7 ms·

> At the other end is the Middle Eastern countries. Monarchs and despots have largely enriched themselves and their families at the expense of their country and

> At the other end is the Middle Eastern countries. Monarchs and despots have largely enriched themselves and their families at the expense of their country and their people. Iran nationalized their oil industry, and they got a CIA-backed coup for their troubles.

quaquaqua1 7y ago
Allende did the same in Chile with the copper mines and CIA delivered the same medicine in kind. Chile's story is a strange duality of murder and relative economic prosperity. It is extremely difficult to say whether it was "worth it". But, the most important thing is that we say it happened, just like you did.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  Don't forget bolivia last year. The first native american president got ousted by a international bankers/cia led coup. And of course, the coming overthrow of venezuela in the coming months led by the same culprits.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Happily, it seems their efforts have failed in Venezuela, in vaguely humorous fashion. Juan Guaidó no longer holds any elected office, although he has enjoyed the hundreds of millions of dollars he has received from CIA. (USA taxpayers will put up with literally anything.) There was just a hung jury on the embassy protectors persecution. Hausmann can't figure out whether he is a professor or an IDB rep. Good times! I still hold out some hope for Bolivia. Of course it's tragic that the new "Christian" coup government has harmed so many indigenous people. In doing so, however, they may have overplayed their hands. Indigenous and unionists aren't knuckling under. There are some inland areas the police and military no longer dare to tread. The coup government that CIA picked out in Bolivia are nearly as hapless as Guaidó and his gang. It will be interesting to see whether Bolivia appears on the popular news in USA once in 2020...
    - ErneX 7y ago
      Evo had a parallel election office set up to manipulate the results of the election. And before you link the recent "MIT study", yeah please don't. That was paid by Mark Weisbrot, a Hugo Chavez paid shill. The level of ruin the bolivarian revolution has brought to my country with the help of Cuba is just appalling. At this point we need all the help available, it's been 20 years already of mismanagement and corruption at levels never before seen in the region.
      - bosswipe 7y ago
        Bolivia's GDP has more than doubled in that time period.
    - dntbnmpls 7y ago
      > Happily, it seems their efforts have failed in Venezuela, in vaguely humorous fashion I think you are underestimating the international bankers' power and resolve. Guaido was a special guest at the state of the union address and both parties along with trump praised him and gave him a standing ovation. Something like that doesn't happen unless a coup in venezuela is pre-ordianed. It also shows that politics and the divisive theatrics are just for show. They are distractions to dupe the american people. Both parties and trump serve the same international banking masters, not the american people. > It will be interesting to see whether Bolivia appears on the popular news in USA once in 2020... It won't. What's interesting is the sudden rise of the pro-coup messaging on social media and of the course the odd downvoting of comments pointing out the coups. I guess the bankers' weren't happy just buying nytimes op-eds. Now they are trying to buy social media influence. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/contributors/venezuela-us-hands-off-joanna-hausmann.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/contributors/vene... Joanna Hausmann is a daughter of a "venezuelan" banker who got ousted by venezuelans. She is a youtuber "comedian" and I guess that is good enough to get an op-ed piece on the nytimes about a major geo-politic issue. But then again, the nytimes was created by a banker...
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Sure, the coup is preordained, but it has been for so long it's starting to smell a bit stale. Gargamel has been hanging around for over a year now. I always suspected he was the sort of loser one appoints when one sort of wants the whole project to fizzle out ignominiously. What's the old saw? Something about "B-level people hire C-level people"? The elected government of Venezuela has been careful to let Guaidó run amok without arresting him or hampering his travel. Now that his erstwhile allies have realized he isn't going to an martyr anytime soon, they're less interested. CIA themselves are on shakier ground than they used to be. They expected to be ordering Pres. Pence around by now. Now the "grown-up" Democrats have "chosen" Biden (as I predicted in 2017), with whom Trump will play as a cat torments a mouse. Say what you will about his speed habit, at least the Cheeto isn't already sundowning halfway through the afternoon. After he wins this year, Trump will be far more interested in shuttering CIA than in tolerating their further misadventures abroad. Above, I was actually referring to Hausmann père, not Hausmann fille. The Hausmann (what a traditional Venezuelan name!) family run sort of a low-rent one-stop yes-we'll-take-black-budget-funds shop. Prof. Hausmann is at the K-school, which I guess explains why he didn't actually stop working for Guaidó when he promised Harvard administration he would. He's hoping to land at CFR...
- cbHXBY1D 7y ago
  The Pinochet "economic miracle" is largely debunked at this point. Naomi Klein has covered this topic extensively in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Here's a relevant passage from her book: “The only thing that protected Chile from complete economic collapse in the early eighties was that Pinochet had never privatized Codelco, the state copper mine company nationalized by Allende. That one company generated 85 percent of Chile’s export revenues, which meant that when the financial bubble burst, the state still had a steady source of fundsâ€¦. By 1988, when the economy had stabilized and was growing rapidly, 45 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line. The richest 10 percent of Chileans, however, had seen their incomes increase by 83 percent. Even in 2007, Chile remained one of the most unequal societies in the world—out of 123 countries in which the United Nations tracks inequality, Chile ranked 116th, making it the eighth most unequal country on the list.” You can read her go deeper into this subject in her 2008 blog post here: https://naomiklein.org/response-attacks/ https://naomiklein.org/response-attacks/ The economy under Pinochet was actually quite mediocre: "By the end of the dictatorship, Chile's average real per capita GDP had grown by only 1.6% per year, a result very close to economic stagnation; 18% of the population was unemployed and 45% below the poverty line. In 1990, Chile’s average GDP per capita, calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity, was only US $4,590, lower than Brazil’s, which at that time, after the “lost decade” of the 1980s, was $6,680. To define this as a "success" is, to say the least, intellectual impudence, if not contemptuous ideological propaganda." Taken from here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/myths-about-pinochets-chile-persist-brazil-today/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/myths-abo...
