Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

The moral logic of Angry Arab

By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb

And just when you thought Angry Arab’s analysis on Syria couldn’t get any sillier, he surprises you with more simplistic and infantile analysis here. He argues:

-“Hezbollah has decided that his enemies (US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel) have basically took over the cause of ridding Syrians of the Assad regime from the Syrian armed and unarmed opposition.”

Really? Hizbullah “has decided”? Because the Israeli-GCC-NATO role in steering the proxy militias otherwise known as the “armed Syrian opposition” is a figment of their imagination. Right. I urge him to read, not alternative media, but mainstream media for a reality check.

-“The alliance with the regime and the extraction of political and military benefits exceeded other humanitarian considerations.”

Other “humanitarian” considerations? What is more humanitarian than protecting Syria and the region as a whole from the colonizers’ grip? What is more humanitarian than rejecting the sectarian bloodshed that the agents of destruction have sown? What is more humanitarian than defending Lebanon and Palestine from the cancer in our midst, Israel? What is more humanitarian than pursuing the liberation of Palestine?

-“If Hezbollah feels it can only choose the side that is opposed to Israel, it should know that it has alienated a large section of the Syrian people.”

So according to his cost-benefit calculus, Hizbullah should sacrifice Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity not to mention Lebanon’s security and the future of Palestine because this alienates the not insignificant minority of misled Syrians who have been fed a steady diet of Qatari-Saudi-American misinformation, happen to believe they are better served by the their colonial masters than by the resistance axis?

-“While Hezbollah is right, from its standpoint, to be most focused on its supply line from Syria and on the military support it has received from the regime. It has to know that support from the people of Syria lasts far longer than support from a regime that sooner or later will go down.”

So the other Syrian people , who otherwise constitute the majority if we must talk numbers, don’t figure into Angry’s pseudo-moral arithmetic. And maintaining the support of a segment of one country’s population is more strategically beneficial to a resistance movement than supporting a government whose fall who would spell the end of Palestine and Hizbullah as a resistance movement. But have no fear Hizbullah, the Syrian oppositionists allied with Israel will secure the weapons’ flow for your resistance and ensure Gaza is well armed for the next Israeli invasion. How do we know this? Because Angry Arab says so. From California no less.

-“But Hezbollah has yet again displayed disregard for the suffering of the Syrian people. How could Nasrallah express sympathy for the dead henchmen of the regime – even if they rendered services to Hezbollah in its fight against Israel – and not express sympathy for the any of the civilian victims of the regime? Hezbollah, like all allies of the Syrian regime in Lebanon from the Phalanges in 1976 to Jumblatt and Hariri and many others, never really expressed concerns for the welfare of the Syrian people.”

So basically, Hizbullah’s fear of sectarian warfare , it’s fear of NATO and Israeli military intervention, and all the other plans being hatched by Empire are not an expression of sympathy for the Syrian people. Because people don’t die of imperialism, only of “authoritarianism”. And as for comparing this paragon of justice and self-sacrifice, a man who sacrificed his own son, Hadi,  for the  cause of Palestine, with the despicable collaborators and slaves of Israel and the US like Jumblatt and Hariri, what can one respond within the bounds of “civilized” discourse beyond shame ? Shame, shame, shame on your petty, colonized, self-serving little mind. Spare us your public mea culpa’s “I was wrong” (see his recent post here) when you clearly never learn from your mistakes. You were wrong then and you are wrong now. 

Land of Barbarism: A Glimpse of America

SOURCE: Black Agenda Report

by Solomon Comissiong

Garbage in, garbage out. “America's foundation is built upon the bloodied, mutilated, and lifeless bodies of innumerable people – mostly of color.” Is it any wonder, then, that the United States would become, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. concluded, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” – mainly directed against non-Europeans. “We cannot evade the fact that America is a swampland of institutional racism and white supremacy; these realities make it easy for many Euro-Americans to accept the mass killing of people of color across the globe.”

