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tankie.tube
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5702291
>Look at the very first thing that Kissinger says to Pinochet’s Foreign Minister—literally the very first thing [that] he says to him when the meeting starts. Yes, the Foreign Minister comes in, he says, ‘I want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk to you’, and Kissinger’s first statement is, ‘[Well, I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but human rights. The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there were not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.](https://books.google.com/books?id=tSDg6xa4z2YC&pg=PA85)’
He would have celebrated his 76th birthday today. As chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and one of its national leaders, Hampton's life was marked by unwavering dedication to the cause of racial equality and social justice. Tragically, Fred Hampton met his demise at the hands of Chicago law enforcement officers when he was just 21 years old. His death has been characterized as a premeditated execution, leaving behind an indelible mark on our collective history.
British intelligence MI6 worked with the US CIA to commit this atrocity. Mohammad Mossadegh was a prominent figure in Iran's secular democracy and resistance to colonialism. He nationalized the oil industry and implemented radical measures like land reform, social security and wealth redistribution. His popular policies directly threatened Western interests, and the response of the US and British intelligence to Mossadegh in "Operation Ajax" is a manual that has been repeated against anti-colonial and anti-imperialist leaders of the Global South many times since.     
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339598736_Nazi_Germany's_Race_Laws_the_United_States_and_American_Indians
The US is beating the regime change drum again in the face of unfolding chaos in Venezuela aimed at overthrowing President Nicolás Maduro. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated "the \[election] results announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people." Here is an (incomplete) list of US military coups in Latin America alone since World War II.
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5210024
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5209496
jingdaily.com
Cool article.
The history of post war Japan and the US involvement setting up the regime there used as an explainer for why the same can't happen in China.
historymatters.sites.sheffield.ac.uk
>Recent scholarship by John Newsinger argues that Clement Attlee’s Labour government was as much a resurgent colonial warfare state as a domestic welfare state in the immediate postwar years.[2] Anne Deighton argues that Britain’s rôle in ideological battlegrounds of the nascent Cold War is demonstrably greater than traditional interpretations have suggested.[3] > >One concrete example of postwar Britain as a colonial Cold Warrior state is the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60. The conflict has been described by Malaysian‐born anthropologist Yao Souchou as ‘a small, distant war’ not for its inconsequentiality in global affairs, but for its relegation to the side‐lines of the historiography of the Cold War. [4] Bringing the conflict to the forefront of our attention, I believe, challenges the broad narrative of postwar ‘decline’ and demonstrates the continued international influence of the British state in the post‐war period. > >The ‘Emergency’ was the longest conflict fought by British forces in the twentieth century. With the aim of achieving national independence, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) fought a bitter campaign of insurgency against the British colonial government of Malaya and its local and Commonwealth allies. Despite their determined (and British‐supported) resistance to [Axis] occupation, the MCP were ultimately defeated. More than just a decisive victory for the British empire, the campaign in Malaya was in fact the only conclusive military success by the Western powers in the entirety of the Cold War period.[5] > > >THE BRITISH ARMY IN MALAYA, 1957 (HU 51581) Men of the 48th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, in action against a terrorist hide-out near Segri Sembilan, Malaya. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, © IWM. Used on an IWM non-commercial licence. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205216100 [Accessed 22 November 2020] > >Because of its abundant tin and rubber resources, Malaya, according to the British Colonial Sectary, was ‘by far the most important source of dollars in the Colonial Empire’.[6] With the British economy profoundly weakened by the loss of the former Indian territories, further capitulation in Asia was simply not acceptable. Although [Marshall Plan aid](https://www.britannica.com/event/Marshall-Plan) chiefly funded Britain’s extensive (and expensive) programmes of urban revival and welfare reforms, a direct consequence of the economic recovery of ‘the West’ was the continuation of European colonialism for another two decades.[7] > >The release of classified Foreign Office files has expanded our understanding of Britain’s propaganda machine in the early Cold War period. The intent of the [Information Research Department (IRD)](https://Wikiless.northboot.xyz/wiki/Information_Research_Department) to promote Britain as a socialist ‘Third Force’ in world politics via its attacks on the Soviet Union and Communism is only now being adequately explored.[8] These offensive tactics were mirrored by a defensive approach to events in Malaya. Repeating the rhetoric used to describe the Jewish Irgun and Lehi in Palestine, British state propaganda relied on the dual euphemism of the ‘banditry’ of Malayan Communist rebels and the ‘emergency’ of their anti-colonial independence war in international representations of the conflict.[9] > >The conflict was presented as arising from an international communist movement. It was done so with nuance: too strong a line could further align the Malayan Chinese ethnic group with the MCP; the opposite could have given the impression that the British were crushing a true nationalist movement. After the proclamation of American anti-colonial policy in the [1947 Truman Doctrine](https://www.britannica.com/event/Truman-Doctrine), the chief aim of British propaganda was to ‘manipulate the American colossus’ into thinking that political and economic support of an archaic colonial régime was ‘the corollary of [Communist] containment’.