Unspinning Official Stories 2009
What's wrong with this picture?
4
January 2009, An Al Jazeera photo today placed right beside
their story of Israel invading Gaza shows George Bush on the phone.
He seems to be talking to the Israeli war room. BBC yesterday
reported that Bush himself had rejected a unilateral ceasefire
in Palestine (that's what it's ALL called in my 1940 world atlas)
and had outlined HIS conditions for a ceasefire. What if, while
the SF Chronicle is front-paging nostalgic stories of twenty years
ago or trying to convince us Al Gore type "green" fiddling around
is already saving the world, our neo-Napoleon president declares
a national emergency and suspends Obama's inauguration so he can
start World War III?
You might not have noticed his bottom of the
news story declaration a few days ago, just before the Israeli
bombardment began, that Israel deserves to fulfill their dream
and finally win the much larger homeland they were promised in
the Bible. Hey! I didn't make that up. Always read to the bottom
of the story. And, while you're upgrading your reading habits,
go back to 2001 and re-read Bush's proclamations about his own
dream of "ending" 35-50 countries to stabilize the world for himself
and his fellow insiders. He's not gone yet.
-Glen Roberts
"The Leader of the free world" - Wow!
10
January 2009, It says in today's SF Chronicle that Obama
is "counting the days" until he takes over as "leader of the free
world." Q#1: When was THAT election? Q#2: What is "the free world"?
The second answer first: "the free world" was
a World War II era term and then (because U.S. editors just couldn't
pull their heads out of those days of neat heroes and villains
and war maps and stuff) it hung on as a very inept cold war era
term actually based on an old Flash Gordon serial fantasy wherein
Flash's Perry-Mason-looking father was "leader of the free world"
and the rest of the world was on another planet called Mongo cruelly
over-lorded by a paper-doll string of Emperor Mings just begging
for a good old American punch in the nose.
Now the answer to the first question: if any
such election (I mean for "leader of the free world") were held
any time during at least the last half century anyplace outside
the American ignorance bubble, Washington and the CIA would lose
it. In fact, Obama's best bet to finally achieve the international
respect neo-Roman America doesn't have and doesn't deserve would
be to join the UN as a listening member. On page 10 of today's
Chronicle, Pakistan's prime minister is quoted as proudly admitting
the CIA is still leading THEM around by the nose. "The American
CIA and Pakistani ISI have an old working relationship," he boasts.
A lot of countries like Venezuela wouldn't second his probably
Cheshire enthusiasm.
The Chronicle story goes on to tell us Obama
is asking his critics to send him their economic stimulus plans.
Mine's filed under 11 October (month before last),
and if I find his address
on You-Tube.com (the only clue provided) and send it in, I've
got as much chance to reach the man himself with it as I do to
reach Michael Moore (which I've vainly tried). Zero. So I suggest
instead that he talk to the actual leader of the newly free Latin
American world, Hugo Chavez, about re-joining the OAS as an equal
member with ears as well as a mouth. The 31 Latin American countries
who recently met very pointedly without the U.S. have some ideas
about stimulating the economy NOT of the rich but of the rest
of us.
On the other foot, today's Al Jazeera declares
that "Most Americans would stop short of tossing their footwear
at the outgoing president - not wanting to spend the rest of their
lives in one of his administration's secret prisons." Sounds like
a wild accusation. U.S. media regularly print such stuff about
Cuba, though, and Americans don't doubt it. In fact, though, I doubt that anybody is likely to be
jailed in Cuba for any length of time without a legitimate judicial procedure. But this charge by Al Jazeera
against Bush's U.S. isn't really far fetched. Is it?
-Glen Roberts
Obama
fans need to look up CHANGE
21
January 2009, CHANGE? Is that just a slogan or does it
mean CHANGE? Come on. What change? I don't think the insiders
want or will permit CHANGE.
Obama's first act as president today
was to go to a praying place and pray. Hey, that's NOT CHANGE,
folks. That's a familiar staged assurance that America's insider
media have written, produced, directed and staged the election
of yet another religious (or pretend-religious) leader, just like
in the Middle East. Of course, it's politically correct to be
or pretend to be religious. But hey! Political correctness is
NOT CHANGE, either. It's also the same old shit.
CHANGE would be to move away from the
fantasy world of gods and flags and anti-communism and secret
agents and "tough" leaders and overwhelming military force and
religiously-believed-in democracy and "free" trade and transparently
stacked-deck stock markets and "THE" economy which is only the
rich insiders' economy and eternal growth for the sake of business
(and to hell with the eco-system} and even entrepreneurial environmentalism
(thank you Mr. Gore) and other assorted politically correct posturing
and - FOR A CHANGE - INSTEAD OF CONTINUING TO LIVE IN THAT FANTASY
WORLD - come live with me in the real world - the one with NO
god but Mother Nature - the real world that desperately needs
real CHANGE, before the 80% forever poor finally get fed up with
being forever poor and revolt bigtime, and before Mother Nature
finally steps up her own obviously now on-going surge to the level
of zero tolerance and overwhelming force.
