#anaconda copper company

[slightlyspooky]

Overlooking this town is a smokestack and a mountain of dull black slag

The copper kings shipped the ore here from their mines

It was far enough they wouldn't breathe the smoke

But close enough they could stop by and be home before lunch

Arsenic

Lead

Mercury

The smokestack is cold and dead

Industry and wealth have left

But the town and its people are still poisoned by it

Monroe Street, Anaconda, Montana.

[stone-cold-groove]

Copper... friend of freedom. Anaconda Copper Mining Company ad - 1950.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

50 years ago, September 11, 1974, the Weather Underground bombed the Oakland office of the Anaconda mining company in retaliation for their "decisive role in the US-sponsored fascist coup in Chile" one year earlier, after the socialist Allende government nationalized copper mines.

Via Left in the Bay

[victusinveritas]

Possibly the only rail car library in existence, on display in Missoula, MT. It was owned by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (murderous douchebags) from the early 1920's and traveled from lumber mill to lumber mill providing the lumbermen with reading materials (definitely no Marx, Goldman, or Debs). This railcar "bookmobile" was taken out of commission sometime in the late 1950's and used for storage until rediscovered and moved to historic Fort Missoula.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 22

1823 – The American author, abolitionist, and soldier Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born today in Cambridge, Massachusetts (d.1911). The Higginson clan was quite pedigreed. Thomas was a descendant of a Puritan minister, a member of the Continental Congress, and the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized African-American regiment, from 1862-1864. Following the war, Higginson devoted much of the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed slaves, women and other disenfranchised peoples.

Higginson has largely been forgotten to history except in the last few years when Brenda Wineapple's book White Heat was published to great accolades. In the book Wineapple posits an intense relationship between Higginson and his penpal, the poet Emily Dickinson. They only met twice but the title of Wineapple's book suggests a more intimate relationship. Interestingly (or not) Wineapple makes no mention in her book of William Hurlbert, the handsome Southern journalist that Higginson was just crazy about. A very telling omission because Higginson's famous "Letter to a Young Contributor" (the Atlantic essay that Dickinson first responded to and started their correspondence) alluded to "Cecil Dreeme," the very queer title character in Theodore Winthrop's 1861 novel by the same name. Dreeme was based on Hurlbert, of whom Higginson once remarked: "I never loved but one male friend with passion—and for him my love had no bounds—all that my natural fastidiousness and cautious reserve kept from others I poured on him; to say that I would have died for him was nothing." Now there's some "White Heat."

In Higginson's book Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870) he exhibits an erotic fascination with black skin and bodies: "I always like to observe [black soldiers] when bathing,—such splendid muscular development, set off by that smooth coating of adipose tissue which makes them, like the South-Sea Islanders, appear even more muscular than they are. Their skins are also of finer grain than those of whites, the surgeons say, and certainly are smoother and far more free from hair."

Whitman scholars like Ken Price have noted that Higginson's later attacks on the gay aspects of Whitman's poetry may have been a case of "pot calling the kettle black" given the "tonalities" in Higginson's writing and relationships.

1896 – Myron Brinig (d.1991), one of the first Jewish-American writers of his generation to write in English rather than Yiddish, was also one of the first to create homosexual characters. Between 1929 and 1958 he published 21 novels. A homosexual himself, he remained publicly closeted all of his life, a stance he thought necessary, not only for his writing career, but also for his place in American society.

Born in Minneapolis, Brinig moved with his family to the rough and tumble mining town of Butte, Montana when he was three. Like many Jewish immigrants to the far west, his father opened a dry-goods store that catered to the needs of copper miners.

Brinig grew up working in the store, and sold candy in brothels and newspapers in bars. He saw first-hand Butte's horrific labor problems, particularly its long strikes and the mayhem the Anaconda Copper Company committed in breaking those strikes.

In 1914 at age 17 Brinig left Butte to study at New York University, where he took writing courses with the poet Joyce Kilmer.

In 1917 Brinig's education was interrupted by military service. When he returned to New York City in 1919, instead of going back to school, he found a job at the Zanuck film studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey reading novels and stories in search of script material. Except for rare visits to his family he never returned to Montana, perhaps because he knew that he could never live even secretly as a homosexual in Butte.

Brinig published his first novel in 1929. Madonna Without Child is a character study of a woman obsessed by someone else's child.

That same year Farrar & Rinehart published Singermann (1929), the story of Moses Singermann, his wife Rebecca, and their six children. It is a story of what the new Amercian freedom does to the family's traditional Jewish values. It is here we first meet Harry and Michael, the two gay Singermann brothers.

This Man Is My Brother, the sequel to Singermann in which Brinig continues the story of the two gay brothers, was published in 1932..

In 1933, in Taos, New Mexico, he met the modernist painter, Cady Wells, the scion of a wealthy eastern family. He and Wells would live together as lovers for the rest of that year and most of the next.

In 1935 Brinig moved to San Francisco without Wells and for the first year since 1929 did not publish a novel. But he resumed writing in 1936 and created his best-seller, The Sisters (1937), which begins in Butte and climaxes with the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Warner Brothers bought the film rights to The Sisters. Directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, the movie was released in 1938. It was a box office success, and with the money he made from the movie, Brinig returned to Taos and bought a house where he lived for the next 16 years.

But Brinig's later novels sold poorly. Publisher Stanley Rinehart dropped Brinig from Rinehart's list. It was quite a blow. In 1955, in an effort to save his career, Brinig sold his house in Taos and moved back to Manhattan.

Brinig, unfortunately, also received neglectful treatment from the literary historians of the American labor movement. Walter Rideout in his The Radical Novel in the United States: 1900 to 1954 never mentions Wide Open Town, Brinig's novel about a famous Butte strike with a graphic lynching scene of a Wobbly organizer. Under the heading "Strike Novels," Rideout discusses several awful Communist Party propaganda novels but not Wide Open Town.

The decisions to ignore Brinig were conscious. These critics understood that Brinig was a homosexual and that several of his characters, while not designated as such, were homosexuals. Rather than deal with these facts they chose to ignore Brinig and his work, perhaps out of embarrassment or homophobia.

Brinig died on May 13, 1991 at the age of 94. He had witnessed his own literary disappearance, first from bookstores, then libraries, and then the public's memory.

Yet the last third of his life was a happy time. For 35 years he lived with the man he loved, had many friends for whom he played the piano, and with whom he frequented a First Avenue bar, appropriately called The Closet, where he could be himself.

1899 – Gustaf Gründgens (d.1963), one of Germany's most famous and influential actors of the 20th century, intendant and artistic director of theatres in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg. His career continued undisturbed through the years of the Nazi regime, but the extent to which this can be considered as deliberate collaboration with the Nazis was hotly disputed.

