I better don't check the News for a while because those fascist media pricks will sure as hell come up with a softened "statesmen" storyline when in fact this scumbag #HenryKissinger killed #SalvadorAllende and enabled #Pinochet - among other evil stuff... /o\
"Throughout its history, the United States has used its military and covert operations to overthrow or prop up foreign governments in the name of preserving U.S. strategic and business interests.
"U.S. intervention in foreign governments began with attacks on and displacement of #sovereign#TribalNations in North America. In the 1890s, this type of imperialist activity, fueled by the idea of #ManifestDestiny, expanded overseas when the U.S. overthrew the #HawaiianKingdom and annexed its islands. As America annexed more overseas territories for its empire, it began to intervene frequently in other countries’ governments—particularly those in its backyard.
"'During the early 20th century, the United States intervened relentlessly in the #CaribbeanBasin,' says Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and author of Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from #Hawaii to #Iraq.
"After World War II, the United States began using the newly established Central Intelligence Agency [#CIA] to overthrow governments all over the world in a more covert manner. U.S. leaders rationalized many of these interventions as necessary for preventing the spread of communism according to the Cold War domino theory. Similarly, 21st-century leaders would later defend U.S. #MiddleEast interventions as necessary for fighting terrorism."
"When Chile elected #socialist#SalvadorAllende as president in 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon originally wanted to block him from taking office, or else mount a #coup soon after Allende became president. On Nixon’s orders, the #CIA began supporting different Chilean groups plotting to overthrow the new socialist president. In 1973, military leader #AugustoPinochet staged a coup that ousted Allende. Pinochet assumed his #dictatorship the following year, ruling as Chile’s president until 1990.
"Whether the CIA was directly involved in #Pinochet’s coup is still contested. However, the agency’s support of earlier coup plots contributed to political instability that Pinochet took advantage of to seize power. In a transcribed phone conversation between #Nixon and National Security Advisor #HenryKissinger about Pinochet’s coup, Kissinger complained that the U.S. media wasn’t celebrating the coup, complaining that 'in the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes.'
"'Well, we didn't—as you know—our hand doesn't show on this one,' Nixon responded. Kissinger clarified, 'I mean we helped them…created the conditions as great as possible.'"
Today in Labor History September 11, 1973: The CIA helped overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile. This ended nearly 150 years of democratic rule. Also killed in the coup were folk singer Victor Jara, and American IWW journalist Frank Teruggi. Jara courageously continued singing Venceremos (We Shall Win) while he lay on the ground, hands broken by his torturers, as they slaughtered hundreds in the national stadium. 16 years of military terror followed under Pinochet’s rule. Chilean-American author Isabel Allende is a cousin of the assassinated former president, Salvador Allende. She wrote her debut novel, “House of the Spirits,” while in exile in Venezuela, after fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship.