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Baltimore and the Human Right to Resistance: Rejecting the Framework of the Oppressor

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Baltimore-Riots.jpg_23790e32da49a4d09d45db82b7634b69To hear President Obama and Baltimore mayor Rawlings tell it, politeness, nonviolence and respect for law and property are the fundamental obligations of those confronting the brazen and lawless violence of police in Baltimore and beyond. This is a truly upside-down reality.

By Ajamu Baraka

Source: Black Agenda Report

Anti-Black racism, always just beneath the surface of polite racial discourse in the U.S., has exploded in reaction to the resistance of black youth to another brutal murder by the agents of this racist, settler-colonialist state. With the resistance, the focus shifted from the brutal murder of Freddie Gray and the systematic state violence that historically has been deployed to control and contain the black population in the colonized urban zones of North America, to the forms of resistance by African Americans to the trauma of ongoing state violence.

The narrative being advanced by corporate media spokespeople gives the impression that the resistance has no rational basis. The impression being established is that this is just another manifestation of the irrationality of non-European people – in particular, Black people – and how they are prone to violence. This is the classic colonial projection employed by all white supremacist settler states, from the U.S., to South Africa and Israel.

The accompanying narrative is that any kind of resistance that does not fit the narrow definition of “non-violent” resistance is illegitimate violence and, therefore, counter-productive because – “violence doesn’t accomplish anything.”  Not only does this position falsely equate resistance to oppression as being morally equivalent to the violence of the oppressor, it also attempts to erase the role of violence as being fundamental to the U.S. colonial project.

The history of colonial conquest saw the U.S. settler state shoot and murdered its’ way across the land mass of what became the U.S. in the process of stealing indigenous land to expand the racist White republic from “sea to shining sea.”  And the marginalization of the role of violence certainly does not reflect the values of the Obama administration that dutifully implements the bi-partisan dictates of the U.S. strategy of full spectrum dominance that privileges military power and oppressive violence to protect and advance U.S. global supremacy. The destruction of Libya; the reinvasion of Iraq; the civil war in Syria; Obama’s continued war in Afghanistan; the pathological assault by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza and the U.S. supported attack on Yemen by the Saudi dictatorship, are just a few of the horrific consequences of this criminal doctrine.

Race and oppressive violence has always been at the center of the racist colonial project that is the U.S. It is only when the oppressed resist — when we decide, like Malcolm X said, that we must fight for our human rights — that we are counseled  to be like Dr. King, including by war mongers like Barack Obama. However, resistance to oppression is a right that the oppressed claim for themselves. It does not matter if it is sanctioned by the oppressor state, because that state has no legitimacy.

No rational person exalts violence and the loss of life. But violence is structured into the everyday institutional practices of all oppressive societies. It is the deliberate de-humanization of the person in order to turn them into a ‘thing’ — a process Dr. King called “thing-afication.” It is a necessary process for the oppressor in order to more effectively control and exploit. Resistance, informed by the conscious understanding of the equal humanity of all people, reverses this process of de-humanization. Struggle and resistance are the highest expressions of the collective demand for people-centered human rights – human rights defined and in the service of the people and not governments and middle-class lawyers.

That resistance may look chaotic at this point – spontaneous resistance almost always looks like that. But since the internal logic of neoliberal capital is incapable of resolving the contradiction that it created, expect more repression and more resistance that will eventually take a higher form of organization and permanence. In the meantime, we are watching to see who aligns with us or the racist state.

The contradictions of the colonial/capitalist system in its current expression of neoliberalism have obstructed the creation of decent, humane societies in which all people are valued and have democratic and human rights. What we are witnessing in the U.S. is a confirmation that neoliberal capitalism has created what Chris Hedges called “sacrificial zones” in which large numbers of black and Latino people have been confined and written off as disposable by the system. It is in those zones that we find the escalation of repressive violence by the militarized police forces. And it is in those zones where the people are deciding to fight back and take control of their communities and lives.

