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REVIEW: Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies by Edward Curtin

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By Ray McGinnis

Source:  Off-Guardian

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a selection of essays. They reveal what stirs author Ed Curtin’s heart, his mind, and his path toward clarity. With each chapter he passionately reflects on the state of his country and what matters most to him. It is a compelling read.

The epigraph at the beginning of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see,” comes from Theodore Roethke’s poem “In A Dark Time”. Here the poet describes a state of disorientation and dislocation of identity. Roethke asserts this is essential to achieve clarity, insight and wisdom. In a dark time, one discovers the fragmented and broken state of things. With this fitting epigraph, Ed Curtin proceeds to alert his readers to the fragmented and broken state of things in America, and the task of its citizenry to begin to see more clearly.

The topics Curtin, a former professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, takes up are not original to him. But they are marked with his own articulate original stamp. One aspect of his novel contribution is that Curtin steps beyond standard frameworks of political analyses.

Three themes have permeated his attention from a young age: truth, death and freedom. He cites an excerpt from an interview with the poet Kenneth Rexroth who told journalist Lawrence Lipton in 1959:

Since all society is organized in the interest of exploiting classes and since if men knew this they would cease to work and society would fall apart, it has always been necessary, at least since the urban revolutions, for societies to be governed ideologically by a system of fraud.

Rexroth referred to this system of fraud as the “social lie.” And in Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies, Curtin takes on the task of describing the roots of the fraud, and its more recent manifestations. He also takes time to point out, despite the burdens society grapples with in an age of deceit, that beauty, art, love, and whimsy are among the qualities that persist as signs of grace.

In his essay “Inside America’s Doll House: A Vast Tapestry Of Lies” Curtin cites Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans who in 1969 brought to trial a case naming persons connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Garrison attempted to show that the assassination of JFK was the work of the CIA and Allen Dulles.

However, Garrison was routinely described as a lunatic by CIA-connected media spokespersons. It was Garrison’s conclusion that American citizens passively consumed television news that was laced with propaganda. Such propaganda was manufactured to preclude Americans from “understanding…what is really happening….”

Garrison warned that Americans were living “in a doll’s house.” Building on the hard lessons Jim Garrison learned from the trial in 1969, Ed Curtin observes:

In the doll’s house into which America gradually has been converted, a great many of our basic assumptions are totally illusory.

His book was also released in winter 2020, some 57 years after JFK’s assassination.

Curtin notes that in 2009:

[President] Obama backed the 2009 coup d’état in Honduras that has resulted in so many deaths at the hands of U.S. trained killers, and now [followers of Trump complain about] all these ‘non-white’ people fleeing to the U.S. to escape a hell created by the U.S…

After 2009. it was learned that U.S. officers at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies trained members of the Honduran military to oust democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. In 2009 and the years following Honduras has had one of the highest rates of murder in the world. These have been driven by death squads connected to the Honduran military. But this coup mattered little to both President’s Obama and Trump, while Hondurans have paid the price in murder, increased debt and poverty.

Examples of what Curtin raises continue since his book was published in late 2020. For Venezuelans it matters little whether a Republican or a Democrat is president in the USA. Under Donald Trump there was a failed attempt in May 2020 to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. And on the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden signed an executive order declaring the United States recognizes Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the nations’ President. This despite Maduro winning over 67% of the popular vote in 2018; That the second candidate in the election results was Henri Falcón who won 21%; And Juan Guaidó wasn’t even a candidate in 2018. Imagine if Venezuela protested the result of the 2020 United States election, and recognized Mitt Romney as president (who ran in 2012 but didn’t run in 2020).

With Biden there is a change of tone from Trump, but many American foreign policies remain the same. Former President Jimmy Carter said of Venezuela’s 2012 elections when Hugo Chavez was re-elected:

…of the 92 elections that we’ve [Carter Centre Foundation in Atlanta] monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.

But that story that doesn’t conform with the media’s narrative. So, it goes down the memory hole.

Curtin notes that while average Americans have not constructed the doll’s house they live in, they are complicit. It is average Americans who have accepted “decades of fabricated reality for so-called peace of mind.” A consequence of accepting illusory narratives is that people are not really free.

In order to cope with a plausible lie, consumers of the news play dumb. And Curtin notes most Americans…

want to be nice (Latin, nescire, not to know, to be ignorant) and to be liked.

As they become a people of the lie, repeating the lies they are fed, a memetic desire arises in society. And the repetition of these lies fuels violence and scapegoating. The doll’s house that Americans (and many citizens of other countries who consume the news uncritically) live in, are reinforced by contracts they have made with the world. This is in order to enhance their social standing, financial status, professional advancement and maintain familial harmony. That kind of peace of mind and contentment require individuals not to venture out far from the doll house, in case they encounter truths they find hard to handle.

Curtin notes that the Central Intelligence Agency began to use the term “conspiracy theory” in a memo on April 1, 1967. This was to discredit assassination theories about other plausible actors in the death of the slain president on November 22, 1963. And he notes that it just so happens that the term “9/11” was first used on September 12, 2001, by future New York Times editor Bill Keller to designate the language for how to refer to the day of the attacks. By using a term synonymous with dialing an emergency number in the United States, the term became fused with feelings of “anxiety, depression, panic and confusion.”

It is useful to note that at the time of the attacks on September 11, 2001, the emergency number in Saudi Arabia was 999. In Afghanistan the emergency numbers were 102, 112 and 119. The numbers in Yemen were 191 and 194. The emergency numbers in the United Arab Emirates were 112, 998 and 999. The emergency number in Libya was 1515. The number in Kuwait was 112. The numbers in Iraq were 104, 115 and 122. In Syria emergency numbers were 110, 112 and 113. In Lebanon the numbers variously were 112, 140, 175 and 999. The emergency numbers in Egypt were 122, 123 and 180. Across continental Europe the emergency number to call on September 11, 2001, was 112. The emergency numbers in Iran were 110, 112, 115 and 125.

Curiously, 911 was a number to dial an emergency uniquely in the United States, Canada, Mexico (as well as 065, 066 and 068), and South America. 911 was not an emergency number in the states where Arabs were alleged to have plotted to attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

In some future scenario – were it to ever happen – might rogue American terrorists fly planes into skyscrapers in Tehran, Iran? And in such a scenario, might such terrorists plot an attack on a January 10th, 12th or 15th of a given year, fusing the day of the atrocity with the abbreviation for a date synonymous with one of the numbers Iranians dialed in case of an emergency?

In his essay “Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore,” Curtin notices that by “referring to September 11 as 9/11,” Keller ensured…

an endless national emergency became wedded to an endless war on terror aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create another ground zero or holocaust. It is a term that pushes all the right buttons evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is language as sorcery; it is propaganda at its best.

Because Curtin suspects that the repetition of the term “9/11” is embedded in an advanced form of mind-control, he refuses to use the term in relation to the attacks. Instead, he uses the phrase “the attacks of September 11, 2001.” Whatever vocabulary we use to refer to the attacks, Curtin advises that we find one that can unbind us from the mesmerizing impact of its official shorthand repeated endlessly, subliminally evoking confusion, depression and panic in its hearers.

As our post-modern society has evolved, the task of creating propaganda is more complex. And so, the complexity of society drives a majority to want ready-made frameworks for understanding their reality coherently. Curtin shows that…

people want to be provided with myths to direct them to the ‘truth,’ but that so-called truth has been preconceived within the overarching myth provided by propaganda.

Nonetheless, the propaganda is efficient enough to allow most people to deduce that they’ve reached their conclusions of their own free will. Most people will assume that they’ve been provided with a suitable range of information about the key points of a given topic in order to decide what is trustworthy. However, the same consumers of the news will regard as inconceivable that the narrative they’ve been led to accept contains cherry-picked news that omits perspectives that are off-message. Surely, wouldn’t any dissenting voices that are worth knowing about would be given a hearing on the six o’clock news?

Curtin concurs with author Lisa Pease who wrote in her book A Lie Too Big To Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy:

The way the CIA took over America in the 1960s is the story of our time, and too few recognize this. We can’t fix a problem we can’t even acknowledge exists.

