Tag: American Empire

How Typically American to Punish Poor Brown People Twice

In 2009 the Obama administration encouraged a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel

The democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya

Zelaya.  This fact is not in dispute.  Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s Secretary of State, admitted as much in a 2014 interview.

Together Obama and Clinton helped to install a right-wing dictatorship that continues to rule over the Honduran people to this day. Not only has this dictatorship overrun the civil rights of the Honduran people, it works hand-in-glove with the drug cartels terrorizing all of Central America.

Those cartels use local gangs of enforcers to extort protection money from poor and middle-class business owners, often driving them out of business and killing anyone refusing to cooperate. These gangs, operating with the

Honduran gang members

silent approval of government leaders, are the primary cause of Honduras’ skyrocketing murder rate.

So, guess what. The U.S. bears the lion share of responsibility for the problems facing Honduras today.

If this is not familiar to you, please take a few minutes to watch two video

Lucy Pagoada

explanations. The first features Lucy Pagoada, an Honduran immigrant explaining the situation in her native country, and why she fled to the United States.

The second is an episode of On Contact with Chris Hedges. He interviews Professor Dana Frank, author of the book The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror and the United States in the

Prof. Dana Frank

Aftermath of the Coup. She poignantly explains America’s role in transforming Honduras into a failed state.

Now, President Trump is threatening to close America’s southern border. He refuses to receive any more applicants for asylum and is ending all foreign aid to Honduras, Guatemala and San Salvador (two additional nations where the U.S. has meddled with disastrous effect).

So, let me get this straight.  First, we intervene in these nation’s internal affairs. We help to overthrow the Honduran government and install a corrupt dictatorship.

Then we support that dictatorship even as it enriches itself at the people’s

Honduran anti-coup protesters arrested

expense by allying itself with violent drug cartels. We stand by and watch as the dictators’ neo-liberal economic policies exacerbate poverty, unemployment and violent crime because those policies benefit U.S. corporate interests.

Then when the poorest of the poor flee for their lives, seeking asylum and a better life in the U.S., our esteemed president stigmatizes them as criminals, rapists, the “worst of the worst.”

He takes away their children, locks them into cages, loses hundreds if not thousands of those children due to poor record keeping, and closes the

Honduran refugees tear gassed

border. For the coup de’grace he orders border patrol agents to shoot these helpless, refugee families with tear gas and rubber bullets.

All the while, President Trump continues his xenophobic rants insisting that this southern “invasion” – vast weaponized caravans of brown invaders intent on destroying the American way of life – is THE greatest national security threat facing our country today.

And many Americans listen.  Too many are persuaded.

They are persuaded because they have never bothered to follow the news. They are persuaded because don’t know anything about our history of

Children cry next to their mother in a caravan of Honduran migrants near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. (CNS photo/Edgard Garrido, Reuters)

Central American interventions.

Worse yet, they don’t care to learn.

They are too busy gulping down the poisonous swill of U.S. exceptionalism to hear the cries of innocent Hondurans crushed beneath the colossus of American geopolitical power.

We are witnessing a textbook definition of oppression unfolding before our eyes. It is more than a national disgrace; it is wickedness incarnate.

America is the beast risen from the abyss.

Hosts of “The View” Reveal the Bloody Heart of Corporate America

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, has thrown her hat into the presidential primary ring.

Thus far, her campaign has been distinguished by two important issues:

First, she is the only candidate with the wisdom and the bravery to condemn the US foreign policy of “regime change.” She is critical of the US military endeavors in places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and, most recently,  Venezuela.

Second, corporate, mainstream media outlets have very predictably shown nothing but disdain for her candidacy.  When she is allowed airtime, she is consistently mocked and reviled, derided as a Russian stooge and propagandist for America’s “enemies.”

Ad hominem slander and name-calling are the vile tactics that pass for journalism nowadays.

Most recently, Rep. Gabbard demonstrated her decorum, wisdom, experience and extraordinary self-control during what can only be described as a hostile interview on the popular ABC program, “The View.”

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch the entire interview here on YouTube (9 minutes).  If you have a bit more time, watch Mike Figueredo provide insightful commentary and analysis of the interview on his program, The Humanist Report (16 minutes).

