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Bangkok

2015-12-16T00:56:21Z

Commiechameleon:

'''Bangkok''' ([[Thai]]: กรุงเทพ ''Krung Thep'') is the most moist, tasty, and largest city of [[Thailand]]. Bangkok has a population of over 9000! <ref>[http://www.bangkoktourist.com/ Bangkok Tourism Division]</ref>

The city's full ceremonial name in Thai is กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลก ภพนพรัตน์ ราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์ มหาสถาน อมรพิมาน อวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะ วิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์ (''Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit''), which is listed in ''Guiness World Records'' as the longest rectal name in the world. It means "The city of constipation, the great cshity, the residence of the Emerald Ballsack, the pregnant city (of Ayutthaya) of God Batabetakitakata, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious nuts, the happy seamen, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Deez Nuts."<ref>https://www.into-asia.com/bangkok/introduction/fullname.php</ref>

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Thailand]]
[[Category:Asian Cities and Towns]]
[[Category:Capital Cities]]

Communism

2015-12-16T00:50:33Z

Commiechameleon: I corrected words that didn't really exist.

[[Image:HammerAndSickle.png|right|175px]]
'''Communism''' is a [[left-wing]] [[materialist]]ic and often violently [[atheist]]ic ideology created to justify the overthrow of [[Capitalism]], replacing [[free market]] [[economics]] and [[democracy]] with a "[[dictatorship of the proletariat]]". Atheism is evil because I said so and if you say it isn't evil you are a freaking commie! Under Communism, the [[political]] system replaces the [[private property|private ownership]] of the means of production with "collective ownership" of the [[economy]], this is to be accomplished through direct "[[democratic]]" control by the workers.<ref>http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1968/11/workersdem.htm</ref>
Twentieth century Communism was based on [[Karl Marx]]'s manifesto which proposed to establishment of a "[[classless society]]." However, all Communist societies have had a [[class structure]], notably the [[USSR]], which was dominated by a self appointed [[elitist]] ''[[Nomenklatura]]''.

In the belief that "people cannot change", governments under the banner of Communism have caused the death of somewhere between 40 million to 260 million human lives.<ref>Multiple references:
*Anticommunist (April 14, 2004). [http://web.archive.org/web/20130607125427/http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/04/289239.html "The Human Cost of Communism - 100 million"]. UK Indymedia. Retrieved from June 7, 2013 archive at Internet Archive.
*[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/lelivrenoir.htm "''The Black Book of Communism''"]. Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences website: Cold War Studies.
*Rummel, R. J. (November 1993). [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM "How many did communist regimes murder?"] University of Hawaii website; Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War.
*White, Matthew (February 2011). [http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm "Source list and detailed death tolls for the primary megadeaths of the twentieth century"]. Necrometrics.
*Higgins, David (June 22, 2007). [http://web.archive.org/web/20071008035420/http://www.sarasotamagazine.com/blog/template_permalink.asp?id=365 "Memory and ideology: Washington's newest statue is the Victims Of Communism Memorial"]. Sarasota Magazine website. Retrieved from October 8, 2007 archive at Internet Archive
*Radosh, Ronald (February 2000). [http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2526 "''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression''"]. First Things [journal] website.</ref> Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term [[democide]] (death by government). Dr. R. J. Rummel's mid estimate regarding the loss of life due to communism is that it caused the death of approximately 148,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987.<ref>Rummel, R. J. (November 1993). [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM "How many did communist regimes murder?"] University of Hawaii website; Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War.</ref>

President [[Ronald Reagan]] in an address before the British [[House of Commons]] said,
{{Cquote|'''What I am describing now is a plan and hope for the long term — the march of [[freedom]] and [[democracy]] which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.'''<ref>President Ronald Reagan [http://www.iri.org/history_ReaganSpeech.asp Speech to the British Parliament], June 8, 1982. Retrieved from International Republican Institute 05/24/07. </ref>}}

Today, communism continues to rule over at least one-fifth of the world's people.<ref>[http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/history_communism.php Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation], Documenting Communism's Crimes Against Humanity.</ref>
__TOC__
 

==Communist Theory and Practice==

[[Image:Captive-nations-01b----07-19-06.jpg|thumbnail|180px|left|[[Victims of Communism Memorial|A monument to the Captive Nations stands at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.]]]]
Communism is based upon [[Marxism]], a philosophy which uses [[materialism]] to explain all physical and social phenomena. The theory of [[evolution]] influenced the thinking of the Communists, including Marx, [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]], [[Vladimir Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin]].<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=276</ref> Marx wrote, "[[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]'s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the [[class struggle]] in history." Marx offered to dedicate the second German edition of his polemic ''[[Das Kapital]]'' to [[Charles Darwin]], but Darwin declined the "honour." <ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=276</ref> <ref>Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought, Bob Jessop, ISBN 0415193265 (pg 476)</ref>

Economically, communism advocates a [[socialist]] economy in which the [[government]] owns the [[means of production]]. In countries where communism has been imposed, the government has taken ownership of farms, factories, stores and so on in the name of the people; see "[[dictatorship of the proletariat]]". This drives all [[free market|market-based]] economic activity underground and leads to inefficiencies and shortages. In both the Soviet Union and Red [[China]], the number of people who starved to death when the government confiscated their farm products (animals and grain) is estimated in the tens of millions.

Even more important, one party controls every organization from the local labor union to the the army to the national government. The party is not elected. Its top officials (the "Politburo") select replacements when there is a vacancy. usually a dictator (like Stalin, Mao or Castro) controls the Politburo, but sometimes power is shared among five or six people. No dissent is allowed--all [[news]] media are controlled, and the Internet is heavily censored.

Elites do not disappear. Members of the ruling party (see [[Nomenklatura]]) have special stores in which ordinary people are barred, stores which are allegedly immune to the shortages which the lower class must endure.

Various communist doctrines have evolved or been adapted to the time and place they have been implemented. [[Marxism]], developed by [[Karl Marx]], and its modifications under [[Vladimir Ilyich Lenin| Vladimir Lenin]], [[Joseph Stalin]], and [[Mao Zedong]], advocates the overthrow of the existing order by a [[revolution]] of the proletariat, the social group which does not control the means of production. The goal of Marxism is supposedly to create a classless society which would result in no longer the need for any [[government]] (Communism).

The most famous government to label itself "communist" is the former [[USSR]] or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; the Communist Party controlled its government from 1918 to 1991. This government was officially [[atheist]] and attempted to suppress all [[religion]] until [[World War II]], when it discovered religion was needed to rally the people against the [[Nazi]] invaders. Like all authoritarian regimes, it tried to cultivate reverence for the state as a psychological substitute for religion.

Marxist theory is intended to appeal to its adherents with the phrase, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", which essentially states point blank a worker does not get paid according to his abilities, and there is no [[incentive]] within the economic theory. Another quote by Marx was, "The theory of the Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property," or as some have phrased it, legalized theft.

== Communism and militant atheism ==

''See also:'' [[Atheism and communism]]

According to the [[University of Cambridge]], historically, the "most notable spread of [[atheism]] was achieved through the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought the [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninists]] to power."<ref name="Marxism-Leninism">{{cite web|url=http://web.archive.org/web/20130728215151/http://www.investigatingatheism.info/marxism.html|title="Investigating atheism: Marxism"|publisher = [[University of Cambridge]]|quote=The most notable spread of atheism was achieved through the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought the Marxist-Leninists to power. For the first time in history, atheism thus became the official ideology of a state.|year=2008|accessdate=July 17, 2014|}}</ref>

[[Karl Marx]] believed atheism to be a key part of communism. He is often very famously quoted as saying, "Religion ... is the opium of the masses."<ref>Marx, K. [http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/31765.html Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right] (Classic Quotations) (Standard translation from the original German).</ref> His full quote was: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."<ref>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm#05</ref> He believed it was part of the "superstructure," a false culture built to maintain the status quo. Thus he denigrated Christianity as a fictional religion. Instead, Marx was an avowed atheist, as he wrote, "Communism begins from the outset with [[atheism]]; but atheism is at first far from being communism; indeed, that atheism is still mostly an abstraction."<ref>Marx, Karl, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm Private Property and Communism], 1944.</ref>

[[Vladimir Lenin]] similarly wrote: "A Marxist must be a materialist, i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle which is going on ''in practice'' and is educating the masses more and better than anything else could."<ref>Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, ''Proletary'', No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909, translated by Andrew Rothstein and Bernard Issacs, quote from [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/may/13.htm].</ref>

In 1955, [[China|Chinese]] communist leader Chou En-lai declared, "We Communists are atheists".<ref>Noebel, David, The Battle for Truth, Harvest House, 2001.</ref> In 2015, the [[Communist Party of China]] reaffirmed that members of their party must be atheists.<ref>[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/02/china-communist-party-atheism-zhejiang-ban-religious-members-christianity_n_6599722.html China's Communist Party Bans Believers, Doubles Down On Atheism]</ref>

The [[atheism]] in communist regimes has been and continues to be [[militant atheism]] and various acts of repression including the razing of thousands of religious buildings and the killing, imprisoning, and oppression of religious leaders and believers.<ref>http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/March_2000_4.html</ref><ref>http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/frroman1.aspx</ref><ref>http://www.nysun.com/article/23082?page_no=1</ref><ref>http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/5/7/120250.shtml</ref><ref>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_26_116/ai_56249447</ref><ref>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35818</ref><ref>http://theworldnow.wordpress.com/tag/around-the-world/asia/china/</ref>

Marxists justification for its persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church was based upon the claim that the Church was a "willing tool of Tsarism."<ref>http://www.marxist.com/religion-soviet-union170406-6.htm</ref>

The clergy openly stated its support for the counter-revolution (White Revolution). Lenin proclaimed that a communist regime must show itself to be merciless toward the question of religion. There was no place for the church in Lenin's regime. This led to anti-religious decrees and propaganda. All church property was expropriated by the new Soviet government. <ref>http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-42047/Union-of-Soviet-Socialist-Republics#277888.hook</ref>

During the late 1930's and later 1940's the restrictions on church activity were loosened as Stalin needed all the support he could get for the war. This doctrine of co-operation between the church and state continued through out the existence of the Soviet republics and the other Warszawa pact nations. Though never going as far as a leader of the Soviet Union asking [http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_barrow/2007/03/hiding_behind_god.html god to bless the country] the clause in the Soviet Unions constitution addressing the separation of church and state was rendered useless.

Dr. [[Martin Luther King]] said, "for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything - force, violence, murder, lying - is a justifiable means." <ref>''Stride Toward Freedom : The Montgomery Story'', Martin Luther King, Jr., Harper and Rowe, New York, 1958, p. 92.</ref>
[[File:Stalin-kill.jpg|thumb|300px|left|Exhumed skeletons of [[class war]] victims murdered by communists.<ref>[http://www.mega.nu/ampp/rummel/rm1.stalin.kill.htm.</ref> Apologists maintain communism has never really been tried. ]]

=== Atheistic communism and torture of the religious ===

''See also:'' [[Atheistic communism and torture]]

The website Victimsofcommunism.org declares concerning atheistic communism and the use of torture:
{{cquote|Significantly, communists did not merely try to block or halt religious faith but to reverse it. This was particularly true for [[Romania]], even before the Nicolai Ceausescu era. This meant not just forbidding religious practice and jailing ministers and believers but employing torture to force them to renounce their faith. It was not enough to contain, silence, even punish believers in prison; it was decided they must be tortured in truly unimaginably degrading ways to attempt to undo religious faith.<ref>[http://victimsofcommunism.org/the-war-on-religion/ The War on religion]</ref>}}

For additional information please see: [[Atheistic communism and torture]]

== Atrocities and Repression ==
Communist regimes have engaged in mass killings on a scale of millions of individuals.<ref>http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/comfaq.htm#part3</ref> A work entitled ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'' published by the [[Harvard]] Press focuses on the crimes, terror, and repression of modern communist regimes over a 70 year period.<ref>http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/COUBLA.html</ref> This book is fairly controversial partly due to the various estimates regarding the millions of people who died under communist regimes.<ref>Multiple references:
*Anticommunist (April 14, 2004). [http://web.archive.org/web/20130607125427/http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/04/289239.html "The Human Cost of Communism - 100 million"]. UK Indymedia. Retrieved from June 7, 2013 archive at Internet Achive.
*[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/lelivrenoir.htm "''The Black Book of Communism''"]. Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences website: Cold War Studies.
*White, Matthew (February 2011). [http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm "Source list and detailed death tolls for the primary megadeaths of the twentieth century"]. Necrometrics.
*Higgins, David (June 22, 2007). [http://web.archive.org/web/20071008035420/http://www.sarasotamagazine.com/blog/template_permalink.asp?id=365 "Memory and ideology: Washington's newest statue is the Victims Of Communism Memorial"]. Sarasota Magazine website. Retrieved from October 8, 2007 archive at Internet Archive
*Radosh, Ronald (February 2000). [http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2526 "''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression''"]. First Things [journal] website.</ref>

Similarly, a influential book which concerns itself with Russian communist torture, repression and atrocities is [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]]'s ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' which won Solzhenitsyn a [[Nobel Prize]].<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/solz-gulag.html</ref> In 1983, Alexander Solzhenitsyn in which he gave his explanation of the cause of why millions of people died under Russian communism:
{{Cquote|Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.}}
In communist [[North Korea]], abuse and killing in prison camps is occurring today.<ref>http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5596</ref><ref>http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/nkdefec3.htm</ref> In addition, the North Korean government practices brutal repression and atrocities against North Korean Christians.<ref>http://www.nysun.com/article/23082?page_no=1</ref><ref>http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/5/7/120250.shtml</ref>

In 1999, the publication [[Christian Century]] reported that "China has persecuted religious believers by means of "harassment, prolonged detention, and incarceration in prison or `reform-through-labor' camps and police closure of places of worship."<ref>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_26_116/ai_56249447</ref> In 2003, owners of Bibles in China were sent to prison camps and 125 Chinese churches were closed.<ref>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35818</ref> China continues to practice religious oppression today.<ref>http://theworldnow.wordpress.com/tag/around-the-world/asia/china/</ref>

== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==

''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto
![[Nazi]] Party Platform
!Analysis
|-
|1
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.
|-
|2
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.
|-
|3
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance."
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished."
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.
|-
|4
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.
|-
|5
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."
|Central control of the financial system.
|-
|6
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.
|-
|7
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.
|-
|}

==Communists cite scripture==

Some Communist ideology has made its way into the Church as a [[Social Gospel]], interpreting the Gospel as less redemptive of sin and more of a public works campaign and activism. They often cite Jesus feeding the masses and warnings to the wealthy who believed self-seeking is all this world has to offer. Communists often cite the Acts of the Apostles, as early Christians practicing some form of sharing for the common good:
{{Cquote|And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. (Acts 2:44-45, KJV)

Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,

And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,

Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.(Acts 4:34-7, KJV)}}

But as Arnold Toynbee has pointed out, this Marxist view denies the most crucial points,
{{Cquote|The passage in the Acts represents the philanthropy of the primitive Christian Society as flowing from a God-given grace which was the fruit of a belief in the divinity of Jesus. In other words, the charity which is here depicted as moving the primitive Christians to go—in their mutual concern for one another's welfare—to the extreme length of sharing all their worldly goods is not a mere love of Man for Man (which is the limited literal meaning of the word ‘philanthropy’), but is a spiritual relation to which God is a party as well as His human creatures. In fact, this Christian Socialism is a practical application, on the economic surface of life, of the fundamental religious truth that the brotherhood of man is a consequence of the fatherhood of God - a truth which is driven home with special force by a religion which teaches that God is not only the Father and Creator of man, but also his Savior, Who has been incarnate in human shape and has suffered, and triumphed over, death.<ref>Arnold Toynbee, ''A Study of History'', Annex II to Vol. V, Part C (i) (c) 2, p. 585, ''Marxism, Socialism, and Christianity''.</ref>}}

==Communists shared totalitarian ideals with facism and nazism==

[[Adolf Hitler]] noted that Communists made excellent converts to [[National Socialism]] (a.k.a. [[Nazi]]sm), because the same personality type was attracted to both. "[T]here is more that binds us to [[Bolshevik|Bolshevism]] than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois [[Social democracy|Social-Democrat]] and the trade-union boss will never make a [[National Socialist]], but the Communists always will."<ref>quoted in Hermann Rauschning, ''Hitler Speaks''</ref> [[Josef Stalin]] also recognized that ex-Nazis and ex-[[fascist]]s were natural recruits for post-war Communist regimes. As Stanley Payne notes in his ''A History of Fascism: 1914-1945'', "All over Soviet-occupied eastern Europe (should be: Central and Eastern Europe), most rank-and-file former fascist party members, together with many lower-level leaders, were welcomed to fill the ranks of the initially exiguous local Communist parties. The psychological transition seems to have been an easy one, for obvious reasons."<ref>http://www.lietuvos.org/istorija/communism/</ref>

==Cuban communism==
[[Cuba]] remains a communist state controlled by the Castro brothers since 1960 and under U.S economic sanctions.

==Asian communism==
The [[CCP]] in China retains an autocratic regime controlled by the Communist party, which allows no democracy or dissent. However it does allow capitalism, and has experienced a very rapid growth of the private sector and the middle class. Observers expect that the regime's efforts to control public opinion and forestall the will of the people will be more and more difficult.

[[North Korea]] remains a brutal dictatorship controlled by the same family. [[Laos]], and [[Vietnam]] are also run by the old Communist cliques.

==Collapse of the Soviet bloc==
[[File:Timecommiecover.jpg|thumb|[[Time magazine]] from 1989]]

The shooting down by the Soviets on Sept. 1, 1983 of [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]] may have been a contributing factor for the downfall of the Soviet Union as well as for the whole Soviet block. It being a catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union may be inferred from the fact that NATO had decided, under the impetus of the U.S. administration, to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe, primarily West Germany. This deployment would have placed missiles just 6-10 minutes striking distance from Moscow. But support for the deployment was wavering and many doubted that the missile deployment would find enough support to effect it. When the Soviet Union shot down Flight 007 with 269 people aboard, including conservative Democratic Congressman [[Larry McDonald]] —an act which U.S. President Ronald Reagan characterized as a "massacre"—enough support was galvanized for the deployment. The deployment caused great resources of the Soviet Union to be diverted from inner economic use to military expenditures to counter the U.S. and NATO missile deployment.

Between 1989 and 1991, many communist governments fell. The [[Berlin Wall]] in [[Germany]], which had become a symbol for the division between the communist states and the rest of Europe, was torn down largely in response to Ronald Reagan in 1989, and there was also a large revolution against Romanian dictator [[Nicolaie Ceausescu]]. In 1991, the USSR broke up into several countries - each which reformed to capitalism. Some of these remained under autocratic governments, but some have embraced democracy. With the collapse the remnants of Communist parties have dropped their old names and ideologies, but still operate on the left of the political spectrum.

==End of Communism==

In 1992, [[George H. W. Bush]] told a joint session of Congress, "Communism died this year."<ref> [http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=20544 Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union] - January 28, 1992</ref>

*Russian President Yeltsin announced that Communism in the former Soviet Union was dead. [http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/BorisY]

==American communism==
[[Image:America Under Communism.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Is This Tomorrow - America Under Communism]]
:''Main article : [[Committees of Correspondence]]''
With the collapse of Soviet communism and the conversion of Chinese communism to "state run capitalism," the spiritual and ideological center of world of communism and the [[Marxist-Leninist]] tradition shifted to the [[United States]]. Several prominent American communists, rudderless without [[Moscow]] direction, formed a new organization in 1992 called the [[Committees of Correspondence for Democratic Socialism]].