Land of Barbarism: A Glimpse of America

by Solomon Comissiong

"I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American [4] dream--I see an American nightmare." ― Malcolm X [5]

“Americans have accepted barbaric narratives of ‘justifiable wars’ and ‘humanitarian wars,’ fed to them from a trough full of lies.”

When Western Europeans embarked upon their expansion of death and destruction throughout what is now commonly known as America, they would often justify these grizzly campaigns in the name of "civilization." They felt it was necessary to civilize the "barbaric red-man." The people whom whites often referred to as "Injuns" [6] (a racist term used by settlers/thugs to label indigenous people throughout North America), were in the way of European plundering of the land. The amoral shiftless hypocrites from Western Europe needed to conjure up some rationalization for the tidal waves of mass murder they were soon to unleash upon the "uncivilized heathens." These "Injun heathens" needed a European brand of civilizing, and they needed the white man's numerously rewritten Bible.

It did not matter that they fled England in large part due to religious persecution; whites referencing their holy book to validate brutal massacres. As a matter of fact, they, and their European cousins (Spanish, Portuguese, French, et al), made a habit of imposing their Bible and religion upon indigenous people of color – no matter where they went. They simply had to "civilize" and bring culture to the world's "savages" of color, or so they said. They were deemed "savages" predicated on simple facts like: they were non-white and they had different cultures. Oh – they were also on land the Europeans wanted to steal. Europeans needed little justification to execute their routine acts of savagery and barbarism. This was the European way.

It mattered little that, no matter where they went, there were prosperous societies riddled with indigenous people. It didn't matter that these societies were much better off, more democratic, and humane than the regions these Europeans fled. And it surely did not matter that these indigenous people had their own form of spirituality. What mattered was that they were different and occupied land they wanted. This was reason enough for the real barbarians to initiate killing sprees that would make Hitler blush.

“They were deemed ‘savages’ predicated on simple facts like: they were non-white and they had different cultures.”

Indigenous people of color throughout the globe were not the savages; it was those who imposed incessant onslaughts of terror upon them. Their actions make this an undeniable conclusion. These horrific true tales happened throughout the globe almost wherever Europeans roamed, including throughout what we now call "America".

America's foundation is built upon the bloodied, mutilated, and lifeless bodies of innumerable people – mostly of color. Given the undeniable historical background of the illegal founding of this country, it should be of no surprise that its legacy of death and destruction continue unabated, even in 2012.  Americans have become, in essence, complicit in their overall mental and social demise. They have allowed a government they believe represents them to psychologically dumb them down, as well as to rob them of humanity. Each time someone (anyone) is complicit with the loss of innocent lives, regardless whoever is the murderer, they are exhibiting disregard for humanity. Martin Luther King, Jr. had it right when he said, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."

Barbarism has become entrenched within American society – the foundation was built hundreds of years ago, it is now perfected. The rulers of this strange society have convinced its populace that lies are truths and that truths are lies. The people believe almost anything their government (and its unofficial 4^th branch, called the media) feed them. It matters little to most Americans that their government has created carnage throughout the globe. Americans have been easily persuaded in to believing that somehow these people are a different kind of human, therefore their lives are less valuable. We cannot evade the fact that America is a swampland of institutional racism and white supremacy; these realities make it easy for many Euro-Americans to accept the mass killing of people of color across the globe.  And they certainly don't give a damn about the state sponsored loss of black life within their own stolen country, let alone that of other countries.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement [7] recently released an important report detailing the extrajudicial killing of 110 black people between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012,[7] by police, security guards or self-appointed law enforcement [8] in America. How many Euro-Americans give a damn about this report or the rampant police brutality and terror communities of color are subjected to throughout this so-called land of "freedom and democracy?”

“It matters little to most Americans that their government has created carnage throughout the globe.”