Born in Düsseldorf, Gründgens after World War I attended the drama school of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and started his career at smaller theaters in Halberstadt, Kiel, and Berlin. In 1923 he went to the Kammerspiele in Hamburg, where he also appeared as a director for the first time, co-working with the author Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann, and his sister Erika Mann. Gründgens, who meanwhile had changed his first name to "Gustaf", married Erika in 1926. However, they divorced three years later.

In 1928 he moved back to Berlin to join the renowned ensemble of the Deutsches Theater under director Max Reinhardt. Apart from straight theatre, Gründgens also worked with Otto Klemperer at the Kroll Opera, as a Kabarett artist and also as a movie actor, most notably in Fritz Lang's 1931 film M, which decisively added to his popularity. From 1932 he was a member of the Prussian State Theatre ensemble, first scintillating as Mephistopheles.

Gründgens' career proceeded after the Nazi Machtergreifung: in 1934 he became "Intendant" of the Prussian State Theatre; though constant attacks on his homosexual orientation made him ask the Prussian Minister President Hermann Göring for his discharge after the Night of the Long Knives. Göring rejected the request and instead appointed him a member of the Prussian state council to ensure his immunity.. In 1941, Gründgens starred in the propaganda film Ohm Krüger and also in Friedemann Bach, a film he also produced. After Goebbels's total war speech on 18 February 1943, Gründgens volunteered for the Wehrmacht but was again recalled by Göring, who had his name added to the Gottbegnadeten list.

Imprisoned by the Soviet NKVD in 1945, Gründgens was released thanks to the intercession by the Communist actor Ernst Busch, whom Gründgens himself had saved from execution by the Nazis in 1943.

From 1936 till 1946, Gründgens was married to the famous German actress Marianne Hoppe. The wedlock was widely seen as a lavender marriage.

Posthumously, Gründgens was the subject of a novel entitled "Mephisto" by his former brother-in-law Klaus Mann, who had died in 1949. The film version was a huge commercial and critical success winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1981.

1938 – Martin Sherman is an American dramatist and screenwriter, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play Bent (1979), which explores the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust. Sherman is an openly gay Jew and has lived and worked in London since 1980.

Sherman wrote Bent for Gay Sweatshop, a company devoted to using theater to raise consciousness, but the theater's artistic director—recognizing the work's wider significance and potential—encouraged him to "give this play to the world." It opened at London's Royal Court Theatre to popular and critical acclaim and established Sherman as a playwright to be taken seriously.

The first play to depict the brutal treatment of gay men by the Nazi regime and their incarceration in concentration camps, Bent concerns the fates of three men caught up in the rising oppression of the era.

Although historian Nicholas de Jongh calls Bent "one of the most significant plays produced in the post-Second World War theatre" and the Royal National Theatre included Bent in its list of the 100 most significant plays of the twentieth century, Sherman had a great deal of difficulty finding backers for the work.

Like Bent, Sherman's other plays often focus on characters who feel they can ignore the world around them, only later to be brought up short by the consequences of their ignorance.Although most of his screenplays for movies and TV all have gay elements and appeal, Sherman's most explicitly gay-themed screenplay (other than for Bent) is the one he wrote for Nancy Meckler's Indian Summer (also known as Alive and Kicking, 1996), which explores the growing relationship between an HIV-positive dancer and an older AIDS counselor.

In 2003, he was commissioned to write a new book for the American premiere of The Boy from Oz, based on the original Australian libretto by Nick Enright. The musical, starring the charismatic Hugh Jackman, set for itself the rather daunting task of telling the life story of Peter Allen (using his music and lyrics) from cradle to grave. Sherman unflinchingly tackled Allen's complicated bisexuality. His work on The Boy from Oz earned Sherman a Tony nomination for best book of a musical.

Sherman has no regrets about being a pioneer, but he does not want to be limited as to his subject matter. As he told The Advocate in 2000, "At the time I wrote Bent it was important to declare yourself as a gay writer. It seems to me that we have now reached this point, which I think is extremely healthy, where I can write about anything."

1959 – Johann de Lange, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is an Afrikaans poet, short story writer and critic. He is renowned for being one of the foremost gay writers in Afrikaans, his most controversial book being Nagsweet ("Night sweat").

He debuted in 1982 with a collection of poetry titled Akwarelle van die dors ("Aquarelles of thirst") for which he was awarded the Ingrid Jonker prize in 1983. This was followed by Waterwoestyn ("Water desert") in 1984, Snel grys fantoom ("Quick grey phantom") in 1986, Wordende naak ("Changing") in 1988 which was awarded the Rapport Prize for Poetry, Nagsweet ("Nightsweat") in 1990, Vleiswond ("Flesh wound") in 1993 and Wat sag is vergaan ("That which is soft perishes") in 1995.

After a silence of 13 years he published a new volume of poetry Die algebra van nood ("The algebra of need") in 2009, which was awarded the Hertzog Prize for Poetry in 2011. In 2010 a selection from his poetry was published under the title Judasoog ("Judas eye").

1960 – The American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on this date (d.1988). Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican woman and a Creole man. Because of his heritage, and his visits to Puerto Rico, Basquiat was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of eleven, and was able to read and write in all three languages. He showed artistic abilities at an early age but struggled in school, finally dropping out of high school.

In 1974, Jean-Michel moved to Puerto Rico with his family, who lived there for two years. It was there he experienced the first of many homosexual encounters; on one occasion he was orally raped by a barber. Upon the family's return to America, Jean-Michel dropped out of school and frequently ran away from home. At the age of 15, he absconded from his father, who caught him having sex with a male cousin and tried to kill him. Basquiat was a bi-sexual. His first sexual encounters were gay, and as a teenager he ofter worked as a gay street hustler, though later in his life he had many famous and infamous relations with women, including Madonna.

In the late 1970s Basquiat began spray-painting graffiti on buildings in Lower Manhattan, working under the pseudonym SAMO. When the Village Voice published an article about the graffiti, the artist ended the project by inscribed "SAMO IS DEAD" on the walls of SoHo buildings in 1979.

He started appearing on live public-access cable show and performing with noise rock bands. Finally in 1980, Basquiat participated in his first major show and received coverage in Artforum magazine, which brought Basquiat to the attention of the art world. This led to his joining a gallery in SoHo and showing regularly and an invitation to meet Andy Warhol who became a collaborator.

By 1985 he was appearing on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in recognition of his success as a leading artist of the period. After Warhol died on February 22, 1987, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his heroin addiction and depression became more severe. He died of a heroin overdose in his art studio on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27.