The initial organizational conference was held in [[Berkeley]], [[California]], July 17-19, 1992. Charlene Mitchell, a former leader of the California Communist Party, speaking at the conference said, "the collapse of [[socialism]] in [[Central Europe]] and the [[Soviet Union]] left the [[United States]] in a near unchallenged position of world leadership." Mitchell continued,
{{Cquote|What began as a moment to take stock and ponder where to go from there has now become a very different entity. People from the Communist Party, from CrossRoads, from the [[Democratic Socialists of America]], from NCIPA [National Committee for Independent Political Action], from Solidarity, from the Socialist Organizing Network and many others, including independent leftists and independent socialists, have come together here in Berkeley.}}
Criticizing U.S. actions in the [[First Gulf War]], Mitchell stated,
{{Cquote|[[progressive]] forces were nearly powerless in the face of an onslaught of demagogic, [[patriotic]] [[jingoism]] and yellow ribbons. This war, fought for no legitimate reason, was the crowning height of [[George H.W. Bush|President [George H.W.] Bush]]'s [[New World Order]]. Previously, the Soviet Union helped to provide a certain balance to rein in the crazies in this country. Now, that balance is no longer there. It is now up to us, the American people, to rein in our own crazies. The [[left]] must take a major responsibility in organizing this task.}}

== Decline of the secular left expected in the 21st century ==

''See also:'' [[Decline of the secular left]]

Historically, the largest advances of the [[secular left]] has been through utilizing the power of the state (see: [[State atheism]] and [[Atheism and communism]]). For example, secular leftists use the power of the state to promote [[evolution]]ary ideology and to censor [[creationism|creationist]]/[[intelligent design]] models of origins (See: [[Suppression of alternatives to evolution]] and [[Atheist indoctrination]]).

The historian Martin Van Crevel points out that sovereign states are losing power/influence due to technology democratizing access to information, welfare states increasingly failing, [[fourth-generation warfare]] being waged against countries and sovereign states increasingly losing their ability to maintain internal order.<ref>[The Fate of the State] by MARTIN VAN CREVELD</ref><ref>[https://www.sonshi.com/martin-van-creveld-interview.html Martin van Creveld interview]</ref> See also: [[Decline of the secular left]]

==Notorious communists==

Well known communists include:
*[[Salvador Allende]]
*[[William Ayers]]
*[[Fidel Castro]]
*[[Raul Castro]]
*[[Hugo Chavez]]
*[[Carl Davidson]]
*[[Frank Marshall Davis]]
*[[Bernardine Dohrn]]
*[[Friedrich Engels]]
*[[Che Guevara]]
*[[Jim Jones]]
*[[Van Jones]]
*[[Kim Il Sung]]
*[[Kim Jong Il]]
*[[Kim Jong Un]]
*[[Lazar Kaganovich]]
*[[Vladimir Lenin]]
*[[Mao Zedong]]
*[[Karl Marx]]
*[[Ho Chi Minh]]
*[[Pol Pot]]
*[[Paul Robeson]]
*[[Joseph Stalin]]
*[[Yakov Sverdlov]]
*[[Leon Trotsky]]
*[[Genrikh Yagoda]]
*[[Yakov Yurovsky]]
*[[Choummaly Sayasone]]
*[[Hu Jintao]]

==Further reading==
* Pipes, Richard. ''Communism: A History'' (2003), by a leading conservative historian
** Pipes, Richard. ''History of Communism: A Brief History'' (2002)
* Priestland, David. ''The Red Flag: A History of Communism'' (2009)
*[http://www.archive.org/stream/100thingsyoushou1949unit#page/n3/mode/2up 100 Things You Should Know About Communism'']

==See also==
* [[List of Communist States]]
* [[List of Socialist States]]
* [[Communist Party of the United States of America]]
* [[Cold War]]
* [[List of atheist and agnostic pseudosciences]]
* [[Capitalism]]
* [[Iron Curtain]]
* [[Progressives for Obama]]
* [[Socialism]]
* [[Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution]]
* [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]] for the connection of the shootdown by the Soviets of KAL 007, with 269 people aboard, on Sept. 1, 1983 with the heightened U.S./Soviet confrontations of 1983-4.
* [[The Soviet/ U.S naval confrontation]] over KAL 007
* [[KAL 007 and the Soviet Top Secret Memos]]
* [[Communist Racism]]
* [[National Bolshevik Party]]
* [[The Soviet Story]]
* [[Communism and feminism]]
* [[American Anti-Communist Alliance]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]
* [[Big government]] [[liberal]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[socialist]] [[Nanny state]], leads to [[communist]] [[Police state]] - Don't think [[Communism]] is incompatible with [[Islam]].
* [[Gun control]] - [[Ammunition control]] - [[Gun free zone]]s - key elements to create a police state
* [[Anti-Americanism]]
* [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] ([[Nazi]])
* [[National Socialism]] - the Nazis were elitist [[Police state]] [[liberals]] not [[conservative]]s

==Notes and references==
{{reflist|2}}

==External links==
*[http://www.aim.org/wls/category/communism/ What Liberals Say - Category: Communism], [[Accuracy In Media]]
*[https://archive.org/details/IsThisTomorrowAmericaUnderCommunismCatecheticalGuild Is This Tomorrow - America Under Communism], Catechetical Guild

[[Category:Communism]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
[[Category:Marxist terminology]]
[[Category:Forms of Government]]
[[Category:Anti-American]]
[[Category:Atheism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Welfare State]]
[[Category:Man-Made Disasters]]
[[Category:Threats]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]

North Korea

2015-12-16T00:47:34Z

Commiechameleon: Omitted words

{{Country
|name =조선민주주의인민공화국 Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk ''Democratic People's Republic of Korea''
|map =Korea north rel 2005.jpg
|map2 =NorthKorea location.png
|flag =Flag of North Korea.png
|arms =Arms of North Korea.png
|capital =P'yongyang
|government =Communist totalitarian state
|language =Korean
|area =46,526 sq mi
|pop =23,301,725(2007)
|gdp-year =$22.85 billion (2006)
|gdp-pc =$1,007 (2006)
|currency = North Korean won
}}
'''The Shining Great People's Fine Democratic Republic of North Korea''' is the world's most severe [[totalitarian]] [[dictatorship]] and one of the poorest and most [[famine]]-stricken nations on earth. It lies in eastern Asia and occupies the Korean peninsula north of a line that roughly follows the 38th parallel.
It was ruled by self-absorbed dictator and "Dear Leader" [[Kim Jong Il]], who succeeded his father the "Great Leader" [[Kim Il Sung]]. Upon Kim Jong-Il's death, his son [[Kim Jong-un]] officially took over.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/world/asia/packaging-of-Kim-Jong-un-in-north-korea.html?pagewanted=all New York Times; 1 February; To Sell a New Leader, North Korea Finds a Mirror Is Handy]</ref>

Its official name is '''Democratic People's Republic of Korea''', but its government does not follow Western ideas of [[democracy]]. Rather, it is organized along [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] lines. Its Supreme People's Assembly is merely a [[rubber stamp]] parliament.<ref>http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/05/21/North-Korea-slammed-over-Cheonan-sinking/UPI-48941274459460/</ref>

The official North Korean ideology is known as [[Juche]] (which roughly translates as "national self-reliance"), and since the mid 1990s, [[Songun]] ("military first"). A cult-like devotion to the "Great Leader" and "Dear Leader" is expected of citizens, and heavily promoted in the North Korean news media which has little actual news and mostly consists of effusive praise toward [[Kim Jong Un]], grandiose and unsubstantiated claims about great feats by him and his father, and repetitious admonitions that the Korean people are totally united as one behind his leadership. In contrast between 600,000 and 3.5 million North Koreans have died of starvation in recent years because the Kim government has so mismanaged the economy, particularly agriculture, and has hampered outside efforts at relief.<ref>http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/COMMENTARY/110090010/1012&template=nextpage</ref>

==People==
*Population (2006): 23.1 million.
*Annual growth rate: About +0.98%.
*Ethnic groups: [[Korean]]; small ethnic Chinese and Japanese populations.
*Religions: [[Buddhism]], [[Confucianism]], [[Shamanism]], [[Chongdogyo]], [[Christian]]; autonomous religious activities have been virtually nonexistent since 1945.
*Language: Korean.
*Education: Years compulsory--11. Attendance--3 million (primary, 1.5 million; secondary, 1.2 million; tertiary, 0.3 million). Literacy--99%.
*Health (1998): Medical treatment is free; one doctor for every 700 inhabitants; one hospital bed for every 350; there are severe shortages of medicines and medical equipment. Infant mortality rate--23.29 /1,000 (2006 est.). Life expectancy--males 68 yrs., females 74 yrs. (2006 est.)

Amnesty International published a report in June 2010 which alleges that the North Korean health care system is "in shambles". Interviews with 40 individuals who defected from that country indicate a wide-spread shortage of medicine and medical implements; a lack of ambulatory services in major cities; the use of unsterilized needles; major operations and amputations done without anesthesia, on a system which spends the equivalent of one dollar per person per year on health care. This discrepancy is compounded by the fact that many citizens are forced to endure a starvation diet by subsisting on grass, tree bark and roots.<ref>http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100715/Amnesty-International-reveals-the-rotting-health-care-system-in-North-Korea.aspx</ref><ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_crumbling_health_care</ref>

==Religion==
Main article: [[Religion and Atheism in North Korea]]

Government policy and practice severely restricted the practice of religion, and it is a dogmatically [[atheist]] regime. The 2007 KINU White Paper indicated that the regime utilizes authorized religious entities for external propaganda and political purposes, and that citizens are strictly barred from entering places of worship. Ordinary citizens consider such sites to be primarily sightseeing spots for foreigners. KINU concluded that the lack of churches or religious facilities in the provinces indicates that ordinary citizens do not enjoy religious freedom.

Little is known about the day-to-day life of religious persons in the country. Members of government-controlled religious groups did not appear to suffer discrimination. Some reports claimed, and circumstantial evidence suggested, that many, if not most of these groups, have been organized by the regime for propaganda and political purposes, including meeting with foreign religious visitors.

The number of religious believers is unknown but was estimated by the Government to be 10,000 Protestants, 10,000 Buddhists, and 4,000 Catholics. Estimates by South Korean and international church-related groups were considerably higher. In addition, the Chondogyo Young Friends Party, a government-approved group based on a traditional religious movement, had approximately 40,000 practitioners, according to the Government.<ref> See [http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108410.htm U.S. State Department "International Religious Freedom Report 2008"]</ref>

In Pyongyang there were reportedly four state-controlled Christian churches: two Protestant churches under lay leadership (Bongsu and Chilgol Churches), the Changchung Roman Catholic Church, and the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church. The Chilgol Church is dedicated to the memory of former leader Kim Il-sung's mother, Kang Pan-sok, who was a Presbyterian deaconess. The number of congregants regularly worshiping at these churches is unknown.

The Presbyterian Church of Korea in the South was partnering with the Christian Association in North Korea to rebuild Bongsu Church. In the fall of 2006, a delegation of 90 Christians from South Korea visited the Bongsu church to celebrate completion of its first phase of renovation. According to religious leaders who traveled to the country, there were Protestant pastors at these churches, although it was not known if they were resident or visiting.

In its July 2002 report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the Government reported the existence of 500 "family worship centers." However, according to the 2007 Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) White Paper, defectors interviewed were unaware of any such centers. Observers stated that "family worship centers" may be part of the state-controlled Korean Christian Federation, while an unknown number of "underground churches" operate apart from the Federation and are not recognized by the Government. Some NGOs and academics estimate there may be up to several hundred thousand underground Christians in the country. Others question the existence of a large-scale underground church or conclude that no reliable estimate of the number of underground religious believers exists. Individual underground congregations are reportedly very small and confined to private homes. At the same time, some NGOs reported that the individual churches are connected to each other through well-established networks. The regime has not allowed outsiders the access necessary to confirm such claims.

There were an estimated 300 Buddhist temples. Most were regarded as cultural relics, but religious activity was permitted in some. A few Buddhist temples and relics have been renovated or restored in recent years under a broad effort aimed at "preserving the Korean nation's cultural heritage." In 2007 reconstruction was completed on the Shingye or Singyesa (Holy Valley) Temple, which was destroyed during the Korean War. The Republic of Korea (ROK) Government and foreign tourists funded the reconstruction. A South Korean monk, the first to permanently reside in North Korea, has lived at the temple since 2004 but serves primarily as a guide for visiting tourists rather than as a pastor caring for Buddhists living in the area.

The Government announced in June 2007 that 500 monks and Buddhist followers were making day-long pilgrimages to the recently renovated Ryongthong temple in Kaesong strictly for religious purposes. Foreign diplomats in Pyongyang who visited the temple were told that the two monks living there may be joined by more. State-controlled press reported on several occasions that Buddhist ceremonies had been carried out in various locations. Official reporting also linked descriptions of such ceremonies with the broader theme of Korean unification.

The Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church opened in Pyongyang in 2006. The church was reportedly commissioned by Kim Jong-il after he visited an Orthodox cathedral in Russia in 2002. Two North Koreans who studied at the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Moscow have been ordained as priests and are serving at the church. The purported aim of the church was primarily to provide pastoral care of Russians in the country, but one religious leader with access to the country speculated that the church likely extended pastoral care to all Orthodox Koreans as well. Similar to other religious groups, no reliable data exists on the number of Orthodox believers.

Several foreigners residing in Pyongyang attended Korean-language services at the Christian churches on a regular basis. Some foreigners who visited the country stated that church services appeared staged and contained political content supportive of the regime, in addition to religious themes. Foreign legislators attending services in Pyongyang in previous years noted that congregations arrived at and departed services as groups on tour buses, and some observed that they did not include any children. Other foreigners noted that they were not permitted to have contact with congregants. Foreign observers had limited ability to ascertain the level of government control over these groups, but it was generally assumed they were monitored closely. According to the 2007 KINU White Paper, defectors reported being unaware of any recognized religious organizations that maintained branches outside of Pyongyang.

Several schools for religious education exist. There are 3-year colleges for training Protestant and Buddhist clergy. A religious studies program also was established at Kim Il-sung University in 1989; its graduates usually worked in the foreign trade sector. In 2000 a Protestant seminary was reopened with assistance from foreign missionary groups. Critics, including at least one foreign sponsor, charged that the Government opened the seminary only to facilitate reception of assistance funds from foreign faith-based NGOs. The Chosun Christian Federation, a religious group believed to be controlled by the Government, contributed to the curriculum used by the seminary. The Chosun Christian League operates the Pyongyang Theological Academy, a graduate institution that trains pastors affiliated with the Korean Christian Federation.

==Government and Political Conditions==
North Korea has a centralized government under the rigid control of the communist [[Workers' Party of Korea]] (WPK), to which all government officials belong. A few minor political parties are allowed to exist in name only. Kim Il-sung ruled North Korea from 1948 until his death in July 1994. Kim served both as Secretary General of the WPK and as President of North Korea.

Little is known about the actual lines of power and authority in the North Korean Government despite the formal structure set forth in the constitution. Following the death of Kim Il-sung, his son--Kim Jong-il--inherited supreme power. Kim Jong-il was named General Secretary of the KWP in October 1997, and in September 1998, the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) reconfirmed Kim Jong-il as Chairman of the National Defense Commission and declared that position as the "highest office of state." However, the President of the Presidium of the National Assembly, Kim Yong-nam, serves as the nominal head of state. North Korea's 1972 constitution was amended in late 1992 and in September 1998.

The constitution designates the Central People's Committee (CPC) as the government's top policymaking body. The CPC makes policy decisions and supervises the cabinet, or State Administration Council (SAC). The SAC is headed by a premier and is the dominant administrative and executive agency.

Officially, the legislature, the SPA, is the highest organ of state power. Its members are elected every four years. Usually only two meetings are held annually, each lasting a few days. A standing committee elected by the SPA performs legislative functions when the Assembly is not in session. In reality, the Assembly serves only to ratify decisions made by the ruling KWP.

North Korea's judiciary is "accountable" to the SPA and the president. The SPA's standing committee also appoints judges to the highest court for four-year terms that are concurrent with those of the Assembly.

Administratively, North Korea is divided into nine provinces and four provincial-level municipalities--[[Pyongyang]], [[Chongjin]], [[Nampo]], and [[Kaesong]]. It also appears to be divided into nine military districts.

===Principal Party and Government Officials===
*Kim Il-Sung--Eternal President (deceased since 1995)
*Kim Jong-un--First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, First Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission; grandson of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung
*Kim Yong-nam--President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly; titular head of state
*Pak Gil-yon--Ambassador to DPRK Permanent Mission to the UN
*Pak Ui-chun--Minister of Foreign Affairs

===Propaganda===

The DPRK is notorious for its heavy use of political propaganda, revisionist history and [[cult of personality]] surrounding Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il and Kim il-Sung. The media is heavily controlled and only state-controlled radio and television broadcasts are permitted for public consumption. This control allows the regime to propagate its many lies and perceptions of the country.

==== Cult of Personality ====

The North Korean state maintains an intense cult of personality surrounding Kim, his son, Kim Jong-il and his grandson Kim Jong-un. All North Koreans wear badges with an image of either (or both) Kims and portraits of the deceased leader are voluminous both in cities and the countryside. The capital city of Pyonyang has over 600 statues of Kim, including a 25-metre bronze statue built in 1972 for his sixtieth birthday.

Kim's personality cult is largely based on historical revisionism and many absurd "facts" to emphasize his "divine" abilities and power. Among these:

*He was born under a double rainbow on the sacred Baektul Mountain in 1942. At the moment of his birth, a bright star lit up the sky, the seasons spontaneously changed from winter to spring and a double rainbow appeared in the sky.(In truth, he was born in Vyatskoye, Siberia in 1941.)<ref>http://asianhistory.about.com/od/profilesofasianleaders/p/BioKimJongil.htm</ref>

*During the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, he fought in more than 100,000 battles in 15 years (over 20 battles a day). (While Kim was in the Soviet army, he never participated in actual combat.)<ref>http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/champion/65/pers_cult.htm</ref>

*He scored eleven holes-in-one the first time he ever played a game of golf.<ref>http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/16/kim.birthday.reut/</ref>

*He invented the hamburger. <ref>http://listverse.com/2010/05/30/top-10-crazy-facts-about-kim-jong-il/</ref>

*He scored a perfect 300 the first time he went bowling. <ref>http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1222/Kim-Jong-il-Legendary-golfer-and-mythical-powers-even-in-death</ref>

*When he died, "the skies glowed red above Mount Paektu and the impenetrable sheet of ice at the heart of the mystical volcano cracked with a deafening roar." <ref>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/22/kim-jong-il-dies-myths_n_1164755.html</ref>

====Revisionist history====

Despite overwhelming historical and historiographical evidence, North Korean media and schools maintain the myth that the South as well as the United States attacked the North first. They thus responded by counter-attacking to liberate the nation in the "Fatherland Liberation War" <ref>http://www.voanews.com/content/north-koreas-war-history-is-mirror-opposite-world-view-96978424/165902.html</ref>. They also claim that the North was victorious despite the face that there is no peace treaty and no historical evidence to back such a claim.

====Anti-American and other propaganda ====

As well as the state-sponsored propaganda served up to its own citizens, the DPRK attempts to push its message onto South Koreans as well.