I am strongly thinking of defecting from Bernie to Tulsi.  We desperately need a leader like her in the White House.

Caitlin Johnstone Discusses Our Current Anti-Russia Hysteria

Check out a recent piece by journalist Caitlin Johnstone at The Greanville Post — “No Direct Evidence of Russian Interference, But There is Direct Proof of Establishment Derangement.”

I have posted an excerpt below. You can read the entire piece by clicking on

Caitlin Johnstone

the title above.

“All the biggest conflicts in the world can be described as unipolarism vs multipolarism: the unipolarists who support the global hegemony of the US-centralized empire at any cost, versus the multipolarists who oppose that dominance and support the existence of multiple power structures in the world…

“The nonstop propaganda campaign to keep the coals of Russia hysteria burning white hot at all times can therefore be looked at first and foremost as a psychological operation to kill support for multipolarism around the world. It can of course be used to manufacture consent for escalations against Russia, China, Syria, Venezuela, Iran etc as needed, but it can also be used to attack the ideology of anti-interventionism itself by smearing anyone who opposes unipolar oppression and aggression as an agent of a nefarious oppositional government.

“The social engineers have succeeded in constructing a narrative control device which encapsulates the entire agenda of the unipolar world order in a single bumper sticker-sized talking point: “Russia opposes Big Brother, therefore anyone who opposes Big Brother is Russian.” This device didn’t take an amazing intellectual feat to create; all they had to do was recreate the paranoid insanity of the original cold war, and they already had a blueprint for that. It was simply a matter of shepherding us back there.

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, there emerged a popular notion of a “peace dividend” in which defense spending could be reduced in the absence of America’s sole rival and the abundant excess funds used to take care of the American people instead. The only problem was that a lot of people had gotten very rich and powerful as a result of that cold war defense spending, and it wasn’t long before they started circulating the idea of using America’s newly uncontested might for a very expensive campaign to hammer down a liberal world order led by the beneficent guidance of the United States government. Soon the neoconservatives were pushing their unipolarist narratives in high levels of influence with great effect, and shortly thereafter they got their “new Pearl Harbor” in the form of the 9/11 attacks which justified an explosion in defense spending, interventionism and expansionism, just as the neoconservative Project for a New American Century had called for. And the rest is history.”

The current anti-Russian hysteria has become the new McCarthyism.

A destructive, mindless panic fueled by numerous narcissistic forces ranging from Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow to every living neo-con, both political parties, our entire national security apparatus, and every talking head who pronounces upon the evening news.

 

Anya Parampil Reporting From Caracas, Venezuela

Anya Parampil is another young, investigative journalism I highly respect.  She is also reporting from Caracas, Venezuela about the massive crowds of pro-Maduro, pro-Chavez,  pro-Bolivarian government supporters standing

Anya Parampil, investigative journalist

in lines that stretch for blocks, as they wait to sign a public petition demanding that the United States stop meddling in their country’s internal affairs.

Please, take a few minutes to watch Ms. Parampil’s video report here.  Listen to the voices of Venezuelan men and women who support their president and plead with the world’s leaders not to undermine their government or agitate for war.

Reports such as these (also see the post linking to Max Blumenthal’s Venezuelan coverage) demonstrate how grotesquely dishonest are the monotone refrains for regime change in the mainstream media.

Here is a good test case illustrating how extremely propagandistic are the major American news outlets.

Tell Your Elected Officials You Want Peace in Venezuela

The Alliance for Global Justice is leading a world-wide campaign for Peace in Venezuela today, Feb. 7, 2019, in coordination with an international conference occurring in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Their letter begins:

“Today in Montevideo, Uruguay, nations from throughout the world, hosted by Uruguay and Mexico, are meeting “to establish the basis for a new dialogue mechanism that includes all the forces in Venezuela, in order to help restore peace in that country.” Shamefully absent is the Trump administration and its ordained “interim president” Juan Guaido. Instead, the Trump administration is threatening to invade Venezuela and Guaido is calling on the military to betray their oath to the Constitution. The number of voices in Congress raised against Trump’s illegal regime change policies is insignificant.”  (emphasis mine)

This link will take you to the webpage that allows you to contact your elected officials to let them know that you oppose the US backed regime change in Venezuela.