CHANGE, to the establishment, eternally
means centrism, which always always ALWAYS means NO CHANGE
that would threaten the flow of profits into the pockets of insiders
who ARE the establishment. And Obama is afraid to move any further
outside the rich insiders' establishment than into the other inside-the-pocket
"liberal" establishment, where CHANGE has meant the same
short-list of about four nice safe politically correct causes
for so long now that the establishment insiders have long ago
thrown the pseudo progressive "liberals" a bone and bought them
by adopting and tailoring their four nice safe causes into a safe
back pocket of centrism (Obama and his staged election
being the best imaginable example).
Obama? Change? Obama is on a short leash.
He can talk about eventually bringing the troops home, and respecting
other countries ONLY WHILE, like any Republican, staying a "tough"
homeland defender and still talking "tough" about upper-class
religious America's military support for upper class religious
Israel and food basket charity for lower class religious Palestine.
But he can't go to the UN as a member and urge the UN to persuade
the Middle Eastern countries, whether they ever become democratic
or not, to become civilized SECULAR states.
Obama can mouth the word environment
and play the presidential mime role in Al Gore's very conveniently
one-trick-pony show about one environmental issue. But he can't
direct American schools and urge the UN to persuade the world
to direct all its schools to immediately start teaching all children
everywhere from the first grade on that one child is enough, two
is maximum, and zero is fine, too, since there is no such thing
as too few people.
Obama can talk about eventually closing
Guantanamo, but he can't just close the damned place, instruct
his State Department to get agreements from all the other countries
involved to admit the released detainees with civilized guarantees,
immediately evacuate the marines from the once-Cuban enclave and
give it back to Cuba, and then go himself to Havana and meet there
with all the new truly progressive Latin American leaders and
LISTEN to their much less stagnant ideas about what CHANGE should
really be.
Obama and his head are being inflated
to mythic proportions, just when America needs to stop talking
down to the world and start looking up to the world's real new
leaders like Hugo Chavez, and it actually scares me when he speaks
of foreign affairs. He obviously still divides the world between
them and us; he obviously means to negotiate with the foreigners
more diplomatically now just so they'll do what Washington wants
them to do; he obviously still thinks the bad guys designated
as "evil" by his stupidest Republican predecessors are indeed
the bad guys. I'm afraid he knows no more about the "foreign"
world than Hillary Clinton. Maybe the appointment of an information
oriented man to head the CIA means something. But, if so, why
not just expeditiously close the CIA's covert meddling branch
(IF they'll let him - they never even let Jimmy Carter know what
they were up to) and CHANGE the department into an honest information
gathering agency to re-educate him and his government for participation
in a new more educated and constructive approach to domestic and
world policy?
Dumping the Republicans in America should
be as great as dumping the Jihadists and Zionists in the Middle
East would be. But I don't think it's going to be. Everything
the new democratic leaders say seems to indicate we're going to
go on having mediocre political leadership. CHANGE? I think America
is more likely going to go on being SHORT CHANGED.
-Glen Roberts
Media
start staging THEIR next election
31
January 2009, On January 12, an article on page 10 of
the SF Chronicle kicked off the media's 2010 California gubernatorial
election. The possessive word media's isn't a typo. It's
always the media's election from start to finish.
This was the standard start: 22 months
before the vote, those who saw the article were handed, with no
effort needed on their part, a ready-made line-up of THEIR preferred
candidates, including some they may never have heard of, and told
how they already ranked them, not as philosophical leaders, just
as candidates in another exciting candidate race. There's even
already a favorite. Those who missed that article will find out
in the next one it's Diane Feinstein.
The Chronicle fielded 10 Democrats and
3 Republicans for their election, no Greens or independents or
socialists, though for sure once or twice between now and November
of 2010, voters will hear of the media's rejects in separate stories
specifically about the rejects as rejects. Voters will be constantly
told what they think of the viable candidates -AS CANDIDATES -
right up to election day, so they'll be prepared for the result.
Don't you realize you've seen this over and over throughout your
voting life?
Just in case you've forgotten or are
habitually oblivious, I explained how it works in April of '05
in a letter from Cuba about how similar the Cuban elections are
to American elections in this respect. "As you certainly know,"
I wrote, "the rigging of American elections doesn't usually happen
on election day. The voters apparently vote as they wish. But
most of them (and that's all it takes in a democracy) wish what
they've been trained to wish. Starting long before election day,
after entrenched insiders decide which candidates are to be taken
seriously and line up their pictures before you in a kind of cast-of-characters
article (like the article that appeared two weeks ago, right on
schedule), the embedded media then stage a very long-running,
very predictable but very slick and expensive multi-media show
of irrelevantly trivial and personal but effectively relentless
and pervasive propaganda - a daily, hourly, up-to-the-minute smoke
cloud - that goes on for months, if not years.
"Pre-presidential election "reporting"
(brainwashing) in America used to go on for only about a year,
but, ever since the media were badly scared by their own loss
of control when they tried (every minute every hour every day
for only a year) and failed to convince Americans that Bill Clinton's
sex life was grounds for impeachment, it's been a 2-year frame-up.
