, you said that the United States has won everything it wanted in the Cold War up to this point. I wanted to go back to the issue of Indonesia and before there's a booing in the audience, just to say as you talk about China and India, Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world. And so I wanted to ask the question in a current way about East Timor. And that is, given what has happened in the twenty years, the 200,000 people who have been killed, according to Amnesty, according to Asia Watch, even according to the Indonesian military.... Do you see that as a success of the United States?

Kissinger: No, but I don't think it's an American policy. We cannot be, we're not responsible for everything that happens in every place in the world. (applause from audience)

Goodman: Except that 90 percent of the weapons used during the invasion were from the US and it continues to this day. So in that way we are intimately connected to Indonesia, unfortunately. Given that, I was wondering if you think it's a success and whether too, with you on the board of Freeport McMoRan, which has the largest gold-mining operation in the world in Indonesia, in Irian Jaya, are you putting pressure, since Freeport is such a major lobbyist in Congress on behalf of Indonesia, to change that policy and to support self-determination for the people of East Timor?

Kissinger: The, uh, the United States as a general proposition cannot fix every problem on the use of American weapons in purely civil conflicts. We should do our best to prevent this. As a private American corporation engaged in private business in an area far removed from Timor but in Indonesia, I do not believe it is their job to get itself involved in that issue because if they do, then no American private enterprise will be welcome there anymore.

Goodman: But they do every day, and lobby Congress.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/East_Timor_TOHK.html

[malaise]

7. It was all about American imperialism

they have never given a flying fugg about democracy in or sovereignty of other nations.

[TBF]

8. ^ this -

in America profit is king. It is all about protecting "our interests" - and by "our" they mean money-making ventures owned by the 1%.

[Octafish]

37. ''(W)e're going to give Allende the hook.''

The Nixon Administration’s Response to Salvador Allende and Chilean Expropriation

EXCERPT...

...Following a meeting regarding U.S. policy on expropriation on the Presidential yacht Sequoia on June 10, 1971 (details of which have yet to be declassified) the Administration’s hard-line position gradually began to take shape.

A number of important meetings took place the day after the Sequoia meeting. During this first meeting, Nixon and Kissinger discussed Chilean attempts to secure new loans and renegotiate their existing obligations. Nixon fumed over the unwillingness of the Congress to do more for Brazil, which, in contrast to Chile, was led by “friends” of the United States. Nixon and Kissinger also discussed the assassination of the former Chilean Cabinet Minister, Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, on June 8, 1971 by a Chilean anarchist group, Vanguard of the People. Nixon and Kissinger chuckled at the Allende’s accusation that the CIA had orchestrated the assassination, noting that Zujovic was a conservative opponent of Allende, and probably the last person the U.S. Government would want to assassinate. Besides, as Kissinger noted, the CIA was too “incompetent” to pull off such an operation, recalling that the last person whom the CIA assassinated had lingered for three weeks before expiring.(vi)

SOURCE w/details, tapes, yada...

http://nixontapes.org/chile.html

Wonder what "expropriation" they talked about? Cuba? Chile? Chicago? Wonder how many CIA victims took three weeks to expire? And that was back when assassination was still illegal, before the world changed on 9/11.

[nationalize the fed]

10. This is the person that was originally going to lead the 911 commission

Only to resign because he would have been obliged to disclose the clients of his private consulting business.

Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission
Friday, December 13, 2002 Posted: 6:52 PM EST (2352 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Facing questions about potential conflicts of interest, Henry Kissinger resigned Friday as chairman of the September 11 commission.

President Bush named Kissinger to lead the 10-member commission last month, dropping his longstanding opposition to an independent probe of the events leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In a letter to the president, Kissinger, 79, said he was stepping down from the appointment to remove any questions about even the appearance of a conflict of interest regarding his ties to several organizations and public figures.

An administration official said Kissinger also called White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card Friday afternoon to talk about his withdrawal from the position. The official would not say if the call was expected, but aides said the president was surprised by Kissinger's decision...
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/kissinger.resigns/

Henry @ 0:54 "There's a need for a New World Order"

[Octafish]

38. Revealing one's client list exposes one's pay check.

I know our oligarchs say we need the oil, but we can buy it cheaper than waging all these wars.

“I was absolutely shocked by what I read,” Congressman Walter B. Jones told International Business Times. “What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly.”

SOURCE: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-20/i-was-absolutely-shocked-what-i-read-congressman-calls-release-secret-911-documents

Funny how I never saw any of that make it to my television screen.