These are defining times for all those who give verbal support to anti-racist struggles and transformative politics. For many of our young white comrades, people of color and even some black ones who were too young to have lived through the last period of intensified struggle in the 1960s and ‘70s and have not understood the centrality of African American resistance to the historical social struggles in the U.S., it may be a little disconcerting to see the emergence of resistance that is not dependent on and validated by white folks or anyone else.

The repression will continue, and so will the resistance. The fact that the resistance emerged in a so-called black city provides some complications, but those are rich and welcoming because they provide an opportunity to highlight one of the defining elements that will serve as a line of demarcation in the African American community – the issue of class.  We are going to see a vicious ideological assault by the black middle class, probably led by their champion – Barack Obama – over the next few days. Yet the events over the last year are making it more difficult for these middle-class forces to distort and confuse the issue of their class collaboration with the white supremacist capitalist/colonialist patriarchy. The battle lines are being drawn; the only question that people must ask themselves is which side they’ll be on.

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer, geo-political analyst and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves as the Public Intervenor for Human Rights as a member of the Green Shadow Cabinet and coordinates the International Affairs Committee of the Black Left Unity Network. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C.

Why Mumia Must Live, and US imperialism Must Die: The Link Between Political Prisoners and the War on Terror

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The so-called War on Terror and the national security state did not emerge full-blown from the rubble of 9/11. Both are products of previous waves of police repression, mainly targeting Black radicals. “The FBI’s counter insurgency war on the Black Panther Party chapters and leaders like Mumia established for local police departments a direct link to Washington’s war and surveillance arsenal.”

By Danny Haiphong

Source: Black Agenda Report

“The fear of the Muslim/Arab terrorist rekindles the same fear in white America that the Black liberation movement ignited over four decades ago.”

Political Prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been subjected to over three decades of torture from the US prison gulag. His political imprisonment has placed his life in serious danger, this time not from state execution but instead from extra-legal medical neglect. The prison state has continuously failed in its efforts to murder Mumia through official means and has thus decided to refuse the former Black Panther adequate medical treatment for diabetes. Meanwhile, Boston residents of all classes await the verdict of whether the alleged “Boston bomber” Dzokhar Tsarnaev will receive the death penalty or life in prison. The event that faithful day remains shrouded in questions , but most of the city has accepted the dominant narrative put forth by the FBI and Boston Police Department. The War on Terror that produced the “Boston Bombing” and Mumia’s struggle against the prison state are intimately connected. For Mumia to live with freedom and dignity, the US imperial order behind the War on Terror must die.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s existence as a political prisoner has been repressed by the establishment, while the War on Terror is a household name in the US. This is because the War on Terror serves the objectives of imperialism and Mumia does not. Mumia joined the Black Panther Party at fifteen and served as the Philadelphia Chapter’s Ministry of Information. He used his talents in journalism in service of Black people both in the BPP and after. This landed him on J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTEPRO list of Black liberation fighters to watch and suppress. In 1978, Mumia covered the Philadelphia police department’s siege on the MOVE Organization. His critical investigation of the Philly PD’s role in repressing MOVE led to his ouster from the journalism industry. In 1982, Mumia was framed for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death.

“He used his talents in journalism in service of Black people both in the BPP and after.”

The context of Mumia’s imprisonment is at the essence of US imperialism’s War on Terror, which could be better named its war of terror. In the film Manufacturing Guilt​ , Mumia’s frame-up is blatantly exposed through court documents and investigations. Yet, Mumia has lived much of his life in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. What explains this injustice and how does it relate to the current War on Terror? In Still Black, Still Strong, Dhoruba Bin-Wahad explains how the FBI’s counter insurgency war on the Black Panther Party chapters and leaders like Mumia established for local police departments a direct link to Washington’s war and surveillance arsenal. Washington’s war on Black liberation fighters precipitated the first SWAT team operation in 1969 and the FBI’s declaration that the Black Panther Party was the “greatest threat to the internal security” of the US. The war on Black freedom that jailed Mumia created the technical capacity for the War on Terror.

