Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Chomsky: Latin America is no U.S. whipping boy

Here's how my man Chomsky sums up a revolution that's going on down below us, unnoticed by all but a few U.S. elites:

There are other cases, but the crime of rendition returns us to the matter of Latin American independence. The Open Society Institute recently released a study called “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition.” It reviewed global participation in the crime, which was very broad, including among European countries.

Latin American scholar Greg Grandin pointed out that one region was absent from the list of shame: Latin America. That is doubly remarkable. Latin America had long been the reliable “backyard” for the United States. If any of the locals sought to raise their heads, they would be decapitated by terror or military coup. And as it was under U.S. control throughout the latter half of the last century, Latin America was one of the torture capitals of the world.

That's no longer the case, as the United States and Canada are being virtually expelled from the hemisphere.

Without the threat of Communism to cover our crimes in Latin America, we don't have the great excuse we once did to foment coups and back dictators. The War on Drugs still serves that purpose to some extent, but not everywhere.


By Noam Chomsky
August 2, 2013 | AlterNet

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