  - nickik 7y ago
    > Naomi Klein has covered this topic extensively in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein is a incredibly left wing journalist who's conclusion had all already been made before she did the research. I would argue that much of her book is incredibly badly research and bordering on straight up conspiracy theory nonsense. Her book is absolutely not up to any standard of economic or any social science resource. It is true that Pinochet did not produce some kind of economic miracle. That part is mostly correct. However one can also argue that the alternative path Allende wanted to go down was incredibly unlike to produce even those results. Because of how Pinochet was was removed, helped Chile on a different path that was good for it, even if many people still don't like it. All that said, I'm against US intervention in other countries.
oh_sigh 7y ago
As most people do who talk about this online, you neglect to mention that in the lead up to the coup, Mossadegh was constitutionally dismissed and yet tried to hold onto power. Doesn't that make him the attempted usurper? It's not like the US put their own figurehead in government after the coup. They just gave it back to the person who was literally the head of the recognized state. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état > On Saturday 15 August, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri,[14] the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered to Mosaddegh a firman from the Shah dismissing him. Mosaddegh, who had been warned of the plot, probably by the Communist Tudeh Party, rejected the firman and had Nassiri arrested.[53][54][55] Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the Iranian constitutional monarchy, the Shah had no constitutional right to issue an order for the elected Prime Minister's dismissal without Parliament's consent. However, the constitution at the time did allow for such an action, which Mosaddegh considered unfair. "The laws not fair! I wanted to be a dictator but it wouldn't let me"
- throwlaplace 7y ago
  because there are literally declassified docs that show the point was the oil and not "democracy". this is like saying the american civil war was about states rights. it's called a pretext and if it weren't for declassified docs in this case (and secessionist writing in the other case) we'd never hear the end of it (but since all that documentation does exist, it can in fact be neglected) Declassified Documents Reveal CIA Role In 1953 Iranian Coup : NPR https://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217976304/declassified-documents-reveal-cia-role-in-1953-iranian-coup https://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217976304/declassified-docume... For the last time, the American Civil War was not about states’ rights — Quartz https://qz.com/378533/for-the-last-time-the-american-civil-war-was-not-about-states-rights/ https://qz.com/378533/for-the-last-time-the-american-civil-w...
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >"The laws not fair! I wanted to be a dictator but it wouldn't let me" At worst you can say he wanted to be dictator but the dictator wouldn't let him, but arguing that somehow Mosaddegh is the bad guy for resisting such an obvious power grab is ridiculous. Being constitutional doesn't excuse a coup.
Gibbon1 7y ago
I wondered how Mexico nationalized it's oil industry and found out what happened was they nationalized in 1938. Before the oil companies and wall street could really move against them WWII started and the issue became moot.
HenryBemis 7y ago
Typical resource curse. Corruption to the max (African countries with diamonds, every non-western country with oil). Venezuela also nationalised their oil industry with Chavez but they were already in a very weak spot and of course not a nuclear power (or close to being one). Oil price dropping was the huff&puff that brought the house down.
- lettergram 7y ago
  Corruption is common in every country, some countries are just better at propaganda. Have you seen the film “There will be blood”? While not biographical, the gist is people were and are willing to do what it takes to “win”.
  - hdjejdjd 7y ago
    Comments like yours that think corruption in the west is anything comparable to the shit world are always so funny to read - like it's a neon light saying you've traded fealty to being reflexively contrarian for anything resembling reasoned informed thought. Like how clueless are you? It's pathetic you're talking about propaganda while spewing hack nonsense. It's very telling that on the subject of corruption, you have to bring up a made up movie to act like you have a clue.
  - jrumbut 7y ago
    In the US I have gotten or been part of getting a driver's license, building permits, government jobs, and government contracts and have never paid a bribe, been offered one, or seen someone else do so except in a newspaper story. I don't know if the cynicism is warranted or helpful really. Of course every country has bad actors and every system has problems but there are real differences and improvements possible.
    - newyankee 7y ago
      The difference is US or Western countries are already mature. I am sure different types of corruption existed there in 19th century when the country was still expanding. Off course culture of people matter but systemic rot arises when existing people work in what essentially is sometimes a negative sum game. Fights between heterogeneous groups over limited resources exist and far too often much powerful foreign powers do interfere to make the best of the situation for themselves.

