Sunday, July 14, 2019

If Trump wants to stop the southern invasion fire Bolton/Pompeo/Abrams and stop overthrowing elected governments in South America




"In [civil war-era] Guatemala, Israel, acting on behalf of the Reagan administration, stepped in to supply military equipment, including helicopters and Galil rifles, and training that had been cut off during the previous Carter administration. Israel also supplied [the Guatemalan regime with] computers, software, and other equipment used for surveillance. This was at the height of the genocide, which ultimately left 200,000 dead, including many Mayans." ~ acclaimed author and historian Greg Grandin

They’re back…   The criminal cabal that wreaked havoc in South America during the Reagan Administration really never left.  What Tucker Carlson aptly called Bureaucratic Tape Worms, Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams continued to do their dirty work during the administrations of W. Bush and Barack Obama, sometimes through “Stink Tanks” and sometimes through the State Department.  They are responsible for the throngs of illegal immigrants charging through our borders to escape the U.S.-Israeli backed death squads in throughout South America, particularly where elected leaders have been replaced with CIA installed strongmen.

These criminals should be prosecuted for treason as they really hate America and want to destroy our once great nation in their service to Zionist controlled Israel.  Donald Trump is right to want to stop the flow of the indigenous people of South America but the way to do that is to fire the Bolton/Pompeo/Abrams cabal and let the people of South America be ruled by their elected leaders not the tyrants installed by the Bureaucratic Tape Worms.  Americans need to learn the history of what has been happening in South America since the 1970’s.  From Belen Fernandez in Aljazeera (2013):


Excerpt:

Death by 'security': Israel's services in Latin America

The country has supported repressive governments in the region to suppress indigenous movements and uprisings.

According to a Mexican news article that surfaced in May, the Israeli military will begin training the police force in Mexico's southeastern state of Chiapas, where the predominantly indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army is based.

Yaron Yugman, Israel's defence ministry representative in Mexico, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, is quoted as affirming that "a country's security is fundamental to its growth" and that human rights would be one of the focuses of military instruction.

Of course, "security" and "growth" aren't luxuries usually intended for domestic indigenous groups. A May article in The Electronic Intifada recalls the aftermath of the 1994 Zapatista uprising, which coincided with the inauguration of the North American Free Trade Agreement:

"The Mexican government found itself needing to respond to the dictates of foreign investors, as a famously leaked Chase-Manhattan Bank memo revealed: 'While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy'."

As for the alleged focus on human rights, Israel's expertise in oppressing indigenous populations and squelching dignity happens to be more marketable.  The Israeli embassy in Mexico has reportedly denied military machinations in the southeast, but not even Fox News Latino is convinced:

"The Israeli Embassy's denial of its government working in Chiapas is puzzling, given the long history that Israel's government has of working with Mexico. Since the early 1970s, the Mexican government has purchased airplanes, helicopters, missile boats, small arms and other weapons from either the Israeli army or Israeli military contractors."

Contributions to genocide

Mexico's indigenous Mayans are not the only group to have found themselves on the receiving end of Israel's arsenal.  In an email to me, acclaimed author and historian Greg Grandin outlined a previous episode of such charitable regional intervention:

"In [civil war-era] Guatemala, Israel, acting on behalf of the Reagan administration, stepped in to supply military equipment, including helicopters and Galil rifles, and training that had been cut off during the previous Carter administration. Israel also supplied [the Guatemalan regime with] computers, software, and other equipment used for surveillance. This was at the height of the genocide, which ultimately left 200,000 dead, including many Mayans."

Investigative reporter Jeremy Bigwood, who as a photojournalist covered Latin American civil wars in the 1980s and 1990s, confirmed that the Israelis were "up to their ears in the genocide" in Guatemala. He said the Israelis had supplied the military with Arava STOL planes and armoured personnel carriers, and established an ammunition factory in the city of Coban. Bigwood added: "The Israelis used telephone analysis - similar to what the NSA is now doing - and were able to utterly destroy the Guatemalan urban guerrillas. They assisted in the countryside by mapping out each family farmhouse and identifying the politics of the inhabitants."

A 2012 report entitled Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network notes that Israel's extensive experience in displacing Palestinians enabled the state to assist in the planning and implementation of "scorched earth" policies in both Guatemala and El Salvador.

According to the report, the Guatemalan operations "were combined with 'development poles' - concentrated villages of displaced populations that allowed for greater government control over the popular movement and the repression of any grassroots organising".

Going back further, a 1986 article by the Middle East Research and Information Project quotes a former member of the Knesset foreign affairs committee as defending Israeli involvement in Guatemala: "Israel is a pariah state. When people ask us for something, we cannot afford to ask questions about ideology. The only type of regime that Israel would not aid would be one that is anti-American".