The recent bombing of the 2013 marathon, and 9/11 before that, created the conditions for a massive expansion of the surveillance state and police state throughout the US mainland. The hundreds of illegally detained prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the increased surveillance of Muslims and Black people in the US, and the massive spy program instituted by the Patriot Act and similar legislation are daily reminders of US imperialism’s ever expanding repressive apparatus. Internationally, the US led War on Terror interventions have caused the loss of life of millions of people in the Middle East and Africa alongside the thousands more from US aerial drone strikes and proxy war. All of this has been justified as necessary to “counter” the so-called threat of “terrorism.”

“The war on Black freedom that jailed Mumia created the technical capacity for the War on Terror.”

Mumia’s story, one shared by numerous US political prisoners sentenced to die in the cages of the prison state, contains in it the seeds that sprouted the rise of the massive War on Terror. Russell Maroon Shoatz, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Leonard Peltier and scores more faced trumped up charges from the state as part of US imperialism’s counter insurgency war on dissent generally and the Black liberation movement in particular. This war has been expanded to meet the needs of US imperialism, which in its current form has produced a potentially explosive situation domestically and globally. The sharpening contradictions of never-ending war and increasing poverty and privatization wouldn’t last long if the counter insurgency war on Mumia and the Panthers hadn’t provided the blueprints and technical support for the mass expansion of the War on Terror’s primary tools: war and surveillance state.

Mumia Abu-Jamal and the rest of the Empire’s political prisoners are caught in the cross hairs of US imperialism’s war of survival. Not only has the material basis of the counter insurgency war that murdered and imprisoned the Black liberation movement grown, but so too has the racist logic behind the repression. The War on Terror’s racist logic has permeated so deeply into the minds of the US public that the mere questioning of the agenda’s blatant deceit is subject to dismissal or defense by most people living in the US mainland. These conditions have left political prisoners with few fighters on the outside pressuring their release. The War on Terror has attempted to erase the memory of political prisoners by reframing the racist justifications for political imprisonment as common sense in what George Jackson called the “Amerikan mind.”

“The War on Terror’s racist logic has permeated so deeply into the minds of the US public that the mere questioning of the agenda’s blatant deceit is subject to dismissal.”

So, even though the justification for each and every War on Terror intervention or policy since 2001 are dubious at best, the fear of the Muslim/Arab terrorist rekindles the same fear in white America that the Black liberation movement ignited over four decades ago. The Black Panther Party and their partners in struggle were deemed criminal in every way and many were falsely charged with the murder of police officers, the highest form of offense in the eyes of white America. The War on Terror built off this strategy by throwing the Muslim community into the racist war on the oppressed as a means to control the dissent of the entire population. That the US imperial machinery is complicit in, and a sponsor of, jihadist terror and proxy war matters as little as the innocence of political prisoners when it comes to preserving the Empire and criminalizing all resistance to its rule.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life needs to be saved by any means necessary, but fighting to free him based on his criminal case alone won’t develop the movement we need. One of the primary obstacles to building a concrete movement for the freedom of political prisoners is the privileging of innocence over a movement that links political prisoners to the repression of the imperial state. But Mumia’s innocence teaches us the real purpose of political imprisonment. The War on Terror is a consolidation of the forces that were built by imperialism to suppress the revolutionary ideas of Mumia Abu-Jamal. What we need is a reexamination of those ideas in the service of the freedom of all political prisoners. By studying the War on Terror and the repression of the Black Liberation movement from which it grew, it becomes increasingly clear that imperialism must die for Mumia to truly live.

Danny Haiphong is an organizer for Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) in Boston. He is also a regular contributor to Black Agenda Report. Danny can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com and FIST can be reached at bostonfist@gmail.com.

Political issues in the Ebola crisis

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By Patrick Martin

Source: WSWS.org

The report that a healthcare worker in Dallas, Texas, one of those who treated Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan before his death, has herself contracted the disease, is a significant and troubling event. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted in a television interview Sunday, “It’s deeply concerning that this infection occurred.”