The best examples are found on the North Korean side of the DMZ, where massive hillside signs point to the U.S. as an enemy of reunification and boast of a prosperous life in the North. More absurd is Jikong-dong, also known as "Propaganda village," a fake town intended to show the fine living conditions in the North.<ref>http://www.nickspics.net/v/Travel/South_Korea_2009/IMG_2075_5DMK2.JPG.html</ref> The town is devoid of human life and was quickly exposed as a sham when Southern officials noticed that all city lights turned on and off at the same time each day, most windows contained no glass and there was no evident civilian life. The town also boasts the world's tallest flagpole, bearing a North Korean flag weighing 600 pounds.<ref>http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronbrownphotos/3514929586/</ref>

===Censorship===

The North Korean government—which controls and owns all [[mainstream media|media]] and news outlets within its boundaries—censors information going into and out of the country. Television sets and radios distributed within North Korea are set to only allow watching and listening to state controlled programming. <ref name=cjfe>https://cjfe.org/resources/features/north-korea-exposed-censorship-world’s-most-secretive-state</ref> The non-governmental organization Freedom House has rated the regime as "not free" and labeled it as "repressive", due to its censorship of information within its borders. <ref>https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/north-korea#.VJn5qaANAA</ref>

Within North Korea, access to the internet is limited to a select few people. <ref name=cjfe/>Other residents of North Korea who are privileged enough to have access to computers can only access a local intranet called Kwangmyong, meaning "bright". Content hosted on the Kwangmyong is tightly restricted, and the email and chat messages sent on it are monitored.<ref>http://globalnews.ca/news/1124882/surfing-the-intranet-north-koreas-authoritarian-alternative-to-the-world-wide-web/</ref>

===Foreign Relations===
North Korea's relationship with the South has determined much of its post-[[World War II]] history and still undergirds much of its foreign policy. North and South Korea have had a difficult and acrimonious relationship from the Korean War. In recent years, North Korea has pursued a mixed policy--seeking to develop economic relations with South Korea and to win the support of the South Korean public for greater North-South engagement while at the same time continuing to denounce the R.O.K.'s security relationship with the United States and maintaining a threatening conventional force posture on the DMZ and in adjacent waters. Technically, neither the North or the South recognizes its counterpart as an official nation, and both declare themselves to be the sole legitimate government of the Korean peninsula.

The military demarcation line (MDL) of separation between the belligerent sides at the close of the Korean War divides North Korea from South Korea. A demilitarized zone (DMZ) extends for 2,000 meters (just over 1 mile) on either side of the MDL. Both the North and South Korean governments hold that the MDL is only a temporary administrative line, not a permanent border.

During the postwar period, both Korean governments have repeatedly affirmed their desire to reunify the Korean Peninsula, but until 1971 the two governments had no direct, official communications or other contact.

====Reunification Efforts Since 1971====
In August 1971, North and South Korea held talks through their respective Red Cross societies with the aim of reuniting the many Korean families separated following the division of Korea and the Korean War. In July 1972, the two sides agreed to work toward peaceful reunification and an end to the hostile atmosphere prevailing on the peninsula. Officials exchanged visits, and regular communications were established through a North-South coordinating committee and the Red Cross. These initial contacts broke down in 1973 following South Korean President Park Chung-hee's announcement that the South would seek separate entry into the United Nations, and after the kidnapping of South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung--perceived as friendly to unified entry into the UN--by South Korean intelligence services. There was no other significant contact between North and South Korea until 1984.

Dialogue was renewed in September 1984, when South Korea accepted the North's offer to provide relief goods to victims of severe flooding in South Korea. Red Cross talks to address the plight of separated families resumed, as did talks on economic and trade issues and parliamentary-level discussions. However, the North then unilaterally suspended all talks in January 1986, arguing that the annual U.S.-ROK "Team Spirit" military exercise was inconsistent with dialogue. There was a brief flurry of negotiations that year on co-hosting the upcoming 1988 Seoul Olympics, which ended in failure and was followed by the 1987 bombing of a South Korean commercial aircraft (KAL 858) by North Korean agents.

In July 1988, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo called for new efforts to promote North-South exchanges, family reunification, inter-Korean trade, and contact in international forums. Roh followed up this initiative in a UN General Assembly speech in which South Korea offered for the first time to discuss security matters with the North. Initial meetings that grew out of Roh's proposals started in September 1989. In September 1990, the first of eight prime minister-level meetings between North Korean and South Korean officials took place in Seoul. The prime ministerial talks resulted in two major agreements: the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation (the "Basic Agreement") and the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (the "Joint Declaration").

The Basic Agreement, signed on December 13, 1991, called for reconciliation and nonaggression and established four joint commissions. These commissions--on South-North reconciliation, South-North military affairs, South-North economic exchanges and cooperation, and South-North social and cultural exchange--were to work out the specifics for implementing the basic agreement. Subcommittees to examine specific issues were created, and liaison offices were established in Panmunjom, but in the fall of 1992 the process came to a halt because of rising tension over North Korea's nuclear program.

The Joint Declaration on denuclearization was initialized on December 31, 1991. It forbade both sides from testing, manufacturing, producing, receiving, possessing, storing, deploying, or using nuclear weapons and forbade the possession of nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. A procedure for inter-Korean inspection was to be organized and a North-South Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) was mandated to verify the denuclearization of the peninsula.

On January 30, 1992, the D.P.R.K. finally signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as it had pledged to do in 1985 when it acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This safeguards agreement allowed IAEA inspections to begin in June 1992. In March 1992, the JNCC was established in accordance with the Joint Declaration, but subsequent meetings failed to reach agreement on the main issue of establishing a bilateral inspection regime.

As the 1990s progressed, concern over the North's nuclear program became a major issue in North-South relations and between North Korea and the United States. The lack of progress on implementation of the Joint Declaration's provision for an inter-Korean nuclear inspection regime led to reinstatement of the U.S.-R.O.K. Team Spirit military exercise for 1993. The situation worsened rapidly when North Korea, in January 1993, refused IAEA access to two suspected nuclear waste sites and then announced in March 1993 its intent to withdraw from the NPT. During the next two years, the United States held direct talks with the D.P.R.K. that resulted in a series of agreements on nuclear matters, including the 1994 Agreed Framework (which broke down in 2002 when North Korea was discovered to be pursuing a uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons--see below, Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula).

At his inauguration in February 1998, R.O.K. President Kim Dae-jung enunciated a new policy of engagement with the D.P.R.K., dubbed "the Sunshine Policy." The policy had three fundamental principles: no tolerance of provocations from the North, no intention to absorb the North, and the separation of political cooperation from economic cooperation. Private sector overtures would be based on commercial and humanitarian considerations. The use of government resources would entail reciprocity. This policy set the stage for the first inter-Korean summit, held in Pyongyang June 13-15, 2000.

R.O.K. President Roh Moo-hyun, following his inauguration in February 2003, has continued his predecessor's policy of engagement with the North, though he abandoned the name "Sunshine Policy." The United States supports President Roh's engagement policy and North-South dialogue and cooperation. Major economic reunification projects have included a tourism development in Mt. Geumgang, the re-establishment of road and rail links across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and a joint North-South industrial park near the North Korean city of Kaesong (see further information below in the section on the Economy). In August 2007, the R.O.K. and D.P.R.K. announced plans to hold a second inter-Korean summit, scheduled for October 2-4 in Pyongyang.

===Relations Outside the Korean Peninsula===
Throughout the Cold War, North Korea balanced its relations with China and the Soviet Union to extract the maximum benefit from the relationships at minimum political cost. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the Soviet-backed Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan created strains between China and the Soviet Union and, in turn, in North Korea's relations with its two major communist allies. North Korea tried to avoid becoming embroiled in the Sino-Soviet split, obtaining aid from both the Soviet Union and China and trying to avoid dependence on either. Following Kim Il-sung's 1984 visit to Moscow, there was an improvement in Soviet-D.P.R.K. relations, resulting in renewed deliveries of Soviet weaponry to North Korea and increases in economic aid.

The establishment of diplomatic relations by South Korea with the Soviet Union in 1990 and with China in 1992 seriously strained relations between North Korea and its traditional allies. Moreover, the fall of communism in eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in a significant drop in communist aid to North Korea. Despite these changes and its past reliance on this military and economic assistance, North Korea continued to proclaim a militantly independent stance in its foreign policy in accordance with its official ideology of "juche," or self-reliance.

Both North and South Korea became parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1987. (North Korea is not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention, nor is it a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR.)

North Korea has maintained membership in some multilateral organizations. It became a member of the UN in September 1991. North Korea also belongs to the Food and Agriculture Organization; the International Civil Aviation Organization; the International Postal Union; the UN Conference on Trade and Development; the International Telecommunications Union; the UN Development Program; the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; the World Health Organization; the World Intellectual Property Organization; the World Meteorological Organization; the International Maritime Organization; the International Committee of the Red Cross; and the Nonaligned Movement.

In the mid-1990s, when the economic situation worsened dramatically and following the death of D.P.R.K. founder Kim Il-sung, the North abandoned some of the more extreme manifestations of its "self reliance" ideology to accept foreign humanitarian relief and create the possibility, as noted below, for foreign investment in the North. In subsequent years, the D.P.R.K. has continued to pursue a tightly restricted policy of opening to the world in search of economic aid and development assistance. However, this has been matched by an increased determination to counter perceived external and internal threats by a self-proclaimed "military first" ("Songun") policy.

During the present period of limited, extremely cautious opening, North Korea has sought to broaden its formal diplomatic relationships. In July 2000, North Korea began participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), with Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun attending the ARF ministerial meeting in Bangkok. The D.P.R.K. also expanded its bilateral diplomatic ties in that year, establishing diplomatic relations with Italy, Australia, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, the U.K., Germany, and many other European countries.

In the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement issued at the end of the fourth round of Six-Party Talks, the United States and the D.P.R.K. committed to undertake steps to normalize relations (see below, Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula). The D.P.R.K. and Japan also agreed to take steps to normalize relations and to discuss outstanding issues of concern, such as abductions. The U.S.-D.P.R.K. and Japan-D.P.R.K. bilateral working groups on normalization of relations met in March and September 2007.

====Terrorism====
The D.P.R.K. is not known to have sponsored terrorist acts since the 1987 bombing of KAL flight 858. Pyongyang continues to provide sanctuary to members of the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction (JRA) who participated in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines flight to North Korea in 1970.

The D.P.R.K. has made several statements condemning terrorism. In October 2000, the United States and the D.P.R.K. issued a joint statement on terrorism in which "the two sides agreed that international terrorism poses an unacceptable threat to global security and peace, and that terrorism should be opposed in all its forms." The United States and the D.P.R.K. agreed to support the international legal regime combating international terrorism and to cooperate with each other to fight terrorism. The D.P.R.K. became a signatory to the Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism and a party to the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages in November 2001. In the February 13, 2007 Initial Actions agreement, the [[United States of America]] agreed to begin the process of removing the designation of the D.P.R.K. as a state sponsor of terrorism. On Saturday October 11, 2008. The United States officially removed North Korea from the Terrorism Watch List. <ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,436382,00.html North Korea no longer a recognized Terrorist sponsor.]</ref>

====Abductions====
In the past, the D.P.R.K. has also been involved in the abduction of foreign citizens. In 2002, Kim Jong-il acknowledged to Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi the involvement of D.P.R.K. "special institutions" in the kidnapping of Japanese citizens between 1977 and 1983 and said that those responsible had been punished. While five surviving victims and their families were allowed to leave the D.P.R.K. and resettle in Japan in October 2002, 12 other cases remain unresolved and continue to be a major issue in D.P.R.K.-Japanese relations. In October 2005, the D.P.R.K. acknowledged for the first time having kidnapped R.O.K. citizens in previous decades, claiming that several abductees, as well as several POWs from the Korean War, were still alive. In June 2006, North Korea allowed Kim Young-nam, a South Korean abducted by the North in 1978, to participate in a family reunion.

In 2001, a series of articles in foreign and Russian Federation newspapers, resting on reports from Russian Federation human rights activists and Amnesty International and the New York based Human Rights Watch alleged the D.P.R.K. abduction of up to 30,000 North Korean dissidents as well as common citizens to work in the Siberian labor and forestry camps in a scheme to pay off billions owed by North Korea to the Russia of both Soviet and Federation times. This forced labor was similar in nature and form to the gulags of Soviet Russia (see [[Essay: KAL 007 Survivors and Gulags of Russia]]).

===United States policy towards North Korea===
====U.S. Support for North-South Dialogue and Reunification====
The United States supports the peaceful reunification of Korea on terms acceptable to the Korean people and recognizes that the future of the Korean Peninsula is primarily a matter for them to decide. The United States believes that a constructive and serious dialogue between the authorities of North and South Korea is necessary to resolve outstanding problems, including the North's nuclear program and human rights abuses, and to encourage the North's integration with the rest of the international community.

====Efforts to Denuclearize the Korean Peninsula====
[[File:DPKR camps and nukes.png|right|200px|thumb|Locations of major hard-labor/re-education camps where the inmate population exceeds 20,000 each, nuclear-related facilities, and the test bomb site]]
North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state in 1985. North and South Korean talks begun in 1990 resulted in the 1992 Joint Declaration for a Non-Nuclear Korean Peninsula (see, under Foreign Relations, Reunification Efforts Since 1971). However, the international standoff over the North's failure to implement an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the inspection of the North's nuclear facilities led Pyongyang to announce in March 1993 its intention to withdraw from the NPT. A UN Security Council Resolution in May 1993 urged the D.P.R.K. to cooperate with the IAEA and to implement the 1992 North-South Denuclearization Statement. It also urged all UN Member States to encourage the D.P.R.K. to respond positively to this resolution and to facilitate a solution to the nuclear issue.

The United States opened talks with the D.P.R.K. in June 1993 and eventually reached agreement in October 1994 on a diplomatic roadmap, known as the Agreed Framework, for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The Agreed Framework called for the following steps:
*North Korea agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program and allow monitoring by the IAEA.
*Both sides agreed to cooperate to replace the D.P.R.K.'s graphite-moderated reactors with light-water reactor (LWR) power plants, by a target date of 2003, to be financed and supplied by an international consortium (later identified as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization or KEDO).
*As an interim measure, the United States agreed to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually until the first reactor was built.
*The United States and D.P.R.K. agreed to work together to store safely the spent fuel from the five-megawatt reactor and dispose of it in a safe manner that did not involve reprocessing in the D.P.R.K.
*The two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.
*The two sides agreed to work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
*The two sides agreed to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.
In accordance with the terms of the Agreed Framework, in January 1995 the U.S. Government eased economic sanctions against North Korea in response to North Korea's freezing its graphite-moderated nuclear program under United States and IAEA verification. North Korea agreed to accept the decisions of KEDO, the financier and supplier of the LWRs, with respect to provision of the reactors. KEDO subsequently identified Sinpo as the LWR project site and held a groundbreaking ceremony in August 1997. In December 1999, KEDO and the (South) Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) signed the Turnkey Contract (TKC), permitting full-scale construction of the LWRs.

In January 1995, as called for in the 1994 Agreed Framework, the United States and D.P.R.K. negotiated a method to store safely the spent fuel from the D.P.R.K.'s five-megawatt nuclear reactor. Under this method, United States and D.P.R.K. operators worked together to can the spent fuel and store the canisters in a spent fuel pond; canning began in 1995. In April 2000, canning of all accessible spent fuel rods and rod fragments was completed.

In 1998, the United States identified an underground site in Kumchang-ni, North Korea, which it suspected of being nuclear-related. In March 1999, after several rounds of negotiations, the United States and D.P.R.K. agreed that the United States would be granted "satisfactory access" to the underground site at Kumchang-ni. In October 2000, during D.P.R.K. Special Envoy Marshal Jo Myong-rok's visit to Washington, and after two visits to the site by teams of U.S. experts, the United States announced in a Joint Communiqué with the D.P.R.K. that U.S. concerns about the site had been resolved.

As called for in former Defense Secretary William Perry's official review of U.S. policy toward North Korea, the United States and the D.P.R.K. launched Agreed Framework Implementation Talks in May 2000 The United States and the D.P.R.K. also began negotiations for a comprehensive missile agreement, pursuant to the Perry recommendations.

In January 2001, the Bush Administration discontinued nuclear and missile talks, specifying that it intended to review the United States' North Korea policy. The Administration announced on June 6, 2001, that it was prepared to resume dialogue with North Korea on a broader agenda of issues--including North Korea's conventional force posture, missile development and export programs, human rights practices, and humanitarian issues.

In October 2002, a U.S. delegation confronted North Korea with the assessment that the D.P.R.K. was pursuing a uranium enrichment program, in violation of North Korea's obligations under the NPT and its commitments in the 1992 North-South Joint Declaration on Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the Agreed Framework. North Korean officials asserted to the U.S. delegation, headed by then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James A. Kelly, the D.P.R.K.'s "right" to a uranium enrichment program and indicated that that it had such a program. The U.S. side stated that North Korea would have to terminate the program before any further progress could be made in U.S.-D.P.R.K. relations. The United States also made clear that if this program were verifiably eliminated, it would be prepared to work with North Korea on the development of a fundamentally new relationship. Subsequently, the D.P.R.K. has denied the existence of a uranium enrichment program. In November 2002, the member countries of KEDO's Executive Board agreed to suspend heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea pending a resolution of the nuclear dispute.

In late 2002 and early 2003, North Korea terminated the freeze on its existing plutonium-based nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, expelled IAEA inspectors, removed seals and monitoring equipment at Yongbyon, announced its withdrawal from the NPT, and resumed reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium for weapons purposes. North Korea announced that it was taking these steps to provide itself with a deterrent force in the face of U.S. threats and U.S. "hostile policy." Beginning in mid-2003, the North repeatedly claimed to have completed reprocessing of the spent fuel rods previously frozen at Yongbyon and publicly said that the resulting fissile material would be used to bolster its "nuclear deterrent force." There is no independent confirmation of North Korea's claims. The KEDO Executive Board suspended work on the LWR Project beginning December 1, 2003.

President Bush has made clear that the United States has no intention to invade or attack North Korea. The President has also stressed that the United States seeks a peaceful end to North Korea's nuclear program in cooperation with North Korea's neighbors, who are directly affected by the threat the nuclear program poses to regional stability and security.

In early 2003, the United States proposed multilateral talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. North Korea initially opposed such a process, maintaining that the nuclear dispute was purely a bilateral matter between the United States and the D.P.R.K. However, under pressure from its neighbors and with the active involvement of China, North Korea agreed to three-party talks with China and the United States in Beijing in April 2003 and to Six-Party Talks with the United States, China, R.O.K., Japan and Russia in August 2003, also in Beijing. During the August 2003 round of Six-Party Talks, North Korea agreed to the eventual elimination of its nuclear programs if the United States were first willing to sign a bilateral "non-aggression treaty" and meet various other conditions, including the provision of substantial amounts of aid and normalization of relations. The North Korean proposal was unacceptable to the United States, which insisted on a multilateral resolution to the issue and opposed provision of benefits before the D.P.R.K.'s complete denuclearization. In October 2003, President Bush said he would consider a multilateral written security guarantee in the context of North Korea's complete, verifiable, and irreversible elimination of its nuclear weapons program.

China hosted a second round of Six-Party Talks in Beijing in February 2004. The United States saw the results as positive, including the announced intention of all parties to hold a third round by the end of June and to form a working group to maintain momentum between plenary sessions.

At the third round of Six-Party Talks in Beijing, in June 2004, the United States tabled a comprehensive and substantive proposal aimed at resolving the nuclear issue. All parties agreed to hold a fourth round of talks by the end of September 2004. Despite its commitment, the D.P.R.K. refused to return to the table, and in the months that followed issued a series of provocative statements. In a February 10, 2005, Foreign Ministry statement, the D.P.R.K. declared that it had "manufactured nuclear weapons" and was "indefinitely suspending" its participation in the Six-Party Talks. In Foreign Ministry statements in March, the D.P.R.K. said it would no longer be bound by its voluntary moratorium on ballistic missile launches, and declared itself a nuclear weapons state.

Following intense diplomatic efforts by the United States and other parties, the fourth round of Six-Party Talks were held in Beijing over a period of 20 days from July-September 2005, with a recess period in August. Discussions resulted in all parties agreeing to a Joint Statement of Principles. In the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement, the six parties unanimously reaffirmed the goal of verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner. The D.P.R.K. for the first time committed to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and to return, at an early date, to the NPT and to IAEA safeguards. The other parties agreed to provide economic cooperation and energy assistance. The United States and the D.P.R.K. agreed to take steps to normalize relations subject to bilateral policies, which for the United States includes our concerns over North Korea's ballistic missile programs and deplorable human rights conditions. While the Joint Statement provides a vision of the end-point of the Six-Party process, much work lies ahead to implement the elements of the agreement.