Basquiat's work has undergone major and influential exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. On May 15, 2007 an untitled Basquiat work from 1981 sold at auction in New York for US$14.6 million. In 1996, seven years after his death, a biopic titled Basquiat was released, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing Basquiat. A 2009 documentary film, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis, was first screened as part of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

1967 – In Canada, Federal Justice Minister (and future Prime Minister) Pierre Trudeau proposed amendments to the Criminal Code which would relax laws against homosexuality, declaring that:

"It's certainly the most extensive revision of the Criminal Code since the 1950s and, in terms of the subject mater it deals with I feel that it has knocked down a lot of totems and over-ridden a lot of taboos and I feel that in that sense it is new. It's bringing the laws of the land up to contemporary society I think. Take this thing on homosexuality. I think the view we take here is there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. I think that what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code. When it becomes public this is a different matter or when it relates to minors this is a different matter."

1989 – Benjamin Brian Castro, better known by his stage name Sebastian Castro, is a Peruvian-Asian American actor, singer, visual artist, and YouTube sensation. He is an international celebrity, with a large following in Southeast Asia.

Castro is most widely known for his viral gay-themed music video "Bubble". Garnering over a million hits in its first couple months, "Bubble" brought Castro fame across South East Asia, most visibly in the Philippines and Thailand.

Castro starred in the role of Sebastian in the acclaimed 2013 Hong Kong movie Voyage, set across Europe and Asia, and filmed in the English language. In one scene, he undresses in front of his girlfriend, and his penis and testicles are shown on camera. The film was directed by Danny Cheng Wan-Cheung (known as Scud), who also commissioned Castro to produce some original artwork for the film.

Born in Long Island, New York. At age 17, Castro was disowned by his parents for being gay. He financed his education independently. He studied in Savannah College of Art and Design, before withdrawing early to focus on his acting and singing career.

On February 14, 2013, Castro's first music video "Bubble" appeared on YouTube, garnering over 700,000 views in its first month. Bubble further popularized the dance craze "Bubble Pop," particularly in the Philippines. The music video was Sebastian Castro's "coming out." Prior to releasing the homo-erotic Bubble music video, Castro was not publicly open about his sexuality.

2000 – Joshua Bassett is an American actor, singer and songwriter. He is known for his starring role as Ricky Bowen in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Bassett was born and raised in Oceanside, California, and was home-schooled.

His first introduction to musical theater was at age 7, over a decade before he starred as Ricky in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, when he was in a community theater production of High School Musical as J.V. Jock No. 2. Since then, Bassett has starred in over 30 musical productions.

He moved to Los Angeles when he was 16 years old to start acting, living in his car for some time to get by.

Bassett sings and plays piano, guitar, ukulele, bass, drums, and some saxophone. On May 10, 2021, he came out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community during an interview.

In December 2021, Bassett disclosed that he experienced sexual abuse as a child and teen.

2010 – President Obama signs the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

OC Transpo winter service begins Sunday, December 22

[loneberry]

September 11, 1973: On the 50th Anniversary of the Coup in Chile 

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, when a fascist junta led by dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. For those of us who are on the left, the story should be familiar by now: Allende had charted a ‘Chilean way to socialism' ("La vía chilena al socialismo") quite distinct from the Soviet Union and communist China, a peaceful path to socialism that was fundamentally anti-authoritarian, combining worker power with respect for civil liberties, freedom of the press, and a principled commitment to democratic process. For leftists who had become disillusioned with the Soviet drift into authoritarianism, Chile was a bright spot on an otherwise gloomy Cold War map.

What happened in Chile was one of the darkest chapters in the history of US interventionism. In August 1970, Henry Kissinger, who was then Nixon’s national security adviser, commissioned a study on the consequences of a possible Allende victory in the upcoming Chilean presidential election. Kissinger, Nixon, and the CIA—all under the spell of Cold War derangement syndrome—determined the US should pursue a policy of blocking the ascent of Allende, lest a socialist Chile generate a “domino effect” in the region. 

When Allende won the presidency, the US did everything in their power to destroy his government: they meddled in Chilean elections, leveraged their control of the international financial system to destroy the economy of Chile (which they also did through an economic boycott), and sowed social chaos through sponsoring terrorism and a shutdown of the transportation sector, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Particularly infuriating to the Americans was Allende’s nationalization of the copper mining industry, which was around 70% of Chile’s economy at the time and was controlled by US mining companies like Anaconda, Kennecott and the Cerro Corporation. When the CIA’s campaign of sabotage failed to destroy the socialist experiment in Chile, they resorted to assisting general Augusto Pinochet's plot to overthrow the democratically elected government. What followed was a gruesome campaign of repression against workers, leftists, poets, activists, students, and ordinary Chileans—stadiums were turned into concentration camps where supporters of Allende’s Popular Unity government were tortured and murdered. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror, 3,200 people were executed and 40,000 people were detained, tortured, or disappeared, 1,469 of whom remain unaccounted for. Chile was then used as a laboratory for neoliberal economic policies, where the Chicago boys and their ilk tested out their terrible ideas on a population forced to live under a military dictatorship.

It shatters my heart, thinking about this history. I feel a personal attachment to Chile, not only because my partner is Chilean (his father left during the dictatorship), but because I’ve always considered Chile to be a world capital of poetry and anti-authoritarian leftism. The filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky asks, “In how many countries does a real poetic atmosphere exist? Without a doubt, ancient China was a land of poetry. But I think, in the 1950s in Chile, we lived poetically like in no other country in the world.” (Poetry left China long ago — oh how I wish I’d been around to witness the poetic flowering of the Tang era!) Chile has one of the greatest literary traditions of the twentieth century, producing such giants as Bolaño and Neruda, and more recently, Cecilia Vicuña and Raúl Zurita, among others. 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup, the Harvard Film Archive has been  screening Patricio Guzmán’s magisterial trilogy, The Battle of Chile, along with a program of Chilean cinema. I watched part I and II the last two nights and will watch part III tonight. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Guzmán’s work, and even quoted his beautiful film Nostalgia for the Light in the conclusion of my book Carceral Capitalism, when I wrote about the Chilean political prisoners who studied astronomy while incarcerated in the Atacama Desert. Bless Patricio Guzmán. This man has devoted his life and filmmaking career to the excavation of the Chilean soul. 

Parts I and II utterly destroyed me. I left the theater last night shaken to my core, my face covered in tears. 

The films are all the more remarkable when you consider it was made by a scrappy team of six people using film stock provided by the great documentarian Chris Marker. After the coup, four of the filmmakers were arrested. The footage was smuggled out of Chile and the exiled filmmakers completed the films in Cuba. Sadly, in 1974, the Pinochet regime disappeared cameraman Jorge Müller Silva, who is assumed dead. 

