Nicaragua Nicaraguita!

Nicaragua Nicaraguita! Me and my kid will be heading out South in a couple of days to visit my good friend, Rafael, in his native land. We are both very excited to have the opportunity to visit with him once again, and wish him the right to visit with us in Colorado Springs again, too. We are all one people!

NOTE*** The music in this video is now practically the official national anthem of Nicaragua,and rightfully so. Would that We the People of the United States, had a national song that was as beautiful as Nicaragua Nicaraguita. Instead, all we have is our ode to the military, The Blood Stained Banner. It is a shame.

Cesar Sandino versus the US drug fiends

Sandino official postal sealEmiliano Zapata was assassinated on this day, April 10, 1919.
 
The Poncho Villa or Emiliano Zapata of Central America, who like Zapata gave his name to a rebel movement that would eventually oust American imperialism from its shores, was Augusto Cesar Sandino. Did you know that is where the Sandinistas of Nicaragua (FSLN) got their name?

La soberanía de un pueblo no se discute,
se defiende con el arma en la mano.

Cesar Sandino fought an undeclared war against US Marines, which made him an illegal combatant. When Sandino captured a US aviator, tried him for having bombed innocent civilians, and sentenced him to hang –in American eyes, outside of the law– the US declared Sandino and his fighters to be terrorists and exempt from protection under the Hague Conventions.

Sandino fought the Americans for six years until he was assassinated during a cease-fire in 1933 by the Samoza regime which would rule Nicaragua with America’s backing until 1979. After 1979 Ronald Reagan and his Contras would redouble US persecution of the Nicaraguans.

The above image depicts a Nicaraguan freedom fighter about to decapitate a vanquished US marine. This served as Sandino’s official postal stamp. Sandino was equally eloquent in words:

Come on you pack of drug fiends, come on and murder us on our own land. I am waiting for you on my feet at the head of my patriotic soldiers, and I don’t care how many of you there are. You should know that when this happens, the destruction of your mighty power will make the Capitol shake in Washington, and your blood will redden the white dome that crowns the famous White House where you plot your crimes.

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

Leaders of anti- Colombian government demo of March 6 assassinated

While attention is elsewhere, the US continues to wage war in South America and it does so using the terrorism of its death squads. And even more pathetic is the US media’s support for this war, as they spread misinformation and lies and blanket out real info about how the US government is waging this war, using murder and torture at will of its political opponents.

Example in point, is how the American media highlighted US coverage of pro- Colombian government demonstrations throughout Colombia against the FARC opposition group, yet ignored the massive demonstrations throughout the same country against the death squad arming, US backed Colombian government. Don’t expect to see much about how the Colombian government murdered the leaders of this demonstration, a mere week after they were held.

See the reportage, Organizers of Colombian march against death squads killed

Instead, the US media will continuously highlight the joint US-Colombian governments’ cooperative campaign to topple the current governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia,and Nicaragua. The center of this campaign will be to bellicosely confront, threaten military intervention, and to try to organize coups to topple Chavez and Raul Castro, of Venezuela and Cuba respectively.

Right now, unfortunately, we have a ‘Peace Movement’ in the US that cannot really even find Mexico on a map, let alone the other countries of Latin America threatened by the bipartisan thugs in D.C. This US war against Latin America is heating up though, and we need to pay attention to what’s going on. The US government pulled the triggers that killed these organizers of peaceful demonstrations against the US government organized, Colombian death squads. And it will pull the trigger again and again in its ongoing efforts to control all of Latin America, if a real opposition to these wars is not begun to be built soon.

The US government wins the Venezuelan elections

Hugo Chavez went down in defeat in Sunday’s election in Venezuela. Like the Nicaraguan elections where the Sandinista’s lost power, the people of a Latin American country were once again defeated by the US government in an election. Why?

Today Nicaragua is the poorest country in the Americas with the exception of Haiti, which is presently occupied by a despicable United Nations military doing the dirty work of the Bush Administration. Why did the Venezuelan electorate vote the way they did then? The answer is simple, and the reasons are similar to why the Nicaraguans voted the way they did back in the ’80s.

Many Venezuelans, like the Nicaraguans before them, simply were scared that the US military would use their power against their Venezuelan ‘patria’ if the vote was against what the gringo Powers in D.C. wanted. They stayed home and abstained from voting in a very close election, handing the victory to the Venezuelan Business Class, though only by the slimmest majority.