To support his assessment, Curtin points to numerous examples in different chapters across his book. This includes a chapter on “The Message From Dallas, JFK and The Unspeakable,” where he summarizes JFK author James W. Douglass’ layer-by-layer excavation of a CIA-backed assassination of a president who had turned from war-making toward peace-making.

In another chapter titled “What Are We Working For ‘At Eternity’s Gate’,” Curtin writes about the rat-race. He recalls a summer job as a clerk in a General Motors office in Manhattan. The “bait” was the salary, and so his youth was spent that summer confined to a boring job.

As I read Curtin’s description, I thought about some of the jobs I had: working a night shift as a hotel security guard, a cleaner at a private golf club, and working at a vehicle repair shop for the Ministry of Forests for the Province of British Columbia. The latter I spent a summer affixing forestry vehicle identification serial numbers on the side of government trucks.

The author mentions a film about the life of Vincent Van Gogh, titled At Eternity’s Gate, which offers a vision of new possibilities for what it means to work, to be alive. For Van Gogh it was the “act of painting” that was “the stroke of genius.” And so, for the impoverished painter it was not the completion of paintings that was important, but immersing himself in painting. This was the key to life.

In this essay, Curtin invites the reader to contemplate what it means to live and to ask ourselves why we work. He tells us:

For Vincent the answer was simple: reality. But reality is not given to us and is far from simple; we must create it in acts that penetrate the screens and clichés that wall us off from it.

One of the screens that Curtin had to penetrate was a slogan he was taught as a United States Marine:

My rifle is my life.

Curtin saw through the slogan, recognizing that being human meant to be a lover of life and being committed to waging peace.

In yet another essay, “The Sexual Passion of Winston Smith”, Curtin details the commodification of society, where everything can be bought and sold. As he speaks about the body’s commodification, Curtin reminds us that part of the body – “the tongue is a bell, tolling out its [language’s] meaning.” It is finally the tongue that helps us in speech to “tell the truth that propagandists try to deny.”

In his book, the author offers suggestions for pointing a way forward that can help us search for truth in a landscape of falsehoods. One of these is poetry. He points out that citizens in Chile, Ireland and Russia know their national poets and can quote their works “by heart.” But in America poets and poetry are ignored. A new generation is too busy checking Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. But Curtin argues:

Poetry is the search for truth. It marries outer to inner.

The best of what poetry can offer helps a society…

address questions of value and ultimate concern…of truth and lies.

He contrasts these with…

screen and selfie culture [where] these matters are irrelevant.

In addition to truth and lies, Curtin points to myriad oddities that dot the landscape of America’s cultural past. Many of the rock n’ roll bands in the mid-sixties were viewed as part of a countercultural/anti-war protest movement against the establishment. There are books like one by Alex Constantine, The Covert War Against Rock, that document operations by the CIA and FBI to discredit and disrupt the lives of pop-rock stars identified as subversive. Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and others had extensive intelligence files on them. Constantine cites a leaked intelligence memorandum discussed in testimony before the Church Committee on April 26, 1976.

Regarding certain recording artists, the FBI wrote to its agents:

Show them as scurrilous and depraved. Call attention to their habits and living conditions, explore every possible embarrassment. Send in women and sex, break up marriages. Have members arrested on marijuana charges….Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity. Use narcotics and free sex to entrap. Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt….Provoke target groups into rivalries that may result in death.

But was another arm of the intelligence community simultaneously grooming anti-establishment recording artists? In Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies Curtin notes that Buffalo Springfield performed in concert, along with the Beach Boys, at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in Orange County, New York, on November 25, 1967.

Curtin points out that this is “a very odd venue for a ‘dissident’ rock group.” Their Top Ten hit in the spring of ’67 – “For What It’s Worth” – invited radio listeners to consider, though it wasn’t “exactly clear” what was “happening,” to “stop,” and “look” at what was “going down.”

How did members of Buffalo Springfield feel about performing at the military academy when there were “battle lines being drawn?” And what an odd thing for cadets at West Point to be listening to lyrics that warn:

step out of line, the man come and take you away.

Citing David McGowan’s Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, Curtin notes that “Papa” John Philips of the Mamas and the Papas attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and that his dad was a Marine Corps Captain:

John’s wife had worked at the Pentagon and her father was involved in covert intelligence in Vietnam.

The Doors Jim Morrison, a neighbor and friend of Philips, was the son of U.S. Navy Admiral George Morrison who was the commander of American Naval ships during the Gulf of Tonkin incident that accelerated the Vietnam War.

Frank Zappa’s father happened to be a chemical warfare specialist.

Curtin notes others like David Crosby and Stephen Stills were also from military family backgrounds. And many of these young musicians all converged at Laurel Canyon:

Although they were draft age, none of them [were] drafted as they played music, dropped acid, and created the folk-rock movement…

Were these musicians’ part of intelligence community operations, as much as the agents who were harassing them? Or as David McGowan asks, was…

the entire youth culture of the 1960s…created not as a grass-roots challenge to the status quo, but as a cynical exercise in discrediting and marginalizing the budding anti-war movement and creating a fake opposition that could be easily controlled and led astray…?

With each chapter, Ed Curtin takes us into different rooms in the doll’s house, and helps us connect the dots. His stories and reflections, in an age of “fake news”, are essential reading.

In the quest for truth, readers of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies will be advised to take the road less travelled. This road requires we quiet our minds, and welcome silence. It is a road less travelled where each must ask: what can I do to help transform our terrible, corrupt, beautiful world longing to be more human, just and peaceful?

Curtin does not intend for us as readers to simply finish his book unfazed. He hopes his chapters might rouse us to find ways to resist in this age of permanent war and oligarchy, in a world still longing for peace and justice.

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is available in digital and paperback versions at Amazon and other retailers. For more info and praise for the book, visit Ed Curtin’s website: www.edwardcurtin.com

The American Exceptionalism of Secretary of State Antony Blinken

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By Kevin Gosztola

Source: Shadowproof

“American leadership still matters. The reality is the world simply does not organize itself,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed at his confirmation hearing. “When we are not engaged, when we are not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place but not in a way that is likely to advance our interests and values, or maybe, just as bad, no one does and then you have chaos.”

Much like President Joe Biden, Blinken is a neoliberal Democrat who believes in the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny.” He thinks if the United States does not impose its will and shape the world then there will be no law and order. He cannot fathom how countries could survive on their own. At least, that is how he argues for greater American intervention in global regions.

Blinken was confirmed as secretary of state in a vote on January 26. Not a single Democrat in the Senate voted against Blinken.

He is a longtime ally of Biden, and during Biden’s first term as vice president, he was his national security adviser.

During President Barack Obama’s second term, Blinken was deputy secretary of state. He was also a part of President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council from 1994 to 2001.

Making Venezuela’s ‘Regime Enablers’ Finally Feel The Pain Of Sanctions

Blinken’s predecessor Mike Pompeo, a right-wing Christian reconstructionist, was involved in President Donald Trump administration’s failed regime change operation against Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela. Yet, despite its failure, Blinken told Republican Senator Marco Rubio he thought the Biden administration should keep recognizing Juan Guaido as the one and only true “leader.”

“We need an effective policy that can restore democracy to Venezuela, free and fair elections,” Blinken declared. He even embraced sanctions, despite the fact that they have hampered the country’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans.

“Maybe we need to look at how we more effectively target the sanctions that we have so that regime enablers finally feel the pain of those sanctions,” Blinken added.

However, a report [PDF] from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) dated January 22, 2021, indicates the sanctions by both the Obama and Trump administrations were targeted pretty well and imposed to inflict “pain” against 113 Venezuelans and 13 entities.

…President Maduro, his wife, Cecilia Flores, and son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra; Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez; Diosdado Cabello (Socialist party president); eight supreme court judges; the leaders of Venezuela’s army, national guard, and national police; governors; the director of the central bank; and the foreign minister…

Trump imposed sanctions to prohibit Venezuela from participating in U.S. financial markets and block the government’s ability to issue digital currency. Treasury Department officials prohibited corporations from purchasing Venezuelan debt. Venezuela’s state oil company, PdVSA, was aggressively targeted for seeking to evade U.S. sanctions and Venezuela’s central bank was sanctioned too.