quaquaqua1 7y ago

Allende did the same in Chile with the copper mines and CIA delivered the same medicine in kind. Chile's story is a strange duality of murder and relative economic prosperity. It is extremely difficult to say whether it was "worth it". But, the most important thing is that we say it happened, just like you did.

dntbnmpls 7y ago
Don't forget bolivia last year. The first native american president got ousted by a international bankers/cia led coup. And of course, the coming overthrow of venezuela in the coming months led by the same culprits.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Happily, it seems their efforts have failed in Venezuela, in vaguely humorous fashion. Juan Guaidó no longer holds any elected office, although he has enjoyed the hundreds of millions of dollars he has received from CIA. (USA taxpayers will put up with literally anything.) There was just a hung jury on the embassy protectors persecution. Hausmann can't figure out whether he is a professor or an IDB rep. Good times! I still hold out some hope for Bolivia. Of course it's tragic that the new "Christian" coup government has harmed so many indigenous people. In doing so, however, they may have overplayed their hands. Indigenous and unionists aren't knuckling under. There are some inland areas the police and military no longer dare to tread. The coup government that CIA picked out in Bolivia are nearly as hapless as Guaidó and his gang. It will be interesting to see whether Bolivia appears on the popular news in USA once in 2020...
  - ErneX 7y ago
    Evo had a parallel election office set up to manipulate the results of the election. And before you link the recent "MIT study", yeah please don't. That was paid by Mark Weisbrot, a Hugo Chavez paid shill. The level of ruin the bolivarian revolution has brought to my country with the help of Cuba is just appalling. At this point we need all the help available, it's been 20 years already of mismanagement and corruption at levels never before seen in the region.
    - bosswipe 7y ago
      Bolivia's GDP has more than doubled in that time period.
  - dntbnmpls 7y ago
    > Happily, it seems their efforts have failed in Venezuela, in vaguely humorous fashion I think you are underestimating the international bankers' power and resolve. Guaido was a special guest at the state of the union address and both parties along with trump praised him and gave him a standing ovation. Something like that doesn't happen unless a coup in venezuela is pre-ordianed. It also shows that politics and the divisive theatrics are just for show. They are distractions to dupe the american people. Both parties and trump serve the same international banking masters, not the american people. > It will be interesting to see whether Bolivia appears on the popular news in USA once in 2020... It won't. What's interesting is the sudden rise of the pro-coup messaging on social media and of the course the odd downvoting of comments pointing out the coups. I guess the bankers' weren't happy just buying nytimes op-eds. Now they are trying to buy social media influence. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/contributors/venezuela-us-hands-off-joanna-hausmann.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/contributors/vene... Joanna Hausmann is a daughter of a "venezuelan" banker who got ousted by venezuelans. She is a youtuber "comedian" and I guess that is good enough to get an op-ed piece on the nytimes about a major geo-politic issue. But then again, the nytimes was created by a banker...
