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Zeitgeist: Addendum - Part Two - Page 3
This is the third page of part two in my series of articles on Zeitgeist: Addendum. Please refer to the introduction if you were lead to this page.
Ecuador 1981
Ecuador for many, many years had been ruled by pro-US dictators, often relatively brutal. Then it was decided that they were going to have a truly democratic election. Jaime Roldós ran for office, and his main goal he said as president would be to make sure that Ecuador's resources were used to help the people. And he won, overwhelmingly, by more votes than anyone had ever won anything in Ecuador, and he began to implement these policies...to make sure that the profits from oil went to help the people. Well, we didn't like that in the United States. I was sat down as one of several economic hit men, to change Roldós, to corrupt him, to bring him around. To let him know, you know, ok, you know, you can get very rich you and your family if you play our game, but if you continue to try to keep these policies you've promised, you're gonna go; he wouldn't listen.
He was assassinated. As soon as the plane crashed, the whole area was cordoned off. The only people that were allowed in were US military from a nearby base, and some of the Ecuadorian military. When an investigation was launched, two of the key witnesses died in car accidents before they had a chance to testify. A lot of very, very strange things that went on around the assassination of Jaime Roldós. I, like most people who've really looked at this case, have absolutely no doubt that it was an assassination, and of course in my position as an economic hit man I was always expecting something to happen to Jaime, weather it be a coup or an assassination I wasn't sure, but that he would be taken down because he was not being corrupted, he would not allow himself to be corrupted the way we wanted to corrupt him.
The election which put Roldós in power was the first election after a decade of dictatorship. not "many, many years." Roldós opposed US oil companies and their involvement with Ecuadorian oil and at the time US President Reagan believed their alliance with Columbia and Peru to be flirting with the USSR[22]. It definitely fits the M.O. of the CIA to want to do something about it. There's really no evidence that anyone came there and tried to "corrupt him" outside of any kind of diplomatic exchange between Roldós and the US, but that's not the same as "economic hit men." While it's entirely possible that he was assassinated, I'm skeptical of this, due to the fact that it was foggy and raining the day of the flight, and they crashed into the side of a mountain.
Perkins' story doesn't fit well either, considering the plane was Ecuadorian Air Force and Ecuadorian Military, not US Military cordoned off the area. I can't seem to find any evidence of these two witnesses that died in car accidents. That doesn't mean, of course, that they don't exist. I'm not really sure how they could be witnesses and what they were testifying for, considering all nine people on board the plane died and it was in the Andes[23].
Panama 1981
Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, was one of my favorite people, I really, really liked him, he was very charismatic, he was a guy who really wanted to help his country. When I tried to bribe him, or corrupt him he said, look John, he called me Juanito, he said, look Juanito, I don't need the money. What I really need is for my country to be treated fairly. I need for the United States to repay the debts that you owe my people for all the destruction you've done here. I need to be in a position where I can help other Latin American countries win their independence, and be free of this terrible presence from the north that you people are exploiting us so badly. I need to have the Panama canal back in the hands of the Panamanian people. That's what I want. And so, leave me alone, don't try to bribe me. It was 1981, and in May Jaime Roldos was assassinated, and Omar was very aware of this. Torrijos got his family together and he said, I'm probably next. But it's okay, because I've done what I came here to do. I've renegotiated the canal, the canal will now be in our hands, he'd just finished negotiating the treaty with Jimmy Carter. In June of that same year, just a couple of months later, he also went down in an airplane crash, which there's no question was executed by CIA sponsored jackals. Tremendous amount of evidence that one of Torrijos' security guards handed him at the last moment as he was getting on the plane a tape recorder, a small tape recorder, that contained a bomb.
All of this talk of overthrowing democratic governments, it's interesting that one of Perkins' "favorite people" was Omar Torrijos, who was a dictator who overthrew a democratically elected government. While he was "good to the people" in the Julius Cćsar sense, he was brutal to people who opposed him in any way. Most of his enemies were exiled, executed, or simply disappeared. His public works projects were also plagued with corruption, which lead to Panama having one of the highest public debts[24]. In short, Torrijos, one of Perkins' favorite people, was responsible for countless human rights violations[25].
It's hard to find evidence of how Torrijos' airplane exploded, but it's extremely likely he was assassinated, but by who is really anyone's guess. The CIA seems like a possibility, however the assassination of Torrijos didn't really move anything in favor of the US, so I'm skeptical of that theory.
Venezuela 2002
It is interesting to me how this system has continued pretty much the same way for years and years and years, except the economic hit men are getting better and better and better. Then we come up with, very recently, what happened in Venezuela. In 1998 Hugo Chavez gets elected president, following a long line of presidents who'd been very corrupt, and basically destroyed the economy of the country...and Chavez was elected amidst all that.
Chavez stood up to the United States, and he has done it primarily demanding that Venezuelan oil be used to help the Venezuelan people. Well, we didn't like that in the United States. So, in 2002 the coup was staged, which, there's no question in my mind and most other peoples minds that the CIA was behind that coup. The way that that coup was fomented was very reflective of what Kermit Roosevelt had done in Iran, of paying people to go out into the streets to riot, to protest, to say this Chavez is very unpopular. You know, if you can get a few thousand people to do that, television can make it look like its the whole country, and things start to mushroom. Except in the case of Chavez, he was smart enough and the people were so strongly behind him that they overcame it. Which was a phenomenal moment in the history of Latin America.
It's important to note that the coup of 2002 actually failed. The movie simply says it was "staged" but really doesn't say much else about what happened[26]. It's unlikely the US was directly involved with the coup, but rather encouraged the coup, even though this is denied by the US government. There is also some evidence to say two US military officers did meet with the coup leaders some time before the coup. There isn't much evidence of anything outside that, but it's my opinion the CIA was not involved like it was in Iran, it was if anything, a coup with some insights from US military officers as to how successfully pull it off[27][28].