Blinken Defends Being Wrong On War In Libya

Obama flouted the War Powers Act and launched a war in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime without the approval of Congress. It created a power vacuum filled by extremist militia groups and transformed the country into a failed state. Migrants are captured and sold in what the United Nations has referred to as “open slave markets.”

Despite the catastrophe sparked by war, Blinken defended his support for a regime change war. “I think it’s been written about. I — I was the president-elect’s national security adviser at the time. And he did not agree with that course of action.”

Biden was opposed to war in Libya. “My question was, okay, tell me what happens? [Gaddafi’s] gone. What happens? Doesn’t the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn’t it become a place where it becomes a petri dish for the growth of extremism? Tell me. Tell me what we’re gonna do.”

Rather than concede President Biden was right and he was wrong, Blinken signaled to Senate Republicans that he would be their hawk when Biden was too dovish.

Blinken bafflingly blamed Gaddafi, who was summarily executed, for what happened in Libya after his death.

“We didn’t fully appreciate the fact that one of the things Gaddafi had done over the years was to make sure that there was no possible rival to his power. And as a result, there was no effective bureaucracy, no effective administration in Libya with which to work when he was gone,” Blinken argued.

The Bothsidesism Of Blinken’s View Toward War In Yemen

Sarah Lazare recalled for In These Times the horrors unleashed on the people of Yemen, as a result of the Obama administration’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthis.

“The coalition bombed a center for the blind, a funeral, a wedding, a factory and countless homes and residential areas, and blockaded Yemen’s ports, cutting off vital food and medical shipments — all while the Obama-Biden administration was in power,” Lazare wrote.

“Indeed, the Obama White House was so complicit in war crimes in Yemen in that its own State Department internally warned key U.S. military personnel could be subject to war crimes prosecution, according to a Reuters investigation published in October 2016. By July 2015, a United Nations official was already warning that Yemen was on the verge of a famine, a premonition that horrifically came true.”

One of Pompeo’s final actions was to sanction Houthis, which caused a disruption to aid groups delivering humanitarian assistance. Biden froze the sanctions for one month the same day the Senate confirmed Blinken.

Asked about the intense humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Blinken drew a false equivalency between the actions of the Houthis and the Saudis.

“We need to be clear-eyed about the Houthis. They overthrew a government in Yemen. They engaged in a path of aggression through the country. They directed aggression toward Saudi Arabia,” Blinken contended. “They’ve committed atrocities and human rights abuses and that is a fact. What’s also a fact though is that the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen to push back against

the Houthi aggression has contributed to what is, by most accounts, the worst humanitarian situation that we face anywhere in the world.”

The Houthis were part of the Arab Spring uprising in Yemen against the corrupt government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. State Department officials generally backed these rebellions against autocratic rulers.

According to a 2017 post from Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, “American intelligence officials said that Iran was actually trying to discourage the Houthis from seizing Sanaa and openly toppling Hadi. Iran preferred a less radical course, but the Houthi leadership was drunk with success. Moreover, Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers said on the record in January that Washington had a productive informal intelligence relationship with the Houthis against al-Qaida. He suggested that the cooperation could continue.”

The Obama administration, which included Blinken, did not want to jeopardize a 70-year-plus alliance with Saudi Arabia and backed the monarchy’s intervention.

‘Very Much’ Supporting U.S. Arms Shipments To Ukraine

Blinken expressed his support for arming Ukrainian groups a total of three times. He even reminded Republican Senator Ron Johnson he had the opportunity in 2018 to write an op-ed for the New York Times promoting what senators euphemistically describe as “lethal defensive assistance.”

He told Republican Senator Rob Portman, “I very much support the continued provision to Ukraine of lethal defensive assistance and, and indeed, of the training program as well.”

“To the extent that across a couple of administrations, we’ve been able to effectively train and as well as assist in different ways the Ukrainians, that has made a material difference in their ability to withstand the aggression they’ve been on the receiving end of from Russia,” Blinken asserted.

It is difficult to gauge whether the policy has been effective or helped Ukrainians withstand battles with pro-Russian separatist groups. There is not a whole lot of reporting.

But Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who was the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, stated in 2015, “If the U.S. policy changed to provide, say, Javelins, for example, that would probably lead to increased lethality on the battlefield for the Ukrainians. It would not change the situation strategically in a positive way, because the Russians would double down. They would dramatically increase more violence, more death, more destruction.”

“The conflict in Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east, called Donbass, erupted in April 2014, weeks after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula,” according to the Associated Press. “More than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists.”

Professor Stephen Cohen called attention to the role of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine. The overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych was a “violent coup” led by fascist conspirators opposed to Russia. They conducted exterminations of ethnic Russians. The Azov Battalion, part of Kiev’s armed forces, is pro-Nazi and was banned from receiving U.S. military aid, but it almost certainly obtained weapons shipped by the Trump administration from the black market.

“We are left then not with Putin’s responsibility for the resurgence of fascism in a major European country but with America’s shame, and possible indelible stain, on its historical reputation for tolerating it, even if only through silence,” Cohen concluded.

US Return To Iran Nuclear Deal Not Happening Soon

It was the United States under Trump that ditched the Iran nuclear deal, not Iran. Still, it is the Biden’s administration position that Iran should first “comply” with U.S. demands before the U.S. rejoins the deal.

“If Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA [nuclear deal], we would do the same thing and then use that as a platform working with our allies and partners to build longer and stronger agreements — also capture some of the other issues that need to be dealt with, with regard to missiles, with regard to Iran’s activities and destabilizing activities in the region,” Blinken said.

“There is a lot that Iran will need to do to come back into compliance. We would then have to evaluate whether it actually [did] so. So, I don’t think that’s anything that’s happening tomorrow or the next day.”

Meanwhile, as CBS News described in November, Iran has endured a “harrowing, sanctions-fueled coronavirus catastrophe.”

Doctors experience shortages of every supply necessary for fighting the pandemic. “U.S.-led sanctions have choked off Iran’s access to foreign-made chemicals and equipment.”

Iran has begged Biden to lift sanctions that prevent Iran from accessing COVID-19 vaccines.

***

Melodramatically, Senator Marco Rubio feverishly asked Blinken has any doubt that the Chinese Communist Party’s goal is to be the “world’s predominant political, geopolitical, military, and economic power and for the United States to decline in relation.”

“I do not,” Blinken replied.

“You have no doubt?” Rubio chimed.

“I have no doubt,” Blinken restated.

From Obama to Trump, U.S. empire has prepared its forces for what it calls “great power competition” between China and Russia. It fears China will take the place of the U.S., leading to one of Blinken’s nightmare futures.

Much of the public is wary over military interventions in the Middle East. The threat of terrorism is no longer enough to justify expenditures toward an ever-gargantuan military-industrial complex. Countering China, however, is an easier sell.

“Forcing men, women, and children into concentration camps, trying to, in effect, reeducate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,” Blinken remarked.

Human rights abuses under Biden will increasingly be weaponized to defend policies and operations that ramp up tensions with China. Whether descriptions of China’s acts are accurate or not, the point will be to silence anyone who questions whether the violations are enough to warrant increased conflict. (Of course, how dare anyone raise the matter of U.S. deportation camps and their horrors or America’s mass incarceration of 1–2 million people to point out any sort of hypocrisy.)

After the House of Representatives voted to arm so-called rebel groups in Syria in 2014, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked Blinken about concerns that arms “could end up in wrong hands.” Blinken brushed aside concerns and maintained the U.S. would vet and give arms to “the right people.”

In March 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported “CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed [militias had] repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo” in Syria.

Blinken may not be rapture ready like his predecessor, Mike Pompeo. He may be more willing to wave the LGBTQIA+ rainbow flag when arming proxy forces or backing regime change operations. However, they are both devout believers in American exceptionalism.

