Part 12.
From 1950 to 1953, the US waged war against Korea. In the war 2 million civilians
were killed. After the US had bombed everything else in North Korea they began bombing the dams.
US air force journals described the destruction with pride. This caused the
wiping out of rice fields, which led to the starvation of countless people. Interestingly,
in the Nuremberg trials (held just a few years before) the US had held Germany guilty
of a war crime for opening Holland's dikes: an action essentially identical to the
bombing of North Korea's dams by the US.
From 1952 through 1954, senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin chaired the
Subcommittee on Un-American Activities. It was a witch-hunt: innocent people
were accused of being communists (which was never against any law), and
careers were destroyed as the accused were encouraged to denounce others, who
were then "blacklisted" and could not thereafter find employment.
In 1953 the US paid street mobs and army officers to harass Iran's nationalist premier: Mohammed Mosaddeq.
Mosaddeq was considered a danger to US interests because he wanted more for his
country than the 20% share of its oil revenues that Britain was allowing at the
time. Mosaddeq had driven the British out of his country in 1951. The US pulled
off the coup that gave the Shah of Iran absolute power over the country. This
resulted in putting the British back in the Iran oil business -- with a new
partner: the US. The two countries began sharing 80 percent of Iran's oil revenues.
It was good for US business, but bad for the Iranian people who hated the Shah's
regime (and by extension, the country that put him in power.) The US would pay
the price years later in 1979 when the Iranian people overthrew the hated Shah,
installed Khomeini in his place, and took 52 members of the American embassy hostage
for 444 days.
In 1954, President Eisenhower approved CIA plans to topple the government of
Guatemala. Arbenz, the country's leader, was a social democrat who had patterned
his policies after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Arbenz had tried to break his
country's dependence on the US based United Fruit Company (which owned nearly
half of Guatemala). He expropriated 400,000 acres of company-owned land and
gave it to landless Mayans to farm. In compensation, he offered to pay United
Fruit 1.2 million dollars. In the company's eyes it wasn't nearly enough.
The CIA proceeded to frame Arbenz as a communist. They parachuted Russian-made
arms into Guatemala. They paid 150 "liberators" to march in from
Honduras under the command of exiled Colonel Armas. They also paid malcontents
in the Guatemalan army to sit back and watch the revolution occur. In conjunction
with the land force, four war planes, flown by pilots under US contract, bombed
Guatemala City. When this still failed to spur a popular uprising, CIA chief Allen Dulles
asked Eisenhower to send more bombers: which he did (a fact he later
concealed in his memoirs.)
The US-chosen Armas was set up as the new leader of Guatemala. He proceeded to
run a brutal police state. He rounded up 9,000 liberals (mostly indigenous
people) and executed hundreds. The peasants lost the land that Arbenz had given
back to them -- they also lost the vote. Over the next 35 years between 150,000
to 200,000 died as a result of his oppressive regime and "death squads".
But Armas was beholden to the US for having set him up in power -- and that was
good for US business.
In 1955 in Montgomery Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city
bus to a white person. She was thrown in jail.
According to Montgomery's segregation laws, African Americans were required to pay
their fare to the driver, then get off and reboard through the back
door. (Sometimes the bus would drive off before the paid-up customers made it
to the back entrance.) They were then required to sit in the back "colored"
section of the bus. If the white section was full and another white
customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farther
to the back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle
from a white person. These humiliations were compounded by the fact that two-thirds
of the bus riders in Montgomery were of African descent.
The incident with Rosa Parks was the last straw for the African American community. A bus boycott
was organized and many were spurred to action, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
who went on to fight a non-violent battle for equal rights... and eventually paid
for it with his life.
In 1957, Orville Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, employed 270 armed troops to
prevent 9 African American children from attending Little Rock Central High School.
President Eisenhower had to call out the National Guard to escort the children
into the school. So incredibly massive was the ignorant bigotry of some US citizens
and government officials.
In 1958 Eisenhower concluded that "there's a campaign of hatred against us in the Middle East - not by
governments but by the people". He asked the National Security Council to look into
the matter, and they gave their analysis as follows:
"there's a perception in the region that the US is supporting corrupt, brutal, and
harsh regimes, and is blocking democratization and development, and is doing so
because of our interest in controlling the oil reserves in the region. It's difficult
to counter this accusation because it's accurate. It is natural for us to support
status quo governments and to prevent democracy because we want to maintain control over
the energy resources of the region."
In the 1960 election, the Kennedy campaign staff illegally wiretapped the phones
of the Stevenson campaign -- and the Stevenson campaign staff returned the favor
with an illegal wiretap on the Kennedy staff's phones.
The evidence indicates that
mayor Daley of Chicago manufactured at least 10,000 votes for Kennedy, while
about 100,000 votes for Nixon were unjustifiably "disqualified". The
Chicago Tribune reported:
The election... was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify
the conclusion that Nixon was deprived of victory.
The New York Herald Tribune reported that in the same election, 100,000 votes were counted
in Texas for Kennedy -- votes that never existed.
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