From Palestinian laboratory to 'trail of terror'

One advantage to being forced to comply "[w]hen people ask us for something", obviously, is that sizable profits accompany weapons sales.

As for Israel's alleged pariah-hood, this tragic scenario is seemingly contradicted by Bigwood's 2003 article for Al Jazeera, Israel's Latin American trail of terror, in which he lists countries in the region where Israel has supplied, trained, and advised right-wing groups and regimes: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. So much for lonesomeness.

Ideology's negligible importance is confirmed in Bigwood's article by Israel's support for the Argentine military junta's dirty war of 1976-1983 - which was characterised by mass forced disappearances and torture - despite, as Bigwood notes, the junta's anti-Semitic orientation.

Ideological overlap is, however, seen in the case of Colombia, where President Juan Manuel Santos has not only appeared in a promotional video for an Israeli private security firm but has also announced: "We've even been accused of being the Israelites [sic] of Latin America, which personally makes me feel really proud."

Inside Story - The shift in the global arms trade

Beyond verifying Santos' clunessness, this statement is particularly relevant given that Carlos Castano - the founder of modern Colombian paramilitarism - was trained in Israel and acknowledged copying the paramilitary concept from the Israelis.

Israel's hobby of collective punishment has, it seems, proven especially instructive; although formally disbanded, Colombian paramilitaries continue to terrorise civilian populations, often reportedly in concert with the military - which is itself famous for slaughtering civilians and dressing the corpses up as anti-government guerrillas. A primary goal of this terrorisation is to clear land of indigenous groups, campesinos, and other people whose existence impedes the proper exploitation of resources.

In Chiapas, meanwhile, the indigenous movement has rudely imperiled the flourishing of neoliberalism. The Electronic Intifada article explains: "The Zapatistas took back large tracts of land [from the government] on which they have since built subsistence cooperatives, autonomous schools, collectivised clinics and other democratic community structures."

Enter the Israeli army.

John Collins, chair of the Global Studies Department at New York's St Lawrence University, describes Israeli military collaboration with the Mexican government in Chiapas as "further evidence of how tools of surveillance and repression field-tested on Palestinians are being used throughout the world", quoting Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper's assessment that "[t]he Israeli economy is based on exporting the occupation [of Palestine]".

Although Israel may contend that "a country's security is fundamental to its growth", the fact is that global insecurity is fundamental to Israel's growth.

There is no way to secure our southern border when these murderous thugs are causing the mass migration from the South American countries they are pillaging.  These so-called “Judeo-Christians” murder indigenous people on a massive scale and do not value human life at all.  They seized back control of the United States government in 2000 and will not give up their power easily.  They hate the American people and have become extremely wealthy feeding off the U.S. treasury.  They run a shadow government worth trillions of taxpayer dollars.  These are very dangerous zealots.  From Whitney Webb at Mint Press:

Excerpt:

The Untold Story of Christian Zionism’s Rise to Power in the United States

Well before Theodore Herzl founded political Zionism and published The Jewish State, Christian Zionists in the United States and England were already seeking to direct and influence the foreign policy of both nations in service to a religious obsession end times prophecy.

The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community.

Members of this organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI’s leader, controversial evangelical preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the administration’s upcoming “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine.

CUFI is but one of many organizations throughout American history that have promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth — an event Christians often refer to as “the Second Coming.” 

While organizations like CUFI and its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only thing standing between them and the Second Coming.

There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these Christians, often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.

As was explored in previous installments of this series, these Christian Zionists, much like religious Zionist extremists in Israel, believe that the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock must be replaced with a Third Jewish Temple in order to usher in the end times…

This alliance, based on a mutual obsession with hastening the coming of the Apocalypse, continues to this day and now, more than at any other time in history, these groups have reached the heights of power in both Israel and the United States…

Yet, this fire-and-brimstone vision of the end times has long been a guide for prominent figures in American history and the American elite, even predating Zionism’s founding as a political movement. Thus, Christian Zionism’s influence on Trump administration policy is merely the latest of a long list of examples where prophecy and politics have mixed in American history, often with world-altering results.

 Puritans, Prophecy and Palestine

Accounts of the role of European and North American Christians in the creation of the state of Israel often begin with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but the efforts of certain Christian groups in England and the United States to create a Jewish state in Palestine actually date back centuries earlier and significantly predate Zionism’s official founding by Theodore Herzl.

Among the first advocates for the physical immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans, an offshoot of Christian Protestantism that emerged in the late 16th century and became influential in England and, later, in the American colonies. Influential Puritans devoted considerable interest to the role of Jews in eschatology, or end-times theology, with many — such as John Owen, a 17th-century theologian, member of parliament, and administrator at Oxford — believing that the physical return of Jews to Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.