He views Biden as a president who will put the “globe back on its axis” after Trump. He will spend his time at the State Department working to “restore democracy” and “renew” America’s “leadership” in the world. Which means Blinken will continue the many callous, cold, and calculating traditions of U.S. imperialism, promote hubris over humility, and commit himself to cloaking ignoble acts in the rhetoric of human rights.

Biden and the Democrats will Sow Chaos in Latin America

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Election Interference, Regime Change and a Possible Humanitarian Intervention is on Washington’s Agenda 

US President Joseph Biden, a relic from Washington’s old political establishment will continue the same imperialist policies in Latin America as did his predecessors including that of Donald Trump.  There is a clear indication that Washington’s hostilities towards Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro will continue under a Biden administration.  The day before Biden’s inauguration, Reuters’ had published a report on what we can expect from the new administration when it comes to Venezuela, ‘Biden will recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s leader, top diplomat says.’ which means that Washington will continue to support the opposition leader, Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s “legitimate” president.  According to the report, Anthony Blinken said “U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will continue to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the South American country’s president.” Not only Washington would recognize a political figure who was selected by Washington, it would continue to use targeted sanctions on the Latin American country coinciding with humanitarian aid:

Blinken told members of the U.S. Senate that Biden would seek to “more effectively target” sanctions on the country, which aim to oust President Nicolas Maduro – who retains control of the country. Blinken said the new administration would look at more humanitarian assistance to the country

US hostilities towards Venezuela did not start with Trump, there were tensions between Washington and Caracas with the Obama and Bush regimes.  An article from the Associated Press (AP) in 2015 ‘Venezuela’s President Accuses Vice President Biden of Plotting to Overthrow Him’ said that Washington had imposed “new visa restrictions on Venezuelan officials and their families.”  The former White House Communications Director under Obama, Jen Psaki who is now on Biden’s team as the White House Press Secretary said that “the U.S. was showing clearly that human rights violators and their families “are not welcome in the United States.” Washington’s actions earned condemnation from Maduro who said that “he would write a letter to Obama over what he called an attempt to violate Venezuela’s national sovereignty” and that Washington’s long-time policies which are basically strong-arm tactics used on Venezuela and its close allies in the region will lead to failure “U.S. policy toward Venezuela has been kidnapped by “irresponsible, imperial forces that are putting the United States on a dead-end.”  Maduro’s response towards Washington’s sanctions at the time was on a televised national address which he criticized Obama’s Vice-President, Joe Biden:

In a televised address over the weekend, Maduro claimed that Biden sought to foment the overthrow of his socialist government during a Caribbean energy summit Biden hosted last month in Washington. According to Maduro, Biden told Caribbean heads of state that the Venezuelan government’s days were numbered and it was time they abandon their support.  “What Vice President Jose Biden did is unspeakable,” Maduro said

And of course, Washington dismissed Maduro’s claims as “ludicrous.”  With Joe Biden in charge, expect more of the same bi-partisanship actions including more sanctions, regime change operations and even the possibility of an assassination attempt on  Maduro’s life.  With a number of war hawks appointed under this new administration including humanitarian interventionist, Samantha Power who will lead the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) tweeted “What’s happening in Venezuela is flying under the radar in the US, but it is incredibly serious” shows what direction Washington will move towards.  “In the past week, the opposition banned from competing in April presidential elections, UNICEF warns of child malnutrition crisis, IMF predicts 13,000% inflation in 2018” meaning that Power will push for a humanitarian intervention in some form or another.  Power has supported military interventions in Syria and was a cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan and Libya.  There will be bi-partisan support from both the democrats and republicans for regime change in Venezuela.  But a war against Venezuela under Biden is also quite possible since they have the world’s largest oil reserves on the planet.  Tensions between Washington and Caracas will only escalate in the upcoming months.

Nicaragua will be also on Washington’s radar as they are scheduled to have Presidential elections in November.  Expect some sort of election interference to oust long-time enemy of Washington, Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega.  In a September 5th tweet, Biden said “Nicaraguan asylum seekers fleeing oppression deserve to have their cases heard.  Instead, they’re being deported back into the tyrannical grip of Daniel Ortega without a chance to pursue their claims.  President Trump’s cruelty truly knows no bounds.”  Venezuela and Nicaragua will experience hostilities from the Biden team, a continuation of policies from previous US regimes is assured.

Obama’s 2009 Coup in Honduras is a Warning to Anti-Imperialists in Latin America 

Joe Biden’s history with Latin America as vice-President to Obama should be considered a warning sign of things to come.  As soon as Obama was selected for office, they went to work on their backyard with a shovel in hand and set their sights on the small nation of Honduras.  Before, the US approved the coup against its Democratic leader, Manuel Zelaya because he wanted to rewrite the constitution. Zelaya administered an opinion poll for a referendum so that a constitutional assembly can legally reform the constitution that would allow Honduran citizens to have a legitimate voice in the political process.  Honduran officials, members of the Supreme Court and even members of his own party who are under Washington’s control declared Zelaya’s plans as unconstitutional.  Officials from the Obama regime including Hillary Clinton who was the Secretary of State at the time, all agreed Zelaya had to be removed from power.  Zelaya was also too friendly with Washington’s enemies in the region including Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.  Zelaya had also helped people in need as he raised the hourly minimum-wage, funded scholarships for students, authorized the distribution of milk and basic food necessities for children and even helped distribute energy-saving light bulbs among others for the Honduran people. Washington also considered Zelaya a threat to its interests concerning the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and its US troops stationed at the Palmerola military base if Zelaya decided to cancel the CAFTA deal or stop US troops from entering Honduras.  For decades, Washington has trained soldiers and officers in the Honduran military through the former U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) which is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

On June 28th, 2009, with permission from the Supreme Court of Honduras issued an order for the military to arrest and detain President Zelaya  who was taken to the Hernan Acosta Mejia Air Base located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and was exiled to Costa Rica.  The aftermath of the coup resulted in Honduras becoming one of the most dangerous countries on the planet with one of the highest murder-rates in Central America. Roberto Micheletti became the interim-president following the coup.  Under his leadership, the Honduras government became a repressive force that lead to an increase of Hondurans deciding to immigrate to the US.  Human rights groups and activists lives were threatened.  In 2016, one of the death threats became a reality for a well-known Indigenous rights and environmental activist by the name of Bertha Caceres who was assassinated in her home.  Caceres was known for preventing one of the world’s largest corporations that builds dams from completing the Agua Zarca Dam at the Río Gualcarque.  Life in Honduras became worst after Washington’s intervention to oust a democratically elected leader who wanted to make things a little better for his people which constitutes a criminal act under Washington’s political establishment.

What Does An Imperialist Power Under Joseph Biden Mean for Latin America?

The gloves will come off.  Joe Biden wants to get the job done for the Military-Industrial Complex.  The Biden regime will be more aggressive and dangerous to left-wing Latin American leaders who have disobeyed Washington’s political establishment.  That’s why they are all on the hit-list to be removed from power so that Washington’s preferred candidates can regain control to benefit their corporate and military interests that has plunged Latin America into a cycle of civil wars, debt and poverty since the end of the Spanish-American war.  Biden and the Democrats will try to prove to the Republicans who can be more “tough” on Latin American leaders and others around the world who defy Washington’s policies.  Biden’s presidency might prove that his administration will be more hawkish than the Republicans on Venezuela and the rest of Latin America’s anti-imperialist governments.

America Condemns One Violent Mob While Celebrating Another

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Tear gas being deployed outside the Capitol on January 6 as Trump supporters stormed the building. [Tyler Merbler / CC BY 2.0]

Where is the corporate media’s disgust for the courtesans of corporate destruction that wreak violence on Americans daily?

By Lee Camp

Source: ScheerPost.com

Most rational Americans have correctly criticized and denounced the violent insurrection in the Capitol last week. Those moments of attack by a racist, disgusting mob have not lacked for condemnation and denunciation. They were violent. They were reprehensible. They called for the killing of lawmakers, demanded the hanging of Congress members. The liberal media and even most of Fox News have not held their tongues when it comes to excoriating the morally bankrupt people who took part. And I agree with those thoughts.

