This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
User "185.125.206.135" deleted the section on "2005: Iran", saying "Iran Topic was based on unreliable information and was simply a lie." That article included citations to ABC News as well as a Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker and an article on Foreign Policy magazine. I did not check to see if the citations supported the claims made here. However, if user "185.125.206.135" feels that section is inappropriate, s/he will need to provide more evidence than a simple claim that it's "a lie." I'm reverting this change for lack of evidence to support the claim. DavidMCEddy ( talk) 15:46, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm a bit worried that the section on Venezuela at the end is getting rather inflated due to WP:Recentism. It is now one of the longest (if not the very longest) section in the article, despite not being more noteworthy than eariler more significant events. I think, as per WP:NOTNEWS, as the situation is unfolding, it is safer to keep it lean and flesh it out if necessary when the dust settles. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 17:26, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Not sure why it's here.-- Jack Upland ( talk) 09:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Korea from 1945 is a case of regime change because the Koreans were willing and able to take over the government once Japan was defeated. If the Americans hadn't intervened, it is clear that a different government would have emerged. The subsequent events up to the installation of Syngman Rhee as President are also regime change as they amount to the prevention of any other government.-- Jack Upland ( talk) 08:53, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
It would be strange if the United States has not involvement in regime change in Venezuela, especially the current crisis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.68.51.117 ( talk) 15:30, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
We should add Bolivia to this as well. 173.88.23.106 ( talk) 08:53, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
The map is inaccurate because it ignores US involvement in the removal of multiple Nazi and Japanese regimes during World War 2, as well as the regime changes in Germany and Japan after WW2. It should be fixed or removed. Adoring nanny ( talk) 10:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
Jamez42 reverted the addition of post-1998 Venezuela, claiming that "support of opposition is not regime change." Not only is it generally understood to be such, it is widely understood to be the case particularly with the US and Venezuela.. This well-documented material should be restored immediately. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 22:59, 14 April 2019 (UTC)
References
Summary: someone wrote an entire section around one (demonstrably one-sided and easily refuted) BLOG. [1] And then, to make things even better, put that one blog opinion in Wikipedia's voice, with no attribution as the opinion of one bloke. Someone else rightly removed the text. [2] And the first someone is complaining and using personal attacks along with the complaining. [3]
Who is looking not so good here?
GPRamirez5, your editing habits are coming across my radar all too often. (And I haven't even started with WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASE. Or making personal attacks in edit summaries, which is a whole 'nother level of bad.)
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:55, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
The 1959 Iraq section [4] strikes me as speculative and tenuous. I'm not removing it yet, but I'm interested in what others think. Adoring nanny ( talk) 01:58, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose to add text to the article concerning Venezuela (1998-present). GPRamirez5 ( talk) 00:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I propose to add the following text to the article:1998-present:Venezuela
Shortly after Hugo Chávez’s election as president, the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) initiated guidance of Venezuelan political parties towards his defeat. [1] NED agents traveled to Venezuela and met individually with Venezuelan party leaders from the opposition, offering guidance on how to electorally defeat Chávez, construct coalition political platforms and reach out to youth. [2] Stephen Kinzer and other scholars have cited the NED as a successor to the CIA’s regime change programs of the 1960s, dedicated to a neoliberal economic agenda. [3] [4] A coalition of all the main NED funded organizations spearheaded the two-month lockout and production stoppage at Venezuela’s central oil company, which, when it ended in February 2003, had cost the Venezuelan people approximately $10 billion in economic damage as a means of destabilizing the Chavez government. . [5] US diplomats also met with the opposition over the course of a decade to advise strategy against Chavez.
Agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) initiated operations developing neutral-looking organizations in poor neighborhoods focused on community initiatives such as participatory democracy. U.S. ambassador William Brownfield described how USAID/OTI, “directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through over 3,000 forums…providing opportunities for opposition activists to interact with hardcore Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo.”
USAID/OTI also materially supported the recently developed anti-Chávez student movement, which produced the political career of Juan Guaidó and other young opposition leaders. OTI functionaries provided students with resources including paper and microphones, paid for travel expenses, and organized seminars to maximize resistance to the socialist government. According to a Washington Post analysis, “U.S. diplomats regularly met with opposition student leaders who primarily operated in Caracas, discussing plans of action against the Chávez government.”
The campaign against Venezuela’s left-leaning government continued under four US presidents, Most recently, the Trump administration has recognized the opposition leader Juan Guaido as president and openly threatened to launch military action to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. [6]
References
GPRamirez5 ( talk) 00:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA operative and influential Bush supporter in south Florida, claimed in an interview with Miami’s Channel 22 that the administration has “contingency plans.” When pressed to explain, Rodriguez said the plans “could be economic measures and even military measures.” Rodriguez and his views must be taken seriously…it is not as if the Venezuelan leader is unjustified in feeling paranoid. In the run up to the April 2002 coup d'etat against the Chavez regime, the Bush administration funneled US taxpayer money to the Venezuelan opposition through the National Endowment for Democracy.
GPRamirez5 ( talk) 00:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Oppose text as written I think there should be such a section in this article and certainly some account of the 1998+ period, but it needs to be phrased much more carefully. The proposed text is highly POV, very selective in its sources, and gives a misleading impression. In particular, especially for the 2019 period, it makes it seem as if the US role was far more unilateral and exceptional than it has been, given that the US has acted in concert with several other countries, including in the region. The case illustrates some of the blurry lines between different forms of action which get linked into “regime change”: legitimate support for democratic opposition movements, humanitarian aid or rhetorical support for allied politicians - through to electoral interference and armed intervention. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 11:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
The last paragraph should note that most of Europe and South America followed the US lead. Adoring nanny ( talk) 23:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Thought I would note a reference I saw just today indicating a general recognition of US regime change campaigns against Venezuela (4th element in list):
In concrete terms, this means the Quincy Institute will likely advocate a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and Syria; a return to the nuclear deal with Iran; less confrontational approaches to Russia and China; an end to regime-change campaigns against Venezuela and Cuba; and sharp reductions in the defense budget.
Oska ( talk) 12:53, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
United States involvement in regime change has entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments.)
@ Jamez42: re: your suggestion above that the US's actions in Venezuela don't constitute regime change—such claims are belied by stories like this, which describes how groups working to get humanitarian aid into Venezuela are having difficulty with US aid because of the degree to which it is politicized:
President Donald Trump has so closely linked U.S. humanitarian assistance to his attempt to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro — even placing goods along the country’s border as an incentive for Venezuelans to revolt — that some groups are citing security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid sent to Venezuela, three aid officials told POLITICO. “This whole idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process — it’s rare to see it that overt,” said Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council Over the next few weeks, the U.S. dropped off more than 200 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid at points along Venezuela’s border, with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him out.
It's clear that reliable sources, as well as people on the ground involved with USAID, recognize the goal of US involvement. Direct foreign funding to NGOs and political parties is not the only way to carry out regime change. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 02:01, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him outdo not constitute regime change efforts? Reliable sources, including peer-reviewed journal articles such as the ones cited in the proposed text, as well as the news article I cited, clearly indicate otherwise. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 16:44, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela — which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it.
