The First 9/11: The Fading Light of American Democracy

[Better Believe It]

September 10 - 12, 2010

The First 9/11
The Fading Light of American Democracy
By PAUL CANTOR

.... on September 11, 1973, twenty-eight years to the day before the Attack on America, our image as a defender of democracy was shattered when Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende in a bloody military coup d’état. Allende in the eyes of President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, was a communist hostile to the interests of U.S. based multinationals with investments in Chile. Consequently, Nixon and Kissinger helped to engineer the coup. Afterward, furthermore, they supported Pinochet as he abolished the Chilean congress, outlawed political parties, censored the press and imprisoned and tortured thousands. The implicit message behind this sequence of events was the United States supports the interest of the wealthy even at the expense of democracy.

Since September 11, 1973, furthermore, our democratic image has been further tarnished by our support for repressive forces and undemocratic regimes in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere and by the manner in which wealth and income has become increasingly skewed and liberties curtailed at home.

The Gini coefficient for the U.S. in 2008, for example, was 44 according to the U.S. Census Bureau while the Gini coefficient for the European Union was 31. The Gini coefficient is a single number that characterizes income distribution in a country. It varies from 0 (perfect equality) to 100 (perfect inequality). Furthermore in 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau, the top 5% of income earners in our country received 21.2% of all the income generated in the economy, while the bottom 20% received only 3.4%. And according a to a study by Levy Economic Institute scholar, Edward Wolff, the top 1% of wealth holders in our country held 35% of the wealth in 2007 or more than twice as much as the bottom 80%. Clearly such wide discrepancies in income and wealth translate into wide discrepancies in the ability to support policymakers and promote policies that favor one’s own interests and are a primary reason we may now be seen as having a government of the people, by the rich, and for the rich.

Finally, the “war on terrorism” led to the PATRIOT ACT which according to the American Civil Liberties Union, “vastly … expanded the government’s authority to pry into people’s private lives” and the Military Commissions Act which led to people defined as unlawful enemy combatants being tortured at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cantor09102010.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. We do seem to suffer from illusions of our own grandeur.

Believing one's own hype is self-destructive..

[Cal33]

5. Yes, and it seems the less informed the person the greater the illusion of grandeur.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Ignorance is not merely bliss..it is ecstasy...

[dipsydoodle]

2. Thanks for posting

Too often overlooked especially given that aggregate deaths as a result completely dwarf the latter day event.

9/11/01 I was mid Atlantic and when the pilot told us that two planes had hit the WTC and the Pentagon had a dent in it , his words not mine , I just assumed it was overdue blowback from Chile.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. My 88 year old uncle warned me on 9-11 that "everything was going to change" when it happened.

He was right.

[Bitwit1234]

4. Even tho the attack on the Twin Towers has not followed by

more violent attacks on this country, the terrorist from Saudi Arabia,(whick 17 of the 19 were) in the long run they are accomplishing their mission. They are helping to rend this country apart. The wimpy ass republicans using this as a sop to the fact that it happened on their watch, is making all kinds of claims against people who had no part in it. After the attack Bush invited the Prince of Arabia to the white house. He proceeded to hug, hold hands with and kiss the guy. But he INVADED an innocent country.

But as I said the terrorist are accomplishing their mission and the republicans are enabling them as fast as they can. Republicans should be classified as leaning toward terrorism.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. And the Pinochet coup was as much economic as political

Pinochet and his allies were heavily influenced by the Chicago School of economics (Milton Friedman's worship of "market forces"), since the Ford Foundation had subsidized the training of Latin American economists at the University of Chicago. Milton Friedman even flew down to Chile to consult with the Pinochet government.

The result was millions of Chileans falling into poverty in what was once one of the most prosperous countries in South America.