While the Puritan roots of what would later become known as Christian Zionism are often overlooked in modern accounts of where and why American evangelical support for Israel began, its adherents still clearly acknowledge its legacy. For instance, on Monday at the CUFI conference, Pompeo, himself a Christian Zionist known for his obsession with the end times, told the group the following:

Christian support in America for Zion — for a Jewish homeland — runs back to the early Puritan settlers, and it has endured for centuries. Indeed, our second president [John Adams], a couple years back, said… ‘I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.’

These Puritan beliefs, which persist today and have only grown in popularity, became more entrenched in England and colonial America with time, especially among the monied political class, and led to a variety of interpretations regarding exactly what the Bible says about the end times…

Hagee is the pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, which has an active membership of over 22,000. A charismatic Christian who believes in dispensationalist eschatology and thinks that Christians are biblically required to support Israel, Hagee has long been a major advocate for Israel within evangelical and charismatic Christianity circles and has raised over $80 million for Israel since he first began hosting “A Night to Honor Israel” events in the early 1980s.

In 2006, Hagee sought to create the “Christian AIPAC” and revived a then-defunct organization previously founded in 1975 known as Christians United for Israel, or CUFI, mentioned at the beginning of this installment. Since its re-founding, CUFI has grown exponentially, now counting 7 million members, a figure that exceeds the Jewish population of the United States, which stands at around 5.7 million. Hagee chairs its executive board, which included Jerry Falwell up until Falwell’s death in 2007.

CUFI is exempt from paying U.S. taxes and from publicly disclosing its finances because it is officially registered as a church, though it is often likened to an arm of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and actively promotes and funds illegal West Bank settlements. CUFI also advocates for Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and the construction of a Third Temple.

Much has been written about CUFI’s influence in the Republican Party, which began under the George W. Bush administration soon after its founding. As journalist Max Blumenthal noted in a 2006 article for The Nation: “Over the past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI).”

As a result of these meetings, CUFI aligned itself tightly with the neoconservatives that were well represented in the Bush administration, even appointing neoconservative and Christian Zionist Gary Bauer to its board and naming Bauer the first director of its lobbying arm, the CUFI Action Fund. Bauer is a founding member of the highly controversial and now-defunct neoconservative group, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and has also served on the executive board of the neoconservative group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).

CUFI has since won powerful allies and counts neoconservative Elliott Abrams; former CIA director James Woosley; neoconservative archon Bill Kristol; former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee; Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Ted Cruz (R-TX); Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence among its staunchest supporters. At a CUFI summit last year, Netanyahu described CUFI as a “vital part of Israel’s national security.”

In addition, CUFI has close ties to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the top donor to President Trump and the entire Republican Party. Adelson even received a special award from Hagee at a 2014 CUFI event. “I’ve never had a greater warm feeling than being honored by Pastor Hagee,” said a beaming Sheldon Adelson at the time.

At the most recent CUFI summit, held on Monday, the Trump administration sent Pence, Pompeo, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, all of whom spoke at the summit…

While Hagee’s influence and the influence of his organization CUFI are stronger than ever with Trump in the White House, his political clout with the Trump administration is, at least partially, due to the presence of staunch Christian Zionists in two of the top offices in the executive branch: vice president and secretary of state.

Pence and Pompeo push “holy war”

Though several Trump officials spoke at the recent CUFI summit, two stand out — not just for their high-ranking positions but also for their open admissions that their Christian Zionist beliefs guide their policies. These officials are Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

After Trump chose his running mate, Pence’s religious fervor came under media scrutiny, with several outlets noting that he was known to be an ardent Christian Zionist. Pence’s faith gained particular attention owing to his past statements on Israel, which he has often described in prophetic terms…

Though many of the initial concerns about Pence revolved around his likely effects on domestic policy, much of his influence has instead been seen in foreign policy, including the administration’s Middle East policy. His public identification as a Christian Zionist and his speech to the 2017 CUFI summit, the first vice president to ever speak at the annual event, have led some to worry that the Christian Zionist view of prophecy is guiding Pence’s political actions.

Following Pence’s first speech at CUFI, Daniel Hummel, a scholar and fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told the Washington Post:

Christian Zionism has a long history in American politics, but it has never captured the bully pulpit of the White House. Past administrations often used general biblical language in reference to Israel, but never has the evangelical theology of Christian Zionism been so close to the policymaking apparatus of the executive branch…
  
Though Mike Pence is the highest-ranking member of the Trump administration who is openly a Christian Zionist, it is Pompeo that is the most overt and open about how his religious beliefs regarding the end times guide his decision-making as head of the U.S. State Department.  

For much of his political career, Pompeo has framed U.S. counterterrorism policy as a “holy war” between Christianity and Islam, which he believes is the earthly equivalent of a cosmic battle between good and evil. In 2017, as CIA director, Pompeo claimed:

Radical Islamic terror [will] continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior [and] truly the only solution for our world.”