U.S. officials acknowledge that positioning the aid on the border is, in part, designed to provoke. The idea is to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country.
"Members of the army are Venezuelan citizens. ... Our hope is that they will be able to persuade Maduro, or they will simply disobey orders to continue the starvation of the people of Venezuela," Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, said at a State Department briefing earlier this month. [...] Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster
opinions and seriously contested assertions must avoid being presented as fact. Politico's quotes of the unnamed three aid officials appears to have been regarding "security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid", and not the "attempt to oust Venezuelan", and Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council was the one quoted to asset that the "idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process". Even though government change is the most expected political change, this change could be any other than government change, such as changing the members of the Electoral Council. The transcript of the NPR source you provided doesn't talk about government change in an editorial voice, saying that "The risks of linking aid to regime change are already coming into focus" and quoting Daniel Almeida, a CARE International volunteer, warning that "Local AGOs received sort of retaliations or warnings because of their engagement with international aid." and that The whole environment is becoming more aggressive." Allegations of intentions of military intervention aren't new, including along the shipment of the humanitarian aid, which has been rejected by the US and OAS secretary general Luis Almagro. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez even went has far as saying that the aid was "carcinogenic", a claim dismissed by the and the US administration, USAID administrator Mark Green and deputy José Manuel Olivares.
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. dropped off more than 200 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid at points along Venezuela’s border, with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him out. The NPR article I posted says, in their editorial voice,
The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela. The transcript of the audio version also links aid to regime change, stating
The U.S. is trying to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country. Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster. Furthermore, the part you quote,
the risks of linking aid to regime change are already coming into focus, when read in context is a clear statement that the US is doing so (otherwise why would the risks thereof be coming into focus?). Here's another example, from the editorial voice of the NYT: The United States military began flying humanitarian aid to a Colombian city close to the Venezuelan border on Saturday in an effort to turbocharge a relief plan that has become a cornerstone of the quest to oust President Nicolás Maduro.
@ Cmonghost: Wait, now hold on a second. This is at least the second time you suggest that I'm presenting my opinions as justifications for the changes, which is an unjust treatment since I have quoted references and policy guidelines. Since this is a controversial topic, I ask you to please refrain from it. That being said, we are mixing and confusing three different issues here at hand: pre-2019 events, the presidential crisis as a whole and the humanitarian aid shipment.
Since you and I have talked about 2019 and the president crisis so far, we should ask: does the United States want a government change in Venezuela? Sure, this is an issue that is uncontested based on public declarations, and not only the US but also the Organization of American States, the European Union and more than 50 other countries. Otherwise they wouldn't have asked Maduro to summon new elections, declared him as illegitimate when he didn't and recognize Guaidó as legitimate president; however, these are just wishes, willingness and supoort at most. Is different to say that the United States wants government change instead of promoting it. Let's remember that we are discussing and considering "overt and covert actions". Sure, diplomatic declarations and actions can count as such, but the article deals mostly with the actions I described in my first response. I will use your same quotes to point this out, "President Donald Trump is still committed to a pressure campaign to force Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step aside to make way for opposition leader Juan Guaido.
", "U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told the Security Council on Wednesday the Trump administration is determined to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, preferably through diplomatic and economic pressure, but "all options are on the table".
"
There are arguably three main events during the presidential crisis that have had the intention to undermine Maduro's authority: the 23 January proclamation of Guaidó, the 23 February aid shipment and the 30 April uprising. Direct involvement of the US in the first and third ones hs not been discussed here, besides possible diplomatic support. If we are going to focus on the aid shipment, we have to reference which is this involvement, which are these actions, specifically focused on producing a regime change, and not only intent. Copying the quotes above:
President Donald Trump has so closely linked U.S. humanitarian assistance to his attempt to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro — even placing goods along the country’s border as an incentive for Venezuelans to revolt — that some groups are citing security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid sent to Venezuela, three aid officials told POLITICO.
This whole idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process — it’s rare to see it that overt,” said Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. dropped off more than 200 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid at points along Venezuela’s border, with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him out.
The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela — which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it.
U.S. officials acknowledge that positioning the aid on the border is, in part, designed to provoke. The idea is to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country.
"Members of the army are Venezuelan citizens. ... Our hope is that they will be able to persuade Maduro, or they will simply disobey orders to continue the starvation of the people of Venezuela," Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, said at a State Department briefing earlier this month. [...] Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster.
The U.S. is trying to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country. Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster.
Only quotes 1 and 3 mention that there's a specific intention to promove a rebellion, which are from the Politico source. While quote 5 mentions willingness for "military officers to defy Maduro's orders", it continues saying that it is only to allow the aid into the country; quote 6 doesn't specify what disobeying orders means, and quote 7 also says that the goal of defying orders was to allow aid into the country, not regime change. Yes, military insubordination is related with regime change, but the reference needs to say that was the goal, and not allowing the trucks across the border, or otherwise it simply is original research.
I need to ask again. It is the case that the humanitarian aid shipment, which intended to deliver food and medicines to Venezuelans that needed them, had the "explicit goal of regime change"?. Let's not lose focus of this, this is what needs attribution and secondary sources. I will remind that my first response to the RfC was completely unrelated with the shipment of humanitarian aid, and before I continue contesting the allegations it must be decided first which one of these are going to be included to the article. WP:BURDEN stands. -- Jamez42 ( talk) 19:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela. You also missed the article from NYT, which says
The United States military began flying humanitarian aid to a Colombian city close to the Venezuelan border on Saturday in an effort to turbocharge a relief plan that has become a cornerstone of the quest to oust President Nicolás Maduro(emphasis added).
I don't have any strong opinions about this latest addition by NYCJosh concerning the U.S. role in Laos during the Vietnam War, but I removed the link to Third World Traveler as a source; as I recall, Third World Traveler was blacklisted on Wikipedia several years ago because of large-scale copyright violations. I don't have the internal wikilinks on hand, but there was even a clean-up project to remove any references to the site from Wikipedia, and I have no reason to believe that the situation today is any different. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 21:13, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I added information from several major newspapers (e.g. The Indepedent (U.K.)) that had based reporting in part on work by the late Said Aburish, a journalist who had been a reported for Radio Free Europe and the London Daily Mail and a writer whose tomes on major Middle East figures were published by major American and other publishing houses.
TheTimesAreChanging deleted some of this with the note that Aburish is "a conspiracy theorist." This seems pretty cavalier and inconsistent with WP rules (e.g. RS, OR)
I also added information from a piece published by a U.S. national security council staff member, author and Harvard PhD Roger Morris.
This same editor deleted this based on his personal assessment of Morris' information. Morris is giving us an inside look into the workings of the national security policy for part of the writing--telling us what CIA officials were saying at the time. -- NYCJosh ( talk) 23:05, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Declassified U.S. government documents offer no evidence to support these suggestions.
However, a careful examination of a wide range of documents and interviews raises important questions about the veracity of these claims as to whether the CIA was behind the 1963 B'athist coup. ... In sum, barring the release of new information, the preponderance of evidence substantiates the conclusion that the CIA was not behind the February 1963 B'athist coup.