[leftstreet]

13. DURec

Kissinger: “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” (from March 10, 1975 Meeting With Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey)

[Octafish]

39. The guy's a card. One of my favorite Quotations of All Time...

Charles Alexandre de Calonne
French statesman, 1734-1802

“Madame, si c’est possible, c’est fait; impossible? cela sefera.”
“Madam, if it be possible, it is done; if impossible, it shall be done.”
Quoted in Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Revolution Francaise (1847)

For Kissinger's take on the great American saying of World War II, "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." I expect it will be how history judges him. That is if we have a history, no thanks to him and his BFEE ilk. Did you see what Spooky Frank of the Congo Carlyle Carlucci was offering for those who can afford such luxuries as survival, let alone gift humanity a lifevest?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025097842#post4

[FiveGoodMen]

17. Is THAT what Hillary considers to be 'American values'?

[99th_Monkey]

24. That was my very first thought, when I saw this OP.

WTF is she thinking anyway?

[Octafish]

50. The Trials of Henry Kissinger

Lot of respect for Dr. Kissinger, yet the facts show a blatant disregard for American values, like Justice and Democracy.

[woo me with science]

57. Thank you.

[MinM]

18. Miltonian Model

Of course one of the objectives in Chile was to unleash the Milton Friedman Economic Model.

Needless to say it was a miserable failure.

Fast forward forty some years and it's deja vu all over again. Only this time in Honduras with Friedman protégé Paul Romer.

[hifiguy]

35. Naomi Klein laid it all out in The Shock Doctrine.

[BillZBubb]

19. That pompous toad makes me want to heave every time I see him.

[radicalliberal]

23. My sentiments exactly!

Notice in the pictures of him and Pinochet how proud he is of the monster he brought to power. They're real buddies!

Ordinarily, I would expect this refugee from Nazi Germany to be empathetic to human rights; but he's not empathetic at all! He's got blood on his hands. Chile is not the only "misadventure" he's had. A truly disgusting human being!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

44. Almost as good of buddies as Rummy and Saddam Hussein

[mackerel]

22. Chile, Argentina, Peru and Colombia horrible right wing terrorist

regimes destroyed those countries, the trust of their people and their economies. Peru and Chile are finally coming round economically.

[Louisiana1976]

28. Kissinger greenlighted the bloody Dirty War in Argentina. I'd like to see Kissinger visit Argentina

where he'll see the inside of an Argentinian prison.

[Jack Rabbit]

25. If I didn't know better, I'd suppose that remark was made in a cynical mood

!!

[Octafish]

53. I wonder how many of Henry's friends feel likewise about Democracy at home.

I know Henry doesn't give two cents for it.

That's fascist.

[panader0]

27. K and R

I admire your work.

[Octafish]

55. Money didn't always trump peace...

JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963

As a Democrat, a DUer and as a citizen of the United States, I was proud to attend the Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy at Duquesne University. One of the many important things discussed there was what author, historian and teacher, James DiEugenio reported on the important change in foreign policy JFK represented from his predecessor and his successors, immediate and otherwise.



DiEugenio said President John F. Kennedy did not undergo a change of heart from Cold War hawk to liberal dove Democrat only after the hair-raising nuclear crises he experienced in office. "John F. Kennedy was never a Cold Warrior," DiEugenio said. Throughout his 16-year career in the House and Senate, President Kennedy sided with the People, Justice and Democracy -- across the United States and around the world. This is a world view radically different from Eisenhower, and his foreign policy makers, principally the Dulles Brothers and their allies, including young Dick Nixon.

The JFK Administration may have represented a break in the action, H20 Man's Father explained to him and I agree. It was a special interlude, indeed. In only 1,037 days, we launched the nation toward the moon, creating a new type of economy; maintained the peace when several times the heads of the military and the secret organs of the national security state counseled all-out war; and started the nation on a path where all men are equal under the law, no matter race, color, or creed, and justice extended to economics and health, as under FDR and the New Deal.

DiEugenio’s research shows President Kennedy was working to defend the interests of democracy over those of colonialism, not only in Europe, as evinced in divided Berlin, but in Africa, Asia, South America and around the world. During less than three years in office, Kennedy turned official U.S. support from that of Eisenhower and the Dulles Brothers for supporting US commercial and colonial interests over democracy, such as in Guatemala and Iran, to respect for the nations and their democratically elected leaders, like Lumumba and Sukarno. In matters of war and peace, JFK always sided with peace, making overtures to North Vietnam. The Dulles Brothers and Nixon sided with France and the colonial powers, even drawing up plans to nuke the North Vietnamese Army at Dien Bien Phu, Operation VULTURE.

