Overthrow: Regime Change Begins in Corporate Boardrooms

[Guest guest]

A

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:09:51 -0400

Overthrow: Regime Change Begins in Corporate Boardrooms

 

 

CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/

 

 

Overthrow: Regime Change Begins in Corporate Boardrooms

20 Corporate Crime Reporter 17(11), April 21, 2006

 

Hawaii, Cuba, Phillippines, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran,

Guatemala, South Vietnam,

Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

 

What do these fourteen governments have in common?

 

You got it.

 

The United States overthrew them.

 

And in almost in every case, the overthrow can be traced to corporate

interests.

 

In Hawaii, the sugar companies didn't want to pay export duties – so

they overthrew the queen of Hawaii and made Hawaii part of the United

States.

 

In Guatemala, United Fruit wanted Arbenz out.

 

Out he went.

 

In Chile, Allende offended the copper interests.

 

Allende – dead.

 

In Iran, Mossadegh offended major oil interests.

 

Mossadegh out.

 

In Nicaragua, Jose Santos Zelaya was bothering American lumber and

mining companies.

 

Zelaya – out.

 

In Honduras, an American banana magnate organized the coup of the

Honduran government.

 

And on down the list.

 

Democratic Party critics charge that the Bush administration is

ripping the United States from a long history of diplomacy by

violently overthrowing governments.

 

Not true, says former New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer.

 

Kinzer says that in fact the opposite is true.

 

" Actually, the United States has been overthrowing governments for

more than a century, " Kinzer said in an interview with Corporate Crime

Reporter.

 

He documents this in a new book: Overthrow: America's Century of

Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006).

 

Overthrow is the third in a series of regime change books by Kinzer.

 

His previous two:

 

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East

Terror (2003).

 

Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (1982).

 

Together, they would make a remarkable " regime change " boxed set for

the holidays.

 

Kinzer left the Times last year.

 

He says that the parting was " perfectly amicable " – although he

doesn't sound convincing when he says this.

 

After all, Kinzer is an anti-authoritarian Noam Chomsky in

authoritarian garb.

 

This became clear during an interview Kinzer gave on NPR's Fresh Air

with Terry Gross earlier this month.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5325069

 

Gross tried to get Kinzer to concede that if we hadn't overthrown

these governments, the Soviets would have taken over, or today,

radical Islam will take over.

 

Kinzer didn't give an inch.

 

For example, Gross said that had we not overthrown these fourteen

governments, " the Soviets might have won the Cold War. "

 

" I don't think that's true at all, " Kinzer responded. " In the first

place, the countries whose governments we overthrew, all countries

that we claimed were pawns of the Kremlin, actually were nothing of

the sort. We now know, for example, that the Kremlin had not the

slightest interest in Guatemala at all in the early 1950s. They didn't

even know Guatemala existed. They didn't even have diplomatic or

economic relations. "

 

" The leader of Iran who we overthrew was fiercely anti-communist. He

came from an aristocratic family. He despised Marxist ideology. "

 

" In Chile, we always portrayed President Allende as a cat's paw of the

Kremlin. We now know from documents that have come out that the

Soviets and the Chinese were constantly fighting with him and urging

him to calm down and not be so provocative towards the Americans. So,

in the first place, the Soviets were not behind those regimes. We

completely overestimated the influence of the Soviet Union on those

regimes. "

 

When Gross asked Kinzer what he thought of the " spread of radical

Islam, " Kinzer didn't hesitate.

 

" We sometimes like to think that our interventions in these countries

don't have effects, but when we break down the doors of foreign

countries and impose our own leaders, as we did in Iran and as we've

recently done in Iraq, we outrage a lot of people, " Kinzer said. " We

like to think that everybody will soon calmly come to realize that by

rational standards, this was a good thing to do. But that doesn't

happen. We are not able to change cultures as easily as we are able to

change regimes. "

 

The United States had a hand in many other overthrows, but Kinzer

limited his cases to those where the United States was the primary

mover and shaker.

 

So, for example, while the United States played a role in the

overthrow of Lumumba in the Congo, Kinzer says that it was primarily

an operation by Belgium on behalf of large Belgian mining interests.

 

This might be the most important book to read as the United States

approaches a showdown with Iran.

 

President Bush says he's trying to bring democracy to Iran.

 

In fact, Iranians had democracy once.

 

And we crushed it.

 

Kinzer is now on tour promoting his book.

 

And he's got a gig at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he lives.

 

He's teaching a course in regime change.

 

(For a complete transcript of the interview with Kinzer, see 20

Corporate Crime Reporter 17, (11-16), April 24, 2006).

http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/aboutccr.html

 

 

 

Corporate Crime Reporter

1209 National Press Bldg.

Washington, D.C. 20045

202.737.1680