Although the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed.(emphasis added)
Although Qasim was regarded as an adversary by the West, having nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, which had joint Anglo-American ownership, no plans had been made to depose him, principally because of the absence of a plausible successor. Nevertheless, the CIA pursued other schemes to prevent Iraq from coming under Soviet influence, and one such target was an unidentified colonel, thought to have been Qasim's cousin, the notorious Fadhil Abbas al-Mahdawi who was appointed military prosecutor to try members of the previous Hashemite monarchy.
"Saddam, nevertheless, had nothing to do with these events"(emphasis added) as he remained
"on the fringes of the newly installed Ba'thi administration and [had] to content himself with the minor position of a member of the Party's central bureau for peasants."
Methodologically, the most serious flaw in the book is the (mis)use of sources. Aburish has ignored new sources on Nasser and Nasserism based on declassified archival material that has been published in recent years and that sheds new light on Nasser's personality, his attitude toward both East and West, his relations with other Arab leaders, and his domestic policies. Instead, Aburish has relied on old, well-known biographies as well as several biased interviews, which he accepts at face value (especially with Hasanayn Haykal and Nasser's daughter, Huda). ... The book suffers from factual mistakes and unwarranted statements ... serious students of the Nasserite period will have to wait for another biography.
"had nothing to do with these events". I am aware that you can find unreliable tabloids and blogs that conflate Saddam's activities as the head of the Ba'athist security service in the mid– to late–1960s with the events of 1963, but in terms of RS, is there any reason to believe that Morris has this right and that Karsh/Rautsi have it wrong? Whatever the case, surely it would be a major blow to the credibility of the party that cannot be trusted to get such basic facts straight? TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 04:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
"see bibliography for web address,"then you're probably copying a bit too much. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 04:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
"Aburish's facts that I cited are unrefuted."That may be your personal belief, but it is not a perspective that can be found in reliable sources, such as those listed above and in the previous archived discussions.
"The fact that King Hussein had CIA links only makes his account more credible ... "Quite possibly true, and no-one has previously opposed including Hussein's allegations in this article; however, reliable sources are always careful to put his remarks in context, to whit:
It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba'ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertinent to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba'ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba'athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba'athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels.(emphasis added)
In this war of position, the Al-Ahram editor and Nasser confidant, Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal, played a leading role. In late September, Haikal published an interview with Jordan's King Husayn that cast the BPI [Iraqi Ba'ath Party] as little more than a neo-colonial client of the CIA. The King, who was himself, widely regarded as an American puppet, sought to absolve himself of any untoward associations with American intelligence by indicting the supposedly 'radical' Ba'th ... King Husyan effort's to clear his name is another story. For present purposes, it suffices to say that Haykal used the King's comments as part of his effort to undermine the credibility of the Ba'th. Haykal continued this theme of the 'Ba'th as collaborator' in November when he characterized the party as dependent on '"certain international powers" who have been persuaded that the Baath is the only political force in the area capable of blocking Nasser's revolutionary tide.' ... Batatu expresses uncertainty about what 'prompted' Husain to make such a comment, but in the context of the argument that I am making, it is clear that it was Haykal that prompted the King to make his statement, as part of the Egyptian's effort to discredit the Ba'th.(emphasis in original)
"masterminded"the February 1963 coup in Iraq is mainstream within the academic historiography of either Iraq or U.S. foreign relations. (On the other hand, numerous major histories of Iraq devote not even a single sentence to an alleged U.S. role in the coup, for example Charles R. H. Tripp's A History of Iraq.)
1. Morris--Morris cites his own experience working in the halls of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus--statements he heard by senior CIA officials. For example, he writes that he heard CIA officials describing that relations between the CIA and Ba'athists were close. The fact that CIA officials described the relationship in this way is not disputed by any other source, academic or otherwise (as far as I know--please correct me if I am wrong). This being the case, per WP rules on RS those Morris statements should be included. The fact that TheTimesAreChanging can find some CIA man who put out CIA documents with self-serving CIA disinformation about Iranian misdeeds (it was not our boy Saddam who gassed Kurdish villagers but the Iranians) has nothing to do with Morris. 2. Aburish--Specific factual claims that Aburish makes that are undisputed by an other RS should be included. On the other hand, if someone finds RS that contradicts specific claims by Aburish, then both that and Aburish's version should be included. Ultimately we as editors do not get to decide what is "true," we follow WP rules.-- NYCJosh ( talk) 01:25, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Just to be clear, with regard to this deletion of RS content, the relevant excerpt from Batatu is as follows:
It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba'ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertinent to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba'ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba'athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba'athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels.(emphasis added)
User:Aleiraq Aleazim, I appreciate that you have dropped the COPYVIO and that your recent edit is far more grounded in RS than anything that NYCJosh has ever added to this article, but I would urge you to partially self-revert your deletion of Batatu's analysis or to propose a better summary if you feel that the long-standing one was inadequate or misleading in some respect. I await your reply, TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 05:00, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
"the names and addresses of Communists"in Iraq were well-known to the Ba'athists because
"the Communists came wholly into the open"during 1958–1959 and both parties
"had frequent dealings ... on all levels"during 1957–1958 as part of their shared opposition to the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 11:02, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
This article pushed a WP:FRINGE theory that the Egyptian revolution of 1952, which brought Nasser's anti-Western Free Officers Movement to power, was actually a Western plot and an instance of United States involvement in regime change, without citing any sources that characterize it as such, based on a CIA officer ( "Kim" Roosevelt Jr.) supposedly meeting some of the Free Officers shortly before the coup, as well as afterwards. According to historian Hugh Wilford, this anecdote originates with the heavily fictionalized memoirs of Miles Copeland Jr. and is denied by all of the other alleged participants:
William Lakeland, who himself had close links to Nasser and the Free Officers, expressed doubts that Miles and Kim met with leading members of the movement before the revolution ... In a second echo of March 1949, when Za'im approached British military adviser Colonel Gordon Fox prior to launching his coup, there is evidence of the Egyptian Free Officers courting Western suitors besides the Americans. In December 1951, another British military instructor, former RAF intelligence officer Group Captain Patrick Domville, wrote the Conservative member of Parliament Julian Amery telling him that friends in the Egyptian army and air force had asked him to seek secret British support for a plot "to overthrow ... the King and then to set up a military dictatorship." Perhaps most damaging to Miles' claims, both Kim Roosevelt himself and several of the Free Officers allegedly involved later denied any CIA role in the conspiracy to depose Farouk.—source: Wilford, Hugh (2013). America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Basic Books. p. 138. ISBN 9780465019656.
Reading that again, I suppose you could argue that Roosevelt et al. only denied "any CIA role in the conspiracy to depose Farouk,"
not earlier contacts, but that's awfully thin gruel to rely on, especially when there is actual documentation that the Free Officers reached out to the former colonial power, Britain, and yet no-one describes Nasser's revolution as "British involvement in regime change"—for the simple reason that no material support was in fact forthcoming. Perhaps British and American intelligence had foreknowledge that Farouk's regime was falling apart (no rocket science required there, folks) and made no attempt to share intelligence with or otherwise prop it up—Britain's later antagonism with Nasser should not obscure the reality that Farouk had alienated virtually everyone by his final days in power, the British very much included—but only an extraordinarily elastic definition could possibly include that as an example of "United States involvement in regime change." Surely, removing this FRINGE and
WP:UNDUE content should not be controversial in the slightest?
