Hey, hey, USA. How many coups did you plan today?
39 years ago today, on February 24, 1966, Ghana leader Kwame Nkrumah was on his way to China when he found out a coup had taken over his government.
According to this article, documents “declassified at the end of 1999 but recently made public, show that the American government started talking about Nkrumah's overthrow as far back as 6 February 1964 - two full years before the actual event - when the then secretary of state Dean Rusk and the CIA Director John McCone met and picked the Ghanaian general, J.A. Ankrah, as the man to take over from Nkrumah.”
After over 10 years of research on the matter, I firmly believe that one of the key reasons President John Kennedy and later, his brother Robert Kennedy, were killed, was because they understood the difference between nationalists and Communists. That put them at odds with the plans (operations) directorate of the CIA, even as it put them in agreement with the more learned but less powerful CIA analysts. As longtime CIA officer Victor Marchetti and his co-writer John Marks wrote in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence:
The Kennedy brothers understood the efforts of these countries not to move to Communism, but towards an independence from Western imperialism. George W. Bush, on the other hand, either cannot or will not understand this. The enemy, to him and his backers, is still nationalism, but since the threat of Communism is now beyond passé, a new threat had to be named: terrorism. Terrorism is now the excuse to wreak havoc on a huge swath of the world across the Middle East, just as we wreaked havoc across Africa in the 60’s. Look at a map of the Middle East and work your way East to see what’s going on. Bush is leaning on Syria. We’re all over Iraq. Skip Iran for a minute, even though we know Bush is going there one way or another. Next is Afghanistan. Click the previous link to see where this is going. From Afghanistan we finally reach India. So what’s really going on? To quote the fabulous George Seldes, “If you take nothing for granted, and try to find the facts, you will soon be safe from false propaganda...If you look for the social-economic motive you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth.”
So we can believe, now, that our movements against Syria are to protect the budding peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. Or, we can believe that Syria, having a major seaport, is a critical component in our ability to ship oil from the middle East to the Western World. Iran holds not just a huge oil supply but also one of the world’s largest natural gas supplies, and natural gas is key to enabling the “Hydrogen Economy” Bush talked about when he was running for his first term in office. India is already “ours” - a friendly country who will serve as a second endpoint for removing the resources of the Middle East.
As Castro found out when he nationalized his nickel mines and oil reserves, as Sukarno found out when he nationalized his rubber and oil reserves, as Lumumba found out when he tried to keep the Katanga province mineral wealth for his own people, as many other world leaders have found out, if you share the wealth of your country’s national resources internally, rather than allowing the West to exploit it, you have to go.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez managed to survive the first U.S. attempt to have him removed from office. But is another plan in the works? You have to see that something’s afoot when Bob Novak can call Chavez’s Venezuela an “infection spreading throughout America’s backyard.”
When will it end? We are a country addicted to power, addicted to seizing whatever we know to be out there, telling ourselves we’re somehow worth it because we’re more powerful, or smarter, or richer. But might doesn’t make right. We have to learn to play fair with the rest of the world The Kennedys tried. If by some miracle we are blessed with another leader of such instincts, will they have any more success? Not so long as we remain quiet and complacent. We must speak out about all imperialist actions, especially those that originate right here at home. “You’re either for us or against us.” Count me as against those worst instincts of our leaders. Speaking out in opposition to the misdeeds of my government doesn’t make me anti-American. That makes me AN American, exercising the precious right to freedom of speech. When’s the last time you exercised your own right to speak up? Use it or lose it.
According to this article, documents “declassified at the end of 1999 but recently made public, show that the American government started talking about Nkrumah's overthrow as far back as 6 February 1964 - two full years before the actual event - when the then secretary of state Dean Rusk and the CIA Director John McCone met and picked the Ghanaian general, J.A. Ankrah, as the man to take over from Nkrumah.”
After over 10 years of research on the matter, I firmly believe that one of the key reasons President John Kennedy and later, his brother Robert Kennedy, were killed, was because they understood the difference between nationalists and Communists. That put them at odds with the plans (operations) directorate of the CIA, even as it put them in agreement with the more learned but less powerful CIA analysts. As longtime CIA officer Victor Marchetti and his co-writer John Marks wrote in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence:
The Intelligence Directorate ... tried to explain that Castro, despite his socialistic leanings, was fiercely independent and a devout nationalist, much like Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt’s Nasser, and Ghana’s Nkrumah - all opponents of Western domination of the Third World but certainly not agents of any international communist conspiracy.As I’ve written elsewhere, The CIA tried to kill Castro. The CIA brought down Sukarno. CIA man Bud Culligan claims he killed Nasser for the CIA. It’s not hard to believe then that Nkrumah was our target as well.
The Kennedy brothers understood the efforts of these countries not to move to Communism, but towards an independence from Western imperialism. George W. Bush, on the other hand, either cannot or will not understand this. The enemy, to him and his backers, is still nationalism, but since the threat of Communism is now beyond passé, a new threat had to be named: terrorism. Terrorism is now the excuse to wreak havoc on a huge swath of the world across the Middle East, just as we wreaked havoc across Africa in the 60’s. Look at a map of the Middle East and work your way East to see what’s going on. Bush is leaning on Syria. We’re all over Iraq. Skip Iran for a minute, even though we know Bush is going there one way or another. Next is Afghanistan. Click the previous link to see where this is going. From Afghanistan we finally reach India. So what’s really going on? To quote the fabulous George Seldes, “If you take nothing for granted, and try to find the facts, you will soon be safe from false propaganda...If you look for the social-economic motive you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth.”
So we can believe, now, that our movements against Syria are to protect the budding peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. Or, we can believe that Syria, having a major seaport, is a critical component in our ability to ship oil from the middle East to the Western World. Iran holds not just a huge oil supply but also one of the world’s largest natural gas supplies, and natural gas is key to enabling the “Hydrogen Economy” Bush talked about when he was running for his first term in office. India is already “ours” - a friendly country who will serve as a second endpoint for removing the resources of the Middle East.
As Castro found out when he nationalized his nickel mines and oil reserves, as Sukarno found out when he nationalized his rubber and oil reserves, as Lumumba found out when he tried to keep the Katanga province mineral wealth for his own people, as many other world leaders have found out, if you share the wealth of your country’s national resources internally, rather than allowing the West to exploit it, you have to go.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez managed to survive the first U.S. attempt to have him removed from office. But is another plan in the works? You have to see that something’s afoot when Bob Novak can call Chavez’s Venezuela an “infection spreading throughout America’s backyard.”
When will it end? We are a country addicted to power, addicted to seizing whatever we know to be out there, telling ourselves we’re somehow worth it because we’re more powerful, or smarter, or richer. But might doesn’t make right. We have to learn to play fair with the rest of the world The Kennedys tried. If by some miracle we are blessed with another leader of such instincts, will they have any more success? Not so long as we remain quiet and complacent. We must speak out about all imperialist actions, especially those that originate right here at home. “You’re either for us or against us.” Count me as against those worst instincts of our leaders. Speaking out in opposition to the misdeeds of my government doesn’t make me anti-American. That makes me AN American, exercising the precious right to freedom of speech. When’s the last time you exercised your own right to speak up? Use it or lose it.
posted by Real History Lisa at 9:32 PM - Permanent Link -
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