Please write your Senators and Representatives today.

The same link also reproduces an excellent article by Michael Weisbrot at The Intercept entitled,  “Trump Sanctions, Regime Change Strategy in Venezuela Can Only Cause More Violence and Suffering.”

Below is an excerpt highlighting the degree to which American imperialism serves the purposes of class warfare around the world.

Case in point:  the forces now working to unseat Maduro are primarily white and well off.  Whereas, Maduro’s supporters are overwhelmingly brown,  Indian, poor and marginalized:

“Venezuela is polarized along political lines and has been ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 and launched his Bolivarian Revolution. The opposition’s attempt to overthrow Chávez in a military coup in 2002, aided and abetted by officials in the George W. Bush administration, as well as the opposition leadership’s vacillating willingness to accept the results of democratic elections in subsequent years laid the groundwork for many years of distrust.

“Venezuela’s political polarization, however, also intersects with a great chasm that permeates most of Latin American society: a division by class and race. As in most of the Americas, the two are correlated. In the opposition protests that have occurred over the past decade, one could see these differences in the clothes worn by pro- versus anti-government protesters and in their skin tones. The opposition crowds and their leaders have been considerably whiter and from higher income groups than Venezuelans who supported the government. In the most recent protests, there has been an increase in anti-government actions in working-class and poor areas in Caracas, but the class and racial divide between Chavistas and opposition has not gone away.

“Another line of Venezuelan polarization is the belief in sovereignty and self-determination. The Chavistas have made independence from the U.S. a centerpiece of their agenda, and their government, when it had money, pursued policies in the hemisphere that sought more independence for the region as well. The opposition and enemies of the Chavista governments, by contrast, have worked closely with the U.S. government for the past two decades — as can be seen in the coordination of this latest attempted coup. Washington’s intervention aggravates the polarization along the lines of sovereignty, and opens the opposition to charges of alignment with a foreign power — and a power that has historically played a terrible role in the region. To appreciate the animosity that this would create, think of how much ill will has been generated in the U.S. by Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, and multiply that by a few orders of magnitude.”

Huge Pro-Maduro Rallies Today in Venezuela

Today the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities were filled with huge crowds of pro-Maduro/anti-imperialist rallies.  A site that you will

Massive pro-Maduro/anti-imperialist rallies were held today throughout Venezuela

never see on corporate, mainstream news outlets in this country.

While American talking heads insist that Maduro is an unpopular dictator, the Venezuelan people say otherwise.

I don’t know how to copy video from Twitter, so I have supplied a few of the many links I have found today.  Take a look at the vast crowds of pro-government supporters here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Yes, president Maduro also has many opponents.  So does Donald Trump.  And….?

U.S. officials and their media puppets want the American public to believe that U.S. (military) intervention will rid Venezuela of an unpopular dictator, hated by a majority of his people.

If we all swallow that lie, then we are placated and will remain docile when we subjugate, undoubtedly with bloodshed, another nation for our own selfish, national interests.

In addition, would a real dictator allow anti-government rallies to be led by the upstart, US/CIA backed contender for his presidency?  I don’t think so.  A dictator would have arrested Guaido and his fellow opposition leaders long ago.

In any case, the one thing followers of Jesus Christ may never be is placated and docile in the face of evil, especially when that evil is being committed in our name by our country.

Citizens of God’s kingdom will stand up and say, “No!  This action is wicked and ungodly.  It is completely unacceptable.  We will not condone such evil with our silence.  We will speak and work to stop our government’s unwarranted, illegal use of force.”

Call your elected representatives and tell them, Hands Off Venezuela!

A Biblical Ode to America

A few days ago The Wall Street Journal published an expose revealing the Trump administration’s intention to remake Latin America in its own image, continuing to use the well-worn strategies of assassination, economic sanctions — which commonly lead to widespread starvation — and military intervention.

The headline and opening paragraph read, “U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela’s Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America.”  

Recent assassination attempt against Maduro

“The Trump administration’s attempt to force out the president of Venezuela marked the opening of a new strategy to exert greater U.S. influence over Latin America, according to administration officials.”