It’s one thing to know the macro-story of what happened in Chile and quite another to see the view from the ground: the footage of the upswell of support for radical transformation, the marches, the street battles, the internal debates on the left about how to stop the fascist creep, the descent into chaos, the face of the military officer as he aims his pistol at the Argentine cameraman Leonard Hendrickson during the failed putsch of June 1973 (an ominous prelude to the September coup), the audio recordings of Allende on the morning of September 11, the bombing of Palacio de La Moneda—the military is closing in. Allende is dead. The crumbling edifice of the presidential palace becomes the rubble of revolutionary dreams—the bombs, a dirge for what was never even given a chance to live.

[fatehbaz]

So 26 February 2023, Grist re-publishes a piece originally from InvestigateWest, after InvestigateWest got their hands on some sensitive emails/documents revealing that the EPA rather than fairly supervising mining companies “they’re supposed to regulate” has instead assisted the companies “by attacking researchers and smearing peer-reviewed science.” (Surprising nobody; Montana is a resource extraction colony.) The piece is titled “Newly revealed records show how the EPA sided with polluters in a small Montana mining town.”

So I’m like “oh, is this gonna be about the natural gas boom near Sidney on the North Dakota border right alongside the Bakken oil fields, an operation so big and extensive that it artificially lights up the night sky over the open prairies of the northern Great Plains in a way that, from a satellite view, makes the least densely populated and remote corner of the contiguous United States glow brightly as if it were a massive city or as if the entire region were on fire? Or is this gonna be about coal mining in the remote southeastern corner of the state in the badlands and shortgrass prairie near Crow and Cheyenne reservations, where coal companies in the Yellowstone River watershed traditionally have extracted millions from near the Powder River and Black Hills?”

But nope, it’s about Butte.

“Small Montana mining town.”

This city is still among top 5 or top 10 most culturally and economically significant cities in the state. “Significant city” would be more apt than “small town.” But beyond that.

This is the place known as “Butte, America.”

Butte was the epicenter, the home base, the foundation of the Gilded Age copper boom that electrified the world and lit the streetlights and parlors of turn-of-the-century London and New York.

All that copper wiring, that’s from Butte, or from the industries that Butte’s barons established. This was the city where mining magnates ran the Anaconda Copper Mining Company which spear-headerd the pillaging of Latin America (referenced in the “open veins of Latin America”). Anaconda established the century-long tradition of Canadian and US mining companies destroying lives and landscapes in the Andes.

By 1899, Butte was one of the most significant US cities between the Mississippi River and the Sierra Nevada. This was the home of the Copper Kings.

The Anaconda company, in 1919, completed construction on a smelter smokestack 585 feet high, which remains the tallest surviving brick structure on the planet.

The wealth of Butte in the Edwardian era is unfathomable. They had a rollercoaster. In a single year, merely just those local mines along the edge of the city could produce $23 million ($700 million today). And that doesn’t include all of the wealth stolen from Latin America or other mines in the western US.

Montana was a state that pioneered the “corporations are people” stuff. Its very statehood itself, the christening of Montana, was a gift to the Copper Kings. Every important state office was practically purchased, owned by those mining barons.

This is also why Montana was the site of some of the earliest and most important labor struggles. Because the entire state of Montana was functionally a copper mining company town. Among notable events: the 1914 Butte labor riots, the 1917 brutal assassination of Frank Little, and the 1920 “Anaconda Road Massacre” in which company guards shot and killed 17 fleeing people.

This is why, depending on who you ask, Butte is either A Company Town or A Union Town.

Butte claims to be the home of the “largest population of Irish-Americans per capita of any US city.” This may or may not be true, but this Irish influence evident in the local popularity of pasties. In the Edwardian era, Butte was also the site of an important Chinatown neighborhood and a large Chinese community.

Locally, Butte is famous/infamous for being the site of the Berkeley Pit. Or “The Pit.” The remaining scar of an open-pit copper mine. It’s one mile long, half-mile wide, almost 2,000 feet deep, filled with 900 feet of acidic water laden with cadmium, sulfuric acid, and arsenic.

Just sitting there. In the city.

“Oh, well, of course, back in the Gilded Age, in the 1890s, US businesses got a little out of control, and boom-town communities weren’t really thinking long-term, and they also didn’t know all The Science, so they allowed for the creation of, like, giant toxic death-pits in their residential areas,”

Nope. They built that open-pit mine in 1955 and operated it until 1982.

Anyway, that’s kind of what the 2023 investigative report is about. There is a newer mine (copper and molybdenum) currently open and operating in the city, right next to The Pit.

And the current mine is owned by the richest man in the state of Montana, Dennis Washington. And the EPA is like, “Don’t worry. The mine in the city is fine, it’s all good.” Because that’s what US government land management agencies do: File due diligence paperwork for land-owners while others get poisoned.

The largest open pit copper mine (by extracted volume) on the planet, and the second-deepest open-pit mine of any kind on the planet, is at Chuquicamata in the Atacama region of Chile. This mine was the property of the Anaconda company.

The towering smokestack. The Pit on the edge of town. The gaping wound at Chuquicamata. The legacy of the Copper Kings lives on with the continued theft and poisoning of those in both Montana and the Andes.

[tomthefanboy]

Copper Hopper September 1942. Deer Lodge County, Montana. "Anaconda smelter, Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Cars containing 50 tons of copper ore are dumped by an unloading mechanism into a 200-ton hopper." Acetate negative by Russell Lee, Office of War Information. [ via Shorpy ]

I love this thing. Why bother ordering complicated train cars that can dump the ore for you, when instead you just by open top train cars from any old plave and let the COPPER HOPPER flip them over!

This makes me imagine an MRI machine on the Isle of Sodor.

[mirekat]

The last time we watched ‘Necessary Evil,’ Em and I went down a deep (high) speculative rabbit hole trying to figure out why anyone would build a self-contained ore processing facility in space. Surely, we thought, blasting a cheap, bulky raw material like ore into orbit--or even shipping it over from an asteroid or a moon or something--would be far less efficient than refining it in situ? It’s not like the Cardassian military has any competitors planetside, or gives a damn about Bajoran labor laws, or worries about ‘Bajorans taking skilled jobs from Cardassian workers’ or any of the other reasons the evil Anaconda Copper Mining Companies of Planet Earth geographically differentiate their evil vertically-integrated neocolonial industries. So whose dumb idea was Terok Nor?