While Frieden claimed that current protocols for treating Ebola patients were effective in preventing the spread of the disease, arguing that there must have been “a breach of protocol,” no actual explanation has been given for how the healthcare worker became infected. She was not one of the 48 primary contacts with Duncan who were being monitored for possible exposure, but worked in a more peripheral role. Her infection was only detected when she contracted a fever and reported it herself.

There are a growing number of such cases, including doctors and nurses in the affected regions of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, who were well aware of the procedures, and an NBC News photographer, whose infection has caused the quarantining of the entire reporting team, led by Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the network’s chief medical correspondent. These cases suggest that despite the repeated assurances from health officials, there is much that is not known about how the disease is transmitted.

What is certain is that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a catastrophe for the people of that region. More than 8,000 people have been infected and more than 4,000 have died, with no signs that the epidemic has been curtailed. The heroic efforts of doctors, nurses and aid workers have been sabotaged by the collapse of the healthcare systems of these countries, among the poorest in the world. Only 20 percent of the affected population in West Africa has access to a treatment center.

It is almost impossible to overstate the dimensions of the disaster. Until this year, Ebola was a disease of remote rural areas that had killed only 1,500 people in 20 previous outbreaks over 40 years. Now the disease has reached urban centers like Monrovia, capital of Liberia, a city of one million, and individuals infected with the virus have travelled from the region only to fall ill in the United States, Spain and Brazil. There are well-founded fears that Ebola could become a global plague, particularly if it reaches more densely populated countries like Nigeria, or the impoverished billions of South and East Asia.

The impotent global response to the immense tragedy in West Africa is a serious warning. The Ebola crisis has proven to be a test of the ability of capitalism, as a world system, to deal with an acute and deadly threat. The profit system has failed. A society organized on the basis of production for private gain and divided into antagonistic nation-states, with a handful of imperialist powers dominating the rest, is incapable of the systematic, energetic and humane response that this crisis requires. It is no accident that the Ebola outbreak takes place in countries that are former colonies of imperialist powers. Guinea was a French colony, Sierra Leone a British colony, and Liberia a de facto US colony since its founding by freed American slaves. Despite their nominal independence, each country remains dominated by giant corporations and banks based in the imperialist countries, which extract vast profits from the mineral wealth and other natural resources. Guinea is the world’s largest bauxite exporter, Sierra Leone depends on diamond exports, Liberia has long been the fiefdom of Firestone Rubber (now Bridgestone).

These countries are unable to provide even rudimentary healthcare services to their populations, not because they lack resources, but because they are exploited and oppressed by a global economic system controlled by Wall Street and other financial and commodity markets. This economic system is so unequal that the 85 richest individuals on the planet control more wealth than the poorest three billion people, nearly half of humanity.

Economic development, particularly over the past 40 years, has created an interconnected and globalized world. Thousands of people travel every day between West Africa and other parts of the world. The revolution in transportation and communications means that what happens in West Africa today can affect Dallas, Boston, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. This makes the Ebola epidemic not a regional event, but a world event.

But the response to the Ebola crisis is carried out by national governments driven by competing national interests, and concerned, not with the danger of the virus to the world’s people, but with how it affects the interests of the ruling class in each nation. Thus there are calls in the United States and Europe for imposing an embargo on travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, although health experts warn that such an action would cause the economic collapse of these countries, vastly worsening the epidemic and making its global spread more rather than less likely.

Equally reactionary is the Obama administration’s decision to send 4,000 US troops to Liberia, ostensibly to build health treatment facilities. Why are heavily armed soldiers chosen for such a mission? They are not construction workers or healthcare providers. If healthcare workers and journalists have become infected, despite taking every precaution, then certainly soldiers could themselves fall victim to the disease, and bring the virus home with them. The real agenda of Washington is to secure a basis for its Africa Command (AFRICOM), up to now excluded from the continent by local opposition, thus advancing the interests of American imperialism against its rivals, particularly China.

The potential dangers of a disease like Ebola spreading from rural Africa to the world have long been understood by epidemiologists and other scientists. It has been the subject of specialized studies and best-selling books. The issue has even penetrated into popular culture through films from The Andromeda Strain to Outbreak and 28 Days. But the profit system has been incapable of generating a serious effort to forestall an entirely predictable crisis.

