I’m going to steal a part of Peter Kornbluh’s title, above, from his Huffington Post Report about this, also a cut from him:
When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected Socialist. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende’s narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript. “I am with you,” Helms responded.
Go over and read his post it will give insight into this:
NEW KISSINGER ‘TELCONS’ REVEAL CHILE PLOTTING
AT HIGHEST LEVELS OF U.S. GOVERNMENTNixon Vetoed Proposed Coexistence with an Allende Government
Kissinger to the CIA: “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 255
Posted – September 10, 2008
A snippet of our past of which is only part of the circle that keeps going round and round, repeating but with different players added to the old players:
Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 – On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.
The telephone call transcripts-known as ‘telcons’-include previously-unreported conversations between Kissinger and President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. Just eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger informed the president that the State Department had recommended an approach to “see what we can work out [with Allende].” Nixon responded by instructing Kissinger: “Don’t let them do it.”
Click on the link above to read more!
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under strong influence from Milton Friedman and the advocates of laissez-faire economics. Social programs ended. The “free market” ruled and so did Pinochet in cracking down on those who refused to go along with the program. Thousands of Chileans were tortured and disappeared. Torture training was provided by the CIA.
There are striking similarities between what happened there in 1973 and what is happening in America in these times. In Chile the country was “shocked” into a crises situation which Pinochet and the military took advantage of to implement their new programs.
Naomi Klein does a fine job in recounting events surrounding the coup in Chile in ’73 in her book Shock Doctrine.
The US was “shocked” by 911 creating a crises that has led to a very serious erosion of civil liberties which continues on at this time. If the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals have their way we can look forward to serious cuts in social spending justified by the need to finance the wars we “need to fight” in order to keep us safe and “free”.
It’s all bullshit but nearly everyone in positions of power and influence seems to think it’s a wonderful idea.