Well. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/jeff-bezos-space-pollution-amazon-b1887510.html

Anyway what definitely happened is that Gul Dukat, self-proclaimed Reformer and Benevolent Guardian of the Bajoran People, heard some Occupational Government Quisling timidly complain about strip mining and thought Oh YeS I ShAll MoVE pOllUTing InDuStrieS IntO SpACE aNd ThEN TheY sHAll giVe Me the LoVE I DeServe. 

[rolandopujol]

The Club Moderne was not the first bar in Anaconda, Montana, but it holds License No. 001 in Deer Lodge County, the Missoulian reported back in 2014. The bar is tops in more ways than one. Two years after that newspaper profile, in 2016, The Club Moderne was named America’s Favorite Historic Bar by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, besting another Montana mainstay, the Sip ‘N Dip in Great Falls, which I also visited on my trip through Montana in February. It’s also No. 1 in a lot of hearts in this community of around 9,500, named after the Anaconda copper mining company that was founded here in 1881. That was perhaps never more clear than on the evening of October 3, 2016, when grief-stricken residents watched helplessly as The Club Moderne, a nationally recognized Streamline Moderne bar from 1937, went up in flames here at the corner of Ash and Park. But it would rise from the ashes soon enough. It had to, because it’s been said that The Club Moderne IS Anaconda, and the Hekkel family, owners since 1997, know that better than anyone. They vowed to rebuild quickly and they did, with many of the original furnishings preserved and the facade restored. Among those salvaged items was the mahogany bar itself, a little worse for the wear but richer in character. My visit was all-too-brief, and I neglected to follow my own advice and go inside. (Note: There are historic Library of Congress photos online.) Smitten as I am with the Smelter City, there will hopefully be a next time for me. This bar’s urbane Streamline sophistication was the product of the prolific architect Fred F. Willson, who was based in Bozeman and gave that city much of its architectural character. But it was the brainchild of John “Skinny” Francisco. The Hekkels say he had traveled a lot and had ideas about the kind of high-class watering hole he wanted here. His ideas, executed by builder Frank Wullus, were grand ones. John Hekkel, speaking of his desire to rebuild, told the Montana Standard: “There’s no way I could drive down the street and not see The Club Moderne.” All we can say is thank you. #retrologist https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb5dun4LAkU/?utm_medium=tumblr

[lis-likes-fics]

A Witch's Luck | Chapter 19

"Ah!" Mariah yelled, her hand grasping her arm. "I've been bit!" She yelled to the witches. A few of the Cullens turned around, but continued fighting.

Merida, now the size of an anaconda for the battle, darted at the newborn. She sunk her fangs in his shoulder and gave him her venom. He fell and died instantly, familiar venom was nothing to mess with.

"Are you alright?" Carlisle asked as he took down a newborn with Esme.

Mariah nodded and looked at the wound. Merida used her tail to move her hand away and used her magic to heal the wound. Mariah thanked her and looked up as a few of the newborns turned to her at the smell of her intoxicating witch blood.

She took a step back and a bunch of them lunged for her. Jasper and the witches took them down quickly. Jasper sped over, picked up Mariah and Merida, and carried them away in less than five seconds.

"Will you be able to fight?" He asked her, concerned.

She shook her head, "No, vampire venom drains witch magic. I can't fight..."

He nodded and told her, "Stay here until this is over. I don't want you getting hurt."

Mariah sighed and nodded, sitting on the ground. She felt bad she couldn't help anymore, but she wouldn't argue. Besides, Merida would keep her company.

Jasper came back to see Ella ripping a newborn in half.

How?

Ella was no longer her normal house cat, she was now a white lion. It was terrifying and amazing at the same time.

He got back into the fight. Freya was pouncing on a newborn when another came to kill her from behind. Jasper came by and tore its head off, tossing it to the side.

She spoke, "Thanks."

"No problem," Jasper told her.

Camille was on the lookout with Seth. As much as she wanted to help in the fight, to keep her witch safe, she had wings and could easily search for Victoria - who was headed straight toward Edward and Bella.

Anyone who thought a large cheetah wasn't too much of a threat against newborns should have thought twice.

As a familiar, she was faster than normal. So she was currently taking down five newborns at once. Levi applauded her and jumped on her back, going with her to take out some more vampires.

Copper should have been home with Charlie, but he refused to stay home while her family risked their lives. He would keep her safe, even if it meant marching into battle.

He may be a sack of potatoes, but he was still a bear.

He grabbed a newborn by the throat in his mouth and crushed his neck, ripping its head off. He was crazed and powerful in battle and everyone knew why having a bear as a familiar was as helpful as it was - even if they all tended to be lazy.

Sam and Jacob charged a newborn, each wolf grabbed an arm in the mouths and rip.

Paul was surrounded by three newborns; Emmett came to his aid. They shared a look, a battlefield rapprochement.

Carlisle and Esme moved in on a newborn, but she backed up frightened, she was just a girl. They shared a look and relaxed their attack stance, trying to calm her, talk to her.

Alice darted from newborn to newborn, not even looking at them, knowing their next move. She swept their feet, keeping them off balance, confusing them. Cole was a step behind her, trying to give her cover.

A newborn took note of Cole's protective actions. Thenewborn appeared behind Cole and bit his shoulder. Alice spun, flinging the newborn to Rosalie, Emmett, and Carlisle who killed him. Alice tended to Cole and scolded, "I can take care of myself."

He chuckled lightly, "Doesn't mean I won't help." She scoffed and continued to help him.

Mariah sat out, folding her arms as she tried to feel for her magic. She didn't like sitting out, she wanted to help, she needed to help her family.

She stood and Merida hissed, scolding her, "Mariah, sssit back down."

"Hush, Merida, I'm just walking," Mariah told her gently. The snake shrunk back to her normal size and Mariah let her sit on her shoulders.

She walked, avoiding the battlefield. She needed to do something.

She stopped as she heard a small whimpering. Merida hissed and her eyes glazed over, getting ready to fight. Mariah put the mark on her forehead to calm her familiar, she whispered, "You're fine."

The whimpering stopped and someone called, "M...Mariah?"

She knew that voice.

Mariah ran over and covered her mouth as she saw Y/N, busted up and bleeding. "Y/N! Oh my God, are you okay?"

She ran over, getting to her knees and inspecting her wounds. There were so many. She asked, "Why are they so puffy?"

"We traveled by water, they may have gotten a little soaked," she said in between breaths.

"Why haven't you healed these? They're bad," Mariah asked frantically.

Y/N spoke, "If I heal them, I get more. Victoria, and I'm almost out of magic. I can barely walk."

Mariah spoke, "I'll stay with you. When the battle is over, we'll take you home and you'll be safe. Alright?"

"Alright."

-

"She knew you'd be with me," Edward spoke to Bella.

