Libyan leader Gaddafi files motion to partition Switzerland at UN

[The Minsky Moment]

The book is terse and to the point from start to end. I don't think he "forgot" to include that part of the memo - it is no more than more meaningless white noise and obscuration, much like the claim that the money was paid the killers for "humanitarian" reasons! There are of course many ways one can choose to interpret the text. I consider you a highly intelligent poster, so I will choose to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you really do not take the official version fully at face value.

The book really is not terse; it is full of lots of irrelevant hearsay and innuendo.  I can accept the claim that the official story should not be taken at face value.  But in order to draw an alternative conclusion, I need some kind of careful, reasoned look at the hard evidence.  Hitchens is too busy crafting a cranky jeremiad against a personality (HK) to perform that kind of cold, objective analysis.

The more distasteful word of kill is replaced by the slightly less distasteful one of kidnap. Or am I missing some nuance here? Please bare with me, if so, because not all of us have the fortune to have English as our first language.

The nuance is that the words mean two different things, and those different meanings have nothing to do with tastefulness (what exactly is less distasteful about kidnapping?). 

Because your English is in fact very good (and your spelling apparently even better) I suspect you already know this.

Right. I will leave it to the reader to conclude whether paying 35 000 $ to the murderers after a murder is a good way to distance yourself from them

Pretty clearly it wasn't or we wouldn't be talking about it now.     That would tend to show the CIA acted foolishly or incompetently, which would not exactly be a huge surprise, and which also would not help prove Hitchens' argument.

[The Minsky Moment]

Mossadeq is very unusual in that he was an independent MP all through his career, even when PM.

He was very unusual, period.

Not that it is such a bad thing . . .

[Zoupa]

It just saddens me to see yet another fucking South American populist setting his country back decades.  It gets really tiresome and makes you despair a bit if the continent will ever sort itself out.

[Euro]That's all America's fault! [/Euro]

The USA's actions in the americas over the last 2 centuries: net positive, net negative?

[citizen k]

Critics march against Chavez across Latin America
By SUSANA LONDONO, Associated Press

BOGOTA – Thousands of opponents of Hugo Chavez marched against the Venezuelan president across Latin America on Friday, accusing him of everything from authoritarianism to international meddling.

The protests, coordinated through Twitter and Facebook, drew more than 5,000 people in Bogota, and thousands more in the capitals of Venezuela and Honduras. Smaller demonstrations were held in other Latin American capitals, as well as New York and Madrid.

The Honduras march was led by Roberto Micheletti, who became president when Chavez ally Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a June coup.

"Any politician who tries to stay in power by hitching up with a dictator like Hugo Chavez, he won't achieve it," Micheletti said. "We'll stop him."

Chavez, who was traveling in Syria, ridiculed the protests, likening Micheletti to a gorilla and saying: "Those who want to march, march with 'Goriletti,' the dictators, the extreme right."

Chavez supporters held smaller counter-demonstrations, including a Caracas rally that drew nearly 200 people. Police in Quito, Ecuador, intervened to keep pro- and anti-Chavez groups from clashing.

Turnout at the anti-Chavez rallies was far from massive in many cities. A dozen people gathered in Sao Paulo, while about 200 turned out in New York, Madrid and Miami. Protests also were held in the capitals of Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Panama and Bolivia.

Protest organizer Marcela Garzon in Colombia said she didn't care about the numbers.

"The quantity doesn't interest us, but rather the quality," she said.


Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez in Caracas, Venezuela, Jeanneth Valdivieso in Quito, Ecuador, and Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, contributed to this report.

[Razgovory]

It just saddens me to see yet another fucking South American populist setting his country back decades.  It gets really tiresome and makes you despair a bit if the continent will ever sort itself out.

[Euro]That's all America's fault! [/Euro]

The USA's actions in the americas over the last 2 centuries: net positive, net negative?

Positive.  The USA has prospered under it's own rule in the Americas.

[Martinus]

It just saddens me to see yet another fucking South American populist setting his country back decades.  It gets really tiresome and makes you despair a bit if the continent will ever sort itself out.