[10] To this, end, as the war continued, international British propaganda utilised the carefully chosen term ‘Communist terrorists’ in their representations of the MCP.[11] > >In terms of national propaganda, a great deal of scholarly attention is often given to the figure of [Sir Gerald Templer](https://Wikiless.northboot.xyz/wiki/Gerald_Templer). Serving as Director of Operations and High Commissioner of Malaya from 1951 to 1954, his view that ‘the answer [to defeating the insurgency] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle but in the hearts and minds of the [Malayan] people’ has dominated conventional historical analysis of the conflict.[12] A defining component of contemporary ‘cultural Cold War’ strategies, we must remain wary of attributing the ‘hearts and minds’ metaphor too much importance in Britain’s victory over the MCP. Indeed, the position of Templer as a semi-mythic figure in the historiography of the conflict simultaneously empowers the actions of the Western élite and obscures the reality of the counter-insurgency tactics the British utilised throughout the conflict. > > >THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY 1948–1960 (D 87947) Men of 22 Special Air Service Regiment practice carrying a casualty to a waiting helicopter during a training exercise in a jungle clearing at Ulu Langat, near Kuala Lumpur. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, © IWM. Used on an IWM non-commercial licence. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205212427 [Accessed 20 November 2020] > >Based on racially motivated colonial attitudes exemplified by events of the [1948 Batang Kali massacre](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/batang-kali-britain’s-my-lai), Bennett argues that mass arrests, deportation and destruction of property corresponded to a deliberate British campaign of ‘counter-terror’.[13] The forced re-settlement of over 500,000 Malayans in ‘New Villages’ with the ostensible aim of removing Communist influence were in fact little more than concentration camps built to keep the rural Chinese population under strict surveillance and control.[14] The tactics employed by the British state against the MCP demonstrated a resolve to maintain dominance of the colonial periphery by often brutal means. > >A colonial attitude of imperial retrenchment, implemented through and influencing a nascent Cold War framework, saw Malaya as a continued source of colonial power for the British state. Britain successfully re-imposed colonial order by armed intervention, protecting its markets and control of natural resources essential to economic recovery. An extensive and influential network of regional intelligence informed international and national propaganda strategies to manipulate public opinion with the objective of the furtherance of British colonial Cold War objectives. Brutal and systematic detention, deportation and violence facilitated the crushing of the MCP revolt.
www.workers.org
>People once again gathered at noon on May 4 at what is known as the “Victory Bell.” There were an estimated 2,000 demonstrators — three times the number that had previously convened, despite every attempt by the school administration to stop the demonstration. A confrontation between protesters and the Guard ensued outside Taylor Hall. The “tin soldiers” opened fire, stealing the lives of 19-year-old Allison Krause, 20-year-old Jeffrey Miller, 20-year-old Sandra Scheuer and 19-year-old William Schroeder, while shooting and wounding nine others. > >Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller were the only two slain who had participated in the demonstration. Krause was a supporter of the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and Miller was active with the KSU branch of Students for a Democratic Society. Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were simply walking to class. > >The murders at KSU led to student strikes and protests on college campuses across the country. > >[…] > >The four murders at Kent State have always gotten more attention than the two at Jackson State — even among white “progressive” circles — despite being equally horrendous. In the May 21, 1970, issue, Workers World newspaper called out the hypocrisy of the “liberal” wing of the U.S. ruling class and the middle-class layers of the antiwar movement: > >“The war against Black America and the war against Indochina are both genocidal wars against colonized people. But while there is a ‘loyal opposition’ within the [neo]imperialist establishment to the war in Indochina, there is no such opposition to the war at home. Where were McGovern, Kennedy, et al., when the bullets cut into the backs of Blacks in Jackson and Augusta? Certainly, these murders are as vicious as the murders at Kent State. > >“But these ‘liberals’ didn’t call a press conference to denounce the murders. They didn’t run to be photographed with grief-stricken Black families or ask Black people to come to Washington. […] They want to limit their ‘loyal opposition’ to the war in Indochina — a tactic they hope will get them votes. > >“For similar motives, these ‘doves’ used the murders at Kent State for their own political ends. […] And so they shed crocodile tears and called for an end to the violence — but they didn’t call for an end to the violence of the cops, the storm troopers of the ruling class. > >“Why? Because there is no loyal opposition to war against Black America — it folded up after the Civil Rights Movement, when the ruling class decided they were not going to give Black people equality, because the class interests of the [neo]imperialists were too intimately tied up with racism and the subjugation of Black people.” > >Youth Against War and Fascism — the youth wing of Workers World Party in 1970 — participated in the student strikes following the Kent State shootings, as well as in actions following the Jackson State murders. YAWF proudly carried banners that read, “Avenge the Kent State Four!” and “Racist Ruling Class Wanted for Murder at Jackson State.”
I noticed that several socialist countries took out loans from the IMF (Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania) even though there was an understanding that the IMF is a predatory organisation. I assume it is connected to the wave of liberalisation in the 1980s, but would be interested in a more concrete breakdown of the logic and context behind it, or articles/links on the topic.