How many of the white corporate owned media outlets (MSNBC/NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX ‘News,’ ABC) give a damn enough to do a feature on this human rights crisis? Please don't hold your collective breaths waiting for an answer. The corporate media in the US have a duty to make sure the overall status quo is upheld. They do this primarily by making sure Americans are oblivious to various issues (which means keeping it off their limited radar), and if they do think about these kinds of issues (police brutality), their job is to make sure Americans cast immediate doubt on the victims (people of color murdered by police) and not on the murderers (cops that kill people of color).  In a sane and civilized country there would be a national outcry to immediately put a stop to a system of policing that preys upon specific communities. Is there a national outcry regarding police brutality in black and brown communities in America? If you correctly answered "no" you also answered the question whether the US is a sane and/or civilized nation.

America is a nation where even its highest government officials, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, routinely exhibit themselves like bloodthirsty cave dwellers. When Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was barbarically murdered on camera by US financed terrorist thugs, it was Hillary Clinton who savagely [9] proclaimed on camera, "we came we saw he died [10]" [10]. Only a nation of mentally moral zombies would condone this kind of barbaric behavior from one of their high-ranking government officials. Americans accept this kind of inhumane behavior because they have been trained (programmed) quite well.

Hillary "the barbarian" Clinton would be a suitable name if she were a professional wrestler, however she is not – nonetheless the name is still befitting of a proud war criminal. Are we to believe that US Secretary of State Clinton has genuine well-intentioned reasons for recently visiting Laos [11]? Are we to believe that she actually gives a damn that decades after the US imperialist Vietnam war there are still people dying from undetonated bombs? These incredibly destructive weapons were left over from the 2 million-plus tons of bombs the United States military indiscriminately dropped on Laos. [12] Hillary Clinton claims the US is so concerned that they are now willing to clean up the leftover bombs. Really? Are civilized human beings to revel at the idea of the US spending 9 million dollars this year to cleanup a mess they created? Where are the hundreds of billions of dollars (at least) of reparations that nations like Laos are owed so that they can move forward towards truly rebuilding much of their nation? There can never be a price tag placed on the countless lives lost (millions throughout Southeast Asia), however, with a justifiable reparations package these resilient people can create a more stable and prosperous future for their children. Once again, don't hold your breath on the US doing the right thing in this case either – providing suitable reparations to the people of Southeast Asia would be an admission of guilt. This is why the US has never taken seriously the issue of reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans. They don't want to admit guilt for the crimes of Euro-Americans who build their economy and infrastructure on the blacks of kidnapped African people.

“In a sane and civilized country there would be a national outcry to immediately put a stop to a system of policing that preys upon specific communities.”

Doing the right thing regarding human rights, in America, has become an elusive idea. Americans have largely accepted the narrative imposed upon them, which is often referred to as "American Exceptionalism."  This most dangerous idea moves American further and further away from the majority of the global community. They are allowing themselves to be moved to a state of isolation from those within the global community who appreciate humanity and want a world free of war and injustice. Americans have decided to put on the myopic eyeglasses given to them by their government, which ultimately impedes them from visualizing a world of peace, justice, and equality. US residents have accepted barbaric narratives of "justifiable wars" and "humanitarian wars", fed to them from a trough full of lies.

 America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya (to name a few), are the furthest thing from humane. They are nothing less than wars of death and destruction – all in the name of Western Imperialism. The United States' insatiable appetite for destruction is growing. The US government now has its ravenous sights set on Iran and Syria.

A politically and socially engaged US populace can make all the difference in the world, literally and figuratively. It is time for these sheep to break free and realize that there is a vast world out there, beyond the limitations of their bizarre worldview. It is time for Americans to regain their humanity. It is time to join other global citizens in creating a more livable world, free of injustice. The struggle to build a better world is going on at this very moment. When will a majority of Americans use the tools at their disposal and become social justice carpenters building a more humane global society? Hopefully we won't have to hold our breath on that question.

Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.yourworldnews.org [13]). Solomon is the author of A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues [14]. He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org. [15]

Links:
[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/colonial-wars
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/institutional-racism
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/uncle_sam_feeding.jpg
[4] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/71788
[5] http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17435.Malcolm_X
[6] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Injuns
[7] http://mxgm.org/report-on-the-extrajudicial-killings-of-110-black-people/
[8] http://www.blogtalkradio.com/your-world-news/2012/07/12/every-40-hours-a-black-person-is-extrajudiciously-murdered
[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fJwS_SWD8&feature=related
[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
[11] http://email09.secureserver.net/%20http://news.yahoo.com/historic-visit-clinton-reaches-laos-042535067.html
[12] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18792282
[13] http://www.yourworldnews.org/
[14] http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0104705049/A-Hip-Hop-Activist-Speaks-Out-on-Social-Issues.aspx
[15] mailto:solo@yourworldnews.org 

Freedom is slavery, popular support is authoritarianism

By Lizzie Phelan

The Washington Post’s double-speak

A recent article by The Washington Post’s Juan Forero entitled Latin America’s new authoritarians is just the latest example of how the imperialist’s media machine is relentlessly engaged in media warfare against sovereign nations in the South, in order to fertilise the ground for new or increased economic and military aggression against them. Such psy-op campaigns also seek to influence events on the ground in target nations, in this case in Venezuela ahead of the October elections where all signs point to another resounding victory for current President Hugo Chávez Frías.

The article is part of the psychological wing of what Nicaraguan based website tortilla con sal terms the West’s “War on Humanity” in order to convince the world of the moral superiority of the minority (the Western elite/imperialists) over the majority so as to minimise the threat of a mass organised effort to challenge that minority’s increasingly doomed attempts to achieve total global hegemony.

Their morals, the minority argues through its vast propaganda network which bombard the majority, are superior because they are universal and therefore must be defended and achieved regardless of the cost, including that of the destruction of entire nations, let alone millions upon millions of lives, whose governments stand in the way, Libya being the most recent example.

Inconvenient facts like the unrivalled criminal record of the NATO powers/imperialists who claim moral superiority, must relentlessly be legitimised, through the imperialist’s media (including The Washington Post) and entertainment industry portrayal of NATO crimes as acts of freedom, while acts of resistance and self-defence by their adversaries which undermine that claim to moral superiority and the total hegemony agenda, are presented as crimes against mankind.

And so looking through Forero’s lens, the sovereign nations of Latin America, that are consolidating their freedom from western domination through the continent's growing unification, are the emerging bogey man that the US government should do something about.

His hook is Human Rights Watch's recent onslaught against Venezuela in their report entitled Tightening the Grip which as the name screams out is a document arguing that Chavez has become more authoritarian then ever.

And in one fell swoop Forero takes all of the popularly elected leaders of sovereign, progressive nations on the continent down with the report on Chavez, with focus on those with the greatest support: Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

Forero/HRW and the evil Venezuelan judiciary straw-man

In Venezuela the crux of the article’s venom, in line with the HRW report, is aimed at the country’s judicial system. Neither the article nor the report make mention of the Venezuelan government’s recently published plan for the next six years which has a section entirely devoted to the judicial system which outlines the government’s intention to tackle that system’s “racist and classist character…and impunity”. In the west such admissions only come after lengthy, meek and costly public inquiries. Those governments would never dream of acknowledging the racism, classicism and rife impunity so blatant in their own systems without, for example, scores of embarrassing racist murders, and sustained public pressure by victims’ families as happened when a public inquiry “found” that the British police were institutionally racist in the wake of the scandalous trial of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers.

To make his case Forero cites the cases of two former judges who have accused the Venezuelan government of rigging the judicial system. Top government officials, he says would call ex-magistrate, Eladio Aponte who has since sought exile in the US, and ask him for “favours”. Forero conveniently fails to inform the reader that Aponte was dismissed from his post because he faces charges of accepting money from drugs traffickers and providing now jailed infamous drugs barron Walid Makled with an identity card. During Makled’s trial he alleged that he paid approximately $70,000 to Aponte. Nor does the article mention that Aponte first fled to Costa Rica to evade trial, from where he travelled to the US in a US Drug Enforcement Administration plane, no less. Aponte has denied the allegations but provided no evidence to support his denial. The Venezuelan authorities have said they will present the evidence of their charges against Aponte.