This is the danger of holding elections where US money is allowed to enter in and determine the results of an election. US money buys elections in poorer countries especially when the threat is to go to war with that country if results are now what the US government wants. A government looking for revolutionary change simply cannot allow the US to channel money into its opposition.

The US government would imprison any opposition taking foreign money to try to overturn it, and that is what the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez didn’t do, with the results being a setback for The Revolution there. Let’s hope that the setback is temporary only, for the Venezuelans under the control of their corporate power elites are going nowhere except into being controlled by the US elites from afar. Live free and independent, or die!

The Lost Boys?

Lost boys want youIt’s amazing. The US has killed a lot of people through our life times, and yet there has never been another group of children from these devastated countries torn apart by US foreign policy made terrorism, flown to families in France, Britain, and the US like the Sudanese ‘Lost Boys’ have been.

I guess there were no ‘Lost Boys’ in Iraq, Lebanon, or Afghanistan, nor from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Vietnam to save? It seems, the US only goes for taking in ‘Lost Boys’ when they seem to come from countries that have supposed villains that are not our own government leaders. But is the newest set of ‘Lost Boys’ even lost, or are they actually the ‘Stolen Boys’?

The latest 103 of these supposedly ‘Lost Boys’ were said to have been found in Darfur, and not Chad. But an international scandal has broken out where the people carrying these kids off are now accused of being kidnappers themselves. In short, they are accused of stealing these kids. See the BBC report… Chad case children ‘not orphans’

Did they do this deliberately? Were they misled? Were they in cahoots with pro-interventionist propaganda groups like the so-called ‘Save Darfur’ who wanted to use these kids to urge their governments to intervene against Sudan with occupation troops and economic warfare? Will we ever find out for sure the truth in this case?

Personally, I think that the truth may lie somewhere in between. Maybe the people were trying to help these kids just escape from their poverty, and didn’t really care that the stories they were giving these European Bleeding Hearts that were to carry them out were all untrue? After all, how often does the Developed World come to aid some of the kids of Africa? How often does one get a free ticket to immigrate? Here in the US, we round up immigrants like they were stray dogs and cats.

Promoting foreign intervention into Third World countries is big business, and if 103 kids were needed to push that cause, then 103 kids were rounded up. Who cares about the details since these kids were getting a bargain? Something to think about when you hear a ‘Lost Boy’ story in the weeks and years ahead. Maybe the ‘Lost Boy’ was not so lost to begin with, but his family or themselves simply found a ticket to ride out of a bad locale into a much nicer one? Who could blame them?

But YES, it does turn out that there is a ‘Save Darfur’ group connection with the French group Zoe’s Ark that was taking these 103 kids out of Africa. The two groups are part of the same effort to supposedly ‘rescue’ 10,000 kids (‘orphans’) from Darfur to safety in the US and Western Europe. See Reuters’ Factbox about Zoe’s Ark

Why not just push these First World countries to save the children of Africa by giving back some of the hundreds of billions of wealth stolen from that continent? But then how would they get the troops in? Picture of ‘orphans’ are needed for that.

Catholic hierarchy killing women in Nicaragua

Nicaragua is a country where the government can’t even obtain an income of more than about $1/day for over 50% of the population, yet it feels that it has a right to butt into a woman’s womb and force her to bear a baby into miserable poverty!

All this due to the reactionary influence of the Catholic Church there. Nicaragua’s Abortion Ban Putting Women’s Lives At Risk, Human Rights Watch Report Says

Get The Catholic Church out of women’s lives. How preachy most Christians become when they talk about women’s lives in Muslim countries yet how they shut their mouths when it comes to women in the Christian majority countries. Millions of children are going hungry across the world and many Christians want to force women to have more kids while doing little to nothing to feed the children already alive? It’s sad.

Benazir Bhutto of Team America

Benazir Bhutto in true colorsWhy was Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan feted with bombs? Whether the bombers were Pakistani security forces or Talibani “terrorists” or western black-ops (each faction by coincidence also fingered for 9/11), they targeted Bhutto because she represents US interests for Pakistan.
 
Our media says she heralds Democracy, their corporate owners know the truth is Capitalism of the most sordid exploitive kind. The press corps traveled with Bhutto on her much hyped homecoming from self-exile. Did their emotion-drenched personal interest leave any doubt their girl’s a member of the American-Dream team?