BUT – why don’t we see an equal amount of disgust and condemnation for the violence done by our ruling class, the courtesans of corporate destruction?

Is allowing people to die or fall ill due to lead pipes in Flint, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and hundreds of other cities not violence?

Is allowing citizens to lose their lives to cancer from Teflon™ chemicals dumped in their water or preventable oil spills not violence?

Is allowing tens of thousands to die of preventable illnesses from our garbage healthcare system not violence?

Is allowing 15 million to lose their healthcare during a pandemic and therefore fear going to the hospital when they get sick not violence?

Is imprisoning millions of people for years for non-violent crimes not violence?

Is locking up political prisoners like Steven Donziger, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Reverend Pinkney, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Leonard Peltier not violence??

Is dropping a bomb every 12 minutes on innocent people in countries thousands of miles away not violence??

Is allowing millions in this country to go hungry while we throw out 40% of all food not violence?

Is arresting people who try to feed those who are starving not violence?

Is allowing hundreds of thousands to go homeless, living under bridges or on benches or squatting in collapsing structures while this country has trillions of dollars and millions of empty houses —is that not violence?

Is arresting, beating, and persecuting those who try to give those people houses not violence? And bulldozing the homes — is that not violence?

Is causing the sixth great extinction, the mass death of half the world’s wildlife, in pursuit of corporate profit not violence?

Is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans via economic warfare not violence?

Is creating an opioid epidemic by pushing pills on desperate people, ultimately leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands not violence?

And then arresting those who stand up and fight back against the pollution, against the pipelines, against the factory farming, against the war industry —IS—THAT—NOT—VIOLENCE?

Of course it is.

It’s violence on a breathtaking scale, far greater than what was done at the Capitol and far greater than any of us will witness in person. And yet large scale corporate-endorsed violence, death and destruction is not only allowable, it’s celebrated, it’s furthered, and promoted. Oil company documents show that they tell cities that oil spills are good for the economy. Other documents show that fossil fuel companies have known about the harm climate change would do since the 1970’s, but they simply saw it as the price of doing business. Corporate sacrifice zones like “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana are well known to be deadly to those who live there, yet it doesn’t matter to the corporations because their money will be green nonetheless. It doesn’t matter to the politicians because the poor who live in these sacrifice zones have no political power. The 40% of food that’s thrown out is not a secret. The subsidies paid to factory farms encourage them to produce heaping mountains of food and dairy and meat even if they can’t sell it all in our market economy. So they throw it out or bury it. Giving it to those in need would take too much time and effort.

Should the racist violent insurrectionists at the Capitol be punished? Absolutely. But so too should the bought-off politicians who do the bidding of our morally bankrupt corporate America. These politicians and the CEOs they serve are purveyors of violence. They trade in, produce, and reap violence. They sit on hordes of money—the obscene profit from feeding American lives into the death cult of unfettered capitalism.

Our mainstream media are blanketing the airwaves with talk of how the violent insurrectionists must be punished, and while they are not wrong, the criminal behavior those same talking heads and “reporters” ignore speaks volumes. All violence is not equal. Some of it is profitable and protected. Some of it is the American way.

Lies, “Yellow Journalism” and the Death of the Mainstream Media

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

During the era of Yellow Journalism in the U.S. which defined the type of journalism that existed before the start of Spanish-American War in 1898. The term, ‘Yellow Journalism’ was associated with various major newspapers that held no journalistic principals or truth, “sensationalism” or “eye-catching headlines” was the only truth that mattered for newspaper owners that exaggerated stories to sell newspapers and fill their pockets with profits. Today they sell you lies to support the agendas of major corporations and the Military-Industrial Complex because corporate interests pays the MSM handsomely to sell their wars, drugs and propaganda.

The accelerated downfall of the mainstream media (MSM) occurred since the election of Donald Trump. It’s apparent that the MSM has caught TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome. I don’t know what you feel or sense when you are watching the MSM, whether it’s CNN, MSNBC who are obviously liberal networks or FOX News who is aligned with the Republicans party, it’s almost like watching the twilight zone.  Journalistic integrity has been absolutely flushed down the toilet. For the record, the MSM has been losing its reputation as a reliable news source way before Trump became US president, he just added TDS to the so-called “television journalists” on CNN and MSNBC. However, that did not stop CNN’s president Jeff Zucker to propose a weekly show with the US President on a call with Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen according to The Hill, “I have all these proposals for him,” Zucker reportedly told Cohen “I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff.” Despite the fact that anti-Trumpism is alive and well in the MSM, it’s hypocritical. CNN and MSNBC will surely miss Trump if Joe Biden officially steals the election because low-ratings will collapse both networks and even FOX news will suffer to a point without Trump being showcased regularly on television networks and that’s probably why Jeff Zucker, had reportedly called Trump “the boss” if he would have signed a contract with CNN.

The print media is also guilty for publishing numerous false claims, accusations and lies that has led to wars and regime change in various countries for decades. One recent example is the case with The New York Times who published an article with the worst possible title ‘The baseless ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory rises again’ yet, on November 1st, Time magazine published a cover story that read ‘The Great Reset’ on its front page. The media must think the people are that stupid, it clearly shows how they view its target audience.  There are many reasons why liberal networks with the possibility of FOX news following in the same direction will collapse due to low-viewership ratings.  CNN, MSNBC and FOX employs a long list of liars and state propagandists who were in previous administrations that offer their one-sided analysis and reports in domestic and foreign issues presented to the viewer.  In an important note, all of the MSM networks are on board and all agree that no matter who is president, they know who their foreign enemies are when it comes to war because they all obviously work for the same US war machine.  Remember when liberal media host on MSNBC, Brian Williams and his comment on U.S. missiles hitting Syrian airfields with Trump’s approval in 2017 as “beautiful”?  I guess he thought Trump wasn’t so bad after all.  The MSM is a propaganda organ of the Democratic party and to the Republican party if we include FOX news.  All of US viewers are beholden to the US war machine that includes all special interest groups and major corporate powers that dictate to the MSM what to report and say to the public. Since 2016, the MSM has stooped to its lowest level of lies and deceit.  Its journalistic principles have evolved into a joke, a laughing stock in the world of news.  Here is a short list out of many lies by the MSM:

The Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax: 3 Years Worth of Conspiracy Theories

The Trump-Russia Collusion scandal was proof in itself that CNN and MSNBC are conspiracy theorists with no actual facts. Conspiracy theorists is defined as those who create “a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators” Well there is a group of “powerful conspirators” that does explain a set of fake circumstances surrounding Trump’s collusion with Russia which in under the definition of a conspiracy theorist.  It took 3 years of this non-stop nonsense about Trump and Russia colluding 24 hours a day which was way over the top for anyone, even for some democrats who turned into republicans because of the MSM lies. The nearly $32 million spent on the Trump-Russia Collusion report turned out to be a devastating blow to the Democratic party.

A letter that was addressed to Senator Lindsey Graham that was signed by John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence (NIA) for the Trump administration requested information on the FBI’s behalf concerning their Investigation. Ratcliffe declassified the information which exposed the scandal and as many of us knew from the start, it was a hoax.  It all turned out to be a major humiliation for the MSM after the dossier was exposed as a Hillary Clinton smear campaign against President Trump. Hillary Clinton was on board with a plan to link candidate Trump in 2016 to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “In late July 2o16, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by typing him to Putin and the Russians’ in hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”  It also stated the following:

According to handwritten noted, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services 

The letter also included that “On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. President candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The MSM including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (who cried on air) after the hoax was exposed was humiliated. The MSM has lost time, money and whatever they had left of their credentials based on Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia lie, at this point they should be all crying themselves to sleep at night.