Forero devotes just one sentence to mentioning that former judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni, is facing trial after having “infuriated Chavez with one of her rulings”. If more than 23 words had been devoted to the case of Afiuni than perhaps some facts would have got in the way of a good story, as the old adage goes. Because Afiuni, after making a ruling where no prosecutors were present (contrary to the law) that Eligio Cedeño, a financier who was charged with embezzling millions of dollars and playing a role in other huge cases of corruption, be set free immediately actually escorted him out of the courtroom and saw him off onto a motorcycle where he began his escape ending up finally in Miami. Regardless of the legality of Afiuni’s ruling, she unilaterally violated the normal procedure of sending the defendant to the court’s detention facility while the administrative procedures regarding his release were completed. It is that scandal of such grave proportions that infuriated the Venezuelan public and government, and it is for that that Afiuni is facing trial.

The Washington Post includes a disclaimer paragraph, conceding that “pro-American” leaders, like in Colombia have “weakened democratic governance”. So Colombia is a weak democracy but Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador are authoritarian regimes? This is another total inverse of the reality. Colombia, the continent’s (and one of the world’s) top recipients of US military aid, boasting seven US military bases, currently detains approximately 5,700 political prisoners and has an eye-watering 3.6 million internal refugees. Such a bleak situation is totally incomparable with the reality in non-US client states like those The Washington Post and HRW have focused their ire on.

And indeed the most abysmal picture globally in terms of domestic abuse of the judicial system is at the hands of the US regime.

Unlike in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, in the US you can be detained indefinitely without charge. One in every 48 men of working age are behind bars and that figure excludes tens of thousands of immigrants facing deportation and people awaiting sentencing. The US imprisons five times more people than Venezuela, six times more than Nicaragua and eight times more than Ecuador. While, the US tops the list of global prison population rates, the other three are far behind at number 98, 122 and 160 respectively.

Conditions inside US prisons are unrivalled, especially given that some 2.3 million people squander in them. Sexual abuse rates are staggering and corporations use inmates as cheap – to - free sources of labour. This is 21^st century systematic slavery in the “developed” world and such a dangerous phenomenon means that there is actually a huge monetary incentive for the corporate elite which pull the strings of the US political system, to incarcerate more and more.

While Venezuela has pledged to tackle the racist character of its judicial system, and has supported the creation of an array of groups of African descent which will act as pressure groups to ensure that the struggle against racism progresses, the US has historically cracked down on African-American organizations that genuinely strive for such progress. There is nowhere on this planet where the treatment of Black people is worse than at the hands of the US regime, as exemplified by the fact that of the US’ 2.3 million inmates, 46 per cent are Black, despite that Black people make up just 13 per cent of the US population.

But neither The Washington Post or HRW dedicate a report to scrutinising the status of human rights in the US as they do with their sexy “Tightening the Grip” headline for Venezuela and mention of the US’ domestic abuses are buried in their annual world reports. That is left every year for the Chinese to do.

While HRW has been busying itself propagandising for the fall of the Syrian government on the back of a bunch of shaky youtube videos purporting to show Syrian security forces using weapons against peaceful protesters, regarding which head of the UN Human Rights Commission investigating Syria, Paulo Pinheiro said: “YouTube isn't a reliable means of investigation... There is manipulation of the media”, there is no way it would mount a campaign for US regime change on the back of this very real video, which only adds to the reams before it, of US police opening fire on unarmed protesters in California’s city of Anaheim.

Popular leader or repressive authoritarian?