The detection of Ebola in the mid-1970s should have been the occasion for the launching of an intensive effort to study the virus, analyze how it is transmitted and develop antidotes and a vaccine. This did not take place, in large measure, as a report last month suggested, because the giant pharmaceutical companies that control medical research saw little profit in saving the lives of impoverished villagers in rural Africa (see “Profit motive big hurdle for Ebola drugs”).

What little research has been conducted on possible cures and vaccines was funded by the US Pentagon, for dubious reasons: at best, to protect US soldiers who might be deployed to the jungles of central Africa as an imperialist invasion force; at worst, to determine whether the virus could be weaponized for use against potential enemies.

What would a serious response to the Ebola crisis look like? It would entail a massive, internationally coordinated response which calls on vast resources on the scale necessary both to save as many as possible of those under immediate threat and to prevent the development of an outbreak on a global scale.

It would mean the mobilization of doctors, nurses, public health workers and scientists from America, Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world to fight back against a deadly threat to the entire human race. And it would mean taking control of this response out of the hands of the national military establishments, particularly the Pentagon, and the giant pharmaceutical firms, one of the most corrupt and rapacious detachments of big business.

This American Empire, It Too Will Collapse

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By Dave Lefcourt

Source: RINF.com

Here is my sense; like all empires before it this American one reached its apex after WWII. It’s on a downward trajectory and will eventually fall or be overtaken.

And I believe most Americans will be taken by surprise as in “How could this happen”?

That’s because most Americans are in the words of Paul Craig Roberts “insouciant”, without a care, too passively indifferent, too besotted with technological gadgetry, have feelings of entitlement and believe in American exceptionalism to bother to notice their government has become sinister-which most others in the world recognize, but their governments too intimidated or blackmailed into following us or they will be demonized. Think Iran, Iraq under Saddam-though earlier an ally in his war with Iran in the 80′s-now the newly announced new cold war with Russia and soon to be China.

As for us Americans take an honest look at what passes for our modern American “culture” nowadays-and contributes to maintaining domestic tranquility at all costs. In no particular order:

Consumerism-excessive and beyond all need. And in conjunction with it

Corporatism and commercialization of the public square i.e. the “mallization” of America.

Sports mania, particularly over Pro football and its marketing.

Popular movies featuring gore, crashes, mayhem, aliens, illusion, “virtual” characters replacing real people.

Celebrity gossip as “news”.

Government surveillance by way of technological gadgetry-cell phones, ipods, computers, email, GPS, EZ pass, toll cameras.

MSM becoming complicit in government actions and its propaganda

Addiction with drugs and alcohol

Incarceration-the highest rates of all 1 st world industrialized democraci

Militarization of local and state police

A trillion dollars in college student debt.

Though certainly not contributing to maintaining domestic tranquility, throw in the bailouts of the big banks too big to fail, income inequality worse than the 1920′s and clearly articulated in the 2011 occupy movement that coined the disparity between the 1% and the 99%, no single payer universal health insurance coverage for all, ignoring global warming and the further despoiling of the environment, the demise of domestic manufacturing, the outsourcing of jobs, home foreclosures and bankruptcy stemming from unscrupulous lenders et al and domestically its an America becoming unrecognizable to these old eyes.

As for the policies and actions of our government that unmistakably reveals its true nature, here again in no particular order are:

  • The war industry-the trillion dollar military/corporate/political complex and its revolving door of key players that move seamlessly between each to maintain its control. The other key element is the creation of,
  • “Enemies” contrived such as the “global war on terror”, and the new “cold war” with Russia.
  • Initiating unnecessary and illegal wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq
  • CIA coups, assassinations to create instability to promote endless war
  • NSA surveillance of everyone in the world through “back doors” of computers and software
  • Absolute control of the political agenda and the enacting of laws, regulations oversight and enforcement to the benefit of corporate interests
  • Justice Department lawyers writing memos “legalizing” all executive actions but kept secret for reasons of national security with no oversight by the Congress or the courts
  • Exercise hegemony worldwide, surround Iran, Russia with “allies”, NATO, a thousand military bases worldwide and a floating armada of carrier task forces
  • Initiate cyberwarfare as was done in Iran in 2010 and its enrichment of uranium
  • Engage in extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture of suspects
  • Targeting and prosecuting whistleblowers, hounding Edward Snowden for exposing the NSA‘s illegal surveillance practices.