CNN Claimed Ecuador’s Embassy in London is a ‘Russian Hacking Hub’

Another case of pure MSM propaganda was against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who at the time was in exile in Ecuador’s embassy in London. The former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa criticized the MSM’s side of the story on Ecuador’s Embassy in London as a ‘Russian Hacking Hub.’ Correa was interviewed by RT.com and this is what he said about CNN and other US media sources:

We never approved interference in the internal affairs of other countries, we respect every nation, that is why when we saw that Julian Assange was publishing the data of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign, we warned him two or three times, and on the third or fourth time we acted, we cut the internet. The story that CNN wants to build, that in the embassy there was a center for espionage operations with Russian support, that we knew about it and approved it. That’s how they want it to appear. what they want to sell to the world. What CNN and other media are saying is rubbish, but were use to it. They are prepping for the show. The reason is, when they extradite Assange to the US and sentence him to life, they want the honest backing of the public, they are setting the stage

What CNN reported on December 9, 2017, was that Donald Trump, Jr. was offered “advanced access” to the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks before those emails were made public. MSNBC also jumped on the band wagon and “independently confirmed” CNN’s evidence about the collaboration between the Trump team and WikiLeaks over the hacked DNC emails. It all turned out to be false information. The email which Donald Trump, Jr. received was a link that was published online and open to the public. If that is not reckless and irresponsible journalism on a grand scale or just plain spiteful propaganda to paint Trump’s team as Russian assets, I don’t know what is.

The Pentagon with Help from the MSM is Pushing Regime Change in Venezuela

The MSM’s Commitment to the Pentagon’s agenda of regime change in Venezuela has been steady as well with CNN has been following Trump’s Line on Venezuela who falsely claimed in the SOTU address last February when Trump declared Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s true and legitimate president. CNN claimed that the voters wanted Maduro to step down since the elections in January 2019, but there’s one problem with that statement, Venezuela’s presidential election was actually held on May 20, 2018. CNN’s story ‘Military helicopter crashes in Venezuela, killing 7, amid protests’ first reported on a helicopter crash that killed seven military officers then redirects the story to the political scene mentioning Juan Guaido, the unpopular political figure who was unpopular among the opposition he’s part of. Washington chose Guaido as the best puppet they can manage as it’s “acting President.” After all, Uncle Sam still makes important decisions for the Venezuelan elite and the rest of its Latin American puppet states. CNN said that “pressure is mounting on Maduro to step down, following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaido over him for president.” Current president Nicolas Maduro won that election by more than 67% of the vote as Juan Guaido and his followers decided not to participate in the elections as a way of protest against the Maduro government.

Eventually Big Tech Will Collapse, And The Alternative Media Will Rise

I feel sorry for the MSM’s faithful viewers, frying their brains with absolute propaganda from their preferred sources of information. They could have done more productive things with their lives. Just imagine, decades of endless lies by the MSM.  It’s hard to wrap my head around what and how the MSM reports to its target audience who accept what is reported as the truth. The media has used propaganda and flat out lies to manipulate the public into believing whatever they said to further Washington’s agenda at all costs, even if it means losing viewership and they still get paid no matter what.  Real journalism has died a long time ago in the US and that’s why the alternative media has grown significantly to challenge MSM’s narrative.

Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are trying to suppress the alternative media and the truth it reveals to the public by way of censorship, but guess what?  There will be alternative platforms that will compete and outperform Big Tech in the future. We already have numerous platforms where alternative voices are heard such as http://www.bitchute.com, http://www.minds.com, ise.media, Global Research.ca, Information Clearinghouse, The Corbett Report, The Gray Zone, rt.com, sometimes even Al Jazeera can be truthful when it wants to be and many others that will rise to the occasion of telling or spreading the truth on various platforms.  The MSM has embarrassed themselves to the point of no return. They are dead in its tracks and the world is waking up to that fact.

Era of US Domination of Latin America Coming to an End

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Marcha en Venezuela contra las sanciones de Trump (Reuters)

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Source: Dissident Voice

Despite its failings at home, the United States intervenes in countries across multiple continents seeking to control their governments and resources.

This week, we look at the US’ latest efforts in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia to undermine their independence and force them to serve the interests of the US government and transnational corporations.

In all three countries, the US has displayed a lack of understanding of the people and their support for their revolutionary processes, and as a result, is failing. As US empire fades, so might the Monroe Doctrine come to an end.

Sandanista- FSLN rally in Nicaragua

Nicaragua: USAID Multi-Year Destabilization Plan Exposed

A US Agency for International Development (USAID) document revealed by reporter William Grigsby describes covert plans to overthrow the democratically-elected Nicaraguan government in the next two years. USAID seeks to hire mercenaries “to take charge of the plan . . . to disrupt public order and carry out other [violent] actions before, during, and/or after the 2021 elections.”

USAID is creating Responsive Assistance In Nicaragua (RAIN), allotting $540,000 in grants to remove the Sandinista government in what it calls “Nicaragua’s transition to democracy.” Daniel Ortega won the 2016 election with 72 percent of the vote in what election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS), a US tool, described as taking “place in a calm, smooth and pacific manner, with no large incidents.”

Brian Willson, who has opposed US efforts to dominate Nicaragua since the 1980s Contra war, concludes the US realizes Ortega will win the 2021 election. In fact, this week, a poll showed support for Ortega’s party, FSLN, at 50% and for the opposition at 10%. One of USAID plans, as they tried in Venezuela in 2018, is for the opposition to boycott the election since they know they will lose, then call it illegitimate and create a political and economic crisis.

The real goal is not a democracy but domination so US transnational corporations can profit from the second poorest country in the hemisphere by putting in place a neoliberal economy to privatize public services, cut social services, and purge all traces of the Sandinistas. USAID also plans to “reestablish” the police and military to enforce their rule. Another goal is to stop Nicaragua from being the “threat of a good example” for its economic growth, reduction of inequality, poverty, illiteracy and crime.

Ben Norton points out in the Grayzone that “the 14-page USAID document employed the word ‘transition’ 102 times” making clear the intent is regime change.  A “sudden transition without elections,” a euphemism for a coup, is one of three possible regime change scenarios.

John Perry writes about “US interference in Nicaragua, going back at least as far as William Walker’s assault on its capital and usurpation of the presidency in 1856.” Since the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the US has sought to take back control of Nicaragua.

USAID and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have been funding the opposition. NED financed 54 projects from 2014-17 to lay the groundwork for a 2018 coup attempt, which  also involved USAID. Wiston Lopez writes the US has provided “more than 31 million dollars between the end of 2017 and May 1, 2020.” When the attempted coup in 2018 failed, the US also put in place illegal unilateral coercive measures, known as economic sanctions, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to try to weaken the country.

The USAID’s RAIN program outlines the usual regime change steps; e.g., remake the police and military as enforcers of the new neoliberal order, move “quickly to dismantle parallel institutions”; i.e., the Sandinista Front, the Sandinista Youth, and other grassroots institutions, and implement “transitional justice measures”; i.e., the prosecution of current government officials and movement leaders.

A new area of attack is a disinformation campaign against Nicaragua’s handling of COVID-19. The opposition misrepresents the government’s response and puts forward false death statistics in an attempt to create chaos. As Wiston López points out, “Since March the US-directed opposition has focused 95% of their actions on attempting to discredit Nicaragua’s prevention, contention, and Covid treatment. However, this only had some success in the international media and is now backfiring since Nicaragua is the country with one of the lowest mortality rates in the continent.”

The US media fails to report on the success of Nicaragua in combating the virus using a community-based health system. Nicaragua has been building its health system for the last 12 years and took rapid action to prepare for the virus. Nicaragua did not impose a lock down because it is a poor country where 80 percent of people are in the informal economy and 40 percent live in rural areas. People must work in order to eat.

Stephen Sefton puts the failure of the United States so far in context. At its root, the US does not understand the people of Nicaragua, their history of fighting US domination, and their ability to overcome right-wing puppets. It also misunderstands what the Sandinista government is doing to better the lives of the people in every sector of the economy. Sefton concludes, “The US government has failed notoriously to meet the needs of its own people during the current pandemic but can still find money to try and destroy a small country whose success makes US social, economic and environmental policy look arbitrary, negligent and criminal.”