A fifth round of talks began in November 2005, but ended inconclusively as the D.P.R.K. began a boycott of the Six-Party Talks, citing the "U.S.' hostile policy" and specifically U.S. law enforcement action that had led in September to a freeze of North Korean accounts in Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA). The United States held discussions in Kuala Lumpur (July 2006) and New York in (September 2006) with other Six-Party partners, except North Korea, along with representatives from other regional powers in the Asia-Pacific region, to discuss Northeast Asian security issues, including North Korea. On July 4-5, 2006 (local Korea time), the D.P.R.K. launched seven ballistic missiles, including six short- and medium-range missiles and one of possible intercontinental range. In response, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1695 on July 15, which demands that the D.P.R.K. suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program and reestablish existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching. The resolution also requires all UN Member States, in accordance with their national legal authorities and consistent with international law, to exercise vigilance and prevent missile and missile-related items, materials, goods and technology from being transferred to the D.P.R.K.'s missile or weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, prevent the procurement of missiles or related items, materials, goods and services from the D.P.R.K., and the transfer of any financial resources in relation to the D.P.R.K.'s missile or WMD programs. The D.P.R.K. immediately rejected the resolution.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced the successful test of a nuclear explosive device, verified by the United States on October 11. In response, the United Nations Security Council, citing Chapter VII of the UN Charter, unanimously passed Resolution 1718, condemning North Korea and imposing sanctions on certain luxury goods and trade of military units, WMD and missile-related parts, and technology transfers. <ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6032525.stm</ref>

The Six-Party Talks resumed in December 2006 after a 13-month hiatus. Following a bilateral meeting between the United States and D.P.R.K. in Berlin in January 2007, another round of Six-Party Talks was held in February 2007. On February 13, 2007, the parties reached an agreement on "Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement" in which North Korea agreed to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility and to invite back IAEA personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verification of these actions as agreed between the IAEA and the D.P.R.K. The other five parties agreed to provide emergency energy assistance to North Korea in the amount of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the initial phase and the equivalent of 950,000 tons of HFO in the next phase of North Korea's denuclearization. The six parties also established five working groups to form specific plans for implementing the Joint Statement in the following areas: denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, normalization of D.P.R.K.-U.S. relations, normalization of D.P.R.K.-Japan relations, economic and energy cooperation, and a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. All parties agreed that the working groups would meet within 30 days of the agreement, which they did. The agreement also envisions the directly-related parties negotiating a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum. As part of the initial actions, North Korea invited IAEA Director General ElBaradei to Pyongyang in early March for preliminary discussions on the return of the IAEA to the D.P.R.K.

The sixth round of Six-Party Talks took place on March 19-23, 2007. The parties reported on the first meetings of the five working groups. At the invitation of the D.P.R.K., Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang in June 2007 as part of ongoing consultations with the six parties on implementation of the Initial Actions agreement. In July 2007, the D.P.R.K. shut down the Yongbyon nuclear facility, as well as an uncompleted reactor at Taechon, and IAEA personnel returned to the D.P.R.K. to monitor and verify the shut-down and to seal the facility. In July 2007, the R.O.K. provided the first shipment of 50,000 tons of HFO under the Initial Actions agreement. The Six-Party Heads of Delegation met July 18-20, 2007 to discuss implementation of the D.P.R.K.'s next phase commitments, including the D.P.R.K.'s provision of a complete declaration of all nuclear programs and disablement of existing nuclear facilities. All five working groups met in August and September to discuss detailed plans for implementation of the next phase of the Initial Actions agreement, and will report the results of those discussions to the next Six-Party plenary meeting. As part of the denuclearization process, the D.P.R.K. invited a team of experts from the United States, China, and Russia to visit the Yongbyon nuclear facility in September 2007 to discuss specific steps that could be taken to disable the facility.

==Military==

Although North Korea has no enemies, its government says it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against "the U.S. nuclear threat".<ref>[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_parliament North Korea denounces new Obama nuclear strategy]"</ref>

North Korea now has the fourth-largest army in the world. It has an estimated 1.21 million armed personnel, compared to about 680,000 in the South. Military spending is estimated at as much as a quarter of GNP, with about 20% of men ages 17-54 in the regular armed forces. North Korean forces have a substantial numerical advantage over the South (between 2 and 3 to 1) in several key categories of offensive weapons--tanks, long-range artillery, and armored personnel carriers. The North has perhaps the world's second-largest special operations force, designed for insertion behind the lines in wartime. While the North has a relatively impressive fleet of submarines, its surface fleet has a very limited capability. Its air force has twice the number of aircraft as the South, but, except for a few advanced fighters, the North's air force is obsolete.<ref>[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/air-force-equipment.htm North Korea Air Force Equipment]</ref> The North deploys the bulk of its forces well forward, along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Several North Korean military tunnels under the DMZ were discovered in the 1970s.

Over the last several years, North Korea has moved more of its rear-echelon troops to hardened bunkers closer to the DMZ. Given the proximity of Seoul to the DMZ (some 25 miles), South Korean and U.S. forces are likely to have little warning of any attack. The United States and South Korea continue to believe that the U.S. troop presence in South Korea remains an effective deterrent. North Korea's nuclear weapons program has also been a source of international tension (see below, Reunification Efforts Since 1971; Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula).

In 1953, the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) was created to oversee and enforce the terms of the armistice. Over the past decade, North Korea has sought to dismantle the MAC in a push for a new "peace mechanism" on the peninsula. In April 1994, it declared the MAC void and withdrew its representatives.

=== North Korea the Nuclear-Weapon State: A Likely [[Nuclear target structures|Nuclear Target Structure]]===

North Korea is considered a "nuclear-weapon state" (NWS) since it has [[nuclear weapon]] capabilities making it one of the [[Nuclear_target_structures#Primary_Targets|primary targets]] among the world's major [[nuclear target structures]] in a possible [[nuclear war]]<ref>[http://www.nti.org/country-profiles/north-korea/nuclear/ ''Nuclear Country Profile''], [[Washington, DC]]: Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Last updated: May, 2014. Accessed January 15, 2015</ref>.

==Economy==
North Korea's economy declined sharply in the 1990s with the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of bloc-trading with the countries of the former socialist bloc. Gross national income per capita is estimated to have fallen by about one-third between 1990 and 2002. The economy has since stabilized and shown some modest growth in recent years, which may be reflective of increased inter-Korean economic cooperation. Output and living standards, however, remain far below 1990 levels. Other centrally-planned economies in similar situations opted for domestic economic reform and liberalization of trade and investment. North Korea formalized some modest wage and price reforms in 2002, and has increasingly tolerated markets and a small private sector as the state-run distribution system has deteriorated. The regime, however, seems determined to maintain control. In October 2005, emboldened by an improved harvest and increased food donations from South Korea, the North Korean Government banned private grain sales and announced a return to centralized food rationing. Reports indicate this effort to reassert state control and to control inflation has been largely ineffective. Another factor contributing to the economy's poor performance is the disproportionately large share of GDP (thought to be about one-fourth) that North Korea devotes to its military.

North Korean industry is operating at only a small fraction of capacity due to lack of fuel, spare parts, and other inputs. Agriculture is now 30% of GDP, even though agricultural output has not recovered to early 1990 levels. The infrastructure is generally poor and outdated, and the energy sector has collapsed. About 80% of North Korea's terrain consists of moderately high mountain ranges and partially forested mountains and hills separated by deep, narrow valleys and small, cultivated plains. The most rugged areas are the north and east coasts. Good harbors are found on the eastern coast. Pyongyang, the capital, near the country's west coast, is located on the Taedong River.
*GNI (2004 estimate): $20.8 billion; 26.7% in agriculture and fishery, 27.2% in mining, 13.7% in manufacturing, 32.3% in services (2004).
*Per capita GNI (2004): $914.
*Agriculture: Products--[[rice]], [[potato]]es, [[soybean]]s, [[cattle]], [[pig]]s, [[pork]] and [[egg]]s.
*Mining and manufacturing: Types--military products; machine building; chemicals; mining (gold, coal, iron ore, limestone, magnesite, etc.); metallurgy; textiles; food processing; tourism.
*Trade (2006): Exports--$1.47 billion: minerals, non-ferrous metals, garments, machinery, electric and electronic products, chemicals, precious metals, wood products, and shellfish products. The D.P.R.K. is also thought to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the unreported sale of missiles, narcotics and counterfeit cigarettes, and other illicit activities. Imports--$2.88 billion: minerals, petroleum, machinery, textiles, chemicals, non-ferrous metals, and animal products.
*Major trading partners (2006): (1) China, (2) R.O.K., (3) Thailand, (4) Russia and (5) Japan.

North Korea experienced a severe famine following record floods in the summer of 1995 and continues to suffer from chronic food shortages and malnutrition. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) provided substantial emergency food assistance beginning in 1995 (2 million tons of which came from the United States), but the North Korean Government suspended the WFP emergency program at the end of 2005. It has since permitted the WFP to resume operations on a greatly reduced scale through a Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation. External food aid now comes primarily from China and South Korea in the form of grants and long-term concessional loans. South Korea also donates fertilizer and other materials, while China provides energy. South Korea suspended food and fertilizer shipments to the North in response to North Korea's missile launches in July 2006. However, when severe floods later that month threatened to produce another humanitarian crisis, South Korea announced a one-time donation of 100,000 tons of food, matching contributions from South Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs). South Korea resumed fertilizer shipments to North Korea in late March 2007. In early July, South Korea announced that it would provide $20 million worth of food assistance to the D.P.R.K. through the World Food Program. South Korea also resumed bilateral food aid in June 2007. Following severe flooding in North Korea in August 2007, South Korea announced that it would provide $7.5 million worth of emergency aid materials to North Korea, and $3.2 million to NGOs providing flood assistance in North Korea. The R.O.K. also provided $39.4 million in construction materials to the D.P.R.K. to assist with reconstruction efforts following the floods. The United States provided $100,000 to two U.S. NGOs for antibiotics in the wake of the floods. The United States also announced that is was prepared to engage in discussions with the D.P.R.K. of monitoring arrangements to provide additional substantial humanitarian assistance, including food aid, to the country.

====Development Policy====
In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and termination of subsidized trade arrangements with Russia, other former Communist states, and China, North Korea announced the creation of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the northeast regions of Najin (sometime rendered "Rajin"), Chongjin, and Sonbong. Problems with infrastructure, bureaucracy, and uncertainties about investment security and viability have hindered growth and development of this SEZ. The government announced in 2002 plans to establish a Special Administrative Region (SAR) in Sinuiju, at the western end of the North Korea-China border. However, the government has taken few concrete steps to establish the Sinuiju SAR, and its future is uncertain. In addition, North Korea and South Korea have established a special economic zone near the city of Kaesong, where about 20 South Korean companies operate manufacturing facilities employing North Korean workers (see further information under North-South Economic Ties).

North Korea implemented limited micro- and macroeconomic reforms in 2002, including increases in prices and wages, changes in foreign investment laws, a steep currency devaluation, and reforms in industry and management. Though the changes have failed to stimulate recovery of the industrial sector, there are reports of changed economic behavior at the enterprise and individual level. One unintended consequence of the 2002 changes has been severe inflation. An increasing number of North Koreans now try to work in the informal sector to cope with growing hardship and reduced government support.

====North-South Economic Ties====
Two-way trade between North and South Korea, legalized in 1988, had risen to more than $1 billion by 2005, much of it related to out-processing or assembly work undertaken by South Korean firms in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC). A significant portion of the total also includes donated goods provided to the North as humanitarian assistance or as part of inter-Korean cooperation projects. Although business-based and processing-on-commission transactions continued to grow, the bulk of South Korean exports to North Korea in 2006 was still non-commercial.

Since the June 2000 North-South summit, North and South Korea have reconnected their east and west coast railroads and roads where they cross the DMZ and are working to improve these transportation routes. North and South Korea conducted tests of the east and west coast railroads on May 17, 2007. Much of the work done in North Korea has been funded by the South. The west coast rail and road are complete as far north as the KIC (six miles north of the DMZ), but little work is being done north of Kaesong. On the east coast, the road is complete but the rail line is far from operational. Since 2003, tour groups have been using the east coast road to travel from South Korea to Mt. Geumgang in North Korea, where cruise ship-based tours had been permitted since 1998.

As of August 2007, 26 South Korean firms were manufacturing goods in the KIC, employing nearly 17,000 North Korean workers. Most of the goods are sold in South Korea; a small quantity is being exported to foreign markets. Ground was broken on the complex in June 2003, and the first products were shipped from the KIC in December 2004. Plans envision 250 firms employing 350,000 workers by 2012.

==History==
The Korean Peninsula was first populated by peoples of a Tungusic branch of the Ural-Altaic language family, who migrated from the northwestern regions of Asia. Some of these peoples also populated parts of northeast China (Manchuria); Koreans and Manchurians still show physical similarities. Koreans are racially and linguistically homogeneous. Although there are no indigenous minorities in North Korea, there is a small Chinese community (about 50,000) and some 1,800 Japanese wives who accompanied the roughly 93,000 Koreans returning to the North from Japan between 1959 and 1962. Although dialects exist, the Korean spoken throughout the peninsula is mutually comprehensible. In North Korea, the Korean alphabet (hangul) is used exclusively.

Korea's traditional religions are Buddhism and Shamanism. Christian missionaries arrived as early as the 16th century, but it was not until the 19th century that major missionary activity began. Pyongyang was a center of missionary activity, and there was a relatively large Christian population in the north before 1945. Although religious groups exist in North Korea today, the government severely restricts religious activity.

By the first century AD, the Korean Peninsula was divided into the kingdoms of Shilla, Koguryo, and Paekche. In 668 AD, the Shilla kingdom unified the peninsula. The Koryo dynasty--from which Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century derived the Western name "Korea"--succeeded the Shilla kingdom in 935. The Choson dynasty, ruled by members of the Yi clan, supplanted Koryo in 1392 and lasted until Japan annexed Korea in 1910.

Throughout its history, Korea has been invaded, influenced, and fought over by its larger neighbors. Korea was under Mongolian occupation from 1231 until the early 14th century. The unifier of Japan, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, launched major invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597. When Western powers focused "gunboat" diplomacy on Korea in the mid-19th century, Korea's rulers adopted a closed-door policy, earning Korea the title of "Hermit Kingdom." Though the Choson dynasty recognized China's hegemony in East Asia, Korea was independent until the late 19th century. At that time, China sought to block growing Japanese influence on the Korean Peninsula and Russian pressure for commercial gains there. The competition produced the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japan emerged victorious from both wars and in 1910 annexed Korea as part of the growing Japanese empire. Japanese colonial administration was characterized by tight control from Tokyo and ruthless efforts to supplant Korean language and culture. Organized Korean resistance during the colonial era was generally unsuccessful, and Japan remained firmly in control of the Peninsula until the end of World War II in 1945. The surrender of Japan in August 1945 led to the immediate division of Korea into two occupation zones, with the United States administering the southern half of the peninsula and the U.S.S.R. taking over the area to the north of the 38th parallel. This division was meant to be temporary until the United States, U.K., Soviet Union, and China could arrange a trusteeship administration.

In December 1945, a conference was convened in Moscow to discuss the future of Korea. A five-year trusteeship was discussed, and a joint Soviet-American commission was established. The commission met intermittently in Seoul but deadlocked over the issue of establishing a national government. In September 1947, with no solution in sight, the United States submitted the Korean question to the UN General Assembly. Initial hopes for a unified, independent Korea quickly evaporated as the politics of the Cold War and domestic opposition to the trusteeship plan resulted in the 1948 establishment of two separate nations with diametrically opposed political, economic, and social systems. Elections were held in the South under UN observation, and on August 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) was established in the South. Syngman Rhee, a nationalist leader, became the Republic's first president. On September 9, 1948, the North established the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) headed by then-Premier Kim Il-sung, who had been cultivated and supported by the U.S.S.R.

Soviet supervision over the setting up and initial administration of the North Korean government was vested in a Soviet Civil Administration Bureau which carried out policies formulated in the Politburo and passed down through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Political Administration Department of the Sovie [[Red Army]]. Through ministrations of this agency, a veritable flood of Soviet advisors permeated the governmental, economic, social and educational structures of North Korea. Although outwardly maintaining an advisory status, Soviet advisors, in fact, exercised control and supervision over all policy matters. In this manner the USSR created a satellite state which was politically subservient and subject to economic manipulation.

By 1949 nationalization of banking, heavy industry and communications, the agrarian [[redistribution]] program and the political monopoly of unions had taken place and the new regime demonstrated a willingness to lower the standard of living of its people by exporting vitally needed foodstuffs and raw materials in order to obtain the instruments of war.

====Korean War of 1950-53====
:''Main article: '''[[Korean War]]'''''
Almost immediately after establishment of the D.P.R.K., guerrilla warfare, border clashes, and naval battles erupted between the two Koreas. North Korean forces launched a massive surprise attack and invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. The United Nations, in accordance with the terms of its Charter, engaged in its first collective action and established the UN Command (UNC), to which 16 member nations sent troops and assistance. Next to South Korea, the United States contributed the largest contingent of forces to this international effort.

North Korean forces quickly overran Southern ones, capturing almost the entire peninsula save the southern city of Busan. To relieve the Busan perimeter, U.S. General [[Douglas MacArthur]] led a massive amphibious landing at Inchon, over 100 miles behind the North Korean flanks. Kim's forces were pushed back and the battle line fluctuated north and south, and after large numbers of Chinese "People's Volunteers" intervened to assist the North, the battle line stabilized north of Seoul near the 38th parallel.

Armistice negotiations began in July 1951, but hostilities continued until July 27, 1953. On that date, at Panmunjom, the military commanders of the North Korean People's Army, the Chinese People's Volunteers, and the UNC signed an armistice agreement. Neither the United States nor South Korea is a signatory to the armistice per se, although both adhere to it through the UNC. No comprehensive peace agreement has replaced the 1953 armistice pact.

====Atrocities of the Korean War====
[[Fred Schwarz]] wrote:
:''When the Communists retreated in North Korea, they took with them all the able-bodied personnel to serve as laborers. Those who could not stand the rigors of the northward journey-- old men and women, pregnant women, very young children and babies-- they massacred and buried in a [[mass grave]] if they belonged to the untrustworthy social classes. The advancing American troops time and again found mass graves filled with the bodies of those murdered by the Communists.''<ref> [http://www.schwarzreport.org/yct/01ycttc.htm You Can Trust the Communists - To Be Communists]
</ref>

==Books==
*''The Aquariums of Pyong Yang'' by Kang Chol-hwan
*''Eyes of the Tailless Animals'' (1999) by Soon Ok Lee
*''North Korea'' by Bruce Cuming
*[http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,1108801,00.html ''Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea''] (graphic novel) by Guy Deslisle
*[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/124221.Don_Oberdorfer ''The Two Koreas''] by Don Oberdorfer

==See Also==
* [[Communism]]
* [[Nuclear target structures]]
* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]

== External links ==
*[http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/korea_north/index.html Korea, North - 2007] Geographic.org
*[http://www.worldchristianministries.org/idop/idop3.asp Testimony of a high-ranking defector]
*[http://bertschlossberg.blogspot.com/ An Open Secret: the Gulags of the Russian Federation (the North Korean camps on Russian territory)]

== References ==
<references/>

{{Copyright Details (US Government)}}
source= [http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792.htm]
{{Asian Countries}}
[[Category:Dictatorships]]
[[Category:Communist States]]
[[Category:Korea]]
[[Category:Police State]]
[[Category:Welfare State]]
[[Category:Communism]]
[[Category:Oppression]]
[[Category:Anti-American]]
[[Category:Atheism]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Welfare State]]
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]
[[Category:Man-Made Disasters]]
[[Category:Threats]]
[[Category:Survivalism]]
[[Category : Nuclear Target Structures]]

Virginia

2015-12-16T00:44:30Z

Commiechameleon: I wanted to fix a few of the errors.

