General On this day 48 years ago, Bob Marley was neraly killed by the CIA
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On this day in 1976, Bob Marley, his wife Rita, and his manager were shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt widely believed to have been orchestrated by the CIA.
The shooting at his home on Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica, occurred just two days before his Smile Jamaica concert, which Marley hoped would ease tensions in the run-up to elections contested by the CIA-backed Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and the progressive People’s National Party (PNP).
The PNP’s Michael Manley had been in power for four years, during which time he introduced various social democratic reforms, including free education and land reform. Manley also began resisting IMF pressure to impose new debt and conditions on Jamaica, stating, “We are not for sale.”
This, along with Manley’s close relationship with Fidel Castro’s Cuba, set off alarm bells in Washington, especially when Manley refused $100 million of US aid in exchange for dropping his support for Cuban troops fighting with Angolan forces against apartheid South Africa.
A covert war ensued, aiming to discredit Manley’s government, modeled on the recent US destabilization of Salvador Allende’s Chile. The CIA orchestrated paramilitary violence that killed hundreds affiliated with the PNP and sponsored anti-Manley propaganda and economic warfare designed to “make the economy scream.”
Although Marley sought to remain neutral, the singer who sang “Rasta don’t work for no CIA” was suspected to be close to the PNP, in no small part due to his revolutionary and anti-imperialist lyrics and his efforts to unite Jamaica in the face of US destabilization.
Marley’s gunmen would later be tried and executed by an ad-hoc community court. His manager, who was present at the trial, said one of the shooters confessed the CIA had hired him in exchange for weapons and drugs. Rolling Stones journalist and Marley biographer Timothy White also alleged that JLP gunmen carried out the shooting at the CIA’s behest.
I'll never understand the canonization of this dirtass. He was a gangster and a dirtbag.
Personally, I blame the hippies.
But I blame them for alot of shit.
Personally, I blame the hippies.
But I blame them for alot of shit.
When I hear Bob Marley I think of all the stoners in high school in the 80's.