The record shows JFK's Foreign Policy of democracy over colonialism was immediately reversed by Lyndon B. Johnson, who reversed course in Vietnam and supported the pro-colonialist forces in Congo, Vietnam, Brazil, Dominican Republic and elsewhere around the world. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and most who followed continued the Business-As-Usual, advancing the interests of Big Money, Big Oil and Big Wars for Profit.

One of the things I am most proud of is how Democratic Underground covered many of these salient points on its boards, from DU1 through the present day. At the Duquesne conference, I was listening and nodding, knowing that many times we had discussed this on DU. In looking back to one particularly important post through GOOGLE, I found we sourced this information back to DiEugenio. That's what the Internet can do: Spread Truth.

Why it matters.

Democracy depends on Truth. The Republic depends on Justice. That is, the reality that ours is a nation under law.

Once a criminal is, or criminals are, allowed to go free, Justice has been denied. We find ourselves operating under a falsehood, we are living a Big Lie.

We as a Nation have been on the criminal path since November 22, 1963.

DUers know you don’t need to read a history book or watch a tee vee special to know: It shows. Since 1964 and the Gulf of Tonkin, it’s been a series of wars without end for profit. And in the process, the rich became super-rich -- the richest and most powerful people in history.

Thanks for reading. Keep spreading the Truth, DU! The next 50 years can be different -- they can be decades of peace and prosperity for ALL: They can be Democratic.

Original thread from 2013: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023964436

PS: Thank you panader0! I very much appreciate your kind words and what you do on DU, this great truth machine for Democracy.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

40. My theory as to why Kissinger viewed Chile as SO necessary to intervene in

All the time I was growing up, one of the standard propaganda lines was "No country has ever freely elected a Communist government."

Then the Chileans went and did it. Salvador Allende was a Marxist, but even though he gave no signs of violating Chile's law limiting presidents to a single term, he had to go. Those silly Chileans, not knowing what was good for them! Those silly Chileans, going against the conventional wisdom that Americans were being taught!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

41. But but Nixon was the last liberal president this country had

[Oilwellian]

45. When Kissinger was suggested for the 911 Commission...

my father, an old school conservative, expressed great dismay at the possibility. If my father understands the serious crimes against humanity that Kissinger committed, why can't Hillary? And why does Obama love Kissinger so?

[woo me with science]

56. +1

[Uncle Joe]

46. And that should be "American Values!?"

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[JEB]

47. K&R for the OP and all the subsequent links and info.

[cilla4progress]

51. These people depend upon our forgetting.

Never was the saying more timely - those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.

[Octafish]

52. What they do to others overseas, they always come back to do at home.

Take NSA spying, please. Alfred McCoy says it's about blackmail, not National Security:

Surveillance and Scandal

Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power

By Alfred McCoy
Tomgram, Jan. 19, 2014

For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies.

[font color="green"]Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable.[/font color]

A Cost-Savings Bonanza With a Downside

Once upon a time, such surveillance was both expensive and labor intensive. Today, however, unlike the U.S. Army’s shoe-leather surveillance during World War I or the FBI’s break-ins and phone bugs in the Cold War years, the NSA can monitor the entire world and its leaders with only 100-plus probes into the Internet’s fiber optic cables.

This new technology is both omniscient and omnipresent beyond anything those lacking top-secret clearance could have imagined before the Edward Snowden revelations began. Not only is it unimaginably pervasive, but NSA surveillance is also a particularly cost-effective strategy compared to just about any other form of global power projection. And better yet, it fulfills the greatest imperial dream of all: to be omniscient not just for a few islands, as in the Philippines a century ago, or a couple of countries, as in the Cold War era, but on a truly global scale.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175795/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy,_it's_about_blackmail,_not_national_security/

Then, there's what Hannah Arendt found while writing about the banality of evil...

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

By Chris Hedges
TruthDig.org, Posted on Jan 5, 2014

EXCERPT...

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.

The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.

[font color="green"]The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant. [/font green]

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

Which seems to be the Big Roundup where the fascists are herding everybody.

PS: Thank you for remembering Santayana, cilla4progress. The future comes from the past.

[woo me with science]

54. K&R