That same year, Pompeo created a new CIA “mission center” targeting Iran headed by Michael D’Andrea, whose CIA nickname is “The Prince of Darkness.” Pompeo, like many Christian Zionists, believes that war between the United States and Iran is part of the end times, a belief that is outright alarming given his prior control over CIA covert operations and his focus on Iran, as well as his current role as the U.S.’ chief diplomat, in which he has also been laser-focused on promoting an aggressive policy towards Iran.

In addition to his views on “holy war,” Pompeo also frequently discussed his views on the rapture while serving as CIA director. TYT reported last year that Pompeo had spoken about the rapture so frequently that it had reportedly frightened top CIA officials.

According to Michael Weinstein — founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group on issues of religious freedom in the military and intelligence community — who was quoted in the TYT report:

He [Pompeo] is intolerant of anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist Christian. The people that worked under him at the CIA that came to us were never confused — they never had time to be confused. They were shocked and then they were scared shitless.”

A 2015 video of Pompeo that surfaced while he was CIA director also shows the former congressman describing politics as “a never-ending struggle … until the rapture.”

Sheesh, if the CIA agents are scared shitless of Pompeo what chance do the American people have?  This guy is seriously mentally ill and he’s America’s top diplomat.  Trump needs to dump these people fast, like yesterday.  These are the same people who are terrorizing South American indigenous people who are now storming our southern border.  Trump’s “special envoy” to Venezuela is war criminal and Zionist Elliott Abrams.  From Branko Marcetic at Jacobin Mag.

Excerpt:

The Tragic Life of the War Criminal Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams was once an innocent child. And then he decided to spend the rest of his life covering up brutal atrocities and defending right-wing dictatorships.  Elliott Abrams once said the animating force behind his and Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy was that the world is “an exceedingly dangerous place.” And this is true, largely because men like Elliott Abrams exist in it.

Last month, Abrams was tapped by Trump to serve as his special envoy to Venezuela, to essentially help steer the Trump administration’s slow-burn effort to topple that country’s government — or as Mike Pompeo put it, “restore democracy” in the country.

It should go without saying that the idea the Trump administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela for the sake of democracy and human rights is as laughable as calling Jamal Khashoggi’s murder a surprise party gone wrong. But in case you need to explain this to politically confused friends and relatives, here are eight good reasons why the appointment of Abrams, in particular, makes a mockery of any such high-minded rhetoric.

1. He was knee-deep in human rights atrocities

Let’s start with the most obvious point, which is that Abrams’ chief claim to fame is his role in Ronald Reagan’s blood-soaked foreign policy in Central America in the 1980s, for which he earned the nickname, “contra commander-in-chief.” The contras were the brutal right-wing paramilitary groups in Nicaragua who terrorized civilians throughout the decade, cutting a swath of torture, rape, and murder aimed at everyone from the elderly to children.

Their methods were similar to those of right-wing paramilitaries in the other countries of the region, including El Salvador and Guatemala, all of which were supported by the Reagan administration. If you have the stomach to read about them, there’s no shortage of sources that outline their barbarity…

2. He covered up brutal acts of terror

Key to Abrams’ role under Reagan was playing down and denying the copious human rights abuses being committed by the forces and governments he and the administration supported.

As Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar pointed out in her grilling of Abrams earlier this week, part of the Reagan administration’s “fabulous achievement” in El Salvador was the horrific El Mozote massacre, which took place shortly before Abrams took up his post.

In his attempt to convince the Senate to certify that El Salvador’s government was improving its human rights record — a precondition for receiving US aid — Abrams testified that the massacre had been “publicized when the certification comes forward to the committee,” and was “being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.” He claimed he had sent military officers to investigate the reports, and that the massacre couldn’t be confirmed.

Another incident was the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed on the orders of Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, one of the administration’s partners in the country. “Anybody who thinks you’re going to find a cable that says that Roberto d’Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool,” said Abrams. In fact, two such cables existed…

Meanwhile, as Guatemalan dictator RĂ­os Montt embarked on a campaign of genocide in the country, Abrams said he had “brought considerable progress” on human rights. He defended Reagan’s lifting of a military aid embargo on Montt’s government, claiming the slaughter of civilians was “being reduced step by step” and that it was “progress” that had to be “rewarded and encouraged.”

3. He’s an unrepentant liar

Abrams told Omar that it is “always the position of the United States” to protect human rights, including in Venezuela, and he stressed the US didn’t want to arm anti-Maduro forces. Besides his well-documented record of doing exactly the opposite, Abrams’ words are even less relevant when you consider his history of outright lying.

We’ve already seen how Abrams regularly lied to cover up or play down abuses by the right-wing forces he supported. This practice would ultimately land him in trouble when he misled Congress about the Iran-Contra affair with statements that ranged from outright lies (“we’re not in the fund-raising business”), to lawyerly parsing of the truth (“I said no foreign government was helping the contras, because we had not yet received a dime from Brunei,” he would write later)…

4. He hates democracy

Abrams has also shown a lifelong contempt for the very thing he’s now meant to be advancing: democracy.