These domestic and foreign policies and actions are not those of a government that is representative of the people in a democratic republic. These are policies and actions of a plutocracy of oligarchs and an empire willing to go to any length to maintain its hegemony worldwide and control domestically.

Incredibly, what’s propping up this edifice of domestic indulgence and propaganda and foreign villainy is the FED printing money, selling billions in treasury notes to China, Japan, even Russia underpinned by what else, our previous debt in the trillions and all based on the assumption these countries will continue to buy our debt. But it’s a form of blackmail these other countries have accepted, at least for the present. That can’t last forever.

For sure one can’t predict the actual demise of an empire, even the American one. But hubris, American exceptionalism, the sense of entitlement and the idea of it being the “indispensible nation” surely won’t save it from the trash heap of other empires long gone. Such illusions may contribute, even hasten that inevitable collapse.

Dave is the author of “DECEIT AND EXCESS IN AMERICA, HOW THE MONEYED INTERESTS HAVE STOLEN AMERICA AND HOW WE CAN GET IT BACK”, Authorhouse, 2009

Did the CIA Kill Hugo Chavez?

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Today marks the first anniversary of the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As Washington DC and U.S. corporate media do everything in their power to shift popular support towards the conservative opposition, now is a good time to remember what Chavez and his party stood for, why the U.S. hated him so much, why his people loved him, and how and why the CIA may have assassinated him. These and other topics are discussed in the interview transcript below with author and historian William Blum by John Robles first published by Stop NATO. For more details about likely CIA involvement in the death of Hugo Chavez, read http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/03/08/who-killed-hugo-chavez/.

The CIA has Attempted to Assassinate 50 Foreign Leaders Including Chavez

The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was warned by Fidel Castro to be careful of a very specific attack, namely a quick jab from an infected needle. Such a warning coming from a leader who has reportedly been the target of CIA assassination plots more than 600 times in over 50 years, was sure to be heeded.

Was the illness of Hugo Chavez a completely deniable assassination by the CIA? William Blum spoke with the VOR’s John Robles and discussed this issue and more.

Robles: I’ve read your Anti-Empire report regarding Hugo Chavez. Can you give us your comments on speculation that he was assassinated by the CIA?

Blum: I cannot prove it of course, but I believe he was. It would be totally in keeping with the entire history of the CIA and its attitude towards people like Hugo Chavez.

The CIA has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and successfully at least half the time. And very few of them were as despised by the US government as Chavez was, I would say. So, there would be no reason at all to expect that the CIA would not at least plan on killing, and the nature of his ailment is very odd.

He went from a cancer, which would not go away despite several sessions of chemotherapy and what have you. Then it went to serious lung infections, which would not go away no matter what they did. And then it went to, suddenly, a massive heart attack. All in the same man with no apparent cause, he was only 58-years-old, and as far as we know he was a very healthy until this happened, it is all very odd.

And given the great motivation that the US Government and the persons in the CIA has put for killing a man like Hugo Chavez, I’m pretty sure that the CIA played a role in this.

Robles: Do you know or have you heard of any credible new technology or new programs that could deliver such a cancer?

Blum: The means would be a needle with a quick, sharp jab and what you need is getting one person close enough to Chavez to do that.

Chavez was always in the public eye, he was always embracing people. There must have been countless occasions in the past few years when he was vulnerable to a quick jab by a needle that would be the method of transmitting the ailments.

Robles: Did he ever complain that he had been poked by something in public? Were there any reports of anything like that happening that you had heard about?

Blum: He did mention that Fidel Castro warned him about just that. He said: “A quick jab with a needle, and they’ll do…I don’t know what!” Actually he was told by Fidel.