"So, for at least a year but probably
two years, these days, not the candidates but the much more reliable
media, speaking like matching oracles from within the smoke, tell
Americans every single thing they reportedly think, not about
issues, almost never about what this candidate or that might do
to change or adjust the system to make life better for all the
participants, but just about the candidate race as a candidate
race, from the beginning until voting day, when the voters do
nothing but fulfill their assigned destinies. By election day,
they've been literally hypnotized. A relentlessly induced paralysis
of their individual and collective will stymies any urge to vote
outside the box.
"The American media, the mercenary bards
of the rich, the slickest propaganda machine ever anywhere, write,
direct, produce, and stage elections which always end with their
type of people still in power, with hardly a word ever spoken
about the purposes and functions of government and government
officials, because the actual, mainly business purposes of government
in America are too shallow or too shameful to reveal. Most of
the world follows the American plan, often with American help
(whether they want it or not)."
An Obama supporter, drunk with euphoria,
has pointed out to me that Obama's election proves that, no matter
how long it takes, the voters eventually always decide who their
leaders will be, but that's not what happens, and it's not what
happened in the last two years.
Two years ago, it should have been apparent
to anyone that the voters would be given John McCain as a sacrificial
goat, since the Republicans had to lose, and Hillary Clinton to
vote for, so they could go on thinking democracy works. Though
the candidates have to be safe for business, what the media sell
isn't just candidates; it's democracy (see democracy in
the definitions box on the front page). So not very long at all
after the curtain rose, in an era when too many people were getting
suspicious of America and what it was up to, a third actor was
added to the cast to provide the voters a more convincing democracy
show, with an exciting candidate race (they'd be told every day
how exciting it was - and they were) between an acceptable woman
and an acceptable black man. It was always obvious why the woman
was acceptable, since Hillary was no threat at all to the status
quo. In the last few weeks, it's become clearer and clearer why
Barack Obama was acceptable, too.
-Glen Roberts
The science
of economics unclarified for you daily
17
February 2009, While the "western" world's designated
economy experts met earlier this month in a place called Davos
and tried but failed to come up with a solution to world financial
problems, the main yell of the protestors outside, who couldn't
have been Americans, was, "YOU're the problem! Resign!" Get it?
No? Try this then.
If the media accounts of how normality
became financial crisis and may now be restored if Obama's supposedly
better bail-out somehow works sound like hocus pocus to you; and
if the quoted comments of congressmen you know can't even speak
English read like pocus hocus, should you feel dumb? Why?
Just remember that the editors, "think"
tankers, and politicians who supposedly understand what you don't
understand are the same klunks who believe that digging up gold
and reburying it in an official cellar makes money more valuable
than beans or lumber or shoes or hard work or wisdom.
And they're the same klunks who believe
that the profiteering of a handful of U.S. billionaires at home
and abroad is everybody's major interest but that environmentalists
are a special interest group. They also believe the most important
thing a president can do is spend trillions of your dollars proving
he's tough by bombing places you never heard of and have nothing
against to supposedly somehow protect you from "terrorists" you're
not afraid of. They believe that a supernatural being nobody's
ever seen approves of the bloody exploits of our leading klunks
and the sacrifice of uniformed children to unexplainable causes
so much that he'll reward us all later in heaven with some deal
even better than 27 virgins apiece.
So maybe what reads like hocus pocus
to you IS hocus pocus.
-Glen Roberts
Media
fixated on Middle East fumble Latin American story
Why are all the new presidents visiting Havana?
20
February 2009 Maybe
their grip on the Middle East is slippery, too, but thanks to
Sunday school, Christmas carols, and their own obsessive reportage
including countless war maps, even if they've got a lot of them
wrong, at least they know there ARE details there. If it wasn't
about Mexican food, most western editors couldn't pass the simplest
pop quiz on Latin America, which (except for the Amazon and Club
Med) most of them think is ALL Gus Arriola's Mexico south of the
one and only border.
It's not that the places they cover aren't
important. My hometown's important and, to the Baghdadians, so's
Baghdad. But I'm talking about a place that starts right across
the border from San Diego, includes half the land area on America's
half of the planet (17% of the dry world and 9% of the world population),
has oil, winter fruit, art, music, dope, plenty of newsworthy
strife, and maybe the world's only respectable revolution, a uniquely
harmonious multi-country project that actually may be going
somewhere. Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not predicting anything. It may not keep going. But I'm not mistaken. YOU just don't know about it.
Latin America, which doesn't do suicide
bombing and has only a few occasionally tense borders and no international
wars, may be the only part of the world currently progressing
(muy poco a poco - very slowly) toward political and philosophical
civilization, eventually to include (if the CIA and the U.S. Marines
will stand for it) actual social and economic equality - which
makes it more important than the U.S., Europe, or the Middle East.
Yet all the embedded news media are strenuously ignoring Latin
America.
When I lived in San Diego, there wasn't
a highway sign in town pointing toward Tijuana or Mexico, and
there's not much sign of the approximately 30 countries south
of Imperial Beach in the San Diego Union, either. Nor in
the LA Times, SF Chronicle, NY Times or any major U.S.
media. On the world net, Al Jazeera MIGHT have one Latin American
story a day (usually the same one for a week), and BBC and CNN
ditto.