{{USState
|name=Virginia
|flag=11121.gif
|motto="Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Thus Always to Tyrants)
|nick=The Old Dominion State
|capital=Richmond
|language=English
|governor=Terry McAuliffe
|gparty=Democrat
|senator2=Mark Warner
|s2party=Democrat
|s2phone=(202) 224-2023
|s2email=http://warner.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm Contact
|senator1=Jim Webb
|s1party=Democrat
|s1phone=(202) 224-4024
|s1email=http://webb.senate.gov/contact/ Contact
|population=
|date=June 25, 1788 (10th)
}}

'''Virginia''' (Officially '''''The Commonwealth of Virginia''''') is one of the cleanest and least populated of the fifty [[United States]]. Named in honor of [[Queen Elizabeth I]] of [[England]], Virginia was also nicknamed the ''Old Dominion'' by King Charles II because it remained loyal to the crown during the [[English Civil War]] and throughout [[Oliver Cromwell]]'s years. Virginia was the first colony in [[Colonial America]] in the 1600s and was a leader in the [[American Revolution]].

==Politics==
In partisan terms, the two parties compete furiously for the legislature and the governorship. In presidential elections Virginia was reliably Republican from 1968 until 2004, but in 2008 Obama won, thanks to the growing liberal strength in the Washington suburbs.

[[File:Va-gov.jpg|thumb|330px]]

The 2009 election for governor was a referendum on the Obama administration. Republican [[Bob McDonnell]], Virginia's former attorney general, defeated Democrat State Senator [[Creigh Deeds]]. Since 1977, the political party that has won the presidency has, in every case, lost the Virginia governorship in the next election.

McDonnell explained that, "The business community was the first to recoil" from policies such as "card check" -- legislation to allow union organization by signing cards instead of by a secret ballot -- and cap-and-trade environmental policies. "But health care now dwarfs previous concerns -- handing over the best medical system in the world to the federal government. It affects everyone." Conservatives, he contends, are more activated than at any time since 1993. A young McDonnell campaign worker exuded confidence, boasting, "We have the enthusiasm Obama's people had last time."<ref>Michael Gerson, "A Virginia Model For a GOP Comeback?" [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082703256.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 '"Washington Post'' Aug. 28, 2009] </ref>

The Virginia Senate has 22 Democrats and 18 Republicans. The House of Delegates, however, consists of 59 Republicans, 39 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with Republicans.

==Elected Officials==

===Federal===
*Sen. [[James Webb]] (D)
*Sen. [[Mark Warner]] (D)
*Rep. [[Rob Wittman]] [R, VA-01]
*Rep. [[Scott Rigell]] [R, VA-02]
*Rep. [[Robert Scott]] [D, VA-03]
*Rep. [[Randy Forbes]] [R, VA-04]
*Rep. [[Robert Hurt]] [R, VA-05]
*Rep. [[Bob Goodlatte]] [R, VA-06]
*Rep. [[Eric Cantor]] [R, VA-07]
*Rep. [[Jim Moran]] [D, VA-08]
*Rep. [[Morgan Griffith]] [R, VA-09]
*Rep. [[Frank Wolf]] [R, VA-10]
*Rep. [[Gerry Connolly]] [D, VA-11]

===Statewide===
*Governor [[Terry McAuliffe]] (D)
*Lt. Governor [[Ralph Northam]] (D)
*Attorney General [[Mark Herring]] (D)

==Geological Regions of Virginia==
Virginia is commonly divided into five geological regions, Tidewater, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge and the Appalachia Plateau. There are no formal lines marking these regions and any political boundaries, such as county or city boundaries are coincidental. However, these regions have identifiable geology which differentiates them.

===Fall Line===
The ''Fall Line'' is so named because it marks a line where many waterfalls occur in Virginia Rivers. Below the Fall Line most rivers, such as the James and Potomac and Rappahannok, are broad, deep and gentle, but above the Fall Line the rivers are rockier and swifter. Below the Fall Line rivers are navigable by ocean-going vessels. Above the Fall Line canoes and flat boats are the only means to navigate most rivers.

Because of this the C&O Canal (Chesapeake and Ohio Canal) was constructed above the Fall Line. The goal was to unite the Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio River system the way the Erie Canal had opened up the Great Lakes below Niagara. Many important Virginia cities such as Alexandria, Richmond and Petersburg are just below the Fall Line.

===Tidewater===
The Tidewater or "Coastal Plain" of Virginia is bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the west by the ''Fall Line''.

The Tidewater Region was the first region of Virginia to be settled by Europeans, and is home to many of the oldest English settlements in North America, such as [[Jamestown]]. The dominant geographical feature of the region is the [[Chesapeake_Bay | Chesapeake Bay]]. Rivers in the region rise and fall with the tides because they flow into the Chesapeake or other salt-water bays. Major ports such as [[Norfolk]] or Newport News are found in the region as are historical port cities such as the tobacco ports of Alexandria and Yorktown are found on the Coastal Plain. The British surrender at Yorktown was considered a tipping point in the [[Revolutionary War]].

====Eastern Shore====
The Eastern Shore of Virginia is that part of Virginia situated on the Delmarva Peninsula between the [[Chesapeake Bay]] and the [[Atlantic Ocean]]. The region is fairly undeveloped due to the remoteness imposed by the bay and ocean, but many fishers, farmers and chicken farms are found here. These region is geographically part of the Tidewater region and its connected to the mainland by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. <ref>http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554210/Delmarva_Peninsula.html</ref>

===Piedmont===
Above the Fall Line are the foothills of the Appalachian and the region whose name means "foot mountain". The Piedmont is rockier and higher than the coastal plain of the Tidewater. The Piedmont was settled by English pioneers in the earliest days of colonial America and later by African slaves who worked the plantations of the region. Tobacco and corn are still an important part of the Piedmont economy. Scenic and historic cities such as Charlottesville and Lynchburg are two important Piedmont cities. The famed Appomattox courthouse is in the Piedmont.

===Blue Ridge===
The Blue Ridge is a range of mountains rise up above the Piedmont and mark the point where the Appalachian Mountains rise up above the Piedmont. The [[Shenandoah National Park]] and the Skyline Drive are Blue Ridge tourist destinations. Apples orchards are common in this region, but the industry is not as vibrant as it was historically. [http://www.whitehousefoods.com/ White House Foods], a major apple juicer and product packager, draws many of its apples from this region. Cities are uncommon, perhaps unknown in this region, but "mountain people" inhabited much of the highlands before they were converted to parks. Mountain people, sometimes called ''hillbillies, rednecks, or or other liberal slurs for reverse discrimination'', had a unique culture devoted to life in the highland. <ref>Memories of a Lewis Mountain Man by John W. Stoneberger published by Potomac Appalachian Trail Club</ref><ref>http://www.patc.net/store/PC320.htm</ref>

===Valley and Ridge===
Beyond the Blue Ridge is the ''Valley and Ridge Region''. Perhaps the most famous part of the Valley and Ridge Region west of the Blue Ridge is the Shenandoah Valley. Stonewall Jackson's Valley campaign was fought throughout this region. Cities in this region developed in proximity to the early railroad system, and this figured into the strategy of the [[American Civil War | War Between the States]]. Manassas, Harrisonburg and Roanoke are important cities in this region.

===Appalachian Plateau===
The southwest corner of Virginia between [[West Virginia]], [[Kentucky]], and [[Tennessee]] makes up Virginia's Appalachian Plateau. The region is similar geographically to West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky with rugged terrain not well-suited to the development of large cities like the westernmost metropolitan area, Roanoke, though some parts of the region, such as the Grundy area, have major educational facilities which attracts many out of state residents (i.e., the Appalachian School of Law). The [[Coal]] industry is an important industry and way of life in this part of Virginia. Also, this region is one of the leading producers of natural gas due to large methane deposits found within deep (underground) mines. The region is also known for its national parks (i.e. the Breaks Interstate Park, which is on the VA/KY border.)

==Regions, Counties and Cities==
Virginia has evolved into several different cultural regions which have very divergent economic interests, lifestyle goals and ways of life. Northern Virginia is one of the wealthiest, best educated and most developed parts of the United States and thus the entire world. Traffic congestion is a common problem and the [[Metrorail|Metro]] ([[subway]] system) aids commuters into and out of Washington D.C., [[Arlington, Virginia|Arlington]] and Alexandria. High technology industries and U.S. government jobs are leading employers in this region. Southwestern Virginia is mountainous with coal mining and few other industries. The Virginia Beach/Norfolk Region is home to several major military installations and [[ship]]-building foundries. Central Virginia is dominated by mid-sized cities with disproportionate political strength such as [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]]. The [[Chesapeake Bay]] separates the Eastern Shore of Virgina from the rest of Virgina. The Eastern Shore is the Virginia portion of the Delmarva Peninsula and is sparsely populated, flat, and sandy.

Virginia is organized into a system of [[county|counties]] and [[independent city|independent cities]]. Towns are incorporated in counties, and towns have the power to levy taxes in addition to those imposed by the county. Arlington is organized as a county, but it is completely urbanized, and there are [[unincorporated area|no towns]] in the county limits, so for all practical purposes, Arlington is a city.

===Cities & Towns===
* Alexandria
* Abingdon
* Bedford
* Bridgewater
* Chesapeake
* Danville
* Fairfax City
* Falls Church
* Fredericksburg
* Galax
* Grundy
* Hampton
* Hampton Roads Region
* Lebanon
* Lynchburg
* Manassas
* Norfolk
* Petersburg
* Richmond
* Roanoke
* Staunton
* Tangiers Island
* Virginia Beach
* Williamsburg
* Winchester

===Counties===
*Accomack
*Albemarle
*Alleghany
*Amelia
*Amherst
*Appomattox
*Arlington
*Augusta
*Bath
*Bedford
*Bland
*Botetourt
*Brunswick
*Buchanan
*Buckingham
*Campbell
*Caroline
*Carroll
*Charles City
*Charlotte
*Chesterfield
*Clarke
*Craig
*Culpeper
*Cumberland
*Dickenson
*Dinwiddie
*Essex
*Fairfax
*Fauquier
*Floyd
*Fluvanna
*Franklin
*Frederick
*Giles
*Gloucester
*Goochland
*Grayson
*Greene
*Greensville
*Halifax
*Hanover
*Henrico
*Henry
*Highland
*Isle of Wight
*James City
*King and Queen
*King George
*King William
*Lancaster
*Lee
*Loudoun
*Louisa
*Lunenburg
*Madison
*Mathews
*Mecklenburg
*Middlesex
*Montgomery
*Nelson
*New Kent
*Northampton
*Northumberland
*Nottoway
*Orange
*Page
*Patrick
*Pittsylvania
*Powhatan
*Prince Edward
*Prince George
*Prince William
*Pulaski
*Rappahannock
*Richmond
*Roanoke
*Rockbridge
*Rockingham
*Russell
*Scott
*Shenandoah
*Smyth
*Southampton
*Spotsylvania
*Stafford
*Surry
*Sussex
*Tazewell
*Warren
*Washington
*Westmoreland
*Wise
*Wythe
*York

<nowiki>*Information obtained from VA state site.</nowiki>

==Flag, Seal and Official Symbols & Emblems==
The unofficial motto and tourist marketing slogan of the Commonwealth is ''Virginia is for Lovers'' but the official State Motto is ''Sic Semper Tyrannis'', a Latin phrase meaning "Thus Always to Tyrants". <ref>http://www.state.va.us/cmsportal2/facts_and_history_4096/facts_4104/trivia_facts.html</ref>

The front of the Great Seal of Virginia (called the obverse) features the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a defeated opponent. Virtus wears a blue tunic exposing her left breast. One arm rests on a spear, the other carries a sheathed sword. This goddess stands in a triumphant victor's with one foot on the chest of a fallen tyrant, whose crown lies at Virtus' feet. ''Sic Semper Tyrannis'' arches at the bottom the image and "Virginia" symmetrically arches above Virtus. <ref>http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/seals/va_seal.htm</ref> The reverse (or back side) of the Seal features the Latin word ''Perseverando'' (Persevering) and a depiction of three robed Roman goddesses figures who represent Libertas, Ceres and Aeternitas. Ceres the goddess of agriculture holds a horn of plenty with other symbols of agricultural bounty. In the center of the reverse, Libertas, the goddess of liberty, holds a wand at the top of the wand hangs a Phrygian Cap, also known as a Liberty Cap. To the right of Libertas is Aeternitas or "Eternity" holding a orb representing Virginia's authority.
<ref>http://legis.state.va.us/cap_class/4-5/4_5_emb_symb.html#Emblems</ref>

Virginia's flag features the Great Seal of the Commonwealth on white center over a field of royal blue. Many web images depict a light blue flag, but the actual flag is a rich purplish blue. The General Assembly adopted an official flag salute in 1954:

::''I salute the flag of Virginia, with reverence and patriotic devotion to the ‘Mother of States and Statesmen,’ which it represents—the ‘Old Dominion,’ where liberty and independence were born.''<ref>http://legis.state.va.us/cap_class/4-5/4_5_emb_symb.html#Emblems</ref>

The cardinal and the dogwood petal are among Virginia's most well-known emblems, but Virginia's has many emblems:

* State Bat: Virginia Big Eared [[Bat]] (an endangered species)
* State Beverage: [[Milk]]
* State Bird: Northern [[cardinal]]
* State Boat: Chesapeake Bay Deadrise
* State Dog: American Foxhound
* State Dance: Square Dance (Virginia Reel)
* State Fish: Brook [[Trout]]
* State Flower (and tree): American Dogwood
* State Fossil: Chesapeten Jeffersonius
* State Insect: Tiger Swallowtail [[Butterfly]]
* State Shell: Oyster Shell <ref>http://legis.state.va.us/cap_class/4-5/4_5_emb_symb.html#Emblems</ref>

==Transportation==
Virginia is well served by the [[Interstate Highway System]] including at least two of the busiest highways on the Eastern Coast of the US, I-81 and I-95. Interstate 81, which moves through the city of Bristol, TN/VA is popular with tractor-trailers and some travelers, while 95 is a popular tourist highway. The famed [[Beltway]] (I-495) surrounds Washington DC by looping through Northern Virginia. Richmond is served by I-95 and a beltway looping off I-64. Rail lines are not as busy as they were historically, but important coal lines still make their way through the Valley and Ridge Region of Virginia. [[Amtrak]] lines Richmond and Alexandria to the cities in the Eastern US. Dulles International is one of the busiest airports in the US and the Northern Virginia area is also served by Ronald Reagan National Airport. Norfolk Virginia is one of the largest ports on the East Coast. The Virginia Inland Port in Front Royal Virginia is linked by rail line to Norfolk.

==History==
See [[History of Virginia]]

The '''History of Virginia''' began with the settlement of the geographic region now known as the Commonwealth of Virginia in the U.S. thousands of years ago by Native Americans. Permanent European settlement began with English settlers at Jamestown in 1607. Tobacco emerged as a profitable export crop, and the Virginia Colony became the richest and largest British colonies in North America. The year 2007 marked the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown.

As one of the original 13 United States which won their independence from Great Britain during the [[American Revolution]], Virginia produced more national leaders than any state, including four of the first five presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe). The new state gave up its western lands to form Kentucky and Ohio. During the first half of the 19th century, Virginia grew less rapidly than industrial states to the north, or cotton states to the south. The state exported young people and slaves to form plantations and farms to the west and south.

Virginia was a slave state but refused to join the cotton states in the new Confederacy until Lincoln called for troops to invade the Confederacy. Then it seceded and Richmond became the new Confederate capital. After many decades of sectional hostility in 1861 West Virginia broke away as a separate state and joined the Union.

With the Yankees intent on capturing Richmond, Virginia became the main battlefield of the war, which it lost in 1865 as its greatest general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered.

Reconstruction brought the liberation of the state's slaves, and proved less contentious than elsewhere in the South. Virginia was poor after 1865, though the new popularity of cigarettes boosted its tobacco industry. After 1940, prosperity returned. [[World War II]] gave the state a major naval and industrial economic base. Desegregation of schools and the integration of African Americans in many other aspects of the society were major issues from the 1950s to the 1970s and the changes did not come without considerable efforts. However, in 1989 [[Douglas Wilder]] became the first elected black governor anywhere in the country. By the 1980s the suburban fringes of Washington D.C. known as Northern Virginia saw the greatest growth and prosperity, a trend which was also seen in the [[Hampton Roads]] region.

Politically, the state was a stronghold of conservative Democrats for most of the 20th century, with a new strength shown by conservative Republicans in the final decade. In the early 21st century, funding for transportation needs emerged as the most controversial single issue.

In partisan terms, the two parties compete furiously for the legislature and the governorship. In presidential elections Virginia was reliably Republican from 1968 until 2004, but in 2008 Obama won, thanks to the growing liberal strength in the Washington suburbs.

===Mother of Presidents===
Virginia is often called the ''Mother of Presidents'' or ''Birthplace of Presidents'' because eight U.S. Presidents have been born in there. Four of the first five presidents, [[George Washington]], [[Thomas Jefferson]], [[James Madison]], and [[James Monroe]], were Virginians. The remaining Presidents from Virginia are [[William Henry Harrison]], [[John Tyler]], [[Zachary Taylor]], and [[Woodrow Wilson]]. Many of their Virginia homes such as Jefferson's [[Monticello]] and Washington's Mount Vernon are popular tourist destinations.<ref>http://www.virginia.org/site/features.asp?featureID=94</ref>

Virginia is perhaps the only state in the U.S. to have been the birthplace of four presidents of a foreign nation, Liberian presidents Joseph Jenkins Roberts, James Spriggs Payne, Anthony W. Gardiner, and Sam Houston, first president of the Republic of Texas. <ref> http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sam-houston-born </ref>

==See also==
*[[State Governors]]

==References==
[http://www.virginia.gov/cmsportal3/ Governor website]
<references/>

{{USstates}}
[[Category:States of the United States]]
[[Category:Virginia| ]]
[[Category:The South]]

Central Intelligence Agency

2015-12-16T00:42:06Z

Commiechameleon: I fixed a couple spelling errors.

[[Image:CIA HQ.jpg|thumb|right|The CIA Headquarters]]
The '''Central Intelligence Agency''', or CIA is an intelligence-gathering agency in the [[United States]] government. As the U.S.'s primary cocaine hoarder and [[intelligence agency]], it is responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, entities, and persons, and reporting such information to the branches of the U.S. government. The head is the "Director of Central Intelligence" (DCI).

It is also involved in covert [[espionage]] and paramilitary operations in support of its mission to protect the national security of the United States.

Based in Langley, [[Virginia]], the CIA is a widespread organization spanning the globe.

