Libyan leader Gaddafi files motion to partition Switzerland at UN

[Valmy]

But Brazil the biggest and the most important Latin American country has had a hugely successful past 15 years.  In the wider context that looks more like what's happening in the rest of Latin America, not Chavezismo.

In other words, why not show Lula some love?

Huh?  I love that guy.  I have slobbered over him in this thread and nearly every other one about South America.  If South Americans want to elect leftists they should elect people like him.  How many times do I have to announce my slavish manlove for Lula on this board?

Brazil gives me happy warm fuzzies everytime I think of it.

[Valmy]

Every politician is a populist.

Ok another guy who is going to loot his country to pay everybody off in an unsustainable way so as to screw his country's prospects for the short term prospect of maintaining his own power.

[Valmy]

I think that's what I've said.  He's colourful and stridently anti-American so more interesting, but not any more important or egregiously tyrannical. 

Are you really this ignorant about him and what he represents?  I swear do they just totally ignore South America in Europe?

[Sheilbh]

Are you really this ignorant about him and what he represents?  I swear do they just totally ignore South America in Europe?

I don't think what he does is as important as similar decisions made by, say, Mubarak or Hu.  Equally I don't think he's that tyrannical compared to similar tyrants.  To me he seems like a colourful and far less important Putin (and I imagine Putin gets more Western newsprint when he strides around topless than for any other single thing he does in a year).

[Threviel]

Just for the record, not all of us swedes are as loopy as Ape and miglia. Only a huge majority.

[The Brain]

fjbdfhgklhgsuehfufhaefah

Don't know what to say but I like to post.

[Razgovory]

Every politician is a populist.

Ok another guy who is going to loot his country to pay everybody off in an unsustainable way so as to screw his country's prospects for the short term prospect of maintaining his own power.

Fine.  Just don't use populist incorrectly.  It's annoying!

[Admiral Yi]

This suddenly has me starting to wonder about the extent of our involvements in the Guatemala and Iran coups also.  I always just took it for granted we had caused those.

I read the Wiki on Iran a while back and was surprised by two things.

a) The Shah had the consitutional authority to remove the PM.
b) Mossadeq was elected PM by a vote in the assembly (12-4 IIRC), not by a popular vote as I had assumed.

[Jaron]

Every politician is a populist.

Ok another guy who is going to loot his country to pay everybody off in an unsustainable way so as to screw his country's prospects for the short term prospect of maintaining his own power.

Fine.  Just don't use populist incorrectly.  It's annoying!

Populist.

[Barrister]

Are you really this ignorant about him and what he represents?  I swear do they just totally ignore South America in Europe?

I don't think what he does is as important as similar decisions made by, say, Mubarak or Hu.  Equally I don't think he's that tyrannical compared to similar tyrants.  To me he seems like a colourful and far less important Putin (and I imagine Putin gets more Western newsprint when he strides around topless than for any other single thing he does in a year).

But I think you answered your own question - he gets the press because he is colourful and strident.  You may well be right that as a dictator his citizen's are probably better off than under Mubarak, but Chavez does make for much better copy.

There's also however the fact that Venezuela is in America's "back yard" and is a country that has made this turn away from democracy quite recently.  As such it's hard to compare to countries that are further away and that have little history of prosperity or democracy.

[Eddie Teach]

Plus Venezuela is important due to their greatest national asset. No, not oil. Beauty pageant winners.

[Pat]

The memo you refer to was the product of an "internal inquiry" authored in the year 2000, i.e. almost 30 years after the events it narrates.  It is neither contemporaneous nor a primary source; purports to be (and is) merely a summary.  Unfortunately, the drafting of the summary was done rather poorly .   It first says that "the CIA provided weapons to one of the groups", i.e. the Valenzuela group.  It then says "contact with one group of plotters [ie Viaux] was dropped early on because of it's extremist tendencies".  The next line is not a sentence at all and appears to have accidentally left out language.  What it appears to be saying is that the CIA had provided weapons in the Viaux group in the past (ie before "contact was dropped early on") and this group was the one that ultimately carried out the fatal attack.  It then clarifies again the CIA had withdrawn their support for this group.

To the extent this memo says anything concrete is does not support your position.  Rather it points out:
+ "We have found no information that the plotters' or CIA's intention was for the general to be killed."
+ The CIA did not support the Viaux group in its actions.

These conclusions of course dovetail with the principal contemperaneous primary source that Hitchens cites in his book: the October 15 cable recounting the conclusions of the meeting at which Kissenger and Webb were present.  At that meeting, not only did the principals agree that Viaux had little chance of success, Kissinger personally intervened to point out all the negative ramifications that would likely result.  As a consequence, the cable clearly states that the principals ordered the CIA to direct Viaux to stand down. 