Continuing with this drive to divert attention from who the greatest enemies of humanity are, the undertone of Forero’s article is that the Venezuelan masses who back Chavez are somehow not in full control of their mental capacities, and this therefore is another sign of how the power hungry Venezuelan government are hoodwinking its people.

And so he quotes one Venezuelan judge who talks about his loyalty to Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and Chavez, as an example of how supporters of Chavez are everywhere, including in the country’s most important institutions. The ridiculous logic seems to be that popularity is dangerous because with people everywhere who support the government, there will be less people to stand in the way of its agenda, regardless of whether that agenda is to improve the lot of all Venezuelans as it has proven hitherto to have done.

Forero patronisingly portrays the masses of poor Venezuelans like sheep under the spell of a “captivating, messianic leader,” as though they support Chavez for no other reason then being brainwashed by his charisma. Even more abhorrent, is the use of academic Javier Corrales, who authored a book about Chavez with the overtly racist title Dragon in the Tropics, as a source to add to the shrill of voices claiming that Chavez is abusing his popularity.

Never mind then that that popularity is a direct result of the facts that since Chavez won his first election in 1999, that country which had one of the world’s widest gaps between rich and poor has seen poverty reduce by more than 50 per cent, illiteracy eradicated, tens of millions now able to access free health care, millions more participating in higher education for free, the creation of tens of thousands of communal councils that give the population the opportunity to participate in the political system, the emergence of 200,000 cooperatives, the emergence of an array of women’s, indigenous and as mentioned African descendant organisations and much more. These are the reasons why, like Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, when Chavez speaks in open squares, something which the imperialists could never dare to dream of, millions flock to hear him speak. This is why they came again in their millions to defend him from the failed US backed coup in 2002 and this is why they repeatedly vote for him in their millions.

Far from consolidating power in few hands, both Nicaragua and Venezuela are steadily moving to strengthen and expand the organs of direct democracy. Venezuela’s communal council’s were cited above, while in Nicaragua the Citizen’s Power model continues to improve the ways in which local communities can make decisions about how government money is spent in their municipalities. The connection between that model and the recent statistics which showed the FSLN had managed to halve extreme poverty in the second poorest country in the Americas after Haiti, is clear. It is local people who know best the needs of their community and as such it is them who decide where government investment should be prioritised for huge infrastructure development, i.e. road, house, roof and electricity development, and social initiatives which have been targeted particularly at enabling Nicaragua’s poorest women to become self-sufficient. The ruling FSLN party has also expanded the number of local government representatives, while not increasing the budget for their salaries. This is a move which ensures more balanced representation and will cut the salary of civil servants, to improve the monetary/social service incentive of such a position in favour of the latter.

Addressing the material and spiritual needs of the poor and marginalised majority as the nations attacked by Forero have done and are doing, is key to ensuring that they enjoy the conditions that enable them to participate in democracy building. Meanwhile, in the US and England, for example, the idea that citizens should be able to have more say over policies that affect their local communities over and above choosing from two or three parties that all represent the same corporate interests every three or four years, which is really no say at all, is unheard of.

In Libya, the wests preferred style of “democracy” has arrived on the back of white phosphorous and Tomahawk cruise missiles, at the expense of the system of direct democracy that was being built there, not to mention tens of thousands of lives, millions of livelihoods, stability and a level of development that brought the Libyan people the highest standard of living in Africa.

Unmasking the missionary

But HRW has a track record of preferring to propagandise in favour of destroying such progress in countries where the balance of power is not in the favour of the NATO powers.

Since its founding in 1978 as Helsinki Watch by the Ford Foundation, HRW has consistently promoted humanitarian intervention in countries viewed as adversaries by the west. Most recently in Libya, HRW was a signatory to the document that lead to Libya’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council, in violation of the UN’s own procedures, and the subsequent Security Council Resolutions that led to nine months of airstrikes supported by approximately 40 NATO countries.

Amidst its long and dirty history, HRW in 2010 announced that they would be accepting $100 million from George Soros who is the honey-pot behind some of the US’ most powerful think-tanks, lobby groups and NGOs and therefore enjoys considerable clout in influencing the US’ imperialist foreign policy.

