Pax Americana & Democracy Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Marpessa Kupendua PAX AMERICANA & DEMOCRACY by Mumia Abu-Jamal June 1, 2002 It is an amazing thing to see and hear an American President abroad, waxing forth on the wonders of American 'democracy.' When the writer hears such things, he wonders, almost immediately, who elected the CIA? For, if there is one American agency, that has done more than any other to project the will of the American ruling class abroad, it has been the US CIA, a body which has become an unseen army in virtually every country in the world to undermine and debilitate governments of the world, so that the world's wealth will continue to flow to American coffers. When most ill-informed Americans think of the CIA, it is perhaps in some lofty, noble vision, inspired by the cinematic antics of the staple of British espionage, Bond -- James Bond. Perhaps the more mature reader thinks of banks of clerks, reading tons of material, doing the scutwork of what has come to be called, "intelligence." To be sure, there is undoubtedly some of that. But, there is another side, one carefully sanitized from the American gaze, of the CIA that would chill the marrow of an Alaskan elk. The work of the CIA, historically, is not the gathering of international intelligence for US policy-makers to read, analyze, or interpret. Their job is to act. What historians have learned [years later] of CIA exploits abroad reads like a rogue's gallery that the Mafia might wish to keep secret. In 1990 it was learned that a "secret military army" was organized in post-war Italy, to insure that the Italian public did not vote in ways the politicians in Washington, DC didn't like. The CIA hid massive stockpiles of weapons and explosives throughout Italy. They amassed an army of 15,000 troops in something called Operation Gladio (gladius is Latin for sword) to strike vital targets and overthrow the elected Italian government if they dared to vote against Washington's will. Similar secret armies were formed in other European nations, like France, The Netherlands, West Germany, and the like -- the latter staffed by former SS officers, working at the behest of their American allies. Let us speak of the Nazis. Historians now report that one of the most important and influential elements that went into the very foundations of the US CIA was something called the Gehlen Organization, chief staff and agents of Hitler's former security and intelligence head, General Reinhard Gehlen. When General Gehlen surrendered to the Americans, he told them of his hidden cache of secret dossiers. They made a deal, a "gentlemen's agreement" between Nazi intelligence and the Americans, and the Gehlen Org began to work for, and be funded by, the Americans. Gehlen convinced the Americans that the Soviets were poised to attack them. According to Mark Zepezauer, author of "The CIA's Greatest Hits" (Odinian Press, 1994): "Gehlen even made sure he got approval for his arrangement from Hitler's appointed successor, Admiral Doenitz, who was in a cushy prisoner-of-war camp for Nazi VIPs in Weisbaden, Germany. For almost ten years, the Gehlen Org was eventually the CIA's only source of intelligence on Eastern Europe. Then, in 1955, it evolved into the BND (the German equivalent of the CIA) which, of course, continued to cooperate with the CIA." [p. 7] With such roots in Europe, how could it be otherwise in the Americas? In Africa? In Asia? The Americans did not care one whit for democracy. They overturned governments they did not like, bought off both politicians and political parties, and when this didn't work, they simply did away with leaders they opposed. And this isn't isolated to the '50s or '60s. Do you not hear today the calls for the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein? The US has been forced to mitigate that call because of the alarm expressed by their European allies, yet isn't it clear that this remains their goal? What we are seeing is the imperial democracy of the US rulers, which determines which leader shall reign in what country, irrespective of what the people of that country may wish. What's "democratic" about that? It is the democracy of hypocrisy. Copyright (c) 2002 Mumia Abu-Jamal ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrad-06.13.02-19:52:24-20876