Team America includes:
Hamid Karzai, President of AFGHANISTAN
Alvaro Uribe, President of COLOMBIA
Meles Zenawi, President of ETHIOPIA
Rene Preval, President of HAITI
Emile Lahoud, President of LEBANON
Felipe Calderon, President of MEXICO
Mahmoud Abbas, President of OCCUPIED PALESTINE
Mohammed Yousef, Puppet in waiting in SOMALIA
Yoweri Museveni, President of UGANDA

Remember these US agents?
General Jorge Rafael Videla, President of ARGENTINA
Colonel Hugo Banzer, President of BOLIVIA
General Humberto Branco, President of BRAZIL
Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of BRUNEI
General Augusto Pinochet, President of CHILE
Fulgencio Batista, President of CUBA
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, President of the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, General of EL SALVADOR
Alfredo Cristiani, President of EL SALVADOR
Halie Selassie, Emperor of ETHIOPIA
General Sitiveni Rabuka, Commander, Armed Forces of FIJI
George Papadopoulos, Prime Minister of GREECE
General Efrain Rios Mont, President of GUATEMALA
Vinicio Cerezo, President of GUATEMALA
François & Jean Claude Duvalier, Presidents-for-Life of HAITI
Roberto Suazo Cordova, President of HONDURAS
General Suharto, President of INDONESIA
Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, Shah of IRAN, King of Kings
Saddam Hussein, President of IRAQ
General Samuel Doe, President of LIBERIA
Hussan II, King of MOROCCO
Anastasio Somoza, Sr. And Jr., Presidents of NICARAGUA
Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq, President of PAKISTAN
General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Defense forces, PANAMA
Alfredo Stroessner, President-for-Life of PARAGUAY
Ferdinand Marcos, President of the PHILIPPINES
Antonio De Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of PORTUGAL
Ian Smith, Prime Minister of RHODESIA
P. W. Botha, President of SOUTH AFRICA
Park Chung Hee, President of SOUTH KOREA
Ngo Dinh Diem, President of SOUTH VIET NAM
General Francisco Franco, President of SPAIN
Chiang Kai-Shek, President of TAIWAN
Turgut Ozal, Prime Minister of TURKEY
Mobutu Sese Seko, President of ZAIRE

Nicaragua, US made basket case

Pity Nicaragua, and pity Haiti. The US has screwed up both places royal through its ‘interventions’ time after time, and yet hardly an American seems to care. What a totally immoral country we live in!

Today, these are the 2 poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere due to what our country has done to them and continues to do.

I have been visiting a friend in immigration lockup in Aurora about once a week for the last month. He feels that INS (ICE) will jail him for about 6-9 months before they deport him back to a country where 50%PLUS of the population is now living on less than $1 a day. Our rich folk’s laws in the US say that he has no right to be here and that he acted illegally in entering their country which happens to be my US. Go figure?

The US entered his country illegally and blew off one of my friend’s arms back when he was still a kid, and turned the country he lived into a total basket case which it already was. The last American intervention just got it turned into yet an even worse basket case than the previous US intervenion had made it into. With each US intervention they just fucked up things worse for the Nicaraguans.

These American rich people that went and pulverized Nicaragua over and over again, always talk about how the poor need to take personal responsibility for their actions yet they themselves never take any personal responsibility for turning another man’s country into a total shit hole of poverty, like what has been done to Nicaragua. These rich imperialist supporters are mean, stupid, and uncaring beyond belief.

I would much rather that our own rich were deported to Hell where they belong than that my friend get deported from where I live. What the Hell is wrong with so many of my neighbors that they actually see poor immigrants, like my friend, as being some sort of threat to their own well being?

I wish my friend the best, and am disgusted with the country that is my own. I would leave it myself except that the US has screwed up most of the rest of the world anyway. America, love it or leave it? Get real… America the way it is just plain sucks and its stench is smelled throughout the world and there is no getting away from it.

There just is nowhere to run from the odor. I am ashamed of the people we have become. Just look at how many places we have destroyed. Is there any current hope for Nicaragua? It is hard to tell.

Vacation en Nicaragua

This post is dedicated to a good friend who got me thinking of Central America once again. It is about a vacation to Nicaragua and more. Let’s start with a beautiful concert at the height of Hope in the early ’80s, before the US government crushed that hope by its horrible imperialist military interventionism. Nicaragua Nicaraguita sung by the great Left folk singer of Nicaragua, Carlos Mejia Godoy.