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Sure, the coup is preordained, but it has been for so long it's starting to smell a bit stale. Gargamel has been hanging around for over a year now. I always suspected he was the sort of loser one appoints when one sort of wants the whole project to fizzle out ignominiously. What's the old saw? Something about "B-level people hire C-level people"? The elected government of Venezuela has been careful to let Guaidó run amok without arresting him or hampering his travel. Now that his erstwhile allies have realized he isn't going to an martyr anytime soon, they're less interested. CIA themselves are on shakier ground than they used to be. They expected to be ordering Pres. Pence around by now. Now the "grown-up" Democrats have "chosen" Biden (as I predicted in 2017), with whom Trump will play as a cat torments a mouse. Say what you will about his speed habit, at least the Cheeto isn't already sundowning halfway through the afternoon. After he wins this year, Trump will be far more interested in shuttering CIA than in tolerating their further misadventures abroad. Above, I was actually referring to Hausmann père, not Hausmann fille. The Hausmann (what a traditional Venezuelan name!) family run sort of a low-rent one-stop yes-we'll-take-black-budget-funds shop. Prof. Hausmann is at the K-school, which I guess explains why he didn't actually stop working for Guaidó when he promised Harvard administration he would. He's hoping to land at CFR...
cbHXBY1D 7y ago
The Pinochet "economic miracle" is largely debunked at this point. Naomi Klein has covered this topic extensively in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Here's a relevant passage from her book: “The only thing that protected Chile from complete economic collapse in the early eighties was that Pinochet had never privatized Codelco, the state copper mine company nationalized by Allende. That one company generated 85 percent of Chile’s export revenues, which meant that when the financial bubble burst, the state still had a steady source of fundsâ€¦. By 1988, when the economy had stabilized and was growing rapidly, 45 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line. The richest 10 percent of Chileans, however, had seen their incomes increase by 83 percent. Even in 2007, Chile remained one of the most unequal societies in the world—out of 123 countries in which the United Nations tracks inequality, Chile ranked 116th, making it the eighth most unequal country on the list.” You can read her go deeper into this subject in her 2008 blog post here: https://naomiklein.org/response-attacks/ https://naomiklein.org/response-attacks/ The economy under Pinochet was actually quite mediocre: "By the end of the dictatorship, Chile's average real per capita GDP had grown by only 1.6% per year, a result very close to economic stagnation; 18% of the population was unemployed and 45% below the poverty line. In 1990, Chile’s average GDP per capita, calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity, was only US $4,590, lower than Brazil’s, which at that time, after the “lost decade” of the 1980s, was $6,680. To define this as a "success" is, to say the least, intellectual impudence, if not contemptuous ideological propaganda." Taken from here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/myths-about-pinochets-chile-persist-brazil-today/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/myths-abo...
- nickik 7y ago
  > Naomi Klein has covered this topic extensively in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein is a incredibly left wing journalist who's conclusion had all already been made before she did the research. I would argue that much of her book is incredibly badly research and bordering on straight up conspiracy theory nonsense. Her book is absolutely not up to any standard of economic or any social science resource. It is true that Pinochet did not produce some kind of economic miracle. That part is mostly correct. However one can also argue that the alternative path Allende wanted to go down was incredibly unlike to produce even those results. Because of how Pinochet was was removed, helped Chile on a different path that was good for it, even if many people still don't like it. All that said, I'm against US intervention in other countries.