When the Uruguayan military government imprisoned Wilson Ferreira, the country’s most popular politician and a fierce liberal opponent of its rule, Abrams defended the Reagan administration’s meek response, which the New York Times had called “stunning.” Abrams explained that “the transition [to elected government] itself is more important than the immediate situation of any individual politician.” Abrams had earlier insisted there was no evidence the Uruguyan military was stifling political freedom, even as it closed newspapers, arrested its opposition, and continued to ban political leaders, among other things…

In 2002, Abrams reportedly “gave a nod” to the military coup that attempted, ultimately unsuccessfully, to remove the democratically elected Hugo Chavez from power. The Observer, which broke the story, called Abrams “the crucial figure around the coup.” Abrams has had his eye on toppling Venezuela’s government for some time.

When Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, Abrams, then the point man for George W. Bush’s Middle East policy, helped implement a scheme to nullify the results by fomenting a Palestinian civil war which, they hoped, would remove Hamas from power. When the plan backfired, with Hamas emerging victorious and in full control of Gaza, Abrams accused Hamas of staging a “coup.”

5. His only political principle was anticommunism

Abrams’ disregard for democracy is part and parcel of his general philosophy, which views left-wing governments uniformly as threats to be stamped out…

In 1984, Abrams quite candidly explained to Policy Review that his human rights policy was one of double standards: fierce opposition to communist rights abusers, and coddling of oppressors friendly to the US…

In other words, no matter how brutal or outright fascist a government, it was by default preferable to a communist one, a philosophy he applied in obvious ways to his work in the Americas. It was also evident in his treatment of Cuba, whose prisons he denounced in 1984 as “barbaric” and whose leader, Fidel Castro, he labeled “oppressive” and accused of “betrayal…”

At literally the same time he was doing this, Abrams publicly defended Turkey, a key regional ally, from criticism of its human rights record. Abrams praised Turkey, which had recently been pilloried in an Amnesty International report for widespread torture of its people, for “extraordinary progress,” charging that “some who criticize Turkey’s human rights situation have no interest in human rights in Turkey or anywhere else,” but “simply use this issue as a weapon with which to attack a vital member of the Western alliance.”

6. He dislikes journalists and accountability

Abrams no doubt sympathized with Turkey’s rulers because he himself had first-hand experience dealing with pesky journalists and human rights groups…

While Abrams didn’t have a police state at his disposal, that didn’t prevent him from lobbing heavy-handed broadsides against reporters he didn’t like. He refused to be questioned by or debate certain journalists he perceived as critical. Most infamously, from 1986 to 1987, Abrams accused left-wing Colombian journalist Patricia Lara of being a “Cuban agent” and “an active liaison” between Colombian terrorist organization M-19 and “the Cuban secret police.” In October 1986, Lara was stopped by New York immigration officials and imprisoned, before being sent back home, without explanation.

Abrams claimed to have “concrete evidence” that Lara was “heavily engaged” with M-19, but when challenged to reveal evidence, claimed it was based on “intelligence information” that he couldn’t reveal. The Colombian Defense Ministry, then battling M-19, categorically denied they had any such information, and assigned her a bodyguard because Abrams’ accusation had put her in danger. The country’s foreign minister said “we don’t know where the US government obtained” such information.

7. He’s a fan of regime change

Like any neoconservative worth his salt, Abrams has an abiding faith in the US government’s ability to simply remove world leaders it dislikes at will. (He’s also continued the neocon tradition of never personally fighting in any war, avoiding Vietnam thanks to a hurt back that happened to clear up once the war was over.)

When Abrams wanted to remove former ally Manuel Noriega from power in Panama, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan wrote, he threatened sanctions, then actually imposed sanctions, then established a Panamanian government-in-exile on a US military base. Abrams finally called outright for the US military to topple Noriega, in an op-ed titled “Noriega Respects Power. Use It,” which is what George H. W. Bush ultimately did. It was a chilling preview of where US policy on Venezuela may now be heading if Maduro stays in power…

In 2013, Abrams told a House Armed Services Committee hearing that the US had to get militarily involved in Syria. Why? Because “a display of American lack of will power in Syria will persuade many Iranian officials that while we may say ‘all options are on the table,’ in reality they are not — so Iran can proceed happily and safely toward a nuclear weapon...”

8. He’s beloved by the Right

In case anyone still believes the fiction that “anti-Trump” conservatives actually oppose Trump, Abrams is a living reminder that there’s no daylight between Trump and the establishment Right that pretends to dislike him.