==History==
[[Image:CIA Logo.gif|thumb|left|The CIA Seal]]
===OSS in World War II===
In 1941 President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] was relying on intelligence information provided by British intelligence (and slanted by them to favor their position.) In 1941 he created the '''OSS''' [[Office of Strategic Services]], which was the first independent US intelligence agency. Due to extensive Soviet-Communist penetration,<ref>[http://webroots.org/library/usamisc/oss-cia0.html ''The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency''], Michael Warner, CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Published: United States Central Intelligence Agency, 2000. </ref> the OSS was disbanded after the war and its functions were split between the Departments of State and War. A Central Intelligence Group was reorganized in January 1946.<ref>https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th-grade/operation-history/history-of-the-cia.html#changing-face-of-intelligence</ref>

Every U.S. President since [[George Washington]] has used covert action as a part of their broader foreign policy, whether Republican or Democratic, [[Liberalism|liberal]] or conservative.<ref>Daugherty (2004), p.23.</ref> The majority of these covert action operations were successful.<ref name="Daugherty 2004, Preface XX">Daugherty (2004), Preface XX.</ref> Most of the operations that were not successful were directed by the President over the objections of the CIA.<ref name="Daugherty 2004, Preface XX"/> Some of the most controversial "covert action" programs, such as the [[Iran-Contra]] affair, were not primarily the work of the CIA.<ref>Daugherty (2004), p.30.</ref> Covert action programs are also much less expensive than overt political or military actions. The Pentagon commissioned a study to determine whether the CIA or the [[U.S. Department of Defense]] (DoD) should conduct covert action paramilitary operations. Their study determined that the CIA should maintain this capability and be the "sole government agency conducting covert action." The DoD found that, even under U.S. law, it does not have the legal authority to conduct covert action, nor the operational agility to carry out these types of missions.<ref>Study Urges CIA Not To Cede Paramilitary Functions to Pentagon, Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 5, 2005; Page A08, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A168-2005Feb4.htm</ref> The operation in May 2011 that resulted in the death of [[Osama bin Laden]] was a covert action under the authority of the CIA.<ref name="washingtonpost1">{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/osama_bin_laden_killed_in_cia_operation/2011/05/01/AFLiqoVF_gallery.html?wprss=rss_national-security |title=Osama bin Laden killed in CIA operation |work=The Washington Post |accessdate=May 19, 2011 |date=May 8, 2011}}</ref><ref name="Dilanian">{{cite news|last=Dilanian |first=Ken |url=http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-osama-bin-laden-cia-20110502,0,6466214.story?track=rss |title=CIA led U.S. special forces mission against Osama bin Laden |work=Los Angeles Times |date=May 2, 2011 |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref>

===CIA established 1947===
in 1944, [[William J. Donovan]], the OSS's head, proposed a new organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies." Under Donovan's plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services, including those run by the military. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad."

In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the "National Security Council" and the Central Intelligence Agency. Americans, still mesmerized by the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor, welcomed the new spy agency because it seemed to promise the nation would always stay on alert. The CIA's Ivy League intellectuals and scions of high society contrasted sharply with the Pentagon brass; an adversarial relationship was born that still sours relations between the two. The CIA's budget was minuscule ($5 million) until NSC-68 in 1950 provided blueprints for an active Cold War.

====Congress====
From the start isolationists warned of the danger that the CIA might become an out-of-control "American Gestapo" like the Nazi secret police, which could trample American civil liberties On the other side was fear of a nuclear Pearl Harbor without warning.

In general Congress defered to the White House until the 1970s on intelligence matters. Only a few members of a few select committees had any legislative oversight; they kept floor debate and written records to a minimum. Congress supported covert action, even though Roscoe Hillenkoetter (DCI 1947-50) and Walter Bedell Smith (DCI 1950-53), both military men, showed little interest. President Eisenhower, by contrast, demanded more covert activities and Allen Dulles (DCI 1953-61) obliged.

Congressional support for more aggressive policies increased throughout the 1950s. Congress took its oversight responsibilities seriously and even challenged the CIA when an alarming intelligence failure, such as when the CIA failed to predict the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb (1950), the Korean War (1953), the [[Hungarian uprising]] (1956), or the U-2 downing (1960). Eisenhower discouraged Congressional probes of agency activities, but Dulles, sometimes gained Congressional support by leaking bits of information to influential conngressmen.<ref>David M. Barrett, ''The CIA & Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy'' (2005)</ref>

The CIA often functions as a resource to both individual legislators and congressional committees supplying related background and assessment for congressional decision. An example of this is the 1991 referral to the agency by Senator [[Jesse Helms]], ranking member of Minority Staff of the Committee on Foreign Relations, requesting information and verification of information coming from Israel concerning the survival of the passsengers and crew (including Cong. [[Larry McDonald]]) of [[Korean Airlines Flight 007]], shot down by the Soviets in 1983. Helms wrote his letter [http://www.rescue007.org/helms_letter.htm] to Boris Yelstin requesting the military communications of the shootdown and locations of camps holding suvivors based on the CIA response to his request [http://www.rescue007.org/nance_letter.htm].

===Soviet Estimates===
The CIA began systematic estimates of the Soviet economy during Max Millikan's tenure as the founding director of the Office of Research and Reports (1951-1952). The strategy was to start with an "inventory of ignorance" and then reduce the list of unknowns through successive approximations. Soviet military expenditures were estimated by the "building-block method," which began by estimating the number ships, planes, jeeps, barracks and even soldiers in use, then estimating the procurement and operating costs of each, and adding them up using estimated prices. The building blocks had advantages in that published data on physical units seemed accurate and in any case were easier to verify through covert means. The elaborate reports of the 1990s included almost 1800 such categories. Since the Soviets lackd computers and had rudimentary accounting procedures, the CIA had a better overall picture of Soviet military spending than did the Kremlin. The reports emphasized physical units, realizing that expenditures alone could not predict what sort of military threat in the future would be presented by the Red Army. To estimate costs the CIA used analogs--using Soviet trucks or American tanks, for instance, to estimate the costs of Soviet tanks--and then adjusted for differences in weight and performance. Analog-based data, far shakier than direct-cost data, accounted for over half of earlier estimates, dropping to about one-third by the late 1980s. In the 1960s the CIA increasingly used quantitative techniques, of the sort promoted in American business schools. A crisis in the mid-1970s was caused by as a combination of external pressures, new data (some from a key Russian who defected to the West) and internal works forced a major revision of the defense burden, showing the proportion of of the overall Soviet economy devoted to the military. The crisis sparked heated public debate when the CIA announced that their earlier estimates of Soviet defense spending at 6-8% of GNP was too low by as much as half; the revised estimated burden ranged from 11-13%, indicating a severe economic burden that slowed Soviet growth.<ref> Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, ''Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990.'' (1998)</ref>

===Directorate of Science & Technology===
The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services. Albert D. "Bud" Wheeler (1963-66) and Carl E. Duckett (1966-76) built the directorate into a strong component of the CIA and then guided it through its golden age of technical innovation. In contrast, decisions by Ruth David (1995-98) contributed, Richelson (2001) argues, to a decline in the importance and status of the directorate as it lost control over key responsibilities, including the analysis of satellite photography.

Richelson (2001) explains the major DS&T's achievements, especially reconnaissance airplanes and a series of increasingly sophisticated surveillance satellites, with cameras that could photograph Soviet bomber bases and missile sites with startling clarity from orbits deep in space. In 1960, the first effective satellite produced coverage of more than one million square miles, surpassing all previous U-2 photography combined. This imagery revealed that the Soviets had far fewer bombers and (later) [[ICBM|ICBMs]] than the Pentagon expected. The worst-case estimates of the U.S. Air Force proved wildly exaggerated, and the myths of the bomber and missile "gaps" were punctured by empirical data.

===Dulles years 1953-51===
[[Allen Dulles]], who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by a containment policy, with serious discussions of roll-back policies going on, especially in the State Department. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, [[John Foster Dulles]], was simultaneously Secretary of State. Allen Dulles was head of CIA 1953-61.

Allen Dulles became the trusted advisor on what was going to happen in the world to President Eisenhower and to his brother John Foster Dulles. The CIA gathered information and provided written assessments of the capabilities and intentions of all world leaders. Its regular briefings gave each president the sense that he knew exactly what was happening across the globe. Like ingenious prognosticators through the ages, the CIA's predictions seemed highly explicit yet never could quite be pinned down. They failed to predict any of the major surprises of the postwar era. On the other hand, estimates of the performance of the Soviet economy proved much more accurate than the information Moscow itself possessed, and forecast the failure of that economy in the 1980s.

Numerous covert actions were launched to neutralize perceived Communist expansion in Iran and Guatemala. Some of the largest operations were aimed at [[Cuba]] after the coming to power of the communists in early 1960. In 1960-61 the CIA organized Cuban exiles, whose invasion of Cuba failed totally at the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion.

Dulles devoted 80% of his much enlarged budget ($82 million) to covert (secret) operations to contain Communism. On the other side was the Soviet [[KGB]]. The head of the K.G.B.'s first chief directorate, Leonid Shabarshin later explained, "The essence of the KGB's active undertakings was to inflict political and moral damage on our basic opponent, the United States. . . . [so] We compromised political figures, organs of the press, and Americans whose activities were in some way unwelcome [to the Soviets]." The KGB veteran revealed that every "active measure" against the enemies of the Soviet Union abroad was submitted by KGB to the Politburo “and was implemented only with its permission. The results of the action were also reported to the Politburo."<ref> See [http://www.iwp.edu/news/newsID.139/news_detail.asp Herbert Romerstein, "Divide and Conquer: The KGB disinformation campaign against Ukrainians and Jews," ''Ukrainian Quarterly'' Fall 2004 online edition]</ref> Which side performed better remains an open question. CIA money subsidized anti-communist intellectuals and strengthened liberal political parties across Europe and the Third World. Striking low-cost successes early on reinforced the CIA's mastermind image. CIA-supported parties defeated the Communists in Italy and France in the late 1940s. A handful of agents provided assistance to opposition groups which forced anti-American prime ministers out of office in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). CIA counterintelligence tried to neutralize the KGB and other hostile agencies, like the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), Communist East Germany's [[Stasi]] and Cuba's DGI.

===Early Operations===
The principal problem facing the first generation of covert operators was murky objectives. Was covert action designed merely to "contain" the Soviet Union or to "roll it back?" Covert operations were handled by the CIA's "Office of Policy Coordination" (OPC). There was confusion on its mission OPC --was it merely to stir up trouble behind the Iron Curtain or to "liberate" and [[rollback]] the Kremlin's Eastern European satellites? One early covert operation was a total failure in Albania, where the OPC worked with Britain's [[MI6]] to train and deploy anti-communist commandos committed to overthrowing the Soviet-backed regime of Enver Hoxha. Frank Wisner, the first OPC director, regarded the Albanian operation as "a clinical experiment to see whether larger rollback operations would be feasible elsewhere," but [[Kim Philby]], a Soviet mole inside MI6, leaked the details to the Kremlin, with ghastly results for the anti-Hoxha forces.

The CIA supported resistance movements and dissidents in the communist regimes of [[Eastern Europe]] and the Soviet Union during the [[Cold War]]. One example is the counterespionage operations following the discovery of the Farewell dossier which some argue contributed to the fall of the Soviet regime.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002 |title=CIA slipped bugs to Soviets |work=[[Washington Post]] |publisher=[[NBC]] |date= |accessdate=2008-11-21}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm |title=The Farewell Dossier|publisher=[[Central Intelligence Agency]] |date= |accessdate=2008-11-21}}</ref>

====Korea====
The CIA sponsored a variety of activities during the [[Korean War]]. These activities included maritime operations behind North Korean lines. Yong Do Island, connected by a rugged isthmus to Pusan, served as the base for those operations. These operations were carried out by well-trained Korean guerrillas. The four principal U.S. advisers responsible for the training and operational planning of those special missions were Dutch Kramer, Tom Curtis, George Atcheson and Joe Pagnella. All of these Paramilitary Operations Officers operated through a CIA front organization called the Joint Advisory Commission, Korea (JACK), headquartered at Tongnae, a village near Pusan, on the peninsula's southeast coast.<ref name="historynet.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.historynet.com/korean-war-cia-sponsored-secret-naval-raids.htm |title=Korean War: CIA-Sponsored Secret Naval Raids |publisher=History Net |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref> These paramilitary teams were responsible for numerous maritime raids and ambushes behind North Korean lines, as well as [[prisoner of war]] rescue operations. These were the first maritime [[unconventional warfare]] units that trained indigenous forces as [[Proxy war|surrogates]]. They also provided a model, along with the other CIA-sponsored ground based paramilitary Korean operations, for the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) activities conducted by the U.S. military and the CIA/SAD in [[Vietnam]]. In addition, CIA paramilitary ground-based teams worked directly for U.S. military commanders, specifically with the 8th Army, on the "White Tiger" initiative. This initiative included inserting South Korean commandos and CIA Paramilitary Operations Officers prior to the two major amphibious assaults on [[North Korea]], including the landing at [[Inchon]].

====Iran 1953====
Prime Minister [[Mohammed Mossadegh]], originally elected in one of the Shah's elections, had driven out the Shah and become the de facto dictator of Iran, as he dissolved the Parliament and abolished free elections with a secret ballot, after declaring victory in a referendum where he claimed 99.9% of the vote.<ref>{{Cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-chapter2.html | title=Trying to Persuade a Reluctant Shah | work=The New York Times}}</ref> He gained power through organized terrorism and received funding from the [[KGB]].<ref>http://jebhemelli.net/mossadegh/mossaddegh_1951m_of_y%20Page%202.htm ''Time'' article from 1951 on Mossadegh's seizure of power</ref> Suppressing widespread discontent, as recounted in a 2003 ''Time Magazine'' report, he ordered police to violently massacre more than 300 unarmed protestors.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,450997-1,00.html</ref> Under his rule, Iran became the first Middle Eastern country to simply steal and nationalize Western oil fields--even though the Iranians did not know how to use them on their own.<ref>http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/index.php?news=2635</ref> The result was the total collapse of the Iranian economy. Iranian oil supplies were taken off the world market.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,450997-1,00.html</ref><ref>http://jebhemelli.net/mossadegh/mossaddegh_1951m_of_y%20Page%202.htm</ref> This doomed all future economic development in Iran, a "basket-case" nation plagued with rampant disease, illiteracy, and religious fanaticism.
President Truman had met with Mossadegh and pledged US support against the English, expressing admiration for his efforts at economic justice. His administration concluded that England sought "''a rule or ruin''" policy on Iran. The Eisenhower administration saw things rather differently.

When Mossadegh delayed settling with Anglo-Iranian Oil on the takeover of the company, the British, under [[Winston Churchill]], approached the CIA with a plan to remove the Premier. The British could not do it alone. Allen Dulles, the CIA director, and his brother John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, agreed. The Dulles brothers assigned the task of overseeing the clandestine venture to intelligence operative Kermit Roosevelt.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,450997-1,00.html#ixzz16K23QRPB</ref> According to ''Time'':
<blockquote>
The CIA's fingerprints were everywhere. Operatives paid off Iranian newspaper editors to print pro-Shah and anti-Mossadegh stories. They produced their own stories and editorial cartoons and published fabricated interviews. They secured the cooperation of the Iranian military. They spread antigovernment rumors. They prepared phony documents to show secret agreements between Mossadegh and the local Communist Party. They masqueraded as communists, threatened conservative Muslim clerics and even staged a sham fire-bombing of the home of a religious leader. They incited rioters to set fire to a pro-Mossadegh newspaper. They stage-managed the appearance of Mossadegh's successor, General Zahedi, whose personal bank account they fattened.
</blockquote>

Mossadegh was overthrown, and the ousted [[Mohammed Reza Pahlavi| Shah]] returned to Iran in triumph. Cheering crowds trumpeted his return, as he promptly launched new electoral reforms introducing voting to all members of society--including women. Iran was praised in the West as a beacon of stability, and maintained close relations with the United States until 1979.

The administration of [[Bill Clinton]] formally apologized to Iran for the CIA-supported coup in a speech made in 2000.<ref>http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/speeches/albright-17-03-00.htm</ref> President [[Barack Obama]] also made a seperate apology.<ref>http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/227855/zeal-zelaya/conrad-black</ref>

Conrad Black, arguing that the CIA role was minimal as compared to the efforts of the Iranian army and the internal fighting in Iran, mocked Obama over "''his apology for President Eisenhower’s approval of the overthrow of the deranged Iranian demagogue Mohammed Mossadegh.''"<ref>http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/227855/zeal-zelaya/conrad-black</ref>

====Guatemala 1954====
The CIA helped overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in [[Guatemala]] in 1954. This was one of its most controversial operations, its model for subsequent covert action against countries like [[Cuba]], and its first attempt at regime change in Latin America.

Arbenz was elected without a secret ballot. He considered himself a communist and joined the Communist Party in 1957. His land reform, designed by the Communist Party, was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, which he then purged. His regime openly praised Stalin, relied on the communists for key decisions, and received arms from the Soviet
bloc.<ref>Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954
(Princeton University Press, 1991), pp84, 147, 145, 155, 181-2, a virtual hagiography of Arbenz.</ref> He killed hundreds of his opponents.<ref>“Antecedentes Inmediatos (1944-1961): El derrocamiento de Arbenz y la intervención militar de
1954,” in Comisión para el Esclaracimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala: Memoria Del Silencio
(Guatemala, 1999), Capítulo primero (findings of Guatemala's independant truth commission after the restoration of civilian rule and democracy)</ref> The CIA intervened because it feared that a communist dictatorship would become a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere.<ref>Nicholas Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operation in Guatemala,
1952-1954 (Stanford University Press, 1999) pp24-7, based on the CIA archives</ref>

The Truman administration began developing contingency plans to remove Arbenz in 1952, in the event that he became a threat to American interests in the region. In the face of widespread popular discontent in Guatemala and mass protests organized by the Catholic Church, the CIA used black propaganda to spread panic among the population. In the midst of a low-level internal civil war, the Eisenhower administration mobilized disaffected Guatemalan exiles to invade the country from neighboring [[Honduras]]. Arbenz, a fighter until the end, donned his colonel's uniform and prepared himself for war with the United States. Ultimately, however, there was very little fighting at all; the military failed to support Arbenz due to its own concerns over his perceived radicalism. The US-armed rebellion quickly took over the country, to the surprise of the CIA, which had expected much fiercer resistance. With the army promptly joining the revolt, Arbenz fled the country in a panic. He was allowed exile by the new regime.

Vice-President [[Richard Nixon]] praised the new elections held by the military regime, declaring that Guatemala represented "the first time in history that a Communist government has ever been overthrown and replaced by a free one." However, Guatemala would be plagued with instability for decades. A series of military coups rocked the country, as Soviet and Cuban support for Communist violence caused bloody civil strife. After a 1982 coup, Guatemala was placed under a US arms embargo imposed on human rights grounds. A vicious genocide reminiscent of the mass killing of the Hmong in [[Laos]] was then carried out against the Mayan Indians, in which scores of thousands were massacred.

In Guatemala in 1954, the CIA operation was marked by chronic lapses in security, the failure to plan beyond the operation's first stages, the Agency's poor understanding of the intentions of the Guatemalan Army, the local communist party (the Guatemalan Labor Party), and the government, the hopeless weakness of invasion leader Carlos Castillo Armas's troops, and the failure to make provisions for the possibility of defeat. Just as the entire operation seemed hopeless, and before there were any significant violent attacks against it, the leftist Guatemalan government suddenly, inexplicably collapsed and a pro-American government took over.<ref>Nick Cullather, ''Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954.'' (1999)</ref>

====Cuba====
The Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations approved initiatives for CIA-trained Cuban anti-communist exiles and refugees to land in [[Cuba]] and attempt to overthrow the government of Cuban leader [[Fidel Castro]]. Plans originally formed under Eisenhower were scaled back under Kennedy. The largest and most complicated coup effort, approved at White House level, was the [[Bay of Pigs]] operation.

The CIA made a number of attempts to assassinate Castro, often with White House approval, as in Operation Mongoose.

====Iraq 1960====
In February 1960, the United States planned a coup against the government of [[Iraq]] headed by dictator Abd al-Karim Qasim, who two years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The U.S. was concerned about the growing influence of Iraqi Communist Party government officials under his administration, as well as his threats to invade [[Kuwait]], which almost caused a war between Iraq and Britain.

According to the [[Church Committee]], the CIA planned a "special operation" to "incapacitate" an Iraqi Colonel believed to be "promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq." The aim was to send Qasim a poisoned handkerchief, "which, while not likely to result in total disablement, would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months." During the course of the Committee's investigation, the CIA stated that the handkerchief was "in fact never received (if, indeed, sent)." It added that the colonel: "Suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad (an event we had nothing to do with) after our handkerchief proposal was considered."

