LEARNING CURVE

 

I read somewhere that one should "Learn something new every day".  Sounds like a new year resolution, but I'm sure we learn somethings new everyday of our lives, and some of them extremely unpleasant.

Like the role of the US in protecting its turf just after the end of the Second World War.

The turf is simply another name for the economy of the United States.  There was a move to subjugate the "Grand Area" - anywhere in the Western Hemisphere including the United Kingdom along with the rest of Europe.  As the British Empire was being dismantled, this seemed like an opportune time for the US to stretch is influence over the rest of the word while much of Europe was being rebuilt:  the US escaped any military aggression on its own land.

The Third World was designated an area to be exploited for the extraction of raw materials for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan. (The latter having been nominated an 'honorary white' country for the sake of expediency and profit.

George Kennan, head of the State Department planning staff was responsible for what took place until 1950.  Here is what he said

George Kennan

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment.  Our real taskin the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity....To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming:  and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives....We should cease to talk about vague and .. unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation.  The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.  The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

The planners were discussing privately how to go about this; and this is what I learned.

• The term Free Trade is in name only.  It is the public who pay for research and development, mainly for the military machine.  Anything that is marketable is seized by the private sector who have access to the profits.  Public subsidy + private profit = free enterprise.
• Right wing politics was to be promoted and retained while reconstruction was place on the shoulders of the poor working class.  (We can hear Make America Great Again trumpeted in the US today with the same objectives as then.)
• Both Italy and Greece witnessed political interference with the installation of a corrupt regime which was the cause of 160,000 deaths in Greece alone, mostly from the Communist-led anti-Nazi resistance.
• US interference in South Korea led to the death of about 100,000 people on the pretext they had resisted the Japanese whose fascist police were responsible for their brutal murder.
• Worst of all, the CIA initiated a coup in Guatemala and turned it into a "hell on earth", the repercussions of which are still felt today.  War criminals - Nazis - were employed and sent to Guatemala after being exonerated of crimes by the French in 1982 because skills learned during the war, such as various methods of torture, could be taught to the government forces there.  Klaus Barbie who had been an SS officer in the Gestapo in France, known as the Butcher of Lyon was among them.  The Vatican and fascist priests were also responsible for their resettling in Latin America.  The alliance between the US and the SS were favourable to the former.

And this is what I learned today.  Nothing has changed.