Then let’s cut almost 1/4 century later, to see a beautiful vacation film in a visit back home to his country and family made by a Nicaraguan in exile far North. The beautiful music of the Colombian salseros, Grupo Niche, is followed in the second half of the film with more music by Carlos Mejia Godoy once again. A beautifully made film that shows Nicaragua at its best. The music is great and worth listening to on its own merits.

Paying reparations will make US as poor as Chad

Noam Chomsky has just written that the US should pay reparations for the damages done to Iraq’s infrastructure by the US invasion and occupation. While I can’t disagree with the justice of this, doing it would make America as poor as the country of Chad.

And why stop with reparations for US damages done to iraq? How about paying damages done to Colombia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Nicaragua, El Salvador, God can we stop now, though the list is still quite incomplete?

One of the most galling things about US war supporters is there constant refrain that they are supporting the constant war only to help Iraqis out! Just the other day on this blog a poster was spouting this line of crap, too. Plus, usually in the same breath they are condemning the Islamic community as being full of barbarians, all the while praying to their Christian God of War. Yes, they are on a great Crusade to help the heathen out!

So why don’t these people dig out THEIR pocketbooks, and make those reparations then, instead of playing stupid and pretending that they are bringing heaven to earth for Arabs? US war supporters have to be about the most shameless human beings imaginable. If there is a Christian Hell for hypocrites?, then they definitely got the ticket. And if we as a nation get forced to actually make reparations, then we’ll all be in Hell alongside them.

What is the purpose of the ‘War on Terrorism’, and when did it start?

When did this war start that is now called ‘The War on Terrorism’ and what is its purpose? The answers to both questions would seem rather simple and obvious to Americans, but on closer examination are not what would be most considered. Why the war on terrorism’s purpose is to stop attacks from terrorists on our country and the world, would certainly be the most common reply. And the war started, of course, on September 11, 2001.

But are these 2 simple answers really the true answers here? And we really should ask yet a third question to get to the bottom of this issue. Is Osama bin Laden the original ‘terrorist’ that had the US government launch its ‘War on Terrorism’? Actually, the “War on Terrorism’ was launched by the US government on January 17, 1991. The terrorist then was considered to be Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq. His victim was considered to be not the United States, but the country of Kuwait that had just been occupied by the Iraqi military forces under the command of Hussein.

The war to stop terrorism was then labeled the ‘War to Liberate Kuwait’. To those Americans under 35 or so, this might be new history, of sorts. And to those under about 46, the decade plus before the launching of this war of liberation from Saddam Hussein, the ‘terrorist’, must seem like almost unknowable ancient history. So let’s review it some. Let’s review from February 11, 1979 (fall of the US backed Iranian dictator, the Shah of Iran) to February 7, 1990 (fall of the Soviet Union).

Pre “War on Terrorism’, the US favored the ‘terrorists world wide. They used them to fight 3 major proxy wars against their enemies. First off, the US spent billions that was sent to irregular forces who used the money to fund terrorist actions against the Soviet backed government of Afghanistan. This is where the US recruited Osama bin Laden and made him their ally. Second group of irregular recruits of terrorists was made in Central America, where the US funded terrroism against Nicaragua. Third use of terror by the Americans was when the US backed Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War, when Iraq attacked Iran. It was only when Hussein later attacked and occupied Kuwait, that the media campaign began to call his war making terrorism. Before then, the media remained totally silent about Hussein’s use of terrorism.

So why did the US go from making terrorism ( in the eighties) its strategy, to making its strategy the fight against ‘terrorism’ (in the nineties onwards), so to speak? That would have to be from the negative publicity that the US got from using terrorism repeatedly against Nicaragua. This put a bad mark against the US in international circles. So propagandists within the uS government began to react from trying to defend terrorists as being so-called ‘freedom fighters’, to themselves attacking the supposed ‘terrroism’ of others. The fight to ‘liberate the Kuwaits’ was what launched the US continual ‘War Against Terrorism’. Nobody under about 45 can remember much being said one way or the other about Kuwaitis. But those 45 and older can remember how America became suddenly bombarded about how supposedly virtuous the Kuwaitis were supposed to all be. Kuwait being raped by Saddam Hussein, the terrorist! Babies being thrown to the ground even!