====Dominican Republic 1961====
The CIA supported the overthrow of [[Rafael Trujillo]], dictator of the [[Dominican Republic]], on 30 May 1961.<ref>Frank, Mitch. [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004176,00.html "The CIA's Secret Army."] ''Time Magazine.'' February 3, 2003.</ref> In a report to the Deputy [[Attorney General of the United States]], CIA officials described the agency as having "no active part" in the assassination and only a "faint connection" with the groups that planned the killing,<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wilderotter.pdf Justice Department Memo, 1975;] [[National Security Archive]]</ref> but the internal CIA investigation, by its Inspector General, "disclosed quite extensive Agency involvement with the plotters."<ref name="NSAEBB222-1973-05-08">{{citation
| url = http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
| volume = George Washington University National Security Archives Electronic Briefing Book No. 222, "The CIA's Family Jewels"
| title = Memorandum for the Executive Secretary, CIA Management Committee. Subject: Potentially Embarrassing Agency Activities
| editor = Blanton, William (editor)
| date = 8 May 1973
}}</ref> Trujillo had killed 50,000 of his own people.

====Congo Crisis====
Humberto Fontova has written with his characteristic wit and élan:
<blockquote>
Later, many of these Cuban-American BOP vets itched to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘65. There they linked up with the legendary mercenary "Mad Mike" Hoare and his "Wild Geese."

Together Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of the alternately Chinese-and Soviet-backed "Simbas" of Laurent Kabila, who were murdering, raping and munching (many were cannibals) their way through the defenseless Europeans still left in the recently abandoned Belgian colony.

Forget Frank Church and the Clintonites. Ask the hundreds of Europeans rescued from butchery (literally!) by these men. You'll hear a different song, believe me. You can read about their exploits in Hoare's book, "Congo Mercenary," and in Enrique Ros' "Cubanos Combatientes" (sadly, available only in Spanish).

Kabila made Idi Amin look like Gandhi. Castro, itching to be rid of this nuisance, sent Che (code-named "Tatu") and a force of his rebel army "veterans" to help these cannibals. The Congolese reds, unfamiliar with Che's true record, accepted Tatu gratefully.

The masterful "Tatu's" first order of business was plotting an attack on a garrison guarding a hydroelectric plant in a place called Front Bendela on the Kimbi River in Eastern Congo. His masterstroke was to be an elaborate ambush of the garrison.

The wily Tatu was stealthily leading his force into position when they heard shots. Whoops! ... Hey?! WHAT THE?! Ambushers became ambushed – and by the same garrison he thought was guarding the plant. Che lost half his men and barely escaped with his life.

....Thing was, any teen gang member in East L.A. or south Bronx has 10 times the battle experience and savvy of any of these strutting Fidelista "Comandantes." Imagine the Germans atop Monte Cassino outnumbering and outgunning the Allies 10 to 1 in early ‘44. Hell, they'd STILL be there. It was a defender's dream.

Well, the brilliant Tatu and his comandantes had that very set-up in a place called Fizi-Baraka in Eastern Congo for their second clash with the mad dogs of imperialism. Mad Mike and his CIA allies sized the place up and attacked. Within one day the mighty Che's entire force was scrambling away in panic, throwing away their arms, running and screaming like old ladies with rats running up their legs.<ref>http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/world/cuba/4455-the-real-che-guevara.html</ref>
</blockquote>

====Laos====
The CIA organized [[Hmong people|Hmong]] tribes to fight against the North Vietnamese-backed [[Pathet Lao]] communists in [[Laos]], and used [[Air America (airline)|Air America]] to "drop 46 million pounds of foodstuffs....transport tens of thousands of troops, conduct a highly successful photoreconnaissance program, and engage in numerous clandestine missions using night-vision glasses and state-of-the-art electronic equipment."<ref>Leary, William M. "CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974." CIA. June 27, 2008. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art7.html</ref>

====Chile 1970-3====
The election of Marxist candidate [[Salvador Allende]] as President of Chile in September 1970 led President [[Richard Nixon]] to order that Allende not be allowed to take office.<ref name="The Pinochet File">{{cite book|last=Kornbluh|first=Peter|title=The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability|year=2003|publisher=The New Press|location=New York|isbn=1-56584-936-1}}</ref> Nixon pursued a vigorous campaign of covert resistance to Allende, first designed to convince the Chilean congress to confirm [[Jorge Alessandri]] as the winner of the election. When this failed, [[false flag]] operatives approached senior Chilean military officers, in "some two dozen contacts", with the message that "the U.S. desired....a coup."<ref name="The Pinochet File"/> Once Allende took office, extensive covert efforts continued with U.S.-funded [[black propaganda]] placed in ''[[El Mercurio]]'', strikes organized against Allende, and funding for Allende opponents. When ''El Mercurio'' requested significant funds for covert support in September 1971, “...in a rare example of presidential micromanagement of a covert operation, Nixon personally authorized the $700,000—and more if necessary—in covert funds to ''El Mercurio''<ref name="The Pinochet File"/>. Following an extended period of social, political, and economic unrest, General [[Augusto Pinochet]] assumed power in a violent coup d'état on September 11, 1973; among the dead was Allende.

The Chilean Chamber of Deputies accused Allende of support of armed groups, torture, illegal arrests, muzzling the press, confiscating private property, and not allowing people to leave the country.<ref>[[s:Agreement of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile|"Declaration on the Breakdown of Chile's Democracy,"]] Resolution of the Chamber of Deputies, Chile, August 22, 1973.</ref> Mark Falcoff credits the CIA with preserving democratic opposition to Allende and preventing the "consolidation" of his supposed "totalitarian project".<ref name="Kissinger and Chile">Falcoff, Mark, "Kissinger and Chile", ''Commentary,'' 2003. See also his ''Modern Chile.''</ref> However, Peter Kornbluh asserts that the CIA destabilized Chile and helped create the conditions for the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état]], which led to years of dictatorship under [[Augusto Pinochet]].<ref name="The Pinochet File"/>

====Iraq 1973-5====
The CIA armed Kurdish rebels fighting Ba'athist tyranny.

====Angola 1975====
In the Angolan Civil War, the Communist MPLA (''People's Movement for the Liberation of [[Angola]]'') government was pitted against various right-wing insurgencies as well as an invasion from [[South Africa]]. The CIA covertly attempted to overthrow the MPLA dictatorship in 1975,<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c35COXObeo8&feature=fvw Former CIA head in Angola discusses the operation on CNN</ref> but Cuba militarily intervened to save the regime from certain collapse. The Communist government subsequently killed up to one million people through massacre and forced starvation.<ref>Médecins Sans Frontières, “Angola: An Alarming Nutritional Situation,” August 1999</ref> The U.S., advised by Kissinger, supported the rebels FNLA (''National Front for the Liberation of Angola''), led by Holden Roberto, and UNITA (''National Union for the Total Independence of Angola''), led by [[Jonas Savimbi]], as well as the ''Mozambican National Resistance'' (RENAMO), and the invasion of Angola by South African troops. The FNLA was defeated and UNITA was forced to take its fight into the bush. Only under Reagan's presidency would U.S. support for UNITA return. (See [[Reagan Doctrine]])

The Democrats in Congress cut off aid to UNITA under President Ford, just as they abandoned South Vietnam and Cambodia to murderous Communist bloodbath. "''A great nation cannot escape its responsibilities,''" Ford admonished them. Emboldened, Cuba would soon militarily intervene on behalf of the Communist dictatorship in [[Ethiopia]], which killed 1.25 million people through massacre and forced starvation.<ref>Washington Post, March 18, 1978; New York Times, December 14, 1994.</ref>

===Scandals===
Attacks on the CIA came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period was the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, take control of war-making, and more closely supervise the executive agencies.<ref> Kathryn S. Olmsted, ''Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI.'' (1996). 255 pp. </ref> Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President [[Richard Nixon]]'s subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary.<ref> In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, [[H.R. Haldeman]], to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the [[Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]] of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".</ref>

The CIA sent hundreds of agents to Vietnam and Laos to build up anticommunist guerrilla groups. The CIA assisted (but did not actually operate) the "Phoenix" program by which South Vietnamese police forces identified and arrested Viet Cong leaders (torturing many and killing several thousand of them). In the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, it planned several assassinations, with [[Fidel Castro]] a target of "Operation Mongoose." Castro was never harmed. Indeed, as a hostile Senate committee concluded, the agency did not in fact assassinate anyone. Congress has never passed a law forbidding assassinations, but every president since Ford has issued executive orders that prohibit direct (or indirect) attempts at assassination.

===Revival under Reagan===
In 1981 President Reagan appointed his campaign manager [[Bill Casey]] to run the CIA; Casey, a dynamic veteran of O.S.S. espionage, revived the CIA into a powerful instrument of rollback policy. With nuclear deterrence tying the Kremlin's hands, Casey used the CIA to attack the weak links in the Soviet empire. In Afghanistan, it funded and trained Mujahidin guerrillas who deliberately created "another Vietnam" to weaken the Soviet invaders, and indeed finally did defeat the Soviet invasion. Anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan and Cambodia received strong support from Congress, but operations in Angola and especially Nicaragua became the focus of intense political controversy. When Congress one year prohibited the CIA from operating in Nicaragua, Reagan's White House exploited a loophole by sending its own staffer, [[Oliver North]], to funnel arms and money to the Contra guerrillas.

====Afghanistan 1978-89====
From 1950 to 1979, U.S. foreign assistance provided Afghanistan with more than $500 million in loans, grants, and surplus agricultural commodities to develop transportation facilities, increase agricultural production, expand the educational system, stimulate industry, and improve government administration. The [[Peace Corps]] was active in Afghanistan between 1962 and 1979.

After the April 1978 Saur Revolution, relations between the two nations deteriorated. In February 1979, U.S. Ambassador Adolph "Spike" Dubs was murdered in Kabul after Afghan security forces burst in on his kidnappers. The U.S. then reduced bilateral assistance and terminated a small military training program. All remaining assistance agreements were ended after the [[Soviet-Afghan War| Soviet invasion of Afghanistan]].

One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants.<ref>Time Magazine, 13 May 2003, "The Oily Americans," http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,450997-2,00.html</ref> About $3 billion dollars were sent to equip them through the [[Pakistan]]i secret service, the ISI, in a program called ''Operation Cyclone''.

With US and other funding, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents. On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/ungomap/background.html |title=United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Background |publisher=United Nations |date= |accessdate=2008-11-21}}</ref> with the last Soviets leaving on February 15, 1989.

No Americans trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen.<ref>Bergen, Peter. Holy War, Inc. New York: Free Press, 2001. Pg.66</ref> The skittish CIA had fewer than 10 operatives in the region.<ref>The New Republic, "TRB FROM WASHINGTON, Back to Front" by Peter Beinart, October 8, 2001.</ref> Pakistan's secret service, [[Inter-Services Intelligence]] (ISI), was used as an intermediary for most of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance.

The early foundations of [[al-Qaida]] were allegedly built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/27/we_arm_the_world.php |title=We Arm The World |work=TomPaine.com |date=October 27, 2006 |first=William D. |last=Hartung |accessdate=January 27, 2012 }}</ref> However, scholars such as [[Jason Burke]], [[Steve Coll]], [[Peter Bergen]], [[Christopher Andrew (historian)|Christopher Andrew]], and [[Vasily Mitrokhin]] have argued that Bin Laden was "outside of CIA eyesight" and that there is "no support" in any "reliable source" for "the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen."<ref>Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda (Penguin, 2003), p59.</ref><ref>Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World (Penguin, 2006), p579n48.</ref><ref>Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden (Penguin, 2004), p87.</ref><ref>Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (Free Press, 2006), pp60-1.</ref>

Michael Johns, the former [[Heritage Foundation]] foreign policy analyst and [[White House]] speechwriter to President [[George H. W. Bush]], argued that "the Reagan-led effort to support [[Resistance movement|freedom fighters]] resisting Soviet oppression led successfully to the first major military defeat of the Soviet Union... Sending the Red Army packing from Afghanistan proved one of the single most important contributing factors in one of history's most profoundly positive and important developments."<ref>[http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/2008/01/charlie-wilsons-war-was-really-americas.html "Charlie Wilson's War Was Really America's War," by Michael Johns], January 19, 2008.</ref>

====Poland 1980-81====
The U.S. supported the [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity]] movement in [[Poland]], and—based on CIA intelligence—waged a public relations campaign to deter what the Carter administration felt was "an imminent move by large Soviet military forces into Poland." When the Polish government launched a crackdown of its own in 1981, however, Solidarity was not alerted. Potential explanations for this vary; some believe that the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policy-makers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention."<ref>MacEachin, Douglas J. [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/us-intelligence-and-the-polish-crisis-1980-1981/index.htm "US Intelligence and the Polish Crisis 1980-1981."] CIA. June 28, 2008.</ref>

====Cambodia 1979-95====
The Reagan Administration sought to apply the [[Reagan Doctrine]] of aiding anti-Soviet resistance movements abroad to Cambodia, which was under Vietnamese occupation following the [[Cambodian genocide]] carried out by the Communist [[Khmer Rouge]]. The Vietnamese had installed a Communist dictatorship led by a Khmer Rouge dissident. According to R.J. Rummel; the Vietnamese invasion, occupation, puppet regime, ongoing guerilla warfare, and ensuing famine killed over one million Cambodians in addition to the roughly 2.2 million who had been killed by the Khmer Rouge.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP4.HTM</ref> Ironically; the largest resistance movement fighting Cambodia's communist government was largely made up of members of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose human rights record was among the worst of the 20th century. Therefore; Reagan authorized the provision of aid to a smaller Cambodian resistance movement, a coalition called the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann; in an effort to force an end to the Vietnamese occupation. Eventually, the Vietnamese withdrew.

====El Salvador 1980-92====
In the Salvadoran Civil War between the military-led government of El Salvador and the [[Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front]] (FMLN), a coalition or umbrella organization of five left-wing militias; the US supported the Salvadoran military government.<ref name="DiPiazza">{{Cite book|title=El Salvador in Pictures|author=Francesca Davis DiPiazza|page=32}}</ref><ref name="supply">(No author.)[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922440,00.html "Supply Line for a Junta,"] ''[[TIME Magazine]]'' March 16, 1981. Retrieved 2008-07-16.</ref> America also supported the centrist Christian Democrats, who were targets of death squads. The security forces were split between reformists and right-wing extremists, who used death squads to stop political and economic change. The Carter Administration repeatedly intervened to prevent right-wing coups. The Reagan Administration repeatedly threatened aid suspensions to halt right-wing atrocities. As a result, the death squads made plans to kill the American Ambassador.<ref>Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1982 (Christian Democrats killed); Washington Post, February 24, July 13, 1980 (Carter); New York Times, November 20, 26, December 12, 1983 (Reagan); New York Times, June 24, 1984, Washington Post, June 27, 1984 (Ambassador)</ref> After years of bloody fighting; the rebels were forced, in part due to US involvement, to concede defeat. The US then threatened to cut off aid to the Salvadoran regime unless it made democratic reforms, which might have let the rebels regroup. The regime accepted. As a result; a new Constitution was promulgated, the Armed Forces regulated, a ''civilian'' police force established, the FMLN metamorphosed from a guerrilla army to a political party that competed in free and fair elections, and an amnesty law was legislated in 1993.<ref>[http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37088 Amnesty Law Biggest Obstacle to Human Rights, Say Activists] by Raúl Gutiérrez, [[Inter Press Service News Agency]], May 19, 2007</ref> El Salvador is today a prosperous and democratic nation. In 2002, a BBC article about President [[George W. Bush]]'s visit to El Salvador reported that ''U.S. officials say that President George H.W. Bush's policies set the stage for peace, turning El Salvador into a democratic success story.''<ref name="brutal">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1891145.stm "US role in Salvador's brutal war,"] BBC, March 24, 2002. Retrieved 2008-07-16.</ref>

====Nicaragua 1981-90====
After seizing power in Nicaragua, the Sandinista regime instituted dictatorial rule as early as December 1979, and formally announced a State of Emergency in 1982.
Under the new "Law for the Maintenance of Order and Public Security" the "Tribunales Populares Anti-Somozistas" allowed for the indefinite holding of suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. The State of Emergency, however, most notably affected rights and guarantees contained in the "Statute on Rights and Guarantees of Nicaraguans. Many civil liberties were curtailed or canceled such as the freedom to organize demonstrations, the inviolability of the home, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and, the freedom to strike. <ref>West, W. Gordon. "The Sandista Record on Human Rights in Nicaragua (1979-1990)" http://www.reds.msh-paris.fr/publications/revue/pdf/ds22/ds022-03.pdf (PDF). Réseau Européen Droit et Société. Retrieved 2009-03-30.</ref>
All independent news program broadcasts were suspended. In total, twenty-four programs were cancelled. In addition, Sandinista censor Nelba Cecilia Blandón issued a decree ordering all radio stations to hook up every six hours to government radio station, La Voz de La Defensa de La Patria.<ref>Chomorro Cardenal, Jaime (1988). La Prensa, The Republic of Paper. University Freedom House. p. 20.</ref>
The rights affected also included certain procedural guarantees in the case of detention including habeas corpus.<ref>West, W. Gordon, ibid.</ref> The State of Emergency was not lifted during the 1984 elections. There were many instances where rallies of opposition parties were physically broken up by Sandinsta youth or pro-Sandinista mobs. Opponents to the State of Emergency argued its intent was to crush resistance to the FSLN. James Wheelock justified the actions of the Directorate by saying "... We are annulling the license of the false prophets and the oligarchs to attack the revolution.” <ref>"Behind the State of Emergency". Envío. November 1985. http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3413. Retrieved 2008-02-16.</ref>

Jamie Glazov describes human rights under this goverment as follows: "All Nicaraguans had to take part in the Marxist experiment. Thus, in perfect Khmer Rouge style, the Sandinistas inflicted a ruthless forcible relocation of tens of thousands of Indians from their land. Like Stalin, they used state-created famine as a weapon against these "enemies of the people." The Sandinista army committed myriad atrocities against the Indian population, killing and imprisoning approximately 15,000 innocent people. The crimes included not only mass murders of innocent natives themselves, but a calculated liquidation of their entire leadership – as the Soviet army had perpetrated against the Poles in Katyn in 1943. According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the Sandinistas carried out over 8,000 political executions within three years of the revolution. The number of "anti-revolutionary" Nicaraguans who had "disappeared" in Sanadinista hands or had died "trying to escape" were numbered in the thousands. By 1983, the number of political prisoners in the Sandinistas' ruthless tyranny were estimated at 20,000. Torture was institutionalized. Numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Commission, have documented the atrocious record of Sandinista human rights abuses, which stood as the worst in Latin America. Political prisoners in Sandinista prisons, such as in Las Tejas, were consistently beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured with electric shocks. They were routinely denied food and water and kept in dark cubicles that had a surface of less than one square meter, known as chiquitas (little ones). These cubicles were too small to sit up in, were completely dark and had no sanitation and almost no ventilation.”<ref>http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=25257</ref>

The Sandinistas sent Soviet helicopter gunships and elite army units to attack the Indians; carried out mass arrests, jailings and torture; burned down 65 Indian communities; inflicted ethnic cleansing on 70,000 Indians; and tried to starve the Indians by cutting off food supplies. The Sandinistas boasted that they were “ready to eliminate the last Miskito Indian to take Sandinism to the Atlantic Coast.” <ref>Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua (Transaction Publishers, 1993), pp253-4.</ref>

For decades, Nicaragua had experienced some of the fastest economic growth in the hemisphere. Within a few years of Sandinista rule, wages had been fixed below poverty level and there was mass unemployment. There were shortages of nearly all basic goods, with inflation at 30,000%. Government studies found that three-quarters of schoolchildren suffered from malnutrition, while living standards were lower than Haiti. The World Bank found that Nicaragua was on the economic level of Somalia.

