Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [26]
• Cambodia—After secretly extending the Vietnam War into Cambodia in the late sixties and then watching the already decimated country slip under the control of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, the United States chose to support this madman for the simple reason that he offered opposition to the Vietnamese communists, who had just fought mighty America to total defeat. Then he took control and wiped out millions of his own people.
• The Congo/Zaire—The CIA got in bed with Mobutu Sese-Seku early, setting off years of horrific violence that continues today. Afraid of the nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, America helped Mobutu to power, oversaw the assassination of Lumumba and then helped crush the resulting uprisings. Mobutu took dictatorial control, outlawed political activity, had people killed, and ruled the country until 1990, with the continued help of the United States (and, yes, also the dastardly French). With the approval of successive American governments he spread his fingers through the crises of his neighboring African countries.
• Brazil—Left-leaning, democratically elected President Joaõ Goulart wasn’t what Washington had in mind for South America’s largest country. Despite pledging his solidarity to the United States during the Cuban missile crisis, Goulart’s days were numbered. Preferring friendly authoritarian rule to democracy, the United States pushed a coup on Brazil, which resulted in 15 years of terror, torture and killing.
• Indonesia—The Southeast Asian archipelago state is one of America’s favorite allies, and also happens to be home to yet another repressive regime. It is also the world’s most populous Muslim country. In 1965, yet another democratically elected president was overthrown with the help of the United States government, which installed in his place yet another military dictatorship. General Suharto headed a hard-line government that ruled the country for three decades. Around half a million people were killed in the years after Suharto took power, but that didn’t stop the U.S. from approving, in advance, Indonesia’s illegal annexation of East Timor in the seventies. About 200,000 more people died there.
Of course, there are many, many more examples, from dictators we supported to democratically elected governments we simply threw into chaos or got rid of altogether (Guatemala and Iran in the fifties and Chile in the seventies are further examples of how much we love freedom by helping to overthrow heads of state who were chosen by their own citizens).
These days, China, the world’s biggest Saddam-o-rama, is our favorite dictatorship. The government imposes severe limits on media outlets, the Internet, workers’ rights, religious freedom, and any attempts at independent thinking. Combined with a judicial system that totally ignores any rule of law and is festering with corruption, China is a perfect place for American companies to do business. There are more than 800 Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in China, around 400 McDonald’s and another 100 Pizza Huts. Kodak is quickly approaching a monopoly on film sales.
The many companies who have set up shop there are not only hawking their wares to the Chinese. The $103 billion trade imbalance between China and the United States is the largest deficit between two countries the world has ever seen. We import six times as much as we export, with Wal-Mart alone accounting for $12 billion worth of Chinese imports, making the All Sino-American company one of China’s biggest trading partners—ahead of Russia and Great Britain.
There are plenty of other companies taking advantage of the state-controlled cheap labor in China, too, from General Motors to Boeing to . . . hell, just take off your pants and have a look at the label, or dismantle your television. Or take off your pants while you’re dismantling your television. And while China makes a killing on exports, and American corporations make a killing on high-profit returns, the