Bella said, "She found us."

Edward listened carefully and added, "She's not alone."

Riley stepped out of the woods. Bella immediately recognized him and is taken aback. Riley edged closer, watching Edward's every move as they both carefully position themselves.

Edward mumbled to Bella, "They brought Y/N. She's close." Bella seemed relieved by that news.

"Riley...listen to me," Edward started, "Victoria's just using you to distract me. But she knows I'll kill you."

Riley hesitated, surprised to be addressed. Edward continued, "In fact, she'll be glad she doesn't have to deal with you anymore."

Victoria emerged from the woods, forming a triangle with Riley with Bella and Edward at the apex. She spoke, "Don't listen, Riley. I told you about their mind tricks."

Edward said, "I can read her mind, so I know what she thinks of you."

"He's lying."

"She only created you and this army to avenge her true mate, James. It's the only thing she cares about. Not you."

She itched at that name, her hand almost reaching for the ornament in her jacket. Riley began to hesitate, glancing at Victoria. She told him, "There's only you. You know that."

Riley focused back on Edward, positioning himself to attack. Victoria's eyes burrowed into Bella's with bloodlust, revenge. Edward spoke, "Think about it. You're from Forks, you know the area. That's the only reason she chose you. She doesn't love you."

Riley faltered ever so slightly, doubt seeping into his mind. But Victoria's face was convincingly emotional. Victoria told him, "Riley...don't let him do this to us. You know I love you."

Riley needed to believe her, his resolve returned. He looked back at Bella and Edward, waiting a beat before saying, "You're dead."

Riley charged toward Edward, who doesn't move because he knows Seth is close. He leapt from the cliff above to land on Riley, taking a chunk out of Riley's hand.

Riley roared with fury and pain as Seth circled back for another attack. While Seth kept Riley on the defense, Edward started toward Victoria.

She backed toward the trees. Edward saw she was about to escape and darted into her path. Edward spoke, "You can escape. You always do. But you won't get another chance like this again."

Victoria hissed at him, backing further away. "You want her. You want me to feel the pain you felt when I killed James... When I tore him to pieces... When I turned him into ash... When I turned him into nothing."

Victoria finally erupted and charged at Bella, but Edward never let her get close. He intercepted her and they rolled down the hill in a death grip. Bella watched the battle, desperate to help.

Meanwhile Riley kicked Seth hard against the cliff. Sharp shards of rock fell around Bella. Seth, battered, went down and Riley spun toward Bella.

Edward now had to protect Bella from both vampires, and he does with impressive skill. With lightning fast speed, he bolted to Riley, kicking him back, and then darted to Victoria, smashing into her.

As Seth struggled to rise, Riley joined Victoria's battle providing her with the tiny advantage she needed. Riley tackled him to his knees, Victoria grabbed Edward from behind.

Bea grabbed a sharp piece of slate and plunged the shard downward, stabbing her arm. Blood immediately flowed dripping bright red onto the white snow. Riley spun toward Bella, the scent made him wild. Victoria caught the smell; her head whipped toward Bella.

Edward seized the moment and flipped Victoria over his head, across the clearing and into a tree, breaking it in two. Edward spun on Riley, who's still bedazzled by the blood.

A sound like metal tearing filled the air as, suddenly, Riley's screaming. His arm was torn off by Edward, who tosses the arm aside and bolts back to Victoria.

Seth, recovered, leapt up, tackling Riley and dragging him screaming into the woods. Riley yelled, "Victoria! Victoria!"

She ignored him, her eyes trained on Edward. She pulled the ornament from her jacket, holding it out beside her with a deadly hold.

She spoke, "James and I will have our revenge."

Edward's eyes widened as he instinctively went to shield Bella. Victoria crushed the ornament in her hand and the ingredients that were inside came spilling out with a mess of blood and herbs on the ground.

She let out a scream, a loud one that Bella had to cover her ears to soften. The spell took Victoria, the magic wrapping around her quickly, seeping into her skin.

She yelled in rage and pain, "Y/N!"

The magic began to take its effect, slowly and painfully turning her skin into ash before them until that's all she was.

Bella and Edward watched in shock and disbelief. The air is still and silent as they stare at the pile of ash in the snow.

"What just happened?" Bella asked, still confused.

Edward's lip twitched as he said, "Y/N fooled Victoria."

Seth came from behind the trees, treading over to the two. Edward turned to him as he listened to his mind. "Alice needs us to go."

He turned to her, "Now."

-

Mariah had gotten word through Camille that the battle had ended. She picked up Y/N, her arm wrapped around her shoulder as she helped her to the field with the others.

Halfway back, Jasper caught their scent. He caught her scent.

He disappeared from the field, leaving everyone confused. He stopped in front of Mariah and Y/N. She smiled slowly, a wide, bright smile that put the sun to shame.

"Jasper!" She exclaimed, moving to hold her arms open for him. She couldn't, however, she was too hurt to removed Maria's aid.

Jasper looked as if he was about to cry as he charged for her, wrapping his arms around her carefully but securely. She cried into his shoulder as she hugged him back the best she could.

"I missed you so much," she cried.

Jasper spoke, "I missed you, too." He pulled back, "You're hurt. Why didn't you tell me how badly?"

She sighed, "I didn't want to worry you."

He saw the pain in her eyes and put the topic to the side. He spoke, "I'm glad you're back."

"I am, too," she told him with a smile, "The spell worked. Victoria is dead."

Jasper smiled more and picked her up bridal style to carry her back to the sight. The family crowded her, worried and happy to see her.

Freya rushed over, shrinking as she ran. She jumped up into the air and landed on Jasper's shoulder, maneuvering around to see her.

"Y/N!"

"Freya! I'm so glad to see you!" Y/N told her from Jasper's arms, putting her behind her ear.

"Can you heal her?" Mariah asked.

Freya shook her head sadly, "They're too bad."

Carlisle caught sight of her wounds and spoke, "These are very bad. We need to get you back as soon as possible."

Alice's eyes glazed over as she spoke, "Wait." All attention turned to her in an instant.

"The Volturi are coming," she said.

They continued burning the bodies and Y/N saw the newborn from before. The one who was a witch.

She looked sadly at her. Y/N spoke, "Are you alright? You're not hurt?"

She shook her head. Y/N asked, "What's your name?"

She answered shyly, "Bree... I'm sorry what happened to you."

"Don't worry," Y/N was quick to reassure, "I'm glad you helped me. Thank you."

She nodded and explained briefly to the questioning eyes, everyone except the witches who had picked it up. "Bree was a witch before she was turned."