A week ago, Michelle Bachelet, the president
of Chile (a country just as modern and twice as big and beautiful
as California and maybe more important right now), paid a visit
to Fidel and Raul in Cuba, which was certainly 10 X as important
as Hillary Clinton's farcical runway stop in South Korea; next
day, Venezuelans voted to let themselves keep Hugo Chavez, whom
I consider on solid grounds the real "leader of the free world,"
as their president for as long as they need him; then new Guatemalan
President Alvaro Colom almost stepped on Bachelet's heels as he
arrived in Cuba specifically to apologize for his country helping
the U.S. attack the Bay of Pigs in 1961 - landmark stories all.
But western media news-briefed the first, completely missed the
point of the second, overlooked the third, and made no connection
between them. I was reminded of how all their meager coverage
of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner's campaign, election,
and inaugeration focused on her clothes and compared her image
to that of Evita or Madonna; I forget which.
If you're very young - not even very
- just young - in fact, if you're an American of any age informed
of the world mostly by your own religiously anti-communist media,
you may not know or remember that in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and
80's, there was a strong and rapidly spreading revolution all
over Latin America and even slopping a bit into the U.S. in the
60's and 80's against local and colonial capitalist poverty and
for socialist dignity and eventual equality, spearheaded by armed
guerrillas like FARC in virtually every mainland Latin American
country. American barbershop and coffeehouse owls, whose predecessors
hooted then of "falling dominoes," now think they think, with
media help of course and still NO grasp of their subject, that
all that ended in 1990. But it didn't.
Far from it (see Chapter Two of "Cuban
Notebooks" on this website). It didn't end because poverty didn't
end and, in spite of western media claims that communism had failed,
the Cuban beacon was still there. And, in fact, since Hugo Chavez'
emergence first prompted laughable American "suspicion" that he
was "going Castro's way," newly elected leftist presidents in
EVERY South American country but the tiny Guyanas, Peru, and Colombia
have followed him. That's right - almost EVERY ONE. When the FARC
take Hugo's advice to trade their arms for amnesty and equal political
participation, now fascist Colombia will probably follow him,
too, and as soon as the once leftist now quisling Alan Garcia
ends his presidential term, Peru certainly will. And that will
make a whole continent "going Castro's way" completely off the
mainstream media screen.
What's starting up down south is an economic bloc intended to counter NAFTA by emphasizing the alleviation of social and economic inequality instead of international profit, cut the US out of Latin American economic affairs, and escape from under the thumb of the World Bank and the IMF. It's called ALBA, an acronym which means dawn and stands for the Latin American Bolivarian Alliance, an alliance which will very importantly include Cuba.
Isn't that a bigger better story than
the bloody awful but endlessly redundant and utterly pointless
religious tribal or tribally religious feuds of the Middle East?
OK, I know all the wars (besides boosting the arms business) are
really wars for space and THAT's important, but the editors don't
even know THAT.
Bachelet's visit to Cuba was a landmark
because, though she had looked less certainly militant than other
new leftist presidents, she clearly came out when she recently
hosted a South American summit in Santiago where Evo Morales'
eviction of the U.S. ambassador from Bolivia was applauded and
supported, and now she is the next to last of the new leftist
presidents to make what's apparently become (to wide awake people
and certainly the CIA) a necessary pilgrimage, a rite of passage,
an initiation for membership in the new Latin American order.
They've ALL done it except the most recent, Paraguay's President
Fernando Lugo, who, from an election celebration platform he shared
with Raul Castro in Asuncion last year, shouted, "Viva Fidel!"
Lujo, known as "the rebel priest" before he was elected president,
is reportedly planning his Havana visit some time in the next
two months.
-Glen Roberts
A freely
profitable press is not really a free press
Media rigging elections again years in advance
6
March 2009: The fourth estate is a miserable failure
in America.Though he never used the phrase fourth estate,
numerous quotations make it clear that Thomas Jefferson advocated
and constitutionally secured freedom for the press precisely so
media could serve as a disconnected sector of government, uncontrolled
or influenced by government, able to keep the government honest
by watching it and criticizing it in the interest of the people.
Jefferson did foresee the misuse of an
embedded press (he didn't use the term embedded but that
was clearly what he meant), but he underestimated the force of
greed in a free enterprise society and the inevitable misuse of
a free enterprise press by the rich (and, yes, by other special
enterest groups but mainly by the rich) and, through the rich,
by the government itself, making the press in America, as a fourth
estate, a miserable failure.
The media are, right now, rigging elections
again - so blatantly that you might think they'd read my exact
description of their regular procedure (see 31 January below)
and were trying to prove me right. The article on page 1 of yesterday's
Chronicle about the "race" to win the California governor election
in 2010 is so outrageously, cunningly, insidiously dishonest,
I'm damned if I can see why every "news" reader above the lumpen
level isn't infuriated.
Of the 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans
the media and their very fishy "Field Poll" have themselves selected
and placed before the voters, only ONE has even clearly tossed
in her hat. And the Chronicle disingenuously allows that that
"leading" Republican, though not previously well known, "got some
help from the timing of the poll because (she) has been in the
news sinceannouncing her likely candidacy two weeks ago."
