>> Amusingly,
>> these business and government leaders recognized what many
>> academics are incapable of; that while most economic activity
>> in the US is not directly related to imperial plunder, the
>> investments of certain important individuals were very large,
>> and they were the people that mattered and had the ear of
>> government.
[snipped example of Roger Farnham -- Haiti]
Is it possible to make this argument more concrete from the historical record of, say, White House transcripts of discussions?
The reason i ask is: this whole thread has reminded me of a passage i always remembered in 'The Price of Power' by Sy Hersh on the Nixon/Kissinger axis. There was a section dealing with Chile and the overthrow of Allende, and what i remember vividly is a description of a lunch Nixon had with several CEO's (i believe), one i think from (Kennicot?) Copper and one i believe from ITT. The next day, Allende was overthrown.
Has anyone gone back, is it possible to find out now, what the content of the conversation was between Nixon and these CEO's? They surely were not talking about the weather, even in South America.... and such dialogue might render more clearly how the 'complex competition of interests' of the ruling class suddenly bifurcates into a 'coherent' decision, for example, to topple Allende.
-- ____ Les Schaffer godzilla at netmeg.net ___| --->> Engineering R&D <<--- Theoretical & Applied Mechanics | Designspring, Inc. Center for Radiophysics & Space Research | Westport, CT USA Cornell Univ. schaffer at tam.cornell.edu | les at designspring.com