"I thought witches only lost magic," Rosalie furrowed a brow. Y/N shook her head sadly, her eyes never leaving Bree, "Not when you're dying."

Y/N bit her lip, unsure of that. "I can try," she said. Jasper hesitantly lowered her to her feet, helping her stand up.

Carlisle and Esme glanced at her before turning back to Y/N. "Can you stand?" Jasper asked.

Y/N almost tripped a little but managed to stand with Jasper's help.

[stone-cold-groove]

And from that moment on, his friends and neighbors always referred to him as “Just-in-time Johnson.”

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY LIKES ADVENTURE!

May 23, 1938

Girl Once Selected as Ziegfeld Beauty Is Skillful Flyer -- Using Own Airplane She Saved Boy From Icy Lake and Has Shot Crocodiles From the Air

By MONROE LATHROP, Special Correspondent of the St. Louis (MO) Globe-Democrat  

HOLLYWOOD, CAL. - "I was with Ziegfeld.” That brief sentence helped Lucille Ball as it has other girls to get a foothold on Broadway and in Hollywood. Selection by the great , impresario commands high, respect any where in the world of entertainment. But before Lucille got that imprimatur she had her full  share of hard knocks and high adventure of her own choosing high - because she's a pretty skillful flyer. 

The ruggedness of the mountain country around Butte, Mont., her birthplace, entered Lucille's spirit early. This daughter of an electrical engineer with the  Anaconda Copper Company in her first school days began to show a daring and determined nature with an almost total lack of fear; and it was later to lead her up into the air and down into the South American jungle. (1)

The Ball family moved to Jamestown, N.Y. where Lucille was graduated from high school and a music institute. Her mother, a concert pianist, hoped to train the girl into her own profession but the girl chose the theater and after training in a New York dramatic academy joined a stock company and went on her own. Too proud and determined to ask help from home, Lucille existed on short rations much of the time before Ziegfeld found her. 

She lived in a hall room, fifth floor back, and prepared her food over a gas jet while working as a mannequin with Hattie Carnegie's models to save for the vicissitudes of her theater efforts! Back in Jamestown, Lucille had her own plane. On a week-end visit the cry went up that two boys were missing with an iceboat on Lake Chautauqua. Without waiting for details Lucille hopped into her plane. (2)

The weather was 20 below when she soared into the sky, searching for signs of the boys. Within an hour she discovered them, grounded her plane on the ice, and pulled one of the lads from a hole. It was too late to save the other boy. (3)

On a visit to Colombia, Lucille, avid for new adventure, went with friends Into the jungle, meeting a flood that had swollen the streams and overrun the banks with huge crocodiles. Instead of heeding the natives' warning, Lucille went to wireless station, ordered an airplane and rifles, and spent a day pumping lead into the big green saurians. Natives rewarded her with a generous helping of crocodile steak later. (4)

After such exploits Lucille takes Hollywood just in stride but with undimmed dramatic ambition. Samuel Goldwyn brought her West as one of a group of noted poster girls for his "Roman Scandals." Steadily she rose to a long-term contract with RKO. She has big blue eyes and natural blond hair. She weighs 120 and "diets" on plenty of hot biscuits, potatoes, candy and French pastry. (5) She has a hearty interest In everything that's going on, likes hard sports and even plays polo. Also, she owns and operates an artificial flower shop in Hollywood to help in giving outlet to her abounding energy. August 6 is her birthday. (6)

EDITOR’S FOOTNOTES 

Just about everything in this article was the product of a publicists’ imagination.  It would almost be easier to note the kernels of truth than to separate the fiction.  

(1) Lucille was not born in Butte, Montana, although her father did briefly work in Colorado - as a lineman for the Bell Telephone company, not as an electrical engineer with the Anaconda Copper Company.  In other early biographies, it was said he was an ‘executive’ of a Copper Company. 

(2) Lucille did not own a plane - nor was she a qualified aviatrix.  She was an actress and a model. 

(3) The story about her rescuing a boy from Lake Chautauqua, while one died, is unsubstantiated by local reports. 

(4) The story about Lucy going to Columbia to fill ‘saurians’ (crocodiles) with lead (bullets) is the stuff of adventure films.  It never happened.  Crocodile steak? Hmmm.

(5) It is highly unlikely that Ball lived on a diet of starches and sweets and maintained her movie-star figure. 

(6) Yes, she played polo - on donkeys - for charity - and publicity.  She was not a traditional polo player.  But her birthday really is August 6th!  

[eopederson]

Anaconda Smelter, Montana, 1969.


“The Anaconda Smelter Stack is the tallest surviving masonry structure in the world, with an overall height of about 585 feet (178.3 m), including a brick chimney 555 feet (169.2 m) tall and the downhill side of a concrete foundation 30 feet (9.1 m) tall.[2][3][A] It is a brick smoke stack or chimney, built in 1918 as part of the Washoe Smelter of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) at Anaconda, Montana, in the United States. A terra cotta coating covered the entire brick chimney when new, but by the time the smelter closed in 1981, most had eroded away except for the upper 40%, exposing most of its bricks and reinforcing rods. The inside diameter at the bottom of the brick chimney is 76 feet (23.2 m) while that at the top is about 60 feet (18.3 m). The stack and its viewing area are now the two-part Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park” Wikipedia 


The height of the smelter stack meant that the numerous pollutants emitted through it, most importantly sulphur dioxide, were dispersed over a sizable portion of south central Montana. Though it is a considerable distance from the highway, thanks to its height the now unused stack can be seen from I-90 between Butte and Deer Lodge,

[eopederson2]

Cityscape with Mineshafts and Smog, Butte, Montana, 1969.

In the 20 or so years the Berkeley Pit open cast mine continued to operate and expand after the photo was taken, a large fragment of the urban fabric of Butte was lost. It was cheaper for the Anaconda Company to buy houses and other structures, remove them and expand the pit rather than to mine copper seams underground. I do not know how much of this scene remains in what is now a “mined-out” and rather abandoned city. I have not been in Butte in 30 years.

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: once again I’ve been away working on long-ish articles for the main website, having spent parts of the past week adding Part Two and Part Three to my five part series on media retractions, corrections and busted bombshells relating to Russia, since the summer of 2016. Hopefully, I haven’t been away too long but I’ve discovered that separating your informal blog writing from your formal essay writing, does not in fact magically add extra productive hours to your work day - I can only write as much as I can write.

In light of the fact that our beloved Pig Empire is now publicly supporting a slow-motion right wing coup in Venezuela (a coup that the U.S. already tried to kick off at least twice over the past decade and change) - I thought I might take a moment to teach a little bit of history about the historical and ideological underpinnings of US foreign policy as it pertains to developing nations in America’s sphere of influence; which has at various times included the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia as well as South and Central America, in the area that is commonly known as “Latin America.”