I'll say. In fact, the Chronicle has
been strenuously publicizing her for two weeks. But I'd bet (and
win for sure) that most California Republicans who supposedly
favor her have still never heard or thought of her. And I'd bet
(and win) that most California Democrats specifically asked if
they felt favorably or not favorably about the candidacy of Diane
Feinstein (who hasn't announced her candidacy) had not been thinking
about THAT. The election being rigged is a year and 8 months away,
and I'd bet most Californians had no idea it was already a "race"
with "favorites" already installed until the Field pollsters called
and told them so.
The most appalling thing about this sham
news story, except for the actually printed quote from Mark DiCamillo,
the director of the Field Poll, that "people have to be comfortable
with candidates and they're comfortable with Diane Feinstein,"
- except for that stunning proof of the fishiness of the Field
Poll, the most appalling thing is the revelation that, while 54%
of Republicans telephoned refused to offer an opinion, 80% of
Democrats were willing to play the game. I'm not a fan of democracy,
anyway (see my definition of democracy linked on the front
page), but I'm apparently more protective of it's imaginary virtue
than are the true believers, including the ostentatiously pro-democracy
pseudo progressives, because it's ME telling you this is not the
way America's vaunted democracy is supposed to work.
What good is democracy if THE voters
don't even select the redundant insider candidates THE voters
then dumbly and dutifully vote for?
-Glen Roberts
Foreign affairs through a trick mirror
21
March 2009: A BBC headline shouts "Venezuelan Military
Seizes Ports! Does that mean Venezuela is seizing Venezuela? No. It means Venezuela has taken another rational step toward nationalization of resources in a country becoming socialist. BBC
news reporting prejudice is too apparent. When the news is about
Venezuela, rich Venezuelan friends of the U.S. who control Venezuela's
biggest news media also control U.S. and British media.
In yesterday's story on Sudan, the media again forgot to explain
U.S. spokesperson Susan Rice's role there. What does she have to do
with Sudan's friction with the UN? The UN has a legitimate complaint
against the president of Sudan. But the automatic acceptance by
media of the US assumption that they have a say about everything
dismays me. Why doesn't the reporter ask Rice what business she
has issuing proclamations? Media don't need to explain why the
world needs a strong UN. They DO need to ask why it needs NATO,
and a U.S. business motivated puppet master in Washington.
Rice's boss's presumption, exactly like that of his predecessor, is just as pervasive, of course. Yesterday, Obama offered a "new beginning" to Iran,
but, just reading his lips, his stance toward Iran is the same
as Bush's stance, arrogant and baseless. Apparently, all the phrase
"new beginning" means is that he's changing the look on his face.
Instead of frowning and demanding, he smiles and demands. But he still
makes charges without evidence and
he still demands with no real authority to demand. Since Iran is a member of the UN, some things Iran does are the UN's business, but what business are they of Barack Obama's? Iran's response that it's the
U.S. that needs to change is reasonable.
-Glen Roberts
US won't
end Cuban embargo, Biden tells press in Chile
30
March 2009, He said he wasn't there to talk about Cuba,
but exactly as if he'd been sent to Santiago last weekend to remind
Latin America who's boss, U.S. VP Joe Biden, speaking (I assume)
for Barack Obama, told the world and his hostess Michelle Bachelet
(who just got back from Havana) and all the other new regional
presidents (who all just got back from Havana) that the Cuban
embargo won't end until the Cubans are "free."
Since Biden's slickly insulting arrogance
perfectly echoed the 20th Century U.S. plantation-boss stance
south of the Rio Bravo, I'm now awaiting an appropriate response,
both from pseudo-progressive American Obama groupies who surely
weren't expecting this, and from Latin American leaders who surely
haven't been falsely raising their poor constituents' hopes.
Brazilian President Lula de Silva, who
once asked the UN to declare inequality a human rights abuse,
spoke out at the ignored Progressive Summit (actually presented
by media as a prep for a definitely NONprogressive G20 meeting
this week in Europe), accusing rich nations of turning the world
into "a giant casino," and rejecting "blind faith in the market."
But he's not reported as effectively defending Cuba from Biden's
obviously Miami inspired slanders. Maybe he did or will, but that
the Brazilian president (and other Latin American leaders) let
their so-called "Progressive" Summit meeting be turned into Biden's
regressive photo op and press conference and then went nonstop
from Santiago to Doha to embrace the Arab sheiks, among the world's
worst capitalists with the least interest in equality, makes me
wonder how clear Latin America is on their own revolution.
Just talking about arrogant US bullying
and exploitation of the world, Latin America ethically HAS to
support Ahmadinejad's refreshingly logical back talk. But there's
little to choose between the west and most of the middle east.
Besides the insiders further enriching their already obscenely
rich ruling families and the outsiders spreading their brutally
primitive religion, what agenda does the Arab world have? One
hears of socialist gestures there but not much and the internet
doesn't turn up much, either. I'm for the Latin American revolutionary
ideal of social and economic equality, and I don't think they
should surrender any sovereignty to the systemically stratified
U.S. OR compromise their integrity by getting ambiguously chummy
with the religiously stratified Arabs.
Latin America is a big enough part of
the world that, even with only their own company, they can't be
thought of as standing alone. So I don't see how misalliances
with the G20 or the Arabs help their cause. Trading is OK, although
they have everything between them they may think they need to
trade the Middle East OR the U.S. for and Cuba has done more than
anybody for its people for decades without U.S. help. So they
don't absolutely NEED to trade with any brand of fascists their
integrity may antagonize.
