Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 19. August
2013 / Timeline August 19, 2013
Version 3.5
18. August 2013, 20. August 2013
08/19/2013
CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup
Documents Provide New Details on Mosaddeq Overthrow and Its
Aftermath
National Security Archive Calls for Release of Remaining Classified
Record
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 435
Edited by Malcolm Byrne
- http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 - Marking the sixtieth
anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad
Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently
declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the
controversial operation. American and British involvement in
Mosaddeq's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's
posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal
acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the
coup.
The explicit reference to the CIA's role appears in a copy of an
internal history, The Battle for Iran, dating from the mid-1970s.
The agency released a heavily excised version of the account in
1981 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blacked out all
references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation.
Those references appear in the latest release. Additional CIA
materials posted today include working files from Kermit Roosevelt,
the senior CIA officer on the ground in Iran during the coup. They
provide new specifics as well as insights into the intelligence
agency's actions before and after the operation.
The 1953 coup remains a topic of global interest because so much
about it is still under intense debate. Even fundamental questions
- who hatched the plot, who ultimately carried it out, who
supported it inside Iran, and how did it succeed - are in dispute.
This posting adds new evidence that should help clarify some of
these disagreements.
08/19/2013
Clinging to Mass Violence
By Lawrence S.
Wittner
Is the human race determined to snuff itself out through mass
violence? There are many signs that it is.
The most glaring indication lies in the continued popularity of
war. Despite well over a hundred million deaths in World Wars I and
II, plus the brutal military conflicts in Korea, Indochina,
Hungary, Algeria, Lebanon, Angola, Mozambique, the Philippines, the
Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, wars continue to rage
across the globe, consuming vast numbers of lives and resources. In
2012, worldwide military spending reached $1.75 trillion. Moreover,
the most lavish spenders for weaponry, war, and destruction were
the supposedly “civilized” nations of NATO, with $1
trillion in military expenditures. By far the biggest military
spender in 2012 was the United States, which accounted for 39
percent of the world total.
Nor has this pattern shifted since that time. Currently, the U.S.
government is pouring $7 billion a month into its
twelve-and-a-half-year-long war in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, drones
are rapidly becoming the U.S. weapons of choice in the worldwide
“War on Terror,” with America’s largest spy
drone, the Global Hawk, costing $220 million each. In recent
months, as the U.S. House of Representatives voted to end food
stamps for the poor, continued the sequestration that slashed meals
for sick and homebound seniors, and moved toward ending Saturday
mail delivery, it rejected a 1 percent cut in military spending
and, then, voted for a national defense authorization that provided
for billions of dollars more than the Pentagon requested.
Furthermore, a nation’s armed forces often engage in violent
behavior quite unrelated to their national security. Commanded by
military officers viewing themselves as the saviors of their
countries, they have staged bloody coups against own governments,
terrorizing and massacring civilians in large numbers, as they did
in Indonesia, Burma, Nigeria, Brazil, Greece, Chile, Argentina,
Uruguay, and many other countries. At the moment, in fact, the
Egyptian armed forces, having deposed a democratically-elected,
civilian government, are busy gunning down thousands of
Egyptians.
In fairness to the official armed forces, it should be noted that
the mass violence in many societies goes far beyond them.
Terrorism, gang wars, and religious massacres continue to plague
nations around the globe. In the United States, lynching has
declined dramatically, but gun-related killings are quite common.
More than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence each year and
– in a society with over 300 million firearms in the hands of
civilians – it seems unlikely that such violence will
decline. Indeed, massacres by gunmen – for example, the
murder of 20 children and 6 teachers at the Sandy Hook elementary
school in Newtown, Connecticut – have become almost
routine.
Admittedly, the Sandy Hook massacre was the work of a
mentally-deranged individual. But the NRA’s response to a
series of mass killings – opposition to all gun control
legislation and a stubborn insistence that wider availability of
guns will reduce violence – makes the Newtown maniac look
relatively sane. And what is one to say about the mental state of
the pro-gun zealots who, this August, made plans to turn up,
fully-armed, at a Starbucks in Newtown -- and were foiled only when
the horrified management shut down the coffee house?
The acceptability of mass violence is demonstrated on a much larger
scale by national governments’ ongoing preparations for
nuclear war. Sixty-eight years after the U.S. government employed
atomic bombs to exterminate the populations of two Japanese cities
and it became clear to all but the mentally feeble that nuclear war
meant global annihilation, over 17,000 nuclear weapons remain in
existence, with 94 percent of them in the arsenals of the U.S. and
Russian governments. Despite numerous claims by national leaders
that they are committed to building a nuclear weapons-free world,
the United States, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan are currently
modernizing their nuclear weapons, with the United States and
Russia spending about $75 billion a year between them on this
project. Meanwhile, the North Korean government threatens to attack
the United States with its small nuclear arsenal, while the Iranian
government continues a uranium enrichment process that might enable
it to enter the nuclear club. Appropriately enough, the famous
“Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists stands at five minutes to midnight.
There are, of course, important countervailing trends. Responding
to the development of modern, mechanized warfare, mass-based peace
movements began to appear in the nineteenth century. During the
twentieth century, these movements grew even larger, particularly
after the advent of nuclear weapons. In place of war, they
championed international arbitration, global cooperation, arms
control and disarmament, and the development of global governance.
The World Court, the United Nations, and other international
institutions owe much to this public pressure. Within individual
nations, as well, critics of mass violence fostered new, more
cooperative modes of education, non-violent resistance, conflict
resolution, innovative therapies, peace studies programs, and gun
control campaigns.
But resorting to violence is a long-term, deeply-ingrained habit in
human history, and is not easily discarded. To shake it probably
requires less attention to a royal childbirth or the latest sex
scandal and more attention to the dangers of mass violence in an
age of modern weaponry and war. This was certainly what the French
writer, Albert Camus, meant when, in the immediate aftermath of
World War II and the first use of nuclear weapons, he offered a
simple but powerful challenge: “All I ask is that, in the
midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to
make a choice.”
Lawrence S. Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of
History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical
novel about university life, "What’s Going On at
UAardvark?” (Solidarity Press).]
08/19/2013
B-1B Lancer Bomber Crashes in Montana
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D., Aug. 19, 2013 - A B-1B Lancer
bomber with the 28th Bomb Wing here crashed today near Broadus,
Mont., during a routine training mission.
08/19/2013
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