But the most interesting thing about the memo Hitchens cites in his afterward is the part of the memo he carefully chose not to include in his book.  That is the part of the memo that directly addresses CIA involvement in the 1973 coup.  It reads as follows:

Awareness of Coup Plotting in 1973.  Although CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende's government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters, and—because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970—probably appeared to condone it.  There was no way that anyone, including CIA, could have known that Allende would refuse the putchists' offer of safe passage out of the country and that instead—with La Monedam Palace under bombardment from tanks and airplanes and in flames—would take his own life.

Not surprisingly, Hitchens somehow "forgot" to point out that part of the memo.

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.

I don't believe the euphemism of "kidnap" instead of "kill" is fooling anyone

Kidnap is not a euphemsism.  It is a word in the English language that has a particular meaning, and that meaning does not happen to be "kill'.

You're right it is not a euphemsism, whatever that means, but I do belive it might qualify as a euphemism:


euphemism
1656, from Gk. euphemismos "use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one," from euphemizein "speak with fair words," from eu- "good" + pheme "speaking," from phanai "speak" (see fame). In ancient Greece, the superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies, or substitutions such as Eumenides "the Gracious Ones" for the Furies (see also Euxine). In Eng., a rhetorical term at first; broader sense of "choosing a less distasteful word or phrase than the one meant" is first attested 1793.


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.

But I hope you understood what I was saying anyway, surely my English is not that bad?

but lest there is any doubt, the memo goes on to say that the Viaux group was given a large sum of money after the killing.

Actually, the memo goes onto the say the following:

and during meetings on 17 18 October [a CIA officer told a member of the Viaux group, that CIA would not entertain their request for support.  The officer warned them that any coup action on their part would be premature.  The Viaux representative said the coup was planned for 21-22 October, and the first step would be to kidnap General Schneider.  The Station doubted the plan because CIA had no corroborative intelligence and Viaux's group had a record of false starts.  On 22 October the Viaux group, acting independently of the CIA at that time, carried out an attempted abduction against General Schneider that resulted in his death. 

It then goes on to say that one month later the CIA paid a member of the group $35,000 of what was basically "hush money" to make sure he didn't spill the beans about the CIA's embarrassing earlier conacts with the group.  An understandable move given the risk of what Hitchens-like conspiracy nuts might do with such information.  I would not consider 35K in this context to be "a large mount of money" even in 1973.

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, and whether $35 000 is a large or small amount of money in the Chile of 1973.

Yes, if we use the term "overthrow" loosely enough, one can say this.  However, to argue that the nation of Chile didn't overthrow Allende is also to make a distinction without a difference,

I have argued no such thing.

We do not know, of course, whether the invasion of North Africa, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the USSR, and Norway would have happened without the backing of Sweden and the ore that was vital to the Nazi war machine.

But Sweden is without a single doubt complicit in the conquest of most of Europe and the extermination of the Jews and others, so yes, Sweden did kill all those people.

Good for the goose and all...

If you like, I can probably find some books and such detailing Swedish cooperation and aid to Nazi Germany during WW2.

Right, you're still on about this.

Consider the motives. Sweden was a small country, surrounded by mighty enemies, that saw it's Nordic neighbours be conquered. Try to think yourself into the Swedish position - what would you have done? Commit the hostile act of embargoing Nazi Germany? Can you really tell me, with a straight face, that you would have done that? I'm not saying we tried to preserve our independence for anything other than selfish reasons, but it did allow us to harbour the jews of Denmark and Norway, and even political enemies of Nazi germany (including my grandmother, though most of her family was not so lucky as to escape).

Now consider the American case. Chile posed no threat and was of little strategic value. No one was forcing the hand of America, the most powerful country in the world, at liberty to select any course of action or simply do nothing at all.

With great power comes great responsibility. Now please don't go all martyr on me and tell me you're the poor unfortunate victim of mindless anti-americanism, as is your habit.

Like Threviel and others above, you don't know shit about me and my views. And I don't speak for Ape. His views are his own, and my views are my own.

[The Brain]

Is the fat American bothering you, miglia?

[Sheilbh]

b) Mossadeq was elected PM by a vote in the assembly (12-4 IIRC), not by a popular vote as I had assumed.

That's because Mossadeq never joined a political party.  He formed his coalitions with other parties but was never a member of one, far less a leader.

[Admiral Yi]

That's because Mossadeq never joined a political party.  He formed his coalitions with other parties but was never a member of one, far less a leader.

I don't follow.  Either Iran had a popular vote for PM back in the 50s or they didn't.