It would mean a lot to this lost world
if Latin America stood up all together on the podium I thought
they were building and, with a clear conscience, told Biden and
Obama AND the feudal Middle East: either normalize relations with
Cuba and recognize the virtue of the Cuban revolution and the
significance of our alliance with the Cuban ideal of economic
and social equality NOW or do without us!
Of course that would be revolutionary.
-Glen Roberts
Military murders in other countries
10
April 2009: Once again U.S. soldiers patrolling somebody
else's streets, this time in Kabul, break down a door and murder
a family and then claim they were fired on first. What were they
doing there? Were these foreign troops looking for Osama bin Laden
on a residential street in Kabul? If they weren't there, would
there BE any firing, and if there would be, has their presence
prevented it? Except for people dropping paper ballots into boxes
annually, has life in Afghanistan even changed since 2001? Will
Obama having his own war there change it?
Two days ago, an Al Jazeera story quoted the relative of
a man murdered by Fujimori in Peru that Fujimori's conviction
is a mile post in the "fight against impunity." The word "impunity"
was well chosen by Gisela Ortiz. A president has been punished
for the impunity of murdering people in his own country. Over
60 years ago, a few presidents were punished for the impunity
of murdering people in other countries.
Three days ago, after somebody besides us, North
Korea, launched a satellite. Obama started
talking about WMD's and going to the Security Council. Every day
we're told and told and told that Obama talks differently than
George Bush. But, regardless of his tone of voice or the expression
on his face, U.S. rhetoric quoted in this story is exactly like
the talk that led up to the attack on Iraq. U.S. war games in
Korean waters ordered by Obama (not Bush) deliberately provoked
a response which permitted Obama to bluster. He already has one
war of his own. Does he want two? Every day we're told and told
and told that Obama, unlike George Bush, "will listen." But he's
not listening to North Korea's explanation that, after being called
"evil" and seeing Iraq, which was also called "evil" and had no
WMD's, attacked; while Pakistan, which has the A-bomb, was befriended,
they felt they needed atomic weapons to immunize themselves from
attack. Is Obama's supposedly changed approach more reasonable
than that? Or, if it's about possible murder in another country, does it matter?
-Glen Roberts
Real issues covered up in Thailand
13
April 2009: As protesters and police struggle in Thailand,
media repeatedly interview exiled former Thai prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatr. They ask him about the turmoil, whether he'll run for
election again, but they never ask him if he has a social or economic
agenda. Obviously, as a politician, he tosses in the word democracy
free. So what? If I were interviewing Thaksin, I'd ask him what
he expects to achieve THROUGH democracy. Does he intend to redistribute
wealth in Thailand? Voting is a means, not an end. What are the
ends of the insurgency the media think will support him? Cleaning
out the sex industry? Keeping U.S. troops out? Leveling slums
and building new homes? Diminishing the power of the king? If
it's not just a brawl, what's it about? The Thai story goes on
and on with no reference to the issues.
-Glen Roberts
Obama
is lectured in Trinidad by angry Latin American leaders
who aren't as easily fooled as Americans;
but you'd never guess it from reading US newspapers
21 April 2009, I can't say much about what went on summit-wise
at the "Summit of the Americas" in Trinidad. My best source is
Fidel Castro, who wasn't there, through his Granma column, well
headed "The Secret Summit," since this was the second Latin American
presidents' meeting in less than a month to be disappeared behind
a U.S. leader's photo op.
Almost all western media wrote it up
as a clip-out for Obama fans, blurring over the off-THEIR-screen
back talk from a crowd that WASN'T Obama's fan club. Like loyal
embedded press who didn't understand the issues,anyway, they focused
on pix of Obama and read-outs from his slick and speechy but shallow
pronouncements, mixing what he said to the press, to the assembly,
and to private groups of sycophants, with no concern for clarity
or the possibility that anyone in the audience wasn't clapping.
The impression given is of a remote
rose garden meeting of plantation peon reps and their new boss,
whom at least the SF Chronicle had expected to be greeted like
a "rock star." Some selected grumbling is mentioned, a little
in this story and a little in that, as a kind of vague context
for the new boss's triumph. But the starry-eyed press is as convinced
as Obama himself that the empty oratorical flourishing and self-consciously
velvet gloved whip cracking that has become his and Hillary Clinton's
trademark will both win the necessary respect of the peons, impress
readers, and continue to delight Obama's heroically oblivious
supporters.
I wrote March 30, though (see below),
that I would expect a response to Joe Biden's arrogance in Santiago,
and behind the newsprint veil, my expectations were met in Trinidad.
Apparently, while media have been going on and on and (JHC!) ON
about Washington's beautiful new facial expression and studiously
or stupidly ignoring the growing world-wide anger of everyone
who recognizes the same-ol' American whip-hand, the Latin American
presidents who really didn't like being lashed by Biden in March
have been lying in wait for their chance at his fool boss in April.