Others amongst HRW’s long list of malignant backers include the Sandler Foundation which has given approximately $30 million to the group. The foundation is the child of Marion and Herb Sandler who themselves have been key donors of Democrats and helped found a number of think-tanks and lobby groups including the Center for American Progress, also funded by Soros and headed by John Podesta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton. It is therefore unsurprising that the foundation has consistently promoted US meddling in the South including supporting the KONY2012 saga that called for military intervention in Uganda on an entirely bogus pretext.

In short, if you follow the money of the NATO countries vast network of think-tanks, lobbyists, NGOs, newspapers, news websites, news channels, music and film industry, that of The Washington Post and HRW included, it can almost always be traced back to a corporate or “philanthropic” elite that have a vested interested in promoting NATO countries global hegemony agenda.

I have noticed some surprise from people who discover the role of organisations like HRW and Amnesty International. The humanitarian-intervention discourse however is perhaps one of the oldest tricks in western empire’s book, but it has only evolved its disguise. This Global Research article was right to call western NGOs modern “Missionaries of Empire” or as Black Agenda Report labelled HRW, “Human Rights Warriors for Empire”. Accounts of the first English presence in Africa, like those given in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, show the insidious way in which missionaries following the first carve up of Africa at the Berlin Conference would embed themselves in African communities and prey on some points of tension as an opportunity to promote the idea to minority sections of those communities that their grievances with their community were examples of suffering of the gravest degree, the cause of which was the moral backwardness of their society and could be solved if they embraced the only correct moral path, the English church. This splitting of the community meant that by the time the disastrous consequences became clear to all, and true suffering of the gravest degree felt, it was too late.

NGOs operate in much the same way today, facilitating imperial designs which only bring war, instability and misery first to the majority people’s of the South behind the mask of those people’s “human rights”. It is a mask however that is being ripped off, first with the call by ALBA for member countries to expel US AID and its representatives, and then this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin signing a bill that will make all NGO’s that receive external funding register as foreign agents, and most recently with Chavez pulling Venezuela out of the OAS’ Inter-American Human Rights Court. The OAS is of course another tool of western domination of the region, a body that is supposed to promote democracy is itself undemocratic and continues to violate the majority will of its members to end the criminal blockade on Cuba.

Chavez’ decision to withdraw, he said, came, “out of dignity, and we accuse them before the world of being unfit to call themselves a human rights group." It is not unheard of for such groups to be barred by governments in the South from their countries when they face actual military aggression. But the war against such sovereign countries begins long before direct military action. It begins in articles such as Forero’s.

Sandinistas demonstrate once more who the true democrats are in Nicaragua

by toni solo July 19th 2012

SOURCE: tortilla con sal

This year, participation of Nicaraguans celebrating the 33rd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua was even greater than in 2011. Only die-hard enemies of Daniel Ortega's government doubt the overwhelming popular support enjoyed now by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional. The event today confirmed what the centre-right opinion poll company M&R found in their survey published this week.

Over 58% of people in Nicaragua support Daniel Ortega's presidency. 69% believe the Ortega-led Sandinista government is doing a good job. 74% feel optimistic about their future. 64% of people believe the Sandinista government is democratic and respects the rule of law. Over 70% believe Daniel Ortega and his government have worked hard to achieve national reconciliation and a climate of peace. The survey showed that Rosario Murillo, the constant butt of snide and ill-informed misogynist comment, has the approval of over 62% of people in Nicaragua.

So in Nicaragua, as in Venezuela, even the right wing polling companies are reporting what is self-evident from recent election results. Both governments and their leaders enjoy overwhelming public support which is likely to give their political parties equally overwhelming victories in the elections scheduled for later this year. Venezuela has presidential elections in October. Nicaragua has municipal elections in November.