TheTimesAreAChanging (
talk)
22:55, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
"perhaps most damaging to Miles' claims,"Wilford clearly did not mean to suggest that the denials are definitive, merely that they are among the most striking contradictory accounts to the Copeland narrative on record. (At no point in the book does Wilford say anything like "so-and-so is obviously a liar;" rather, he will say things like "this account proved controversial," etc.)
"Kim explicitly rejecting the suggestion that he returned to Egypt after his February [1952] trip to meet with Nasser and the others,"that is not a reference to an earlier meeting with Nasser that Kim acknowledged; rather, as Wilford explains on pp. 135-136, Kim met with Farouk that February in an attempt to convince the king
"to implement a reform program that would diffuse the 'revolutionary' forces in Egyptian society and thereby save his throne."So, at least as late as February 1952 (if not later), U.S. policy in Egypt was to attempt to "save" Farouk's regime and forestall anything like the revolution that was to occur in July and had been plotted long beforehand. At some point, certainly, the U.S. gave up on Farouk, just as it eventually abandoned Batista and declined to launch a major invasion of China to further prop up Chiang Kai-shek, but that's a far cry from any conspiracy in which the U.S. actively abetted Nasser. Of course, Egypt is a complicated case because the U.S. undoubtedly did prop up Nasser, saving him from its allies during the Suez Crisis and benefiting from Nasser's role in stamping out the Syrian communist party during the short-lived United Arab Republic. (Although Nasser did not prove to be a reliable "client" for U.S. purposes, his successors—starting with Anwar Sadat—completed the transition of post-revolutionary Egypt into a U.S. client state.) Nevertheless, at a minimum, any acceptable summary of these events would have to note that all parties stipulate that the U.S. was supporting Farouk until at least a few months prior to the latter's overthrow, and that Copeland's memoirs are contradicted by all other parties—which, regardless of what the WP:TRUTH may be in reality, to me just begs the question of how much WP:WEIGHT is appropriate for something that is denied by both the U.S. and Egyptian sides (the denials admittedly "prove" nothing, but I have no WP:BURDEN to prove a negative).
"Moreover, there is a considerable amount of evidence that, whether or not the CIA dealt directly with the Free Officers prior to their July 1952 coup, there was extensive secret American-Egyptian contact in the months after the revolution"(italics in original) is relevant to establishing the criteria under which this incident is supposed to qualify as an example of United States involvement in regime change. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 21:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
family correspondence indicates he might in fact have traveled to Cairo in April, which would support Copeland's account. If it were truly a fringe theory I would expect him not to mention it at all, or only in passing—let alone give it the amount of credence that he does. What's more, plenty of secondary sources exist that do not dismiss the account as readily as you do; several can be found at our page on Project FF, including Geoffrey Wawro's Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East and Matthew Holland's America and Egypt: From Roosevelt to Eisenhower. As I've already said above, it's perfectly appropriate for our text to note that the allegations were disputed (as many allegations of regime change are), but it's by no means a fringe view and it would not be OR, nor would it be SYNTH to include it. As you note, our task isn't to determine what the truth is; our task is to summarize what secondary sources say, and numerous reliable secondary sources describe the events. That means that they belong in our article—with the appropriate level of nuance. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 03:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
@
Adoring nanny: Re: your last edit to this page: I took "per talk" to mean "per rationale on talk" (and I have seen it used similarly in many other edit summaries). Anyway, since you did not cite any issues with the content you removed other than the edit summary, I have just reinstated the content with a more verbose edit summary.
WP:REVERT has the following to say on the subject: Do not revert an otherwise good edit solely because an editor used a poor edit summary or has a bad username. You cannot remove or change prior edit summaries by reverting, even if you made the edit in question. If an edit summary violates the privacy policy or otherwise qualifies for oversighting or deletion, then see Help:Edit summary#Fixing. Otherwise, ignore it.
—
cmonghost 👻 (
talk)
04:54, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Reverting per misleading edit summaryseems like a pretty unambiguous statement of intent to revert based on the edit summary. In any case, if the revert were about lack of consensus, it would still be on shaky ground, as there is equally no consensus to remove Egypt, and in the absence of consensus it's standard to go with the status quo. It's up to those in favour of a change to build a consensus to implement that change. Anyway, as I said above, I'm not opposed to adding attribution, etc. (you're obviously free to go ahead and do so yourself if you have the time, as you seem to have a pretty solid grasp of what sources could be added). What I'm opposed to is the wholesale removal of Egypt from the article altogether. I think it would be more productive to improve the content that's already there. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 03:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Maybe color coded for when it happened (decade or era?) and/or whether the previous regime was democratic or not. Vandergay ( talk) 19:14, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
In respect of the recent editing war, a consensus should be agreed upon in whether the recent coup in Bolivia should be listed. /info/en/?search=2019_Bolivian_protests Aldan-2 ( talk) 02:26, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
One good reason for opposing Bolivia being added when it's so obvious at this stage (why it hasn't been added already is beyond me.) could be this : that you're a propagandist, or you're flat out fucking stupid. User0088800 ( talk) 17:39, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
The issue has been thoroughly discussed at the Evo Morales government resignation talk page, and no agreement has been reached, including a move proposal. I strongly suggest reading the sections that refer to the denomination as a "coup" before attempting to include it here, and to continue the discussion here if needed. Best regards. -- Jamez42 ( talk) 23:12, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
There are some pretty solid allegations that the CIA was involved in the dismissal of the Whitlam government of Australia in the early 1970s. Would it not be worth adding that to the list of covert regime changes instituted by the United States? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loomhigh223555 ( talk • contribs) 02:54, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
I restored language that the coup in Iran was "orchestrated", because that is what is in the WP:RS. As far as I can tell that language has has never been challenged since it was first added in October 2012. I may have seen one editor claim that the U.K. had no part in it who was overruled. -- David Tornheim ( talk) 12:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Value-laden labels (...) may express contentious opinion and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution.-- Jamez42 ( talk) 16:04, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"plan or coordinate the elements of (a situation) to produce a desired effect, especially surreptitiously."This is exactly what the sources are saying.-- SharʿabSalam▼ ( talk) 16:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"plan or coordinate the elements of (a situation) to produce a desired effect, especially surreptitiously."-- SharʿabSalam▼ ( talk) 17:08, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Jamez42: If a diverse set of solid, reliable sources use a term, it's good evidence that it's not really a contentious label. Some other sources not using it doesn't mean that they did so because it's non-neutral. It simply means they chose another word—English has a lot of them. What you would want to show to indicate that "orchestrated" is not NPOV would be a style guide saying so, or evidence that only sources on one "side" of the dispute used it. (Also, note that a number of the sources you link above, e.g., history.state.gov and voanews.com, are US government sources, not neutral sources.) — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 17:20, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
This article mentioned here: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Regime_change_(esp._Venezuela). -- David Tornheim ( talk) 08:02, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
User "185.125.206.135" deleted the section on "2005: Iran", saying "Iran Topic was based on unreliable information and was simply a lie." That article included citations to ABC News as well as a Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker and an article on Foreign Policy magazine. I did not check to see if the citations supported the claims made here. However, if user "185.125.206.135" feels that section is inappropriate, s/he will need to provide more evidence than a simple claim that it's "a lie." I'm reverting this change for lack of evidence to support the claim. DavidMCEddy ( talk) 15:46, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm a bit worried that the section on Venezuela at the end is getting rather inflated due to WP:Recentism. It is now one of the longest (if not the very longest) section in the article, despite not being more noteworthy than eariler more significant events. I think, as per WP:NOTNEWS, as the situation is unfolding, it is safer to keep it lean and flesh it out if necessary when the dust settles. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 17:26, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Not sure why it's here.-- Jack Upland ( talk) 09:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Korea from 1945 is a case of regime change because the Koreans were willing and able to take over the government once Japan was defeated. If the Americans hadn't intervened, it is clear that a different government would have emerged. The subsequent events up to the installation of Syngman Rhee as President are also regime change as they amount to the prevention of any other government.-- Jack Upland ( talk) 08:53, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
It would be strange if the United States has not involvement in regime change in Venezuela, especially the current crisis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.68.51.117 ( talk) 15:30, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
We should add Bolivia to this as well. 173.88.23.106 ( talk) 08:53, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
The map is inaccurate because it ignores US involvement in the removal of multiple Nazi and Japanese regimes during World War 2, as well as the regime changes in Germany and Japan after WW2. It should be fixed or removed. Adoring nanny ( talk) 10:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
Jamez42 reverted the addition of post-1998 Venezuela, claiming that "support of opposition is not regime change." Not only is it generally understood to be such, it is widely understood to be the case particularly with the US and Venezuela.. This well-documented material should be restored immediately. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 22:59, 14 April 2019 (UTC)
References
Summary: someone wrote an entire section around one (demonstrably one-sided and easily refuted) BLOG. [1] And then, to make things even better, put that one blog opinion in Wikipedia's voice, with no attribution as the opinion of one bloke. Someone else rightly removed the text. [2] And the first someone is complaining and using personal attacks along with the complaining. [3]
Who is looking not so good here?