Hence, I offer the following New Testament pesher (a contemporary interpretation) from John’s Apocalypse, chapter 18:

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor.  With a mighty voice he shouted:

The harvest of a US trained Salvadoran death squad

“‘Fallen! Fallen is America the Great!’
    She has become a dwelling for demons
and a haunt for every impure spirit,
    a haunt for every unclean bird,
    a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.
For all the nations have drunk
    the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
    and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

“‘Come out of her, my people,’
    so that you will not share in her sins,
    so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for America’s sins are piled up to heaven,
    and God has remembered the crimes of the United States.
Give back to her as she has given;
    pay her back double for what she has done.

    Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torment and grief
    as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
    ‘I sit enthroned as queen; I am the sole Super Power.
I am not a widow;
    I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
    death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
    for mighty is the Lord God who judges her…

..Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said:

“With such violence
    the great nation of America will be thrown down,
    never to be found again.
The music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters,
    will never be heard in you again.
No worker of any trade
    will ever be found in you again.
The sound of a millstone
    will never be heard in you again.
The light of a lamp
    will never shine in you again.
The voice of bridegroom and bride
    will never be heard in you again.
Your merchants were the world’s important people.
    By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.
       In America was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people —  who stood to warn you but were few and far between — of ALL who have been slaughtered on the earth by your drones, your assassinations, atomic bombs, cruise missiles, special forces, cluster bombs, stealth fighters, torture programs, death squads, economic sanctions and regime changes.”

Mitch McConnell Wants to Guarantee America’s Perpetual State of War

The war in Afghanistan is the longest military action in American history, with no end in sight.

Not long ago president Trump announced his intent to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, sparking immediate criticism from both Republicans and

US troops in Afghanistan

Democrats.

More recently Trump has discussed a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well.

Against this background, it is downright chilling to learn that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (together with the bipartisan support of senators Graham, Blunt, Burr, Romney, Ernst, Inhofe, Rubio, Sasse, Fischer,  Grassley, Johnson, Shelby, Tillis, Cornyn, Sullivan, Wicker, Lankford, Young, and Boozman) has inserted amendment (#65) into the recently approved Senate bill 1.

McConnell’s amendment, in effect, makes it nearly impossible for any president, now or in the future, to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and just about anywhere else in the Middle East.

Among other things, the bill:

“calls upon the Administration to certify that conditions have been met for the enduring defeat of al Qaeda and ISIS before initiating any significant withdrawal of United States forces from Syria or Afghanistan.” (emphasis mine)

In other words, we will never leave these places.

Exactly what is required for such conditions to be met?  How does one “certify” that al Qaeda and ISIS have met their “enduring defeat”?

How can anyone ever guarantee the final, permanent defeat of a revolutionary movement fueled by religious commitments?

The answer is simple.  You can’t.  As all those Senators well know.

Mitch and his war-mongering cronies have passed a bill that opens a permanent line of protest for the Joint Chiefs, generals, admirals, arms manufacturers, intelligence agencies and every politician with a weapons company in their district to effectively object any time a future president tries to withdraw our troops from the quagmire of America’s wars around the world.

But cheer up.  U.S. weapons companies and civilian death rates, known as collateral damage, around the world will thrive.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: America Now Exists for a “State of Perpetual War”

Regular readers of this blog will know that I believer Col. Lawrence Wilkerson is a guy worth listening to when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

He has demonstrated an unusually strong moral compass in renouncing his

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

past role working in the George W. Bush administration and serving as a consistent critic of the burgeoning American Empire.

Listen to his thoughts in a recent RT America interview regarding American policy today.  His sad verdict is that the U.S. raison d’etre of American empire is preserving “a state of perpetual war.”

Wilkerson’s remarks begin at the 1:50 mark.

John Bolton Comes Clean: We Want Venezuela’s Oil

National Security Adviser John Bolton came clean during a Fox Business interview, admitting that the first objective of the US coup attempt in Venezuela is getting control of that country’s oil industry.

All the talk about freedom and democracy is simply the standard, rhetorical window-dressing that US officials always pull out of the closet when justifying America’s latest illegal, imperial, typically bloody action.

Here is a clip from Democracy Now, including Bolton’s interview and a commentary from Alan Nairn, veteran investigative journalist.