BBC called it a "sour note" (in the Obama
debut symphony they were stubbornly directing) when Evo Morales
demanded an apology for the Obama State Department's role in a
recent attempt to assassinate him (I don't know about that, but
neither do you). But the Bolivian president was actually perfectly
on key.
I'm sure the actual new leaders of the
free world came hoping to disarm America's swell-headed pretender
with a generous measure of diplomatic applause and friendliness
up to a point, but I doubt they were surprised when he stupidly
repeated Biden's recitation that the embargo couldn't be expeditiously
ended because "the Cuban people still aren't free" (see freedom - undefined). In fact, they arrived in Trinidad already
angry.
Hugo Chavez didn't just run out to the
hotel bookstore for a copy of Eduardo Galeano's " Open Veins of
Latin America" and present it to Obama as a spontaneous response
to the American's presumptuous explanation to a group of new socialist
leaders that poverty must be alleviated "from the bottom up (?)".
Obviously, Hugo already knew that his junior colleague needed
educating.
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner
wasn't just ad libbing in response to Obama's asininely boss-like
(or Fox News-like) advice not to blame America for all their problems
when she read off a litany of U.S. business, political, and CIA
sins against civilization.
And though Nicaraguan President Daniel
Ortega's address was apparently not pre-written, he was only freshly
motivated by Obama's repeating Biden's slander of Cuba when, as
part of a list of Nicaraguan grievances against a comprehensive
list of U.S. presidents, he expressed everyone's "shame" for attending
a supposed "summit" from which Cuba was excluded not by the majority,
nor (as the media said) by anonymous organizers, but by the U.S.
Ortega also vainly reminded the comatose
press that Latin America has recently started organizing their
own new trading bloc, quarter-world bank, and progressive summit
organization - the most important news blacked out of the main
stream media story from Santiago.
Readers may not know, since the media
never remind them, that The "Summit of the Americas" is an entirely
U.S. stage show, invented by George Bush I just before he left
office, for the specific purpose of isolating Cuba, then being
described as regularly as a pop song by tacitly obedient American
media as "the only country in the hemisphere still not free" (see
#10 under Misconceptions About
Cuba on this website). All the command delegates know
that and, had they not had slight hopes for Obama, it wouldn't
have surprised me if they'd all boycotted the Trinidad conference.
In effect, they probably ended its run,
as they refused to sign a "mission accomplished" type summit summary
document (written two years ago in the U.S.) until it declares
capitalism the hemisphere's worst problem and until it adds Cuba
to the membership list.
After Obama demonstrated the same velvet
insult technique that isn't fooling Iran by offering to smilingly
"listen" to Cuba's admissions of guilt, and after Raul Castro
obviously ironically responded on the radio from Caracas that
he will talk with Obama about several things including a prisoner
exchange, Hillary Clinton dizzily burbled that Raul seemed to
be admitting his errors, but only Obama's team and most of the
press were confused.
Just one news account I read that day
called Raul's radio speech "fiery" and "reminiscent of his brother,"
meaning when Fidel was angry. And the Washington Post registered
two days later that he was actually offering to trade Obama any
Cuban convicts Obama miscalled "political prisoners" (see my Friendy
Critique Of Cuban Press Freedom for the truth about those
guys) for the 5 Cubans jailed in America for spying NOT on America
but on the Miami mafia. But I believe (I hope) Raul's point, talking
about a "prisoner exchange", was that since the embargo, which
is based on the WWII American Trading With The Enemy Act
is to be continued, the opposing commanders in chief could do
some legitimately war-related stuff like that.
In his column, Fidel virtually told Obama
to stop talking and just end the embargo. He characterized Obama's
reference to the embargo as "aspero y evasivo." The few accounts
that have mentioned Fidel's response translated aspero
as terse or gruff, but Fidel meant that Obama's
apparent understanding of his subject was abrasively and insultingly
inadequate, and he added that, being over half as old as Fidel,
Obama was old enough to understand things better than that.
Fidel really nailed Obama as a specimen,
however (pay attention NOW Obama fan club), when he reacted to
Obama's ostentatiously diplomatic admission that Cuba's practice
of sending medical missions to other countries that need them
has been more effective than U.S. military missions in gaining
influence for the Cubans. The most highly respected chief of state
in the world explained, "We the Cubans don't do that to gain influence."
President Obama, to whom it is now clear
the purpose of power is power, even if he'd read that might not
have understood it or even believed it, but outside the U.S. ignorance
bubble it's understood and believed, which is why all of Latin
America is "going Castro's way (see 20 February below)." But Obama,
who was invited to come along but failed the test when his false
summit collapsed (but who may have been comforted when he was
cheered the next day by CIA torturers he was defending), may not
be welcome now in the newly blossoming progressive government's
organization, ALBA (dawn), which, though still ignored by regressive
media, will hopefully soon be leaving the U.S. dominated OAS behind.
-Glen Roberts
*See If
Not Democracy, What?
The time
has come, the media say,
to talk of pigs with wings
29
April 2009: Yesterday the Chronicle devoted almost half
its A section to alarming headlines and contradictory news and
blather about a possibly emerging flu epidemic and then headed
their lead editorial, "Now is not the time to panic." Of
course, I didn't read the editorial because it wasn't signed.