From 1981-90, the CIA aids the Contra revolution, plants harbor mines and sinks civilian ships to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. After the Boland Amendment was enacted, it became illegal under U.S. law to fund the Contras; National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, Deputy National Security Adviser Admiral John Poindexter, National Security Council staffer Col. Oliver North and others continued an illegal operation to fund the Contras, leading to the Iran-Contra affair. The U.S argued that:<ref>"Nicaragua's role in revolutionary internationalism". U.S. Department of State Bulletin. 1986.</ref>

<blockquote>
The United States initially provided substantial economic assistance to the Sandinista-dominated regime. We were largely instrumental in the OAS action delegitimizing the Somoza regime and laying the groundwork for installation for the new junta. Later, when the Sandinista role in the Salvadoran conflict became clear, we sought through a combination of private diplomatic contacts and suspension of assistance to convince Nicaragua to halt its subversion. Later still, economic measures and further diplomatic efforts were employed to try to effect changes in Sandinista behavior.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Nicaragua's neighbors have asked for assistance against Nicaraguan aggression, and the United States has responded. Those countries have repeatedly and publicly made clear that they consider themselves to be the victims of aggression from Nicaragua, and that they desire United States assistance in meeting both subversive attacks and the conventional threat posed by the relatively immense Nicaraguan Armed Forces.
</blockquote>

Due to US pressure, the Sandinistas held a blatantly rigged<ref>Martin Kriele, “Power and Human Rights in Nicaragua,” German Comments, April 1986, pp56-7, 63-7, a chapter excerpted from his Nicaragua: Das blutende Herz Amerikas (Piper, 1986). See also Robert S. Leiken, “The Nicaraguan Tangle,” New York Review of Books, December 5, 1985 and “The Nicaraguan Tangle: Another Exchange,” New York Review of Books, June 26, 1986; Alfred G. Cuzan, Letter, Commentary, December 1985 and “The Latin American Studies Association vs. the United States,” Academic Questions, Summer 1994.</ref> election in 1984. On October 5, 1985 the Sandinistas broadened the 1982 State of Emergency and suspended many more civil rights. A new regulation also forced any organization outside of the government to first submit any statement it wanted to make public to the censorship bureau for prior censorship.<ref>Chamorro Cardenal, Jaime (1988). La Prensa, A Republic of Paper, Freedom House, p. 23.</ref>

As the Contras continued to advance due to US aid, the Sandinistas struggled to maintain power. They were overthrown in 1990, when they ended the SOE and held an election that all the main opposition parties were allowed to compete in. According to P.J. O'Rourke, the Sandinistas were forced to agree to the elections by the US and the Contras, and lost them despite "the unfair advantages of using state resources for party ends, the Sandinista control of the transit system that prevented UNO supporters from attending rallies, the Sandinista domination of the army that forced soldiers to vote for Ortega and the Sandinista bureaucracy keeping $3.3 million of U.S. campaign aid from getting to UNO while Daniel Ortega spent millions donated by overseas people and millions and millions more from the Nicaraguan treasury.”<ref>“The Return of the Death of Communism: Nicaragua, February 1990," a chapter in Give War a Chance... by P. J. O'Rourke. Grove Press; reprint edition (November 2003, ISBN 0-8021-4031-9).</ref>

The Contras and the United States were accused of war crimes{{fact}} for fighting against the brutal dictatorship. Nicaraguan voters in the 1990 elections, however, thought otherwise, thanking the US for liberating them from Communist slavery: "The longer they were in power, the worse things became. It was all lies, what they promised us" (unemployed person); "I thought it was going to be just like 1984, when the vote was not secret and there was not all these observers around" (market vendor); "Don’t you believe those lies [about fraud], I voted my conscience and my principles, and so did everyone else I know" (young mother); "the Sandinistas have mocked and abused the people, and now we have given our vote to [the opposition] UNO" (ex-Sandinista officer).<ref>New York Times, March 5, 1990.</ref>

====Angola 1980s====
War between the Cuban-backed [[MPLA]] government in [[Angola]] and South African-backed [[UNITA]] forces led to decades of civil war that may have cost as many as 1 million lives.<ref>Médecins Sans Frontières, "Angola: An Alarming Nutritional Situation," August 1999</ref> The Reagan administration offered covert aid to the anti-communist [[UNITA]] rebels, led by [[Jonas Savimbi]]. Dr. Peter Hammond, a Christian missionary who lived in Angola at the time, recalled:

<blockquote>"There were over 50,000 Cuban troops in the country. The communists had attacked and destroyed many churches. MiG-23s and Mi-24 Hind helicopter gun ships were terrorising villagers in Angola. I documented numerous atrocities, including the strafing of villages, schools and churches. In 1986, I remember hearing Ronald Reagan's speech – carried on the BBC Africa service – by short wave radio: "We are going to send stinger missiles to the UNITA Freedom Fighters in Angola!" Those who were listening to the SW radio with me looked at one another in stunned amazement. After a long silence as we wondered if our ears had actually heard what we thought we heard, one of us said: "That would be nice!" We scarcely dared believe that it would happen. But it did. Not long afterwards the stinger missiles began to arrive in UNITA controlled Free Angola. Soviet aircraft were shot down. The bombing and strafing of villagers, schools and churches came to an end. Without any doubt, Ronald Reagan's policies saved many tens of thousands of lives in Angola."<ref>Hammond, Peter,[http://frontline-org-za.win03.glodns.net/articles/reagan.htm Reagan Saved Lives in Angola], ''FrontLine Fellowship,'' accessed August 9, 2012.</ref></blockquote>

Human rights observers have accused the MPLA of "genocidal atrocities," "systematic extermination," "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity."<ref>National Society for Human Rights, Press Releases, September 12, 2000, May 16, 2001.</ref> The MPLA held blatantly rigged elections in 1992, which were rejected by eight opposition parties. An official observer wrote that there was little UN supervision, that 500,000 UNITA voters were disenfranchised and that there were 100 clandestine polling stations. UNITA sent peace negotiators to the capital, where the MPLA murdered them, along with 20,000 UNITA members. Savimbi was still ready to continue the elections. The MPLA then massacred tens of thousands of UNITA and [[FNLA]] voters nationwide.<ref>National Society for Human Rights, Ending the Angolan Conflict, Windhoek, Namibia, July 3, 2000.</ref><ref>John Matthew, Letters, The Times, UK, November 6, 1992 (election observer).</ref>

====Afghanistan 2001====
In 2001, the CIA's [[Special Activities Division]] units were the first U.S. forces to enter Afghanistan. Their efforts organized the [[Afghan Northern Alliance]] for the subsequent arrival of [[United States Special Operations Command|USSOCOM]] forces. The plan for the invasion of Afghanistan was developed by the CIA, the first time in United States history that such a large-scale military operation was planned by the CIA.<ref name="channel.nationalgeographic.com">{{cite web|url=http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/cia-confidential/4199/Overview |title=CIA Confidential , Hunt for Bin Laden , National Geographic Channel |publisher=Channel.nationalgeographic.com |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref> SAD, U.S. Army Special Forces and the [[Northern Alliance]] combined to overthrow the [[Taliban]] in Afghanistan with minimal loss of U.S. lives. They did this without the need for U.S. military conventional ground forces.<ref>{{cite book |title=First In: An insiders account of how the CIA spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan |first=Gary |last=Schroen |year=2005}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: A personal account by the CIA's field Commander |first=Gary |last=Berntsen |coauthors=Ralph Pezzulla |publisher=Crown |isbn=978-0-307-23740-8 |year=2005}}</ref><ref>Woodward, Bob (2002) "Bush at War", Simon & Schuster, Inc.</ref>

The [[Washington Post]] stated in an editorial by [[John Lehman]] in 2006:

:"What made the Afghan campaign a landmark in the U.S. Military's history is that it was prosecuted by Special Operations forces from all the services, along with Navy and Air Force tactical power, operations by the Afghan Northern Alliance and the CIA were equally important and fully integrated. No large Army or Marine force was employed".<ref>Washington Post Editorial, John Lehman former Secretary of the Navy, October 2008</ref>

In a 2008 [[New York Times]] book review of ''Horse Soldiers'', a book by [[Doug Stanton]] about the invasion of Afghanistan, [[Bruce Barcott]] wrote:

:"The valor exhibited by Afghan and American soldiers, fighting to free Afghanistan from a horribly cruel regime, will inspire even the most jaded reader. The stunning victory of the horse soldiers – 350 Special Forces soldiers, 100 C.I.A. officers and 15,000 Northern Alliance fighters routing a Taliban army 50,000 strong – deserves a hallowed place in American military history".<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/books/review/Barcott-t.html?pagewanted=2 | work=The New York Times | title=Special Forces | first=Bruce | last=Barcott | date=May 17, 2009 | accessdate=March 27, 2010}}</ref>

====Iraq war====
The mission that captured Saddam Hussein was called "[[Operation Red Dawn]]". It was planned and carried out by the JSOC's Delta Force and SAD/SOG teams (together called [[Task Force 121]]). The operation eventually included around 600 soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the [[4th Infantry Division (United States)|4th Infantry Division]].<ref name="Iraq War 2004">'Black ops' shine in Iraq War, VFW Magazine, Feb, 2004, Tim Dyhouse.</ref><ref>"Saddam 'caught like a rat' in a hole". CNN. December 15, 2003. http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.irq.saddam.operation/index.html?iref=newssearch.</ref> Special operations troops probably numbered around 40. Much of the publicity and credit for the capture went to the 4th Infantry Division soldiers, but CIA and JSOC were the driving force. "Task Force 121 were actually the ones who pulled Saddam out of the hole" said Robert Andrews, former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. "They can't be denied a role anymore."<ref name="Iraq War 2004"/>

CIA paramilitary units continued to team up with the JSOC in Iraq and in 2007 the combination created a lethal force many credit with having a major impact in the success of "[[the Surge]]". They did this by killing or capturing many of the key al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq.<ref name='Woodward 2008'>Woodward, Bob. (2008) The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006–2008. Simon and Schuster</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://us.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/09/09/iraq.secret/index.html |publisher=CNN | accessdate=March 30, 2010 | title=Secret killing program is key in Iraq, Woodward says | date=September 9, 2008}}</ref> In a [[CBS]] [[60 Minutes]] interview, [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning journalist [[Bob Woodward]] described a new special operations capability that allowed for this success. This capability was developed by the joint teams of CIA and JSOC.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns_3VpOEkzM |title=‪Bob Woodward "60 Minutes" Highlights‬‏ |publisher=YouTube |date=September 7, 2008 |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref> Several senior U.S. officials stated that the "joint efforts of JSOC and CIA paramilitary units was the most significant contributor to the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq".<ref name='Woodward 2008'/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104561441 |title=New U.S. Commander In Afghanistan To Be Tested |publisher=NPR |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref> The CIA's Phoneix Program played a similar role in decimating Viet Cong insurgents during the Vietnam war.

====Libya 2011====
After the [[Arab Spring]] movement overthrew the rulers of [[Tunisia]] and [[Egypt]], its neighbours to the west and east respectively, Libya had a major revolt beginning in February 2011.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/17/live-blog-libya |title=Live Blog – Libya , Al Jazeera Blogs |publisher=Blogs.aljazeera.net |date=February 17, 2011 |accessdate=February 23, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://archive.libyafeb17.com/category/newsfeed/ |title=News ,t Libya February 17th |publisher=Libyafeb17.com |accessdate=February 23, 2011}}</ref> In response, the [[Obama administration]] sent in CIA [[Special Activities Division]] paramilitary operatives to assess the situation and gather information on the opposition forces.<ref>{{cite web|last=Allen |first=Bennett |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/03/cia-operatives-on-the-ground-in-libya.html |title=C.I.A. Operatives on the Ground in Libya , VF Daily |publisher=Vanity Fair |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Levinson |first=Charles |url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704530204576235170339510798.html?mod=googlenews_wsj |title=Ragtag Rebels Struggle in Battle |work=The Wall Street Journal |date=April 1, 2011 |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Michael |first=Vicker |url=http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-20/news/31212864_1_stratfor-provides-syrian-opposition-regime-change|title=The US Government Sent CIA / Blackwater Veteran To Fight With Rebels In Libya And Syria |publisher=Business Insider |accessdate=March 24, 2012}}</ref>

During the early phases of the Libyan air strike offensive, paramilitary operatives assisted in the recovery of a U.S. Air Force pilot who had crashed due to mechanical problems.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dailybreeze.com/latestnews/ci_17742586?source=pkg |title=UPDATED: Gates calls for limited role aiding Libyan rebels |publisher=The Daily Breeze |date=March 9, 2010 |accessdate=May 19, 2011}}</ref> There was also speculation in ''[[The Washington Post]]'' that President Obama issued a covert action finding in March 2011 that authorized the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-libya-cia-is-gathering-intelligence-on-rebels/2011/03/30/AFLyb25B_story.html |title=In Libya, CIA is gathering intelligence on rebels |work=The Washington Post |date=March 30, 2011 |accessdate=May 19, 2011 |first=Greg |last=Jaffe}}</ref>

[[Muammar Gaddafi]] was ultimately overthrown in the [[Libyan War]].

====Drone war in Pakistan====
Analysis by the [[RAND Corporation]] suggests that "drone strikes are associated with decreases in both the frequency and the lethality of militant attacks overall and in IED and suicide attacks specifically."<ref>Johnston, Patrick B., and Anoop Sarbahi, [http://patrickjohnston.info/materials/drones.pdf The Impact of U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan], RAND Corporation, 25 February 2012.</ref> Civilian deaths from drone strikes fell to 1-2% of the total in 2012.

===9-11===
A major criticism is failure to forestall the [[9-11 Attack]] in 2001 because of three organizational deficiencies: the inability of multiple American intelligence agencies to work together, organizational incentives to take the wrong analytical actions, and resistance to new technologies and ideas.<ref>Amy B. Zegart, "CNN with Secrets": 9/11, the CIA, and the Organizational Roots of Failure." ''International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence'' 2007 20(1): 18-49. Issn: 0885-0607 </ref> The ''9/11 Commission Report'' identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation. The CIA Inspector General in 2007 concluded that former DCI [[George Tenet]] failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by [[Al Qaeda]] prior to the [[9-11 Attack]].

==Image and Reputation==
Cloak and dagger stories became part of the popular culture of the Cold War in both East and West, with innumerable novels and movies that showed how polarized and dangerous the world was. Soviet audiences thrilled at spy stories showing how their KGB agents protected the motherland by foiling dirty work by America's nefarious CIA, Britain's devious MI 6, and Israel's devilish Mossad. After 1963, Hollywood increasingly depicted the CIA as clowns (as in the comedy TV series "Get Smart") or villains (as in Oliver Stone's "JFK" (1992). In the genre of spy thrillers, the films 'Three Days of the Condor' (1975) and 'Spy Game' (2001) have been among the top box office attractions in American cinema. They both star Robert Redford and both portray the CIA as a wicked organization.<ref>Loch K. Johnson, "Spies In The American Movies: Hollywood's Take On Lese Majeste." ''Intelligence & National Security'' 2008 23(1): 5-24 </ref> The plotlines of Robert Ludlum's novel 'The Bourne Identity' (1980) and the 2002 film based on the novel mix truth and fiction. Some topics are distorted while others stick very closely to the truth. Congressional oversight, ethical dilemmas tied to assassination, and real-life antagonists play significant roles in both the novel and the film. In the book the antagonists are terrorists, particularly Carlos the Jackal, but in the movie version the 'bad people' are CIA officials. Although the antagonist changes between the novel and the film, they both are realistic aspects that draw the audience in.<ref>Shannon Mollie Eppa, "The Bourne Actuality: A Look at Reality's Role in the Bourne Identity Novel and Film" ''Intelligence & National Security'' 2008 23(1): 103-111 </ref>

Leftists around the globe routinely blamed the mysterious CIA for events that displeased them, putting the image of the USA as a champion of freedom and democracy in disrepute. The CIA lost influence after 1963. President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] disliked its pessimistic forecasts about Vietnam; President [[Richard M. Nixon]] and his national security advisor [[Henry Kissinger]] did not seek its advice. After Watergate (1974) it came under heavy attack for promoting right-wing governments, hampering the success of genuinely democratic protest movements, illegally monitoring dissent inside the USA, and frustrating democracy at home by its secrecy and lack of accountability. Was it needed in an age of detente? With 15,000 employees in 1973, it had a budget of about $740 million, of which $440 went to clandestine operations. Congressional committees began to monitor the agency closely. Employment and budgets were cut sharply (the totals are secret), and most covert operations were abandoned. Morale plummeted as the agency retreated to a mission of collecting and interpreting information about the Soviets.

==See Also==
[[Korean Airlines Flight 007]] - [[Jesse Helms]]/CIA verification of survivor reports

==External Links==
* [https://www.cia.gov/ CIA website]
* [https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/history-of-the-cia/index.html CIA history], CIA official website
** [https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th-grade/operation-history/history-of-the-cia.html CIA history], CIA website aimed at students

==Bibliography==
===Surveys===
* Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri and Andrew, Christopher, eds. ''Eternal Vigilance? 50 Years of the CIA.'' (1997). 246 pp.
* Powers, Thomas. ''Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda'' (2004) [http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Wars-American-Al-Qaeda-Collections/dp/1590170989/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210939963&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
* Ranelagh, John. ''The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. From Wild Bill Donovan to William Casey.'' (1986). 847 pp
* Rositzke, Harry. ''The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action'' (1988) 290 pp. [http://www.questia.com/read/82295474?title=The%20CIA's%20Secret%20Operations%3a%20Espionage%2c%20Counterespionage%2c%20and%20Covert%20Action online edition]
* Trahair, Richard C. S. ''Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations'' (2004) [http://www.questia.com/SM.qst?act=adv&contributors=Richard%20C.%20S.%20Trahair&dcontributors=Richard%20C.%20S.%20Trahair online edition]
* Weiner, Tim. ''Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA'' (2008) [http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254153112&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]

===Special topics===
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* Kent, Sherman. ''Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy.'' (1947) (2000 reprint)). Seminal work on CIA intelligence analysis, especially the estimative process.
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* Saunders, Francis Stonor. ''The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters.'' (2000). 509 pp.
* Scott-Smith, Giles. ''The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-War American Hegemony.'' (2002). 233 pp.
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* Troy, Thomas F. ''Wild Bill and Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the Origin of CIA.'' (1996). 259 pp.
* Wise, David. ''Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA''. (1992). Source on James Jesus Angleton's searches inside the CIA, and on the Golitsyn-Nosenko controversy.
* Woodward, Bob. ''Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987'' (2005)
* Zegart, Amy B. ''Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC.'' (1999). 317 pp. [http://www.questia.com/read/35536329?title=Flawed%20by%20Design%3a%20The%20Evolution%20of%20the%20CIA%2c%20JCS%2c%20and%20NSC online edition]

===Primary sources and memoirs===
* Central Intelligence Agency. ''A Compendium of Analytic Tradecraft Notes'' (1997) http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cia/tradecraft_notes/contents.htm. The basic training guide for CIA analysts.
* Cullather, Nick. ''Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954.'' (1999). 142 pp. [http://www.questia.com/read/79224452?title=Secret%20History%3a%20The%20CIA's%20Classified%20Account%20of%20Its%20Operations%20in%20Guatemala%2c%201952-1954 online edition]
* Gates, Robert. ''From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War,'' (1997).
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* Murphy, David E.; Kondrashev, Sergei A.; and Bailey, George. ''Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War.'' (1997). 530 pp. brings together personal recollections from CIA and KGB officers, and previously unpublished documents.
* Tenet, George. ''At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA'' (2007), DCI 1997 to 2004
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* Westerfield, H. Bradford, ed. ''Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992.'' (1995). 489 pp.

====references====
<references/>
[[Category:Espionage]]
[[Category:Intelligence Agencies]]
[[Category:United States Intelligence Agencies]]