Nicolas Maduro kicks out Donald Trump (Photo by Ben Norton

Venezuela: Bipartisan Failed Regime Change

Ever since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, successive US administrations have tried and failed to dominate Venezuela. The bipartisan nature of this policy was on display on August 4, when Elliot Abrams, the notorious coup-monger for multiple presidents, testified in Congress. Not a single Senator criticized the attempt to illegally overthrow a democratically-elected government.

Abrams was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for his inability to remove President Maduro from power. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) was most open about the coup attempt describing it as “a case study in diplomatic malpractice” and claiming Trump botched a winning play in a comedy of errors that strengthened Maduro. After the hearing, Murphy posted a series of Tweets admitting the coup and how it could have been done better.

A clip from Murphy’s embarrassing comments was shared widely including by the Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza. When Vijay Prashad asked Arreaza his reaction, he described the US openly admitting crimes and said the “confessions” of Murphy, Gen. John Kelly, John Bolton, and Elliot Abrams “are priceless evidence for the complaint we raised at the International Criminal Court.”

Elliot Abrams testified that he would continue to work very hard to remove Maduro hopefully by the end of the year.  This echoed a statement by President Trump at SouthCom headquarters in Florida. Sen. Murphy’s comments are consistent with those made by Joe Biden who says he would be more effective at removing Maduro than Trump. Biden described Trump as soft on Maduro because he considered talking to him.

Elliot Abrams announced the US will be starting a media war against Venezuela. The reality is the US has been conducting a media war against Venezuela for more than 20 years.

Venezuela is moving ahead with elections for the National Assembly on December 6, 2020. Unlike 2018, more parties are agreeing to participate including the larger Democratic Action and Justice First parties, as well as a new Communist Party alliance and the hard-right Popular Will party, which was US puppet Juan Guaidó’s former party. There will be 105 political parties contesting for 277 National Assembly seats, 110 more than the current term. Venezuela uses a combination of majority winners and proportional representation. Venezuela also requires half the candidates to be female, and they use electronic voting confirmed by paper ballots with a public citizen audit on Election Day.

Juan Guaidó and others allied with the United States said they would boycott the election. Guaidó cannot risk running because he is likely to be defeated. The US is encouraging a boycott and then will claim the election was not legitimate as it did in the last presidential election. After December, Guaidó will not hold any elected office making his fraudulent claim to the presidency even weaker.

These events come after two major embarrassments for the US in Venezuela. Operation Gideon, an attempt by mercenaries to invade Venezuela was foiled on May 4, leading to their arrests and the arrests of their co-conspirators. The State Department abandoned the mercenaries, and this week two former Green Berets were sentenced to 20 years in prison after admitting their guilt. It was evident that Guaidó was heavily involved in this failure adding to his failed presidential takeover and tainting him beyond repair.

The second defeat was Iran and Venezuela working together to deliver oil and equipment for Venezuelan refineries. Five Iranian oil tankers passed by the largest US armada in the Caribbean since the invasion of Panama. Southcom has been repeatedly sending warships into Venezuelan waters. The solidarity of Iran and Venezuela overcame the naval blockade, undermined US sanctions, and sent a shudder through the US by showing other nations they can defy the United States.

Venezuela has a strong history of struggle against imperialism but the US’ economic war is costing their economy hundreds of billions of dollars and leading to the premature death of Venezuelans. In addition, the United Kingdom is refusing to release more than a billion dollars of Venezuelan gold held in the Bank of England that was to be used for food and medicine. The UK court ruled against Venezuela but they are appealing the decision.

Bolivians protest the postponement of the election

Bolivia: US Dictator Fears Democratic Vote

On November 12 2019, a US-backed coup in Bolivia removed President Evo Morales who had just won re-election. The self-proclaimed President Jeanine Añez, a right-wing Christian, leads a de facto government involved in massacres, persecution and imprisonment of political leaders. It is destroying the social and economic model and achievements of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS Party) led by Morales.

The OAS played a crucial role in the coup with their false analysis of Morales’ re-election. The western media reported the false OAS analysis without criticism. Now, studies by MIT and the Center for Economic and Policy Analysis have shown that Morales clearly won the election and should have remained in power. For months the Washington Post claimed Morales’ re-election was a fraud, but finally, in March, it acknowledged the election was legitimate. Similarly, the New York Times admitted in July that Morales won the election.

Many have called this a lithium coup because the element is plentiful in Bolivia and critical for batteries. This was made evident when Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, said on Twitter “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Tesla would benefit from cheap and plentiful lithium for electric car batteries.

The people of Bolivia are struggling to restore democracy. The fraudulent report by the OAS led to a three-week conflict between right-wing Bolivians protesting alleged fraud and pro-government, mostly indigenous, demonstrators defending Morales. The military and police sided with the right-wing coup. The coup government threatened legislators and their families while repressing the people. There were racist attacks against the majority Indigenous population and the Wiphala, the indigenous flag, was burned in the streets. When she took power, Áñez, surrounded by right-wing legislators, held up a large leather bible and declared, “The Bible has returned to the palace.”

The US recognized the coup government, similar to its recognition of the failed coup leader, Juan Guaidó in Venezuela. Añez claimed she’d be transitory until the next election, but at the direction of the US, she is putting in place deep roots and has delayed elections.

The repression has galvanized the MAS party, as well as peasant unions and grassroots organizations who continue their struggle to restore Bolivian democracy. The pressure led to elections being scheduled. Initially, Áñez said she would not run but reversed herself and is now a candidate while she is trying to outlaw the MAS party and its candidates.

Elections were scheduled for May 3, but have been postponed twice allegedly due to the pandemic, but really because this is an ongoing coup.

It is true that the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting Bolivia hard with horror stories about people unable to get medical treatment. Immediately after the coup, the Añez government expelled the Cuban doctors. The coup-government is unable to manage the health system. Corruption is rampant in the purchase of medical equipment. The health ministry has had three ministers during the crisis. The situation is dire with overcrowded hospitals, lack of basic supplies, and corpses in the streets and in their homes with nowhere to be buried.

The coup-government is using the virus to try to delay elections because polls show the MAS candidate, Luis Arce, is far ahead and likely to win in the first round of elections with Áñez coming in a distant third. Áñez has sought to prosecute Arce to keep him from running, so far unsuccessfully.  On July 6, the Attorney General of Bolivia charged Evo Morales with terrorism and financing of terrorism from exile and is seeking preventive detention.

Since mid-July, thousands of Bolivians have been protesting the postponement of elections. They are holding sustained protests throughout the country and blocking many roads. Indigenous and peasant groups, agricultural groups, along with women and unions are joining together calling for elections.  Morales, Arce, and the MAS Party have denounced the delay.

Domination Will Not Reverse Decline

Evo Morales said in a recent interview:

The United States is trying to make Latin America its backyard forever. We know about the hard resistance of the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. The struggle of our peoples is very important. The United States wants to divide us in order to plunder our natural resources. The peoples no longer accept domination and plunder. The United States is in decline, and yet it lashes out.

The US is weakening as a global power and its failures in Latin America are both a symptom of this and are causing further decline. The US’ violations of international law are obvious and are being challenged. But the US is an empire and it will not give up the Monroe Doctrine easily.

As citizens of Empire, we have a particular responsibility to demand the US stop its sanctions and illegal interference in Latin America and elsewhere around the world. In this time of multiple global crises, we must demand the US become a cooperative member of the world community and work peacefully to address the pandemic, recession and climate crisis.

Structures to do this exist to help with this such as the global ceasefire and the Paris Climate agreement. And on the anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, we must add the Nuclear Ban Treaty as another effort the US must join.

Project Venezuela: Right-wing activists push Wikipedia to blacklist MintPress, other alternative media

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A group of right-wing Venezuelans has managed to ban the use of a range of alternative media outlets covering Venezuela, including MintPress News.

By Alan MacLeod

Source: Intrepid Report

Still unable to convince a sufficient number of their countryfolk to support them, the Venezuelan opposition has turned their efforts towards convincing an international audience—primarily Americans—to support their cause. Part of that is spending inordinate amounts of time online, arguing in English on social media, creating bot networks, and editing Wikipedia articles. Many Wikipedia articles on Venezuela are particularly biased towards the opposition, containing numerous inaccuracies, falsehoods and non-sequiturs.