GPRamirez5, your editing habits are coming across my radar all too often. (And I haven't even started with WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASE. Or making personal attacks in edit summaries, which is a whole 'nother level of bad.)
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:55, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
The 1959 Iraq section [4] strikes me as speculative and tenuous. I'm not removing it yet, but I'm interested in what others think. Adoring nanny ( talk) 01:58, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose to add text to the article concerning Venezuela (1998-present). GPRamirez5 ( talk) 00:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I propose to add the following text to the article:1998-present:Venezuela
Shortly after Hugo Chávez’s election as president, the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) initiated guidance of Venezuelan political parties towards his defeat. [1] NED agents traveled to Venezuela and met individually with Venezuelan party leaders from the opposition, offering guidance on how to electorally defeat Chávez, construct coalition political platforms and reach out to youth. [2] Stephen Kinzer and other scholars have cited the NED as a successor to the CIA’s regime change programs of the 1960s, dedicated to a neoliberal economic agenda. [3] [4] A coalition of all the main NED funded organizations spearheaded the two-month lockout and production stoppage at Venezuela’s central oil company, which, when it ended in February 2003, had cost the Venezuelan people approximately $10 billion in economic damage as a means of destabilizing the Chavez government. . [5] US diplomats also met with the opposition over the course of a decade to advise strategy against Chavez.
Agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) initiated operations developing neutral-looking organizations in poor neighborhoods focused on community initiatives such as participatory democracy. U.S. ambassador William Brownfield described how USAID/OTI, “directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through over 3,000 forums…providing opportunities for opposition activists to interact with hardcore Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo.”
USAID/OTI also materially supported the recently developed anti-Chávez student movement, which produced the political career of Juan Guaidó and other young opposition leaders. OTI functionaries provided students with resources including paper and microphones, paid for travel expenses, and organized seminars to maximize resistance to the socialist government. According to a Washington Post analysis, “U.S. diplomats regularly met with opposition student leaders who primarily operated in Caracas, discussing plans of action against the Chávez government.”
The campaign against Venezuela’s left-leaning government continued under four US presidents, Most recently, the Trump administration has recognized the opposition leader Juan Guaido as president and openly threatened to launch military action to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. [6]
References
GPRamirez5 ( talk) 00:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA operative and influential Bush supporter in south Florida, claimed in an interview with Miami’s Channel 22 that the administration has “contingency plans.” When pressed to explain, Rodriguez said the plans “could be economic measures and even military measures.” Rodriguez and his views must be taken seriously…it is not as if the Venezuelan leader is unjustified in feeling paranoid. In the run up to the April 2002 coup d'etat against the Chavez regime, the Bush administration funneled US taxpayer money to the Venezuelan opposition through the National Endowment for Democracy.
GPRamirez5 ( talk) 00:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Oppose text as written I think there should be such a section in this article and certainly some account of the 1998+ period, but it needs to be phrased much more carefully. The proposed text is highly POV, very selective in its sources, and gives a misleading impression. In particular, especially for the 2019 period, it makes it seem as if the US role was far more unilateral and exceptional than it has been, given that the US has acted in concert with several other countries, including in the region. The case illustrates some of the blurry lines between different forms of action which get linked into “regime change”: legitimate support for democratic opposition movements, humanitarian aid or rhetorical support for allied politicians - through to electoral interference and armed intervention. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 11:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
The last paragraph should note that most of Europe and South America followed the US lead. Adoring nanny ( talk) 23:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Thought I would note a reference I saw just today indicating a general recognition of US regime change campaigns against Venezuela (4th element in list):
In concrete terms, this means the Quincy Institute will likely advocate a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and Syria; a return to the nuclear deal with Iran; less confrontational approaches to Russia and China; an end to regime-change campaigns against Venezuela and Cuba; and sharp reductions in the defense budget.
Oska ( talk) 12:53, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
United States involvement in regime change has entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments.)
@ Jamez42: re: your suggestion above that the US's actions in Venezuela don't constitute regime change—such claims are belied by stories like this, which describes how groups working to get humanitarian aid into Venezuela are having difficulty with US aid because of the degree to which it is politicized:
President Donald Trump has so closely linked U.S. humanitarian assistance to his attempt to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro — even placing goods along the country’s border as an incentive for Venezuelans to revolt — that some groups are citing security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid sent to Venezuela, three aid officials told POLITICO. “This whole idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process — it’s rare to see it that overt,” said Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council Over the next few weeks, the U.S. dropped off more than 200 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid at points along Venezuela’s border, with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him out.
It's clear that reliable sources, as well as people on the ground involved with USAID, recognize the goal of US involvement. Direct foreign funding to NGOs and political parties is not the only way to carry out regime change. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 02:01, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him outdo not constitute regime change efforts? Reliable sources, including peer-reviewed journal articles such as the ones cited in the proposed text, as well as the news article I cited, clearly indicate otherwise. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 16:44, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela — which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it.
U.S. officials acknowledge that positioning the aid on the border is, in part, designed to provoke. The idea is to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country.
