▲ Perhaps the most extreme and documented case of US intervention in other countries’ electoral processes was that of Chile; first, to prevent the victory of Salvador Allende in 1970, and then to overthrow him in 1973. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (1973-1977) argued then that a nation could not become communist for no reason. the irresponsibility of its people. The image is from 2015.Photo Ap

L

the American political class She says she is outraged by alleged external attempts – especially from Russia – to influence her electoral process, but the most astonishing thing is not these revelations, but the claim of moral authority in Washington to denounce them without first looking in the mirror.

The Biden administration has seized websites it says are used by the Kremlin and accused employees of RT (formerly Russia TV) last week of being part of a multimillion-dollar Russian plot to create and spread disinformation online aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election.

We will have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian governments to exploit our democratic systems of government.Attorney General Merrick Garland said. The State Department stated: We will not tolerate malign foreign actors intentionally interfering in and undermining free and fair elections..

US officials insist that the Kremlin is the main threat to the US election. In the 2016 contest, they accused Russia of intervening on behalf of Trump’s campaign, something that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic leadership insist explains how they lost that election and thereby evade responsibility for their defeat.

A senior official of the intelligence community in a briefing lLast week identified Russia, Iran and China as The three major players in foreign influence in the US election, those he accused of trying to “exacerbate divisions in American society for their own interests (and) make the United States and its democratic system look weak…”

But so far, no American official or politician, nor most of the mass media reporting this story, have dared to confess that any of this sounds familiar to them.

Former CIA chief James Woolsey was interviewed on Fox News in 2018 and asked whether the United States had ever interfered in other countries’ elections. Probablyhe replied, But it was for the good of the system and to prevent the communists from taking power, for example, in Europe in 1947 and 1948 and 1949, the Greeks and the Italians. And to the question of whether still we do thatWoolsey hesitated and with a smile replied that only for a very good cause and in the interests of democracy.

Anyone who wants to know knows that the United States has intervened in dozens of electoral processes in other countries around the world. And the history is long. Perhaps the most extreme and documented case was that of Chile, first to prevent Allende’s victory in 1970 and then to overthrow him in 1973. Kissinger was the one who best expressed Washington’s justification: I don’t know why we need to stand by and watch a country turn communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are too important to let Chilean voters decide for themselves.. This justification apparently continues to apply to other cases.

In fact, and partly due to CIA scandals revealed around Chile and other cases, the United States created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries in the 1980s, whose explicit purpose is to get involved in political processes in other countries, but it is also reported that clandestine operations continue, which have been officially denounced in recent times in various corners of the world from Venezuela, Mexico, Honduras and even Mongolia, Bulgaria and Russia itself.

We cannot be outraged when other countries try to do, on a smaller scale, what we have taught the world how to do for over a century.commented a few years ago veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer, author of Overthrow: The American Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraqin an interview with Democracy Now.

But here they still ask: how dare they?

Carolina Chocolate Drops. Political World (by Bob Dylan). https://open.spotify.com/track/0WTjEhREeHqNbKcULFhVLw?si=0ae94a32194541d4