Now, according to The Grayzone, a group of right-wing Venezuelans has managed to ban the use of a range of alternative media outlets that do not comport with their views. These include MintPress (already blackballed by Wikipedia), The Grayzone, and the much-lauded independent news site Venezuelanalysis, the most extensive English-language resource on the country available. One user in particular, ZiaLater, a member of a group called “Project Venezuela” who control and moderate content related to the country, was the catalyst for the banning of the sites taking an anti-imperialist stance. Some members of Project Venezuela spend long hours changing Venezuela-related pages so they are more critical of the government and sympathetic to the opposition.

Policing the narrative

Wikipedia suggests using corporate-funded mainstream sources who they feel are “generally reliable.” However, on Venezuela, these same outlets closely resemble and parrot U.S. regime change propaganda. For example, CNN, the BBC, and the Daily Telegraph all reported the blatant falsehood that the Venezuelan government burned aid trucks trying to enter the country last year. In reality, it was the opposition themselves that burned their own trucks, as immediately reported by The Grayzone, MintPress News, and other outlets who were actually there. Multiple well-circulated live streams also showed the event in real-time. However, that was all ignored. The New York Times, a site recommended by Wikipedia for citation, currently employs a journalist covering Venezuela who openly admitted to me on tape that he considers himself a “mercenary” and deliberately plants outrageously exaggerated stories into Western media to push his goals. Other journalists told me that their colleagues consider it their number one mission to overthrow the Maduro government.

In 2017, The Washington Post published an article openly calling for a violent coup in the country, and currently employs a Venezuelan journalist who resigned from The New York Times, saying, “Too much of my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism” that he “can’t possibly be neutral.” Meanwhile, The Guardian described Oscar Perez, a local ex-soldier who hijacked a helicopter and used it to bomb parliament buildings as a “patriot,” and even pushing the debunked conspiracy theory that Perez was a “government plant.” They have not retracted it, nor apologized. This is just a minor sampling of the opposition propaganda disguised as objective reporting pumped out constantly by corporate media.

“The media coverage of Venezuela is about as terrible as for any country in the world, except possibly for Palestine. It is utterly biased, misleading and distorted,” said Dan Beeton, an economist and Latin America specialist from the Center for Economic Policy Research. “The gap between the image and the reality of Venezuela,” said professor William I. Robinson of the University of California, Santa Barbara, “is so enormous that it is unfathomable.”

In contrast, MintPress has a number of experienced contributors based in Latin America, including Camila Escalante and Ollie Vargas. I myself have published a Ph.D., book, and five peer-reviewed studies in academic journals on the country and find myself in the mainstream of academic thought. Yet the chasm between how specialists see the country and how it is reported in media is so large that we appear ultra-partisan in comparison to the corporate monolith.

A tool to propagate the biases of the ruling elite

While the popular view of Wikipedia is that it is a collective public undertaking that anyone and everyone can add to, in reality, the online encyclopedia has come to mirror the inequalities present in society. The more edits you do, the more power, prestige and influence you accrue, allowing individuals to wield unreasonable power over the world’s 13th most visited website. A class of powerful editors has emerged, who spend hours every day editing and changing content how they see fit. There are strong suspicions that governments and other wealthy organizations are paying people—or teams of people using the same account—to moderate the site full-time, and these power users openly advertise their services to corporations or other groups who want to sanitize or promote their image by changing their pages. Because these users have climbed the Wikipedia hierarchy, their edits become law and are very difficult to overrule.

The CIA has been exposed changing the pages of politically sensitive topics, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, an FBI computer was spotted editing the entry on Guantanamo Bay, while the NYPD amended Eric Garner’s page and even tried to remove pages focussing on police brutality. Israeli groups are also active on the site, conducting an information war, trying to improve the country’s image. The Guardian revealed they even gave out awards and prizes like free balloon rides for those selected as the “best Zionist editor.”

Thus, the site has effectively been turned into “a tool to propagate the reigning ideology and biases of the ruling elites,” in the words of former New York Times journalist Chris Hedges. As Wikipedia has shown little interest in opposing the site being slowly taken over by organized groups, it is unlikely that the mass blacklisting will be overturned.

Freedom Rider: The Internet Does Washington’s Dirty Work

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By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

As long as the internet is in private hands it should be seen as a “frenemy” — a useful resource that can also be wielded as a weapon.

“Black people are routinely sent to “facebook jail” if their words anger racist white people.”

In its early days the internet seemed to be an undisputed good, a means of communication open to all. It was hoped that these new platforms would level the playing field and give smaller outlets like Black Agenda Report access to a worldwide audience. The internet has done that but it is also a weapon that is used against the left in this country and against nations and movements declared enemies by this government.

In the rush of enthusiasm one important fact was forgotten. The internet is in the hands of private corporations. They decide who gets service, where they get it and at what speed. The growth of social media only exacerbated the problems of corporate control.

This columnist uses Facebook and Twitter and other platforms by necessity. They are sources of information and important means of communication. But they are controlled by powerful corporate entities who work hand in hand with the government. Ultimately they decide who can be seen and who cannot.

“Private corporations decide who gets service, where they get it and at what speed.”

When the U.S. government speaks, Facebook and Twitter listen and then do as they are told. When foreign governments are declared adversaries their representatives and advocates are censored. In the past year, the Syrian government and the Venezuelan government have been temporarily blocked on Twitter. Sites such as Telesur have been repeatedly removed from Facebook. Numerous Palestinian advocacy sites have been removed from Facebook at the behest of the Israeli government.

Facebook decides if “community standards” have been violated and restrict anyone who violates their opaque rules. Black people are routinely sent to “facebook jail” if their words anger racist white people.

But the loss of access is not the biggest problem. When the United States government killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani they also wanted to kill off his memory. Facebook posts which spoke of him in any favorable light were removed. Facebook isn’t alone in joining the governmental directive. The Iranian English language service, Presstv, was removed from Youtube, which is owned by Google. Years of reporting and interviews, including some given by this columnist, disappeared into the black hole of cyberspace. When the U.S. began ratcheting up its maximum pressure, the corporate sector went right along and Presstv was sent down the memory hole.

“Presstv was removed from Youtube, which is owned by Google.”

Censorship has gotten worse because of liberals, not conservatives, and they have used the Russiagate fraud to accelerate the deplatforming process. Immediately after the 2016 election we were told that the Russian government was responsible for Trump’s victory and that censorship was the only thing standing between us and living under the control of Vladimir Putin.

The infamous Proporornot  list declared that Black Agenda Report and other sites were under Russian influence. Ever since that list was published in late 2016 many left sites lost visibility on Google and other search engines.

Now Trump administration sanctions are impacting our ability to communicate in a variety of ways. Not only were references to Soleimani removed, but the use of the word “Iran” can result in censorship and the inability to complete financial transactions. The Grayzone project  reported that Paypal restricted donations from anyone who mentioned the word Iran.

It must be repeated that Trump has plenty of help from Democrats and liberals in this regard. Pleas for Facebook “fact checking” will result in more censorship of black people and of anyone who happens to voice opinions that run counter to the imperialist narrative.

“The use of the word “Iran” can result in censorship.”

Already Russia is being blamed for election interference, yet Russia is not the target. The left is the target and Democrats are leading the charge. Their goal is to narrow discourse and to make war propaganda acceptable. It is an irony and a contradiction that while Trump is falsely accused of being under Russian influence, his policy goals are furthered with help from liberals. U.S. imperialism is a thoroughly bipartisan project.

This collusion between the wings of the duopoly must be kept in mind during the farcical impeachment. The Democrats could have added the war crime of the Soleimani assassination to their articles of impeachment. But they are complicit in this regard and will mention nothing of substance. Instead they have only one flimsy charge that is a cynical get out the vote effort and a source of anti-Russian propaganda.

As long as the internet is in private hands it should be seen as a “frenemy,” a useful resource that can also be wielded as a weapon. These platforms cannot be trusted unless or until they are publicly regulated. In the meantime, our reliance on them comes at a price.