"Members of the army are Venezuelan citizens. ... Our hope is that they will be able to persuade Maduro, or they will simply disobey orders to continue the starvation of the people of Venezuela," Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, said at a State Department briefing earlier this month. [...] Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster
opinions and seriously contested assertions must avoid being presented as fact. Politico's quotes of the unnamed three aid officials appears to have been regarding "security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid", and not the "attempt to oust Venezuelan", and Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council was the one quoted to asset that the "idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process". Even though government change is the most expected political change, this change could be any other than government change, such as changing the members of the Electoral Council. The transcript of the NPR source you provided doesn't talk about government change in an editorial voice, saying that "The risks of linking aid to regime change are already coming into focus" and quoting Daniel Almeida, a CARE International volunteer, warning that "Local AGOs received sort of retaliations or warnings because of their engagement with international aid." and that The whole environment is becoming more aggressive." Allegations of intentions of military intervention aren't new, including along the shipment of the humanitarian aid, which has been rejected by the US and OAS secretary general Luis Almagro. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez even went has far as saying that the aid was "carcinogenic", a claim dismissed by the and the US administration, USAID administrator Mark Green and deputy José Manuel Olivares.
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. dropped off more than 200 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid at points along Venezuela’s border, with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him out. The NPR article I posted says, in their editorial voice,
The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela. The transcript of the audio version also links aid to regime change, stating
The U.S. is trying to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country. Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster. Furthermore, the part you quote,
the risks of linking aid to regime change are already coming into focus, when read in context is a clear statement that the US is doing so (otherwise why would the risks thereof be coming into focus?). Here's another example, from the editorial voice of the NYT: The United States military began flying humanitarian aid to a Colombian city close to the Venezuelan border on Saturday in an effort to turbocharge a relief plan that has become a cornerstone of the quest to oust President Nicolás Maduro.
@ Cmonghost: Wait, now hold on a second. This is at least the second time you suggest that I'm presenting my opinions as justifications for the changes, which is an unjust treatment since I have quoted references and policy guidelines. Since this is a controversial topic, I ask you to please refrain from it. That being said, we are mixing and confusing three different issues here at hand: pre-2019 events, the presidential crisis as a whole and the humanitarian aid shipment.
Since you and I have talked about 2019 and the president crisis so far, we should ask: does the United States want a government change in Venezuela? Sure, this is an issue that is uncontested based on public declarations, and not only the US but also the Organization of American States, the European Union and more than 50 other countries. Otherwise they wouldn't have asked Maduro to summon new elections, declared him as illegitimate when he didn't and recognize Guaidó as legitimate president; however, these are just wishes, willingness and supoort at most. Is different to say that the United States wants government change instead of promoting it. Let's remember that we are discussing and considering "overt and covert actions". Sure, diplomatic declarations and actions can count as such, but the article deals mostly with the actions I described in my first response. I will use your same quotes to point this out, "President Donald Trump is still committed to a pressure campaign to force Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step aside to make way for opposition leader Juan Guaido.
", "U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told the Security Council on Wednesday the Trump administration is determined to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, preferably through diplomatic and economic pressure, but "all options are on the table".
"
There are arguably three main events during the presidential crisis that have had the intention to undermine Maduro's authority: the 23 January proclamation of Guaidó, the 23 February aid shipment and the 30 April uprising. Direct involvement of the US in the first and third ones hs not been discussed here, besides possible diplomatic support. If we are going to focus on the aid shipment, we have to reference which is this involvement, which are these actions, specifically focused on producing a regime change, and not only intent. Copying the quotes above:
President Donald Trump has so closely linked U.S. humanitarian assistance to his attempt to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro — even placing goods along the country’s border as an incentive for Venezuelans to revolt — that some groups are citing security concerns and asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid sent to Venezuela, three aid officials told POLITICO.
This whole idea that in Venezuela aid was going to be part of a political change process — it’s rare to see it that overt,” said Joel Charny of the Norwegian Refugee Council
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. dropped off more than 200 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid at points along Venezuela’s border, with the goal of spurring Venezuelans — including military leaders — to rally against Maduro and push him out.
The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela — which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it.
U.S. officials acknowledge that positioning the aid on the border is, in part, designed to provoke. The idea is to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country.
"Members of the army are Venezuelan citizens. ... Our hope is that they will be able to persuade Maduro, or they will simply disobey orders to continue the starvation of the people of Venezuela," Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, said at a State Department briefing earlier this month. [...] Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster.
The U.S. is trying to convince Venezuelan military officers to defy Maduro's orders and allow the aid into the country. Such a rebellion could lead to Maduro's ouster.
Only quotes 1 and 3 mention that there's a specific intention to promove a rebellion, which are from the Politico source. While quote 5 mentions willingness for "military officers to defy Maduro's orders", it continues saying that it is only to allow the aid into the country; quote 6 doesn't specify what disobeying orders means, and quote 7 also says that the goal of defying orders was to allow aid into the country, not regime change. Yes, military insubordination is related with regime change, but the reference needs to say that was the goal, and not allowing the trucks across the border, or otherwise it simply is original research.
I need to ask again. It is the case that the humanitarian aid shipment, which intended to deliver food and medicines to Venezuelans that needed them, had the "explicit goal of regime change"?. Let's not lose focus of this, this is what needs attribution and secondary sources. I will remind that my first response to the RfC was completely unrelated with the shipment of humanitarian aid, and before I continue contesting the allegations it must be decided first which one of these are going to be included to the article. WP:BURDEN stands. -- Jamez42 ( talk) 19:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela. You also missed the article from NYT, which says
The United States military began flying humanitarian aid to a Colombian city close to the Venezuelan border on Saturday in an effort to turbocharge a relief plan that has become a cornerstone of the quest to oust President Nicolás Maduro(emphasis added).
I don't have any strong opinions about this latest addition by NYCJosh concerning the U.S. role in Laos during the Vietnam War, but I removed the link to Third World Traveler as a source; as I recall, Third World Traveler was blacklisted on Wikipedia several years ago because of large-scale copyright violations. I don't have the internal wikilinks on hand, but there was even a clean-up project to remove any references to the site from Wikipedia, and I have no reason to believe that the situation today is any different. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 21:13, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
I added information from several major newspapers (e.g. The Indepedent (U.K.)) that had based reporting in part on work by the late Said Aburish, a journalist who had been a reported for Radio Free Europe and the London Daily Mail and a writer whose tomes on major Middle East figures were published by major American and other publishing houses.
TheTimesAreChanging deleted some of this with the note that Aburish is "a conspiracy theorist." This seems pretty cavalier and inconsistent with WP rules (e.g. RS, OR)
I also added information from a piece published by a U.S. national security council staff member, author and Harvard PhD Roger Morris.
This same editor deleted this based on his personal assessment of Morris' information. Morris is giving us an inside look into the workings of the national security policy for part of the writing--telling us what CIA officials were saying at the time. -- NYCJosh ( talk) 23:05, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Declassified U.S. government documents offer no evidence to support these suggestions.
However, a careful examination of a wide range of documents and interviews raises important questions about the veracity of these claims as to whether the CIA was behind the 1963 B'athist coup. ... In sum, barring the release of new information, the preponderance of evidence substantiates the conclusion that the CIA was not behind the February 1963 B'athist coup.