Robles: A quick jab with a needle. Do you think that happened with Fidel because he had become very ill?

Blum: Well, Fidel…According to Cuban intelligence, there were more than 600 attempts on the life of Fidel Castro by the CIA. There is an entire book on that subject by Cuban intelligence.

And many of the methods were pretty bizarre, including an exploding cigar, but over the course of 50 years the Cubans claim there were more than 600 attempts on his life and it may have taken just one with Chavez.

Robles: Have you heard anything from your sources or from where you get some of your information? Have you heard anything detailing any connection between these two US Air Force attaches that were expelled from the country and the death of Hugo Chavez?

Blum: No. I would assume that there is a connection but I don’t know if the Venezuelan government has actually said so.

Getting back to Chavez’s case, we have to keep in mind that four other South American leaders, prominent people on the left, all came down with cancer within the past year or two.

Robles: I think it was seven, wasn’t it, altogether?

Blum: The four that I named in my report…You can add the ones that you know just for my information… were Cristina Fernandez…

Robles: De Kirchner, right…

Blum: of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, the former Brazilian head of state Lula da Silva. Who would you add into that list?

Robles: Well, and then of course Hugo Chavez himself…

Blum: Castro is one of them…

Robles: I would add Castro to the list and Kirchner’s husband who died of a mysterious heart attack as well.

Blum: Right.

Robles: We might add that as a mysterious illness, not exactly a cancer but…

Blum: Right! If the CIA was involved it doesn’t have to be cancer necessarily of course.

Robles: Oh, sure, it could be anything. Have you heard anything about cancer strains or any kind of killing weapons like this, any kind of biological weapons that would give maybe cancer-like symptoms, not exactly a certain type of cancer?

Blum: I very well may have read of such over the years. I have read so much about the CIA, but at the moment I can’t think of anything to supply you with that information. Although we do know, it is well known, that for decades the CIA was looking for a method of killing somebody which would not leave a trace. The CIA itself has used those words. For the entire period of the Cold War that was a major stated project of the CIA. But where that stands today, I have no idea.

Robles: Yes, of course that is all very secret and no one is going to talk about it, but perhaps there are some echoes or some whispers? Maybe somebody has come out and said something? What other reasons would you give to back up the argument that he was assassinated?

Blum: I will mention there is no one in the entire universe who was more hated, no leader more hated than Chavez was by the US government. In the eyes of the US power that be, Chavez was worse than Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende.

Robles: Why was he so hated?

Blum: Because he was the most outspoken leader in the world when it came to criticizing US foreign policy. He never pulled his punches for a moment, he made a claim that it was all crimes against humanity and the US leaders were war criminals, and he said so explicitly. It is unusual for a head of state to be talking that way. And at the UN he attacked Bush in front of the whole world.

Robles: Oh yes, I remember he said that the Devil had been there the day before or something, and it still smelled like sulfur.

Blum: Yes, Bush had spoken to the UN before Chavez from the same platform. And Chavez said there was a smell of sulfur in the air because of that.

Robles: That’s usually the domain of the United States, I mean… Isn’t it? I mean Bush was calling everybody the axis of evil, and all this stuff, branding everyone evil. Wasn’t that kind of a shock to see the same thing done to an American leader?

Blum: Yeah, it is a shock for anyone under any circumstances to be so outspoken in the criticism of the US foreign policy. It is a point in Chavez’s favor that he could have the honesty and the courage to say such things, which very much needed to be said.

Robles: So, you supported the way he stood up?

Blum: Well, in general yes. I think there certainly were times when he may have overdone it, even for me. I mean, he felt obliged to comment on everything under the sun, and I thought several times that he could have held off on saying certain things, they were not serving any good purpose. But that’s a minor criticism of his overall marvelous record.

Robles: You say he had a marvelous record. What do you think were his major achievements in your opinion?

Blum: What he’s brought to the poor people of Venezuela in the way of education and healthcare, and housing, and what have you. And what he brought to the rest of the South America, he formed various anti-US empire blocs which stood in the way of expansion of the US influence.