Abrams was once an “anti-Trump” Republican who signed a letter opposing his candidacy in 2016. He tutored Paul Ryan in foreign policy when he was Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate, and served on Marco Rubio’s so-called National Security Advisory Council in 2016. It’s no surprise the Florida senator, long viewed as an establishment-friendly, “sensible” conservative alternative to Trump, is now all but directing Trump’s Latin American policy, sounding virtually indistinguishable from Abrams.

Abrams has now served in every Republican administration since he first entered government bar one. In between, he’s worked at the Heritage Foundation (whose head of Latin American policy just called him “a patriot and dedicated voice for repressed communities”), helped found “anti-Trump” Bill Kristol’s Project for the New American Century, was a fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, the US government’s arm for foreign political meddling…

That someone like Abrams, who’s now leading Trump’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, is warmly embraced by the coterie of establishment and “never-Trump” conservatives should tell you everything you need to know about these groups.

Yes Elliott Abrams is a Bureaucratic Tapeworm who never really left the body politic and whose specialty is overthrowing democratically elected governments in South America and supplying arms to murder indigenous people.  Don’t for a second believe that the Democratic Party is any different.  Self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden’s presidency would not look any different from that of a Republican.  It was the Obama Administration that overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras.  From Stephen Zunes at NCR Online:

Excerpt:

The US role in the Honduras coup and subsequent violence

On March 3, Berta CĂ¡ceres, a brave and outspoken indigenous Honduran environmental activist and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, was gunned down in her hometown of La Esperanza. Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director for Amnesty International, noted how "For years, she had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the rights of indigenous communities."

She is just one of thousands of indigenous activists, peasant leaders, trade unionists, journalists, environmentalists, judges, opposition political candidates, human rights activists, and others murdered since a military coup ousted the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

Despite being a wealthy logger and rancher from the centrist Liberal Party, Zelaya had moved his government to the left during his four years in office. During his tenure, he raised the minimum wage and provided free school lunches, milk for young children, pensions for the elderly, and additional scholarships for students. He built new schools, subsidized public transportation, and even distributed energy-saving light bulbs.

None of these were particularly radical moves, but it was nevertheless disturbing to the country’s wealthy economic and military elites. More frightening was that Zelaya had sought to organize an assembly to replace the 1982 constitution written during the waning days of the U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz Garcia.

A non-binding referendum on whether such a constitutional assembly should take place was scheduled the day of the coup, but was cancelled when the military seized power and named Congressional Speaker Roberto Micheletti as president.

Calling for such a referendum is perfectly legal under Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran Civil Participation Act, which allows public functionaries to perform such non-binding public consultations regarding policy measures. Despite claims by the rightist junta and its supporters, Zelaya was not trying to extend his term. That question wasn’t even on the ballot. The Constitutional Assembly would not have likely completed its work before his term had expired anyway. 

The leader of the coup, Honduran General Romeo VĂ¡squez VelĂ¡squez, was a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, a U.S. Army training program nicknamed “School of Assassins” for the sizable number of graduates who have engaged in coups, as well as the torture and murder of political opponents…

There is no evidence to suggest that the Obama administration was behind the coup. However, a number of U.S. officials -- most notably then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- played an important role in preventing Zelaya’s return to office and the junta consolidating its power in the face of massive nonviolent protests.

Clinton insisted the day after the coup that "all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying problems that led to yesterday’s events." When asked if her call for "restoring the constitutional order" in Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself, she didn’t say it necessarily would.

State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly evaded reporters' questions as to whether the United States supported Zelaya's return, placing the United States at odds with the Organization of American States, the Rio Group, and the U.N. General Assembly, all of which called for the "immediate and unconditional return" of Zelaya.

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens, reflecting the broad consensus of international observers, sent a cable to Clinton entitled "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," thoroughly documenting that "there is no doubt" that Zelaya’s ouster "constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup."

Similarly, Ann-Marie Slaughter, then serving as director of Policy Planning at the State Department, sent an email to Clinton strongly encouraging her to "take bold action" and to "find that [the] coup was a 'military coup' under U.S. law."

However, Clinton's State Department refused to suspend U.S. aid to Honduras -- as required when a democratically-elected government is ousted in such a manner -- on the grounds that it wasn’t clear that the forcible military-led overthrow actually constituted a coup d'Ă©tat.

Emails released last year by the State Department also show how Clinton rejected calls by the international community to condemn the coup and used her lobbyist friend Lanny Davis -- who was working for the Honduran chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, which supported the coup -- to open communications with Micheletti, the illegitimate interim ruler installed by the military.

Leaders of Latin American nations, the U.N. General Assembly and other international organizations unambiguously demanded Zelaya’s immediate return to office. However, in her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton admits that she worked to prevent restoring the elected president to office: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”

The elections, held under military rule and marred by violence and media censorship, were hardly free or fair. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) declared they would not recognize elections held under the de facto government and the Organization of American States drafted a resolution that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorship, but the State Department blocked its adoption.

