Pollyana on LSD - part the third

Well, friend Tom Friedman has jumped the shark. Again. This recent essay is so ahistoric as not to be believed. After all, this is an educated almost geezer who should have his facts in hand. Apparantly not.

It evinces the sin of omission.

Because after talking to people in the U.S. oil industry, it is clear to me that if Trump wants to see U.S. companies invest billions of new dollars to repair Venezuela's oil infrastructure, the first thing they will tell him is that they need a return to the rule of law in Venezuela.

Like hell, that's what they want. They always want a benevolent (to them) dictator who'll keep wages at subsistence and the coveted resource at nada. Rule of law? Ha Ha. Only if the dictator and bidnezzmen get to make the law.

So, it seems, he's never heard of the original Banana Republic?

In 1911, Zemurray conspired with Manuel Bonilla, an ex-president of Honduras (1904-1907), and American mercenary Lee Christmas, to overthrow the civil government of Honduras and install a military government friendly to foreign businesses.

The mercenary army of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, led by Christmas, effected a coup d'état against President Miguel R. Dávila (1907-1911) and installed Bonilla (1912-1913). The United States ignored the deposition of the elected government of Honduras by a private army, justified by the U.S. State Department's misrepresenting Dávila as too politically liberal and a poor businessman whose management had indebted Honduras to Great Britain. This was a geopolitically unacceptable circumstance in light of the Monroe Doctrine.

United Fruit, et al, were happy.

Or the CIA's destruction of Mosaddegh in Iran? It was all about the oil, of course. So we got the Shah, a compliant dictator. The oil companies were happy.

On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the United States (CIA) and the United Kingdom (MI6). A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mossadegh nationalized and refused to concede to western oil demands. It was instigated by the United States (under the name TP-AJAX Project[8] or Operation Ajax) and the United Kingdom (under the name Operation Boot).

Fact is, bidnezzmen always would rather a compliant dictator, who keeps labor at subsistence wage and free access to the desired resource.