I personally heard American after American who claimed to know a Kuwaiti or two. They all told of what a wonderful folk they were in the most graphic manner! In the Arab world, the Kuwaitis had horrible reputations. The Kuwait citizens were the mionority of the population in their own country, yet employed huge numbers of other Arabs from around the Middle East who they treated like slaves. The women of Kuwait had absolutely no rights what-so-ever. Yet, the American press began a gigantic propaganda campaign to ‘liberate Kuwait’ from the Iraqi ‘terrorist’, Hussein! That is the reason, that even today so many Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had some sort of role in the toppling of the World Trade Towers. The US launch of the ‘War Against Terrorism’ began with plans to ‘liberate Kuwait’, and continued with the let’s get Hussein campaign.

But George Bush Senior was a smart man. Who was he going to have as ‘terrorist’ foil if he actually caught Hussein? So Kuwait was ‘liberated’, but the most evil ‘terrorist’ was not caught. That unfortuantely left the Democrats as the leaders in the ‘fight against terrorism’ when Bush unexpectly did not make it a second term. But what to do since the victim of terroism, Kuwait, was already ‘liberated’? Could a new victim be found? Well, yes it was soon found. The victim was potential, as Hussein was claimed to be developing nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons! And of course, the potential victim could only be ourselves, us the poor US citizens, so the terrorist had to be stopped! Eight years of the ‘War Against Terrorism’ was then fought by Clinton and Gore against the people of Iraq, where hundreds of thousands weree killed by economic sanctions designed solely to stop the ‘terrorist’.

Now we know, all of that was the big lie. The Democrats actaully have the nerve to credit Bush Junior with lying about that! Takes some gall, it sure does. But with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, communists could no longer be the offical enemy, so ‘terrorism’ had to be it. The fall of the Soviet Union was over 10 years before 9/11, and Saddam Hussein was the big guy bad guy, before we ever began to think about Osama. Fast forward to now, where terrorists are all over, and all ephemeral.

We now know when the ‘War Against Terrorism’ started, but what has been the purpose? To stop terrorists from harming us? Why NO, that’s not it at all. To catch Osama? No, he has been killed already, more than likely. NO, the real purpose is to provide an official enemy that can camoflage 2 countries’ needs to steal from others. One Holy Land needs to steal land, and the other needs to steal oil. Together they have allied themselves to fight a continual conflict, that they now call, a “War Against Terrorism’. Even as it’s fought, we create yet more of the official enemy to fuel our production of war equipment. Oil and industry for us, and stolen land for our ally. That’s the purpose that makes our leaders march us like so many sheep, into this war against the shadows they create.

The ‘War Against Terrorism’ cannot be stopped, until the land is stolen, and the oil supplies are ours.

Poor Nicaragua

I don’t really have much comment here. Nicaragua was a squalid, miserable little country in the ’80s when the US refused to abandon its grip on the place after Uncle Sam’s man, Somoza, went down. Sure there were the 8 years of Reagan to blame for this, but did Jimmy Carter ever open his mouth in any real protest? Did the Democratic Party help Nicaragua defend itself from the Republican thugs? Did the Sandinistas ever really have a chance? All the answers are… NO.

Just like the American union movement, the people of Nicaragua got run over as a result of Reaganism in action, and the Democratic Party in inaction. Today, the country has a population the size of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, living lives of pure misery. Only Haiti suffers a worse fate in the Hemisphere. America has crammed capitalism and its corruption down the throats of the people living in this sad country, and continues to hold its grip on all of Nicaragua’s affairs. Sadly, the recent elections there offer little hope for change. For the best article about Ortega’s victory and what it means for future hopes, go to Counterpunch and skip past the fundraising pitch to the article by Joe Raymond afterwards.

Reactionary Tourism

I came across an article today that makes me really chuckle. For years now, a certain type of tourist has been going in groups to places like Cuba, the former Sandanista Nicaragua, and in earlier times, to China and the exSoviet Union. The purpose? Why to see what a revolution was really like! This type of travel by liberals and radicals earned the derisive label, ‘revolutionary tourism’ from conservatives.
 