In the subsequent six years, the horrific repression and skyrocketing murder rate -- now the highest in the world -- has resulted in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing for safety in the United States. Ironically, as Secretary of State, Clinton rejected granting political asylum and supported their deportation.

Clinton’s role in supporting the coup in Honduras is a reminder that the Middle East is not the only part of the world in which she is willing to set aside principles of international law and human rights to advance perceived U.S. economic and strategic interests. Indeed, it may be a troubling indication of the kind of foreign policies she would pursue as president.



So where are we going with all of these wars that the U.S. is waging across the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia?  The Christian Zionists have bankrupted America and these wars for Empire are not sustainable.  From Umair Haque at Eudaimonia and Co


Excerpt:

(Why We Should All Celebrate) The End of American Empire

America Fought a World War Against Social Democracy. It Lost. Will the World be Better For It?

There’s a strange myth Americans are taught, which is also a simple one. It goes like this: having an empire is good for them, and good for the world, too.  It’s not so odd when you think about it. Every empire from Rome to Britain has told itself this myth. Sometimes, it’s even true — in ways. But in America’s case, both parts are false.

One of the conditions necessary for America to make progress again — instead of the grim, bleak, light-speed regress it’s currently making — is to give up on empire.  Let’s take those points one by one, and along the way, I’ll explain what I mean by “American empire” — though I’d bet you already have a hint.

Was American empire good for the world? Let’s think about the long, long list of countries America destabilized, toppled, and destroyed. Chile, Argentina, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua…the list is almost endless.

It’s a myth — and a particularly dangerous one that American empire was some kind of gift to the world. DC insiders and American pundits see America as some kind of benevolent policeman, standing guard over the world, leading its peoples to freedom.

Americans are weaned on the milk of this myth. But ask a Chilean how they feel about Pinochet’s death squads, an Iraqi how they felt about Saddam — and then being bombed to remove Saddam, anyone from southeast Asia about America’s decades long wars against them.

America was never a benevolent guardian of global peace or freedom. In fact, what was happening was this. Much of the rest of the world — almost every single country on my list above, in fact — didn’t want to choose the American path: capitalism, greed, violence, narcissism. It wanted something very different: social democracy.

Why? Because while Americans — at least white ones — might have enjoyed the fruits of global capitalism, it was the rest of the world which paid the price. With its labour, with its raw materials, with endless drudgery. And more crucially, with a lack of human rights, basic freedoms, or democracy. Hence, this rest of the world was much more influenced by European thinkers than American ones. From Marx to Fanon to Adorno. Latin Americans would name their kids Lenin, and Asia saw powerful socialist and unionist movements arise.

America wasn’t giving the world freedom. It was taking it away. The world wanted social democracy. But America wasn’t about to have it. Because American capitalism couldn’t work in isolation. It needed cheap oil, minerals, trees, meat. It needed capital and labour and markets, the more speculative and destabilizing, the better. But this was exactly what the world didn’t want.

Outside America, the fans of extreme, aggressive, predatory capitalism were few and far between. Almost nonexistent, in fact. What other region of the world chose it? Europe didn’t. Canada didn’t. Australia didn’t. But see the point: these were regions of the world that were free to choose — countries too rich, powerful, and altogether white for America to interfere much with. Yet if a country wasn’t any of those things — bang!

I really want you to reflect on this point. Outside America, nearly nobody on earth wanted to be a capitalist society. For good reason: they’d seen the ills firsthand that capitalism brought with it, from pollution to inequality to despair. America wouldn’t see them until the 2010s or so.

So what did America do? Well, it set to work forcing the world to become capitalist societies, anyways. Any way its elites deemed necessary. And if they couldn’t be capitalist ones, then America would settle for authoritarian ones. Hence, dictators like Saddam and Pinochet were installed — at least they were people Americans could “do business” with, aka people who would sell oil and labour cheap.

But this — America installing authoritarianism in country after country, to ensure capitalism’s health — also meant that the world never evolved the way it wanted to. It meant that the world was less free than it should have been. Think about it, if you’re American. If Chileans or Iraqis wanted social democracy — who are you to tell them they can’t have it?

And yet that’s exactly what American institutions did. In hard ways — they made war, with bullets and bombs. In soft ways — they used propaganda and money and disinformation.

Let me come to the point. Over the last century or so, the world has not become as free as it should have been: the net effect of American hegemony is that the growth of global social democracy was stifled and suffocated and strangled. Simply ask the question: if America hadn’t acted like a violent, greedy, bully — how many countries would have been stable social democracies long ago? A long, long list — just the same list above…

Do you see how starkly opposed the myth and the reality are? American empire is seen in America as a moral crusade — “we bring peace and prosperity to the world!” But the world laughs at this kind of naivete — precisely because the reality is that America’s missiles and bombs have brought not just death and despair, but decades of the lack of progress the world should have rightly seen, wanted, and freely chose for itself, over and over again.