Although the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed.(emphasis added)
Although Qasim was regarded as an adversary by the West, having nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, which had joint Anglo-American ownership, no plans had been made to depose him, principally because of the absence of a plausible successor. Nevertheless, the CIA pursued other schemes to prevent Iraq from coming under Soviet influence, and one such target was an unidentified colonel, thought to have been Qasim's cousin, the notorious Fadhil Abbas al-Mahdawi who was appointed military prosecutor to try members of the previous Hashemite monarchy.
"Saddam, nevertheless, had nothing to do with these events"(emphasis added) as he remained
"on the fringes of the newly installed Ba'thi administration and [had] to content himself with the minor position of a member of the Party's central bureau for peasants."
Methodologically, the most serious flaw in the book is the (mis)use of sources. Aburish has ignored new sources on Nasser and Nasserism based on declassified archival material that has been published in recent years and that sheds new light on Nasser's personality, his attitude toward both East and West, his relations with other Arab leaders, and his domestic policies. Instead, Aburish has relied on old, well-known biographies as well as several biased interviews, which he accepts at face value (especially with Hasanayn Haykal and Nasser's daughter, Huda). ... The book suffers from factual mistakes and unwarranted statements ... serious students of the Nasserite period will have to wait for another biography.
"had nothing to do with these events". I am aware that you can find unreliable tabloids and blogs that conflate Saddam's activities as the head of the Ba'athist security service in the mid– to late–1960s with the events of 1963, but in terms of RS, is there any reason to believe that Morris has this right and that Karsh/Rautsi have it wrong? Whatever the case, surely it would be a major blow to the credibility of the party that cannot be trusted to get such basic facts straight? TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 04:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
"see bibliography for web address,"then you're probably copying a bit too much. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 04:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
"Aburish's facts that I cited are unrefuted."That may be your personal belief, but it is not a perspective that can be found in reliable sources, such as those listed above and in the previous archived discussions.
"The fact that King Hussein had CIA links only makes his account more credible ... "Quite possibly true, and no-one has previously opposed including Hussein's allegations in this article; however, reliable sources are always careful to put his remarks in context, to whit:
It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba'ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertinent to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba'ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba'athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba'athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels.(emphasis added)
In this war of position, the Al-Ahram editor and Nasser confidant, Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal, played a leading role. In late September, Haikal published an interview with Jordan's King Husayn that cast the BPI [Iraqi Ba'ath Party] as little more than a neo-colonial client of the CIA. The King, who was himself, widely regarded as an American puppet, sought to absolve himself of any untoward associations with American intelligence by indicting the supposedly 'radical' Ba'th ... King Husyan effort's to clear his name is another story. For present purposes, it suffices to say that Haykal used the King's comments as part of his effort to undermine the credibility of the Ba'th. Haykal continued this theme of the 'Ba'th as collaborator' in November when he characterized the party as dependent on '"certain international powers" who have been persuaded that the Baath is the only political force in the area capable of blocking Nasser's revolutionary tide.' ... Batatu expresses uncertainty about what 'prompted' Husain to make such a comment, but in the context of the argument that I am making, it is clear that it was Haykal that prompted the King to make his statement, as part of the Egyptian's effort to discredit the Ba'th.(emphasis in original)
"masterminded"the February 1963 coup in Iraq is mainstream within the academic historiography of either Iraq or U.S. foreign relations. (On the other hand, numerous major histories of Iraq devote not even a single sentence to an alleged U.S. role in the coup, for example Charles R. H. Tripp's A History of Iraq.)
1. Morris--Morris cites his own experience working in the halls of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus--statements he heard by senior CIA officials. For example, he writes that he heard CIA officials describing that relations between the CIA and Ba'athists were close. The fact that CIA officials described the relationship in this way is not disputed by any other source, academic or otherwise (as far as I know--please correct me if I am wrong). This being the case, per WP rules on RS those Morris statements should be included. The fact that TheTimesAreChanging can find some CIA man who put out CIA documents with self-serving CIA disinformation about Iranian misdeeds (it was not our boy Saddam who gassed Kurdish villagers but the Iranians) has nothing to do with Morris. 2. Aburish--Specific factual claims that Aburish makes that are undisputed by an other RS should be included. On the other hand, if someone finds RS that contradicts specific claims by Aburish, then both that and Aburish's version should be included. Ultimately we as editors do not get to decide what is "true," we follow WP rules.-- NYCJosh ( talk) 01:25, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Just to be clear, with regard to this deletion of RS content, the relevant excerpt from Batatu is as follows:
It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba'ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertinent to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba'ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba'athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba'athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels.(emphasis added)
User:Aleiraq Aleazim, I appreciate that you have dropped the COPYVIO and that your recent edit is far more grounded in RS than anything that NYCJosh has ever added to this article, but I would urge you to partially self-revert your deletion of Batatu's analysis or to propose a better summary if you feel that the long-standing one was inadequate or misleading in some respect. I await your reply, TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 05:00, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
"the names and addresses of Communists"in Iraq were well-known to the Ba'athists because
"the Communists came wholly into the open"during 1958–1959 and both parties
"had frequent dealings ... on all levels"during 1957–1958 as part of their shared opposition to the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 11:02, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
This article pushed a WP:FRINGE theory that the Egyptian revolution of 1952, which brought Nasser's anti-Western Free Officers Movement to power, was actually a Western plot and an instance of United States involvement in regime change, without citing any sources that characterize it as such, based on a CIA officer ( "Kim" Roosevelt Jr.) supposedly meeting some of the Free Officers shortly before the coup, as well as afterwards. According to historian Hugh Wilford, this anecdote originates with the heavily fictionalized memoirs of Miles Copeland Jr. and is denied by all of the other alleged participants:
William Lakeland, who himself had close links to Nasser and the Free Officers, expressed doubts that Miles and Kim met with leading members of the movement before the revolution ... In a second echo of March 1949, when Za'im approached British military adviser Colonel Gordon Fox prior to launching his coup, there is evidence of the Egyptian Free Officers courting Western suitors besides the Americans. In December 1951, another British military instructor, former RAF intelligence officer Group Captain Patrick Domville, wrote the Conservative member of Parliament Julian Amery telling him that friends in the Egyptian army and air force had asked him to seek secret British support for a plot "to overthrow ... the King and then to set up a military dictatorship." Perhaps most damaging to Miles' claims, both Kim Roosevelt himself and several of the Free Officers allegedly involved later denied any CIA role in the conspiracy to depose Farouk.—source: Wilford, Hugh (2013). America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Basic Books. p. 138. ISBN 9780465019656.
Reading that again, I suppose you could argue that Roosevelt et al. only denied "any CIA role in the conspiracy to depose Farouk,"
not earlier contacts, but that's awfully thin gruel to rely on, especially when there is actual documentation that the Free Officers reached out to the former colonial power, Britain, and yet no-one describes Nasser's revolution as "British involvement in regime change"—for the simple reason that no material support was in fact forthcoming. Perhaps British and American intelligence had foreknowledge that Farouk's regime was falling apart (no rocket science required there, folks) and made no attempt to share intelligence with or otherwise prop it up—Britain's later antagonism with Nasser should not obscure the reality that Farouk had alienated virtually everyone by his final days in power, the British very much included—but only an extraordinarily elastic definition could possibly include that as an example of "United States involvement in regime change." Surely, removing this FRINGE and
WP:UNDUE content should not be controversial in the slightest?
