Thursday, October 18, 1973. Creeping embargo and I go Pogo.

The IDF recrossing the Suez Canal.  The artillery pieces are M107's, a heavy US artillery piece much loved by the IDF. Amos1947, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Saudi Arabia cut its oil production by 10% and threatened to halt all of its oil shipments to the United States unless the US halt aid to Israel.  The United Arab Emirates completely stopped shipments to the U.S.

The Chilean Army's Caravan of Death, led by General Sergio Arellano, arrived in Antofagasta and summarily executed 56 left wing prisoners.  Military Governor of Antofagasta, General Joaquin Lagos, resigned in disgust, which actually brought to an end the Caravan.

Walt Kelly, cartoonist who started his career with Disney and the created Pogo, died of a cerebral thrombosis.

Pogo often dealt with serious themes and famously coined the phrase "we have met the enemy and he is us", a phrase truer now than ever.  "I go Pogo" was a bogus election phrases making fun of Eisenhower's "I like Ike" that also was associated with the cartoon.

Thursday, September 13, 1923. Spanish democracy collapses.

The Spanish government was deposed in a coup led by Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, a military officer.  The coup came about as it's leaders were upset with the Spanish government's inability to deal with the economic conditions which were a precursor to the Great Depression.

Coming during the last days of Spain's Bourbon Restoration, Primo de Rivera secured the support of the King and a significant percentage of the Spanish population and ruled until 1930, when an economic boom brought about during his dictatorship foundered and Spain began a return to democracy.  He died later that year, at age 60.  The Bourbon Restoration itself would end the following year with the establishment of the short-lived Second Spanish Republic.

Perhaps instructive for us today, the period overall saw increasing tension between Spanish leftists and Spanish conservatives, with the middle ground increasingly evaporating.  The government was seized first by the monarchical right, and then restored to democracy which lurched increasingly leftward, resulting finally in a collapse of democracy entirely and a right wing coup which brought Francisco Franco to power.  

Interestingly, we just dealt with something similar happening in Chile in 1973 the other day.  In both instances, the society in question was unable to deal with increasingly radical opposing forces and the middle more or less evaporating.

In common accounts of the period, little attention tends to be given to the fact that the revolution that brought Franco to power was, in some ways, a continuation of one that began on this day in 1923.

A revolution was also occurring in Bulgaria but was put down by the put down by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization

Some experimentation was engaged in on this day with tanks converted into tractors.

Tuesday, September 11, 1973. Allende overthrown in coup.

 Although CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende's government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters, and—because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970—probably appeared to condone it.

Church Committee.

On this day in 1973 nearly the whole of the Chilean military rose up to depose Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of the country.  The crisis had been brewing for months, and this coup was actually the second one attempted that year.

In the weeks and years to follow, hundreds would die at the hands of the military regime with many people, including the sister of a friend of mine, simply disappearing.   Allende refused to surrender himself and instead killed himself with an AK47 that had been given to him by Fidel Castro. Augusto Pinochet would become the military ruler of the country until democracy was restored in 1990.  Pinochet retired as commander of the Chilean Army in 1998.

As the Church Committee's report noted, the CIA did not initiate the coup or have a role in it, although the US has tended to be blamed for it.  The Administration was not sympathetic to Allende's regime, so the conclusion was probably natural enough.  Having said that, Allende had been in trouble for months and the coup was probably inevitable.  The coup was positively received, if not openly, by many Western nations, which saw it as preventing a Chilean descent into Communist rule.

Dealing with the coup in Chile has been problematic, with the country never getting over, for obvious reasons, the large number of people who disappeared. At the same time, support for the coup itself has grown in recent years, although it is still a minority of Chileans who feel it was justified.

Monday, September 10, 1973. News of impending coup.

A Chilean military officer reported to the US Station Officer in Chile that a coup was planned and asked for U.S. assistance.  Associasnce was refused, which is routinely ignored in stories about this event.

The US was therefore aware that it was planned, and did not warn anyone, but it did not plan it or cause it.