[PEN-L:9543] RE: Re: Re: My Ideologies

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Henwood [mailto:dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 3:59 PM
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [PEN-L:9539] Re: Re: My Ideologies


Brad De Long wrote:

>Do the "deaths in Indonesia need to be attributed to liberal U.S.
>capitalism"? To the U.S. national security state, perhaps. But even
>there you have to construct a counterfactual picture of what the
>succession to Sukarno would have been like: rule by the PKI is scary
>to think about.

But it's in no small part relentless U.S. opposition to even the
mildest reformism in the "Third World" that has helped make
revolutionary movements more brutal than you or I would like. Who
knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not
tried to smother it in its crib? Who knows what would have happened
elsewhere in Latin America & the Caribbean if the Cubans had been
allowed to go their way? What would have happened in Nicaragua if
Reagan hadn't unleashed the contras? What would have happened in the
USSR had the "West" not been hostile for 75 years? What would
have.....?

Doug

Hi Doug,

Not long ago I saw an interview with an OSS officer who periodically was
dropped into occupied France during World War II. He stated unequivocally
that the OSS not only dropped arms and supplies into areas where the French
Resistance was operating, but also into areas where they were not. He was
asked why they would drop weapons into areas where the French Resistance was
light and he answered that this would cause increased repression and
executions by the Germans thus leading to increased recruitments into the
Resistance.

The infamous Pentagon Papers give chapter and verse on social systems
engineering campaigns in North Vietnam (propaganda, counterfeit currency,
rumors of intended repression of Catholics, embargoes, destruction of crops,
sabotage etc) specifically designed to put a society under seige that would
lead to and justify (in the minds of those engaging in increased repression)
increased repression (e.g. during WWII being at War was used to justify the
internment of Japanese Americans and in the Civil War Lincoln justified
suspending Habeas Corpus under the banner of being under seige) that would
then be used to "confirm" and "prove" the Cold War caricatures of socialist
societies as inherently repressive, inefficient, backward etc versus the
good old capitalist USA portrayed as "progressive", democratic, dynamic,
respectful of human rights etc.

This stuff is done both overtly and covertly. The idea is to push hot
buttons, exacerbate contradictions and traditional rivalries, cultivate
compradors, manipulate traditional levers and centers of power to engineer
economic failures and political repression that can be used as "evidence" of
and attributed to the real nature, intentions and consequences of socialism
while the overt and covert provocations and social systems engineering
machinations and their intended/inexorable effects remain outside of
scrutiny or assignment of any responsibility for their effects.

See "World Without War: American Planning for the Next Vietnams" by Michael
Klare for an excellent synopsis of social systems engineering campaigns. The
same was done in Chile, Indonesia, North Korea, China, USSR etc etc.

Then we get the usual Cold War contrived syllogism/tautology:
China = Socialism
Socialism = Barbarism and Inefficiency
China = Barbarism and Inefficiency

and
US = "Free" Enterprise
"Free" Enterprise = Personal Freedom, Efficiency, Decency, Max Human Rights
US = Personal Freedom...

Jim Craven