TheTimesAreAChanging (
talk)
22:55, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
"perhaps most damaging to Miles' claims,"Wilford clearly did not mean to suggest that the denials are definitive, merely that they are among the most striking contradictory accounts to the Copeland narrative on record. (At no point in the book does Wilford say anything like "so-and-so is obviously a liar;" rather, he will say things like "this account proved controversial," etc.)
"Kim explicitly rejecting the suggestion that he returned to Egypt after his February [1952] trip to meet with Nasser and the others,"that is not a reference to an earlier meeting with Nasser that Kim acknowledged; rather, as Wilford explains on pp. 135-136, Kim met with Farouk that February in an attempt to convince the king
"to implement a reform program that would diffuse the 'revolutionary' forces in Egyptian society and thereby save his throne."So, at least as late as February 1952 (if not later), U.S. policy in Egypt was to attempt to "save" Farouk's regime and forestall anything like the revolution that was to occur in July and had been plotted long beforehand. At some point, certainly, the U.S. gave up on Farouk, just as it eventually abandoned Batista and declined to launch a major invasion of China to further prop up Chiang Kai-shek, but that's a far cry from any conspiracy in which the U.S. actively abetted Nasser. Of course, Egypt is a complicated case because the U.S. undoubtedly did prop up Nasser, saving him from its allies during the Suez Crisis and benefiting from Nasser's role in stamping out the Syrian communist party during the short-lived United Arab Republic. (Although Nasser did not prove to be a reliable "client" for U.S. purposes, his successors—starting with Anwar Sadat—completed the transition of post-revolutionary Egypt into a U.S. client state.) Nevertheless, at a minimum, any acceptable summary of these events would have to note that all parties stipulate that the U.S. was supporting Farouk until at least a few months prior to the latter's overthrow, and that Copeland's memoirs are contradicted by all other parties—which, regardless of what the WP:TRUTH may be in reality, to me just begs the question of how much WP:WEIGHT is appropriate for something that is denied by both the U.S. and Egyptian sides (the denials admittedly "prove" nothing, but I have no WP:BURDEN to prove a negative).
"Moreover, there is a considerable amount of evidence that, whether or not the CIA dealt directly with the Free Officers prior to their July 1952 coup, there was extensive secret American-Egyptian contact in the months after the revolution"(italics in original) is relevant to establishing the criteria under which this incident is supposed to qualify as an example of United States involvement in regime change. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 21:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
family correspondence indicates he might in fact have traveled to Cairo in April, which would support Copeland's account. If it were truly a fringe theory I would expect him not to mention it at all, or only in passing—let alone give it the amount of credence that he does. What's more, plenty of secondary sources exist that do not dismiss the account as readily as you do; several can be found at our page on Project FF, including Geoffrey Wawro's Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East and Matthew Holland's America and Egypt: From Roosevelt to Eisenhower. As I've already said above, it's perfectly appropriate for our text to note that the allegations were disputed (as many allegations of regime change are), but it's by no means a fringe view and it would not be OR, nor would it be SYNTH to include it. As you note, our task isn't to determine what the truth is; our task is to summarize what secondary sources say, and numerous reliable secondary sources describe the events. That means that they belong in our article—with the appropriate level of nuance. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 03:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
@
Adoring nanny: Re: your last edit to this page: I took "per talk" to mean "per rationale on talk" (and I have seen it used similarly in many other edit summaries). Anyway, since you did not cite any issues with the content you removed other than the edit summary, I have just reinstated the content with a more verbose edit summary.
WP:REVERT has the following to say on the subject: Do not revert an otherwise good edit solely because an editor used a poor edit summary or has a bad username. You cannot remove or change prior edit summaries by reverting, even if you made the edit in question. If an edit summary violates the privacy policy or otherwise qualifies for oversighting or deletion, then see Help:Edit summary#Fixing. Otherwise, ignore it.
—
cmonghost 👻 (
talk)
04:54, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Reverting per misleading edit summaryseems like a pretty unambiguous statement of intent to revert based on the edit summary. In any case, if the revert were about lack of consensus, it would still be on shaky ground, as there is equally no consensus to remove Egypt, and in the absence of consensus it's standard to go with the status quo. It's up to those in favour of a change to build a consensus to implement that change. Anyway, as I said above, I'm not opposed to adding attribution, etc. (you're obviously free to go ahead and do so yourself if you have the time, as you seem to have a pretty solid grasp of what sources could be added). What I'm opposed to is the wholesale removal of Egypt from the article altogether. I think it would be more productive to improve the content that's already there. — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 03:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Maybe color coded for when it happened (decade or era?) and/or whether the previous regime was democratic or not. Vandergay ( talk) 19:14, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
In respect of the recent editing war, a consensus should be agreed upon in whether the recent coup in Bolivia should be listed. /info/en/?search=2019_Bolivian_protests Aldan-2 ( talk) 02:26, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
One good reason for opposing Bolivia being added when it's so obvious at this stage (why it hasn't been added already is beyond me.) could be this : that you're a propagandist, or you're flat out fucking stupid. User0088800 ( talk) 17:39, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
The issue has been thoroughly discussed at the Evo Morales government resignation talk page, and no agreement has been reached, including a move proposal. I strongly suggest reading the sections that refer to the denomination as a "coup" before attempting to include it here, and to continue the discussion here if needed. Best regards. -- Jamez42 ( talk) 23:12, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
There are some pretty solid allegations that the CIA was involved in the dismissal of the Whitlam government of Australia in the early 1970s. Would it not be worth adding that to the list of covert regime changes instituted by the United States? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loomhigh223555 ( talk • contribs) 02:54, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
I restored language that the coup in Iran was "orchestrated", because that is what is in the WP:RS. As far as I can tell that language has has never been challenged since it was first added in October 2012. I may have seen one editor claim that the U.K. had no part in it who was overruled. -- David Tornheim ( talk) 12:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Value-laden labels (...) may express contentious opinion and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution.-- Jamez42 ( talk) 16:04, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"plan or coordinate the elements of (a situation) to produce a desired effect, especially surreptitiously."This is exactly what the sources are saying.-- SharʿabSalam▼ ( talk) 16:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
"plan or coordinate the elements of (a situation) to produce a desired effect, especially surreptitiously."-- SharʿabSalam▼ ( talk) 17:08, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Jamez42: If a diverse set of solid, reliable sources use a term, it's good evidence that it's not really a contentious label. Some other sources not using it doesn't mean that they did so because it's non-neutral. It simply means they chose another word—English has a lot of them. What you would want to show to indicate that "orchestrated" is not NPOV would be a style guide saying so, or evidence that only sources on one "side" of the dispute used it. (Also, note that a number of the sources you link above, e.g., history.state.gov and voanews.com, are US government sources, not neutral sources.) — cmonghost 👻 ( talk) 17:20, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
This article mentioned here: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Regime_change_(esp._Venezuela). -- David Tornheim ( talk) 08:02, 4 January 2020 (UTC)