During his relatively brief speech in Managua's Plaza de la Fe today, Daniel Ortega pointed out the special importance of the forthcoming municipal elections. He reminded his huge audience that two pieces of Sandinista-promoted legislation, now law, will make the 2012 municipal elections the most democratic and representative elections ever in Nicaragua.  The two measures were passed with the support of Nicaragua's political opposition in the National Assembly.

One law mandates that 50% of all candidates in all elections in Nicaragua must be women. The other reformed the make up of the country's municipal councils by expanding the number of councillors to be elected. These two measures will significantly increase the levels of representation for Nicaraguans in decision making in their local affairs. The measures also mean a complete transformation of the gender balance at municipal level because women will have an equal voice for the first time ever. Nicaragua is already a world leader in terms of women's representation in the national legislature.

This reality – the overall popular acceptance of the Sandinista led government and the dramatic democratization of popular participation – has left Nicaragua's political opposition bereft of initiatives and facing ever-diminishing electoral support. Ever since they lost ground in the municipal elections of 2008, all the opposition have been able to do is to make false accusations of systematic electoral fraud. But they have neither ever seriously substantiated those claims nor mobilized popular support for them.

The Nicaraguan opposition and the Venezuelan opposition are both headed for humiliating electoral defeat in their countries' respective elections later this year. The tactic of both sets of national political  opposition is to plan to make yet more absurd false claims of electoral fraud to justify their rejection by voters. The right wing M&R poll found that over 67% of people in Nicaragua dismiss the right  wing opposition parties as a worthwhile political choice. In response, the Nicaraguan opposition are already claiming that the elections will be rigged against them.

The similarities between Venezuela and Nicaragua figured also in an important point made by Daniel Ortega during his address on this 33rd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.  President Ortega made clear that the threats and fear-mongering of the United States and its regional allies are much less effective than in the past.  Latin American unity among progressive governments from Argentina and Brazil to Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and also to Nicaragua and Cuba makes it far more difficult for the United States and its allies to intimidate otherwise vulnerable small countries.

President Ortega made that point in a context where the US State Department has already cut bilateral aid to Nicaragua. It is also contemplating a measure that may trigger attempts to influence multilateral lenders like the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund from lending to Nicaragua. Those economic threats are accompanied by constant propaganda lies about threats in Nicaragua to democracy and human rights. These follow the same pattern as the recent deceitful psy-warfare report by Human Rights Watch on the Venezuelan government's human rights record.

The malevolent folly of US foreign policy is all too vividly clear in the sinister insistence by murderous genocidal terrorists like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and their accomplices on attacking the well-being of people in Nicaragua. They tacitly recognize the fact that people in Nicaragua overwhelmingly support Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government. That is why, as part of their endless war on humanity, they seem once again to be organizing vicious, anti-democratic economic aggression against Nicaragua's people to accompany their endless psy-warfare offensive.

The difference from the 1980s is that Nicaragua is supported by almost every other country in Latin America. In the majority world outside North America and Europe, Daniel Ortega's government enjoys great international prestige. It has excellent relations not just within Latin America and the Caribbean but with many countries in Europe, Africa and Asia, as well as its enduring alliance with Russia. Even among US allies in Latin America, the Sandinista government enjoys excellent relations with both Mexico and Perú.

President Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo made one other absolutely fundamental point during the 33rd Anniversary celebrations of the Sandinista Revolution today. They both emphasized that Sandinista government support is built on the country's youth. Young people make up the great majority of Nicaragua's population. They are growing to adulthood experiencing the radical improvement of Nicaragua's economy and society under the Sandinista government's socialist-inspired policies.

The US government has all too easily assaulted its own people, stealing from them to rescue the country's corrupt financial sector and trashing basic democratic rights. By contrast, a century after its marines invaded Nicaragua in 1912 to impose a US puppet government, it is having to think hard about how to attack Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution. That definitive decline in US power and influence is compounded by the fact that a new dynamic creative young Sandinista generation is just as ready to defy them now as their revolutionary forebears were in 1979.