Julianne Escobedo Shepherd — Nixon Policy Advisor Admits He Invented War On Drugs to Suppress 'Anti-War Left and Black People'

Dan Baum, writing in support of drug legalization at Harper’s, has unleashed a frank 1994 quote from former Nixon policy advisor John Ehrlichman, and as inadvertently salient an argument for legalizing drugs as any I’ve ever seen:

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Jezebel
Nixon Policy Advisor Admits He Invented War On Drugs to Suppress 'Anti-War Left and Black People'
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Pepe Escobar — ‘Resistance’ runs amok in the US Deep Throat War

The current Deep Throat War is more like the case of a fractioned Deep State out for revenge on Trump via its media arm. The one-two tie-in – Woodward’s book and the “resistance” Op-Ed – looks increasingly like a sophisticated psy-ops – a prelude for a Deep State white coup....

It would be hard to dismiss the President when he says: “I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back.”

It would be hard to dismiss the President when he says: “I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back.”...

Asia Times
‘Resistance’ runs amok in the US Deep Throat War

Pepe Escobar

Bloomberg Special Report — The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret

The facts confirm the rumors.

Bloomberg
The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret
Andrea Wong, With assistance from Sangwon Yoon

Carey Wedler — Nixon Advisor Admitted War on Drugs Invented to Crush Anti-War and Black Movements

In 1994, a former Nixon policy adviser admitted the War on Drugs was waged not to keep Americans safe, but to crush dissent. According to John Ehrlichman, who served time in prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, the Drug War was intended to disempower anti-war and black rights movements in the 1970s.

Author Dan Baum wrote in the April edition of Harper’s Magazine that in 1994, he spoke with now-deceased Ehrlichman, who frankly explained why President Nixon pushed prohibition:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”…

And therein lies one of the most powerful, lesser-known reasons for prohibition: it is a heavy-handed tactic to silence dissent.

Whether the government’s effort was a pointed strategy to demonize counterculture and anti-authoritarian thought itself — or simply to suppress the movements that harbored them — is unclear. Regardless, Ehrlichman’s admission clarifies the increasingly evident reality that the Drug War was never about keeping people safe.…

Anti-War Media
Nixon Advisor Admitted War on Drugs Invented to Crush Anti-War and Black Movements
Carey Wedler

Daniel Ellsberg — Nixon Almost Took Vietnam War Nuclear In November 1969

Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential race based on the idea that he’d end the war in Vietnam as quickly as possible.

Ellsberg said Nixon believed he could win the war quickly by issuing a nuclear ultimatum to Vietnamese forces and offering a treaty which would offer concessions from both sides.

“There was pressure to make the war larger” if the offer was rejected, the whistleblower noted, and “nuclear targets were picked.” Ellsberg speculated that the plans would have gone ahead in November 1969.

Instead, a huge demonstration on Oct. 15, 1969, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, combined a general strike with nationwide protests and teach-ins. About 2 million people came out to protest across the country, even “little towns that had never protested before,” Ellsberg recalled.

This was a major success of the anti-war movement, even though most of its members were never aware of their victory.

“As far as you could see from the anti-war movement, it had almost no perceivable effect,” he said. “The war went on.”
However, Ellsberg concluded:

“People didn’t understand the Joint Chiefs were pressing throughout this period for a bigger war, and Nixon was threatening and planning a bigger war.

It did not shorten the war significantly, but it did keep a lid on the war. Without the Moratorium, there would have been an escalation, possibly the use of nuclear weapons in November 1969.”

MintPress News
Daniel Ellsberg: Nixon Almost Took Vietnam War Nuclear In November 1969

Mark Karlin — New Allende Overthrow Info Reconfirms US Suppresses Economically-Rebellious Democracies

New revelations about the Chilean military overthrow of the popularly elected Salvador Allende regime in 1973 once again confirm that the US is supportive of democracies that enhance US economic interests, but it is the enemy of those that don't.

Truthout/Buzzflash
New Allende Overthrow Info Reconfirms US Suppresses Economically-Rebellious Democracies
Mark Karlin, Editor Of Buzzflash At Truthout
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

John Pilger — Kissinger and Chile: In an Age of Vigilantes, There Is Cause for Optimism

The most important anniversary of the year was the 40th anniversary of September 11, 1973 - the crushing of the democratic government of Chile by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, then US secretary of state. The National Security Archive in Washington has posted new documents that reveal much about Kissinger's role in an atrocity that cost thousands of lives.

In declassified tapes, Kissinger is heard planning with President Richard Nixon the overthrow of President Salvador Allende. They sound like Mafiosi thugs. Kissinger warns that the "model effect" of Allende's reformist democracy "can be insidious." He tells CIA director Richard Helms, "We will not let Chile go down the drain," to which Helms replies, "I am with you." With the slaughter under way, Kissinger dismisses a warning by his senior officials of the scale of the repression. Secretly, he tells Pinochet, "You did a great service to the West."...

Understanding Kissinger's criminality is vital when trying to fathom what the US calls its "foreign policy." Kissinger remains an influential voice in Washington, admired and consulted by Barack Obama. When Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain commit crimes with US collusion and weapons, their impunity and Obama's hypocrisy are pure Kissinger. Syria must not have chemical weapons, but Israel can have them and use them. Iran must not have a nuclear program, but Israel can have more nuclear weapons than Britain. This is known as "realism" or realpolitik by Anglo-American academics and think-tanks that claim expertise in "counterterrorism" and "national security," which are Orwellian terms meaning the opposite.

In 2006, I interviewed Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who ran the CIA in Latin America in the 1980s. Here was a true "realist." Like Kissinger and Nixon on the tapes, he spoke his mind. He referred to Salvador Allende as "whatshisname in Chile" and said "he had to go because it was in our national interests." When I asked what gave him the right to overthrow governments, he said, "Like it or lump it, we'll do what we like. So just get used to it, world." 

While Chile is recovering from the overthrow of Allende and the right wing is still in power, the rest of Latin America is veering left.

The world is no longer getting used to it. In a continent ravaged by those whom Nixon called "our bastards," Latin American governments have defied the likes of Clarridge and implemented much of Allende's dream of social democracy - which was Kissinger's fear. Today, most of Latin America is independent of US foreign policy and free of its vigilantism. Poverty has been cut almost by half; children live beyond the age of 5; the elderly learn to read and write. These remarkable advances are invariably reported in bad faith in the West and ignored by the "realists." That must never lessen their value as a source of optimism and inspiration for all of us. 

Truthout | Op-Ed

Kissinger and Chile: In an Age of Vigilantes, There Is Cause for Optimism
John Pilger

Remind me what the difference between neoliberalism at its worst, as displayed by Kissinger, and fascism is. One of Nixon's worst appointments and the most powerful and nefarious. When the history is written he will go down as the man that lost Latin America for the US.