Now. If American empire had a steep price for the world — country after country wanted to be a social democracy, but America used force and power to make them capitalist societies, or authoritarian states — what about America? Did America pay a price for empire, too?

Can you already see it coming?...

It’s true — America spent trillions on wars, sacrificed countless lives, wasted its time and energy, its “human capital.” There was a deeper price. Just as America denied the world the chance to progress into social democracy — it never could, either.

Today, America is the world’s first poor rich country. A 15 year old in Bangladesh has a higher chance of living to 50 than an American boy does. Think about that for a second. Isn’t it staggering? But how did it happen? It wasn’t just because America was busy making war on the world. There was a subtler effect happening.

The more that America fought against what the world wanted — social democracy — the less it could ever have it at home. It’s collective mind — its public sphere, its discourse, its ideas, its thinking — all became stunted, polluted, crippled. The basic ideas of social democracy were presumed to be sinful, horrific crimes — in a kind of Soviet way.

Nobody could ever argue for, say, public healthcare, education, retirement — and hope to have a career as an American thinker, academic, intellectual, pundit. But that was only logical. America was fighting a global war against social democracy — though nobody in America could ever even that much — and a society can’t allow itself to argue for the thing its fighting against.

It was only left able to think in terms of violence, in the end. “Which country should we bomb this year, Morning Joe?” “I don’t know, Ezra Klein — maybe Iraq?” “Let’s see what David From and Max Boot think!” “They love the idea!” “Let’s run it by Paul Ryan and the gang!” America’s intellectual class became a cesspit of the world’s most foolish, violent, and clueless men. Men who wouldn’t stand a chance as thinkers in any other country at all. But what do you expect when you’re fighting a war against what the world wants?

In the end, something genuinely bizarre and remarkable happened. Something that history will remember — and shudder — but something we don’t understand yet.

America built the most perfect killing machine ever made. Click, tap, swipe — Wham!! An entire village, town, city goes up in flames. From the comfort of an air-conditioned room, by pressing a button, just by glancing at a screen, the operator could kill literally anyone, anywhere on earth…

But at the same time, Americans didn’t have any of the following. Healthcare. Retirement. Affordable education. Stable incomes. Savings. Community, trust, happiness. Their lives cratered.

The average American lived paycheck to paycheck, couldn’t raise $500 for an emergency, and, shockingly, died in a mountain of debt. He never broke even his whole life long. And yet American economists — Soviet, by now — pronounced that all was well in the empire.

But all wasn’t well. The price of American empire for America was that it could never progress to the stage of social democracy — because that was the very thing it was fighting a world war against. All it could do were violent things, which had precisely no benefit to anyone, really whatsoever. Like building the most perfect killing machine in history. But not hospitals, schools, retirement systems, and so forth.America regressed as a society — because it couldn’t advance.

It grew more and more violent, focused on violence, in love with violence, until at last, authoritarianism arose. The very kind it had installed around the globe. But that wasn’t a surprise, either. Capitalism had to be kept afloat. By any means necessary. If authoritarianism was ok with Americans in Chile, Iraq, Argentina — why wouldn’t it be in America, too, in the end?

We’ve barely begun to understand the price of America empire yet, as a world — or as Americans. But that price has been crippling. It has been ruinous. Shattering. American empire cost the world freedom, development, happiness, peace, maturity — the world chose social democracy, but America prevented it, violently.

It fought a world war against social democracy. But the price for America was that it never became a social democracy, either. It became a more and more predatory, extreme, aggressive capitalist society — what else could it become.

America became the kind of society that built history’s most perfect killing machine. But couldn’t give its own people insulin, an education, healthcare, retirement. And that kind of society, my friends, implodes — just as America’s doing today.

America’s world war against social democracy failed. America lost — not because an enemy defeated it, but because the costs were too steep to ever be borne. And so we should all celebrate — if we are thinking, decent, humane, worldly people — the end of American empire.

President Trump ran for president on a platform of social justice.  President Trump said he was going to end these endless wars that have devastated America.  Yet the very people who are responsible for America’s decline, the Bureaucratic Christian Zionist Tapeworms have hijacked his foreign policy that is the key to Make America Great Again.

The people charging our southern border do not want to leave their beautiful, resource rich home countries, they just want what they voted for, a social democracy.  Regime change begins at home and if Trump want to stop the flood of refugees storming our border, fire the Bureaucratic Christian Zionist Tapeworm Criminal Cabal and restore our Democracy in America.  Bolton/Pompeo/Pence and Elliott Abrams must be fired and tried for treason.  These tapeworms should be excised from the body politic for good.


No comments:

Post a Comment