Today’s quotation comes to you from “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House” by arguably the greatest investigative “war” reporter of our time, Seymour Hersh.

Reading Hersh can be something of an acquired taste; please keep in mind that we’re talking about a guy who has forgotten more than you and I will ever known about cartoon super villains like Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney - the facts and quotations in Hersh’s work tend to come at you fast and heavy, like a raging torrent of righteous accusation from an author who knows the material like a fish knows water and firmly expects you to keep up as you read along. Once you catch the frenetic rhythm of Hersh’s writing however, the rewards for the diligent student of Pig Empire corruption, murder and hypocrisy are immense, and the same is true of “The Price of Power” - a book that functions as Sy’s extremely unauthorized biography of infamous genocidal warmongering freak, former National Security Advisor and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  

The above passage comes from the twenty-first chapter of the voluminous tome, appropriately titled “Chile: Hardball.” Understanding it however, requires a broad stroke grasp of the U.S. relationship with Chile prior to the democratic election of Salvador Allende, a socialist, in 1970. As detailed in this chapter, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been involved in shaping Chilean politics on behalf of both the American government, and powerful U.S corporations with interests in Chile, throughout the mid-1950′s and into the late 1960′s, with an astounding degree of success. Quoting Hersh - “by the mid 1960′s Chile had become widely known in the American intelligence services as one of the CIA’s outstanding success stories. The Agency had managed to penetrate all elements of Chilean government, politics and society...” This included, not coincidentally, helping influence the Chilean elections of 1958 and 1964 towards U.S. puppet, corporation-friendly candidates and against Salvador Allende Gossens, a member of the Socialist Party; we’ll come back to him in a moment.

Economically, the CIA’s control of Chilean politics allowed for the creation of a strongly-pro American corporate paradise with companies like the Chase Manhattan Bank, PepsiCo, International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) and especially Anaconda copper, reaping immense profits at the expense of the Chilean people; who grew more destitute even as conditions for U.S. corporate profit taking grew more favorable. As is common in situations of rising inequity, heartless pillaging and squalid poverty, this phenomenon began to galvanize the Chilean people towards left wing economic redistribution programs and naturally, the already immensely popular Salvador Allende - a situation that terrified corporate America as much or more than it terrified the aggressively anti-Communist U.S government and its covert arm in Chile, the CIA. 

This created a unique problem for the Nixon White House because, while Allende was indeed an avowed socialist and ran on a platform of “land reform, nationalization of major industries, closer relations with socialist and communist countries, and redistribution of income” the reality is that he represented a very different type of left wing leader than the revolutionary communists the U.S. was waging the cold war against in places like the Soviet Union, China and closer to home in Cuba. As the above quotation from Price of Power notes, Allende’s willingness to use Chile’s democratic process and peacefully accept the results of elections opened the door to democratically elected socialist movements in the West, or even the United States itself - a possibility that neither the corporatist Nixon, or the imperialist Kissinger could tolerate; even as the Cold War wound down from the hysteria of the post-WWII period and into the long grinding detente that Nixon and his National Security Advisor would orchestrate.

In the late summer of 1970, during a meeting of the influential 40 Committee, Kissinger is reported to have uttered the now infamous quote “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people” and thus, the race to destroy Allende was on. Once again, the CIA was tasked with rigging the Chilean elections, this time with the offer of a sizeable war chest from the previously mentioned American corporations. Unfortunately for the Pig Empire however, Allende, running at the head of a newly-formed united leftist coalition, won anyway – immediately sending Nixon into a rage and putting the CIA in the business of ousting the newly-elected government, even before it took office if that was at all possible.

What followed was a three year terrorist campaign of propaganda, violence, false flag incidents, economic sanctions, financial sabotage of the Chilean economy by a massive coalition of western nations (see Nixon’s infamous “make the economy scream” quote), the bugging and surveillance of Chilean diplomats and officials in the United States, assassination attempts and at least two separate, CIA backed coup plots - one of which finally struck home on September 11th 1973, leading to the death of Salvador Allende and the rise of genocidal right wing dictator (and brutally anti-communist western ally) Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

While the CIA-backed 1973 coup and the U.S. government’s long term support of Pinochet (including looking the other way when the dictator order the assassination of former Chilean ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier; who was killed with a car bomb on a busy Washington D.C. street) is one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the Pig Empire, for the purposes of our discussion what’s important is to recognize the similarities between the pre-coup situations in early-70′s Chile, and today in Venezuela.

In Chile we see a long-term, concerted plot to maintain American corporate dominance; a plot that spans multiple presidencies, crosses political party lines and involves rigging elections, causing economic devastation and fostering (ultimately successful) coup attempts. In Venezuela, the United States has been trying to bring down the left wing government since at least the 2002 attempted coup against Hugo Chavez, an effort that has involved attempting to interfere with elections, causing economic devastation and fostering (still unsuccessful) coup (and possibly even assassination) attempts. This too is a policy objective that has spanned multiple presidencies (in both countries) and sees the U.S. government backing a violent fascist minority opposition movement against a democratically-elected left wing government they’ve driven into the ground through economic warfare. Both Chile (copper) and Venezuela (oil, preferably traded in petrodollars) have key strategic resources that matter to powerful U.S. corporations and Pig Empire planners. Both countries have been the target of extensive propaganda campaigns in the U.S. media, then and now, designed to justify what is clearly an illegal coup attempt on behalf of western imperialist/capitalist interests.

More important than the operational similarities at work here however, is the matching ideology that underpinned the Nixon White House’s war against Allende and the now decade and a half (at least) long war against the Chavez and Maduro governments in Venezuela. The Pig Empire’s quest to topple the left wing government of Venezuela didn’t begin with Maduro’s supposed corruption, it began when Hugo Chavez decided to use the nation’s vast oil reserves to help the poorest people in Venezuela; oil reserves American corporations could be using to generate enormous profits. We were fostering coup attempts long before the right wing opposition voluntarily boycotted the most recent Venezuelan elections and our media lied every bit as much about Chavez as it does today about Maduro.

In other words, after almost seventy-five years of post-WWII U.S. imperialism in Latin American, the Pig Empire and its affiliated private interests are still unprepared to tolerate anything but pro-U.S. western capital-friendly, right wing governments... “in our backyard.”

Looking around at present, it seems clear that things haven’t changed very much since Kissinger’s time in government; which probably shouldn’t be that surprising since the genocidal architect of Nixon’s blatantly imperialist U.S. international policies remains a cherished influence in American political and foreign policy discourse to this day; even among so-called liberals.

- nina illingworth