Capital Crusades
Warrick Kemp (b 1968)
Capital Crusades
Bronze - Edition of 6
Height: 70 cm
R59 000
When the leader of a sovereign state refuses to become a puppet for a foreign government or corporation, regime change is often engineered. Evidence of this has been the replacement of Mossadegh by the Shah in Iran in 1953, Sukarno by Suharto in Indonesia in 1970, and Allende by Pinochet in Chile in 1973. All these coups were engineered and supported by the US and/or the UK governments.
The common thread is the active support of a dictatorship or oligarchy that pursues privatization of its state enterprises and natural resources, and opens its borders to big business and foreign governments at the expense of its population. Such actions are often sanctioned by the aggressor’s civilian population, whipped up by propaganda and spin, but usually benefit only a small ruling class in the target country.
George Kennan, head of the US State Departments Policy Planning staff between 1947 and 1949, is quoted in Derrick Jensen’s End Game (2006 p. 76) as saying that ‘if we are to maintain a position of disparity over those whose resources we must take, we should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratisation, and instead should deal in straight power concepts, not hampered by idealistic slogans about altruism and world-benefaction.’
Noam Chomsky, in Hegemony or Survival (2003 p. 34), writes, ‘George Kennan, in this case, briefing US ambassadors to Latin America on the need to be guided by a pragmatic concern for the protection of our raw materials, ours, wherever they happen to be located, to which we must preserve our inherent right of access.’
These actions are initiated under various guises; the fight against Communism, terrorism - anything to scare the population into believing that intervention in the affairs and leadership of a sovereign state is required and justified. Highly decorated US Major General Smedley Butler carried out many ‘Capital Crusades’: ‘I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force - the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.’ Butler wrote in Time of Peace, an article in Common Sense magazine, November 1935, pp 8-12.