He and others formed a new…A counter to the OAS, the Organization of American States, which for decades has been dominated and corrupted by the US and Canada. And they formed a new organization in South America excluding the US and Canada. So it was that simple.

Robles: Do you think his achievements will continue or do you think the US will be successful in rolling back everything he did? Which of course I assume they would want to.

Blum: Yes, they would want to. But if Maduro who was chosen and backed by Chavez, wins, and he is expected to win in the election next month, then most of it will continue, I assume.

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Saturday Matinee: Walker

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Walker afiche

Following the modest successes of “Repo Man” and “Sid and Nancy”, director Alex Cox took a chance on an Acid Western filmed in Nicaragua about soldier-of-fortune William Walker. Featuring a script by cult screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, a great soundtrack by Joe Strummer of the Clash, and an excellent performance by Ed Harris in the title role, “Walker” (1987) is unlike any historical biopic made before or since. The stylistic madness of the film reflects the madness of Walker’s misadventures. A sense of absurdity and inevitability is added to the proceedings through intentional anachronisms. While this may take viewers out of the story, it also makes it impossible to ignore parallels between the colonialist, imperialist attitudes of Walker’s time and U.S foreign policy of the 1980s and today.

While the film failed at the box-office in the U.S., it became the second highest grossing film in Nicaragua at the time. Walker is a rare film that not only has a radical message but its production was a radical political act in itself, having economically supported the Sandinista government.

Putin on Syria

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Putin, like all world leaders, has done his share of morally dubious actions, but on the issue of Syria he has shown more integrity and wise judgement than U.S. heads of state.

Via: Veteran News Now :

He pulled no punches calling US foreign policy “very dangerous (in its) uncontained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.”

US imperialism “overstep(s) national borders in every way.”

“(U)nilateral illegal actions have not resolved any single problem. They have become a hotbed of further conflicts.”

“We are seeing increasing disregard for the fundamental principles of international law.”

“No one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them.”

“Of course, such a policy stimulates an arms race. The dominance of force inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”

Putin addressed America’s responsibility for a “unipolar world.” He called it one “in which there is one master, one sovereign.”

“And at the end of the day, this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.”

“We are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.”

America deplores democracy. It does so at home and abroad. It’s intolerant of what it claims to support.

“As far as this incident is concerned,” he added, “it is well-known that the Syrian government turn(ed) to the world community with a request to inspect, what it thought (were) cases of using chemical weapons against civilians by militants.”

“Unfortunately, that did not happen.”

“Any unilateral use of force without the authorization of the UN Security Council, no matter how ‘limited’ it is, will be a clear violation of international law, will undermine prospects for a political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict in Syria and will lead to a new round of confrontation and new casualties.”

U.S Escalates Campaign Against Syria

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The sounds of war drums and sabre rattling are getting obnoxiously loud as the U.S. government and allies continues their relentless rush towards war in Syria. Just as Colin Powell lied for the Bush administration to start the war in Iraq, John Kerry is doing the same to push for war in Syria for the Obama administration.

Via: 21st Century Wire:

Kerry is not just implying – he is insisting, that anyone who dare questions Washington’s own expedited, and fabricated version of events in Syria – is somehow immoral. Even though the US, UK and France lack any real proof that Assad has launched a chemical weapons attack against its own people, Kerry is, in effect, slandering anyone who has exposed the facts on the ground, including the UN, Russia and others who have taken a more sober approach to analysing the important issues.

Why the rush, and why the harsh and conclusive language from Kerry? The answer is simple: they must get their war underway before the real evidence can be shown to the world – that NATO’s US, UK, France and Turkish-backed rebels in Syria are out of control, and have been dabbling with chemical weapons and killing civilians under the direction of western intelligence agencies and private military contracting firms operating in the region. Israel is also involved, in cooperation with the US.

Full story: http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/08/27/john-kerry-delivers-obamas-war-declaration-against-syria/

Paul Craig Roberts provides more details about why the U.S. government and its allies seem so desperate to get a new war started in his latest essay: Syria: Another Western War Crime In the Making