Today, the biggest sponsor of this type of excursion for the liberal Left is through the organization ‘Global Exchange’. There are a very few other miniscule companies also that compete for liberal centavos, but Global Exchange is the big one. And head of that group, Medea Benjamin, is a diehard Democratic Party liberal voter, despite a brief Green fling. Today, she is a pilar of the Progressive Democrats of America and the Anybody But Bush mindset. So it really freaked me out, to find that Rupert Murdoch is now promoting travel that can only be described as the polar sameness to Revolutionary Tourism, which would be Reactionary Tourism, of course! What a brilliant man. Look in the travel section of his Sun newspaper chain for further details.

Well, I lied. Reactionary Tourism, as founded by Murdoch, cannot be found within the travel sections of his tabloids, but rather in the ‘news’ sections. We can probably look for Fox News to fill us in more about this reactionary way of travel in the days ahead, too. But what genius to found this idea of reactionary travel that Murdoch has had! And here are the people, Peter Worthington, noted Canadian homophobe, his noted Canadian hyperZionist father-in-law,David Frum, and that old adorable Reagan buddy, Ed Meese. Look ’em up in Wikipedia. The threee musketeers of reaction! But where to send them to?

See the luxury of Guantanamo!

Nicaragua and Jimmy, a case study in how not to run elections

Daniel Ortega is back in. He has won the Nicaraguan presidential election held Sunday, with less than 40% of the vote! And we thought it idiotic when Dubya won the US election with less than 50%. These election structures that are so patently lacking in credibility would be comical, except for the fact that they are so sad. And to top the Nicaraguan election circus off, has been the media tourism down there of both Ollie North, US terrorist, and Jimmy, The Peanut Man Carter. News is in, that his stamp of approval already has fallen upon the election just held. All was done right and fair, he says. So Nicaragua has a new, yet old, president back in office who wins with only 38.5% of the vote! Good Ol’ Jimmy. He couldn’t make it to a gigantic Mexico this July, where there is substantial evidence that the declared winner won with less votes than the loser, but he could go to miniscule Nicaragua. Go figure? The Lord works in mysterious ways with this man of God.

Can’t really say much about an electoral structure that gives a win to any vote of 35% that is followed by 30% or less by candidate Number 2. What geniuses came up with that one anyway? But is it any more ridiculous than our own US gerrymandered Congressional Districts, our own system where the winner of the popular vote can actually be the loser, and where Wyoming gets the same representation as California or New York in the Senate? But you can’t beat an election system for idiocy like the Nicaraguan one, that allowed the world super power, the USA, to continually interfere in their national campaigning. That is how certainly not to run elections with any real credibility. Right, Jimmy? Wonder if he’ll be back to certify as fair our own nonsensical elections today?

Brad Will presente

The city of Oaxaca, Mexico is now under direct military assault. For days now death squads have been killing the people there who have been demanding the dismissal of the state governor, who is the guiding force and organizer behind that state’s death squad activity. One of those victims, murdered just a couple of days ago, was an American reporter for IndyMedia, Brad Will. He was dedicated to bringing to light, the fight for justice of the Mexican people against the US supported Mexican dictatorship. See the last film he ran as he was shot down in cold blood: Brad Will- Presente .

One might ask, just what does Oaxaca have anything to do with us here in Colorado Springs? The answer is simply that for us to intelligently judge our own government as it builds a Border Wall and talks tough on Hispanic immigration to this country, we need to know what is going on inside Mexico itself, and other Latin countries, too, like Nicaragua. And just what has been the role of our own government in its long standing propping up of Mexico’s institutional dictatorship? It has not been a very pretty story, and this history says a lot about how little our own elites actually have any democratic inclinations of their own.

For more info on the current situation in Oaxaca and Brad Will, go to either Narco News or IndyMedia

Oliver North and Bizarro World

Oliver North is in Nicaragua advising voters there not to vote for Daniel Ortega for President this November 5. He is one of a series of benevolent GOP thugs who have gone down there the last couple of weeks to help ‘bring democracy’ to that country. And part of democracy, according to the GOP, is to intervene in the affairs of foreign, and supposedly sovereign, states.
 
Here is what MSN says that he told Nicaraguans…. Ollie told them that they had suffered enough from the influence of outsiders! Now that’s Bizarro World! He was referring to Hugo Chavez, and not the GOP of the USA, of course. But it’s too bad that the Nicaraguans can’t arrest this war criminal and have him shot. In fact, it’s too bad that Americans can’t do the same. Our national security certainly is not helped by allowing terrorists like Ollie to run loose.

Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

By Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!