oh_sigh 7y ago

As most people do who talk about this online, you neglect to mention that in the lead up to the coup, Mossadegh was constitutionally dismissed and yet tried to hold onto power. Doesn't that make him the attempted usurper? It's not like the US put their own figurehead in government after the coup. They just gave it back to the person who was literally the head of the recognized state. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état > On Saturday 15 August, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri,[14] the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered to Mosaddegh a firman from the Shah dismissing him. Mosaddegh, who had been warned of the plot, probably by the Communist Tudeh Party, rejected the firman and had Nassiri arrested.[53][54][55] Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the Iranian constitutional monarchy, the Shah had no constitutional right to issue an order for the elected Prime Minister's dismissal without Parliament's consent. However, the constitution at the time did allow for such an action, which Mosaddegh considered unfair. "The laws not fair! I wanted to be a dictator but it wouldn't let me"

throwlaplace 7y ago
because there are literally declassified docs that show the point was the oil and not "democracy". this is like saying the american civil war was about states rights. it's called a pretext and if it weren't for declassified docs in this case (and secessionist writing in the other case) we'd never hear the end of it (but since all that documentation does exist, it can in fact be neglected) Declassified Documents Reveal CIA Role In 1953 Iranian Coup : NPR https://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217976304/declassified-documents-reveal-cia-role-in-1953-iranian-coup https://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217976304/declassified-docume... For the last time, the American Civil War was not about states’ rights — Quartz https://qz.com/378533/for-the-last-time-the-american-civil-war-was-not-about-states-rights/ https://qz.com/378533/for-the-last-time-the-american-civil-w...
boomboomsubban 7y ago
>"The laws not fair! I wanted to be a dictator but it wouldn't let me" At worst you can say he wanted to be dictator but the dictator wouldn't let him, but arguing that somehow Mosaddegh is the bad guy for resisting such an obvious power grab is ridiculous. Being constitutional doesn't excuse a coup.

Gibbon1 7y ago

I wondered how Mexico nationalized it's oil industry and found out what happened was they nationalized in 1938. Before the oil companies and wall street could really move against them WWII started and the issue became moot.

HenryBemis 7y ago

Typical resource curse. Corruption to the max (African countries with diamonds, every non-western country with oil). Venezuela also nationalised their oil industry with Chavez but they were already in a very weak spot and of course not a nuclear power (or close to being one). Oil price dropping was the huff&puff that brought the house down.

lettergram 7y ago
Corruption is common in every country, some countries are just better at propaganda. Have you seen the film “There will be blood”? While not biographical, the gist is people were and are willing to do what it takes to “win”.
- hdjejdjd 7y ago
  Comments like yours that think corruption in the west is anything comparable to the shit world are always so funny to read - like it's a neon light saying you've traded fealty to being reflexively contrarian for anything resembling reasoned informed thought. Like how clueless are you? It's pathetic you're talking about propaganda while spewing hack nonsense. It's very telling that on the subject of corruption, you have to bring up a made up movie to act like you have a clue.
- jrumbut 7y ago
  In the US I have gotten or been part of getting a driver's license, building permits, government jobs, and government contracts and have never paid a bribe, been offered one, or seen someone else do so except in a newspaper story. I don't know if the cynicism is warranted or helpful really. Of course every country has bad actors and every system has problems but there are real differences and improvements possible.
  - newyankee 7y ago
    The difference is US or Western countries are already mature. I am sure different types of corruption existed there in 19th century when the country was still expanding. Off course culture of people matter but systemic rot arises when existing people work in what essentially is sometimes a negative sum game. Fights between heterogeneous groups over limited resources exist and far too often much powerful foreign powers do interfere to make the best of the situation for themselves.