[Euro]That's all America's fault! [/Euro]

The USA's actions in the americas over the last 2 centuries: net positive, net negative?

Well, as far as the Anglo-Saxon America is concerned, it was clearly positive.

And as far as the Latin America is concerned, the governments there have proven to be equally capable of fucking their own people with or without America's help, so the influence there is a net zero, imo.

Thus, in total it is net positive.

[Eddie Teach]

Well, as far as the Anglo-Saxon America is concerned, it was clearly positive.

And as far as the Latin America is concerned, the governments there have proven to be equally capable of fucking their own people with or without America's help, so the influence there is a net zero, imo.

Thus, in total it is net positive.

[The Brain]

LOL American oppression of fags conveniently forgotten to score some brownie points with American posters. Classy.

[Eddie Teach]

We leave Latin American governments free to oppress their own gays.

[Jaron]

LOL American oppression of fags conveniently forgotten to score some brownie points with American posters. Classy.

[Sheilbh]

He was very unusual, period.

Not that it is such a bad thing . . .

This is true.  He was very eccentric.

[grumbler]

I don't think that's fair.  The British and Americans had worked to destabilise Mossadeq for a while.  They'd bribed a number of important figures and recruited others, there'd been a propaganda campaign, they'd supported bombings from agents provocateurs within the Iranian Communist Party (which was, of course, far weaker than was believed) and had reluctantly brought the Shah on board.  Those Iranians had taken the initiative a few times and, for example, spoken to some Ayatollahs to try and drum up the existing anti-Mossadeq feeling in Qom.

I am not sure what isn't "fair" about my having an opinion, but on the larger issue, while it is true that the US and (especially) the British had worked to destabilize Mossadeq's Iran, he still retained a pretty powerful popular mandate, and one the Army was reluctant to test.

What happened in the coup was that everything the British and Americans wanted to happen, didn't happen or went disastrously wrong and that the Iranian elements they'd already recruited took matters into their own hands, with good reason.  The CIA was thinking of evacuating and the repurcussions for Iranians would be even worse.  I don't know that after the work done prior to the coup whether it could really have not happened, especially because funds were nowhere near exhausted.  Roosevelt arrived with one million and only spent one hundred thousand dollars, the CIA spent a further five million after the coup to help stabilise things.  I think the CIA operation prior to the coup, which destabilised the country, could have continued and was so successful that something had to happen.

I would be very, very careful about using Roosevelt as a source (which some of this sounds like) because he had a definite agenda in the way he presented the story.  As you note, he and the British had actually failed miserably, and the Iranian Army officers they had counted on were preparing to flee the country (as the Shah already had) when Mossadeq suspended the constitution and (again) dissolved parliament.  This was a pretty crucial moment, because it turned a lot of the junior army officer against Mossadeq, and convinced the more senior officers involved in the coup that they should try again.

Whether Mossadeq could have lasted a lot longer, given the forces arrayed against him, is certainly debatable.  I don't think it is "unfair" to say, though, that the British and American coup against him had failed until he reinvigorated it by over-reacting and dissolving parliament  and declaring rule by decree.

[grumbler]

What ever.  Clearly we have different definitions of the word.  I seem funny to you because I simply have the right one.

The definition you have isn't just wrong, it is non-existent.  No pre-existing definition of "populist" includes every politician.

[Admiral Yi]

The USA's actions in the americas over the last 2 centuries: net positive, net negative?

Net positive.

Cuba achieved independence.  Puerto Rico achieved kind of independence. (And it's theirs for the asking now.)

The Monroe Doctrine prevented an Ottoman-type recievership for Venezuela, and more generally helped Latin American countries to maintain some of the lowest military spending/GDP ratios in the world.

The countries that have followed more market friendly economic policies (promoted by the US) have done better than those that nationalized and appropriated and socialized and deficit spent their way to social justice.

The US led bailout of Mexico prevented a massive economic collapse.

[Martinus]

LOL American oppression of fags conveniently forgotten to score some brownie points with American posters. Classy.