But I e-mailed friends in San Diego, where 5 of the 3 million
county residents had been diagnosed with mild cases of "swine
flu" to ask if they were in a panic. They weren't. As for me,
only one of probably over 40 million Californians not infected,
you may not care what I think since I have not spent a minute,
since September 11 2001, fearing a terrorist would strike me.
But I'll tell you anyway that I think now might be a good time
for a trip to Mexico.
Oh I know. There's been either 200
or 102 or 2 deaths clearly pinned on swine flu there, and maybe
2000 milder cases (a few or very few or even fewer of which have
been verified) in a national population of (approximately or possibly
or maybe) about 120 million. It's the "danger zone."
On today's front page, the Chronicle
asks why - that is the Chronicle claims "puzzled" scientists are
wondering with all their might WHY - there are so many more unconfirmed
cases and not-certainly related deaths in Mexico than anywhere
else. After puzzling myself about why they'd be asking such a
stupid question, I came up with only a half dozen obvious answers,
beginning with (1) it started there and (2) pigs don't fly.
Obviously the Chronicle, like Backtrack
Obama who also doesn't know what to do, is just thrashing around.
To sensibly fill the big spread they think they need would require
a hard squint at some facets of the problem or pseudo problem
they instinctively know they don't want to touch. Too bad, because
this MAY be a situation that could use some media with the brains
to keep the public properly informed. I say it COULD be, because
it could be.
The most useful actual fact I dug
out of the blather (it wasn't up front where it belonged) is that
you can't get swine flu from eating cooked pork. A lot more of
that kind of information was needed, such as, for instance, that
the reason First World cases so far reported are mild is that
First World people live in cleaner and less crowded conditions
than poor Mexicans and have more resources when they get sick.
I also learned in today's Chronicle
that U.S. pig farmers say swine flu doesn't even come from swine;
and from a number of sources since yesterday that Mexican investigators
say it damn sure does but they aren't sure ANY cases in Mexico
came from swine; and that they aren't sure if all or even many
of the cases ARE cases; and that the Mexican government thinks
the disease may come from ANOTHER country (that's called keeping
your eye on the ball); and that some scientists think the disease
may have already been common everywhere and is now being found
because they're looking for it, so the more they look for it the
more they find it, and the more it looks like a pandemic.
To belabor a point that needs belaboring,
one question the media don't have the wit or the will to answer
for me is: are most cases in poor, crowded, unsanitary neighborhoods?
I think so, and the reasons I'm not afraid to go to Mexico now,
when I won't be tripping over a lot of other tourists, is that
(1) I'll be driving alone in the clean interior of my own car,
not riding a crowded bus, (2) I'll be drinking bottled water,
like all tourists and all well-off Mexicans, (3) I'll eat only
hot cooked foods from clean stands or in clean places where nobody
looks sick, (4) I'll be staying NOT in crowded dirt-floored shanties
but in clean little hotels where the sheets and pillow cases are
washed daily, (5) I'll be bathing and brushing my teeth and gargling
mouth wash and washing my hands regularly and cleaning my nails,
etc. That is I'll be living like a first world person, as I always
do, not the way the world's poor majority live. Add that (6) I'll
be taking my first world health in with me, with infection and
disease resistance built on a lifetime of good nutrition, that
is I won't be weakened by any of the endemic diseases and conditions
that plague the majority poor, and after decades of Latin American
travel I won't be threatened by Montezuma's revenge, either. All
this plus odds steeper than the lottery against catching swine
flu at all (YET) and, apparently, odds of at least hundreds to
one (probably thousands to one) that the case I catch will be
mild. Add to that the fatalism of a 72-year-old seasoned traveler
and realistic philosopher who knows that the death rate is 100%,
anyway.
I don't mean to foolishly guffaw at
the swine flu threat. If it's not just a way to keep us from noticing
what's happening in Pakistan, or a way to punish Latin America
for siding with Cuba, it's at least a more real KIND of threat
than most of the threats the media hype. It could turn out a number
of ways, though.
It could be a false alarm just like
the bird flu and West Nile disease. Or it could be as bad as sleeping
sickness or an outbreak of cholera or AIDS, devastating to certain
populations but not others. It could be a worse strain of flu
than the strain they say killed 50 million people once upon a
time (never believe catastrophe stats) yet less disastrous because
people now are more resistant. Or that could be true in the suburbs
but not in the ghettos. Or it could be more deadly this time because
there are so many more people living so much closer together and
intermixing so much more in so many more ways. Assuming this is
a poor people's disease (which I do), it's important that, along
with having 6 times as many people now as in 1918, we have more
than 6 times as many poor people.
Anyway, there'll be more pandemics
and if this one's not bad enough, the next one or the next one
will be. During the 20 years between 1950 when, at 14, I was given
my first typewriter and 1970, when I gave up hope that I, anyway,
could penetrate human denial - during that time when, unlike now,
I was actually on a crusade, I regularly predicted that the eco-collapse
of the 21st Century (brought on by overpopulation and the overgrowth
of the human encampment, exacerbated by capitalism and its necessary
corollary sprawling poverty, facilitated by religion and tribalism)
would include endless wars for space and "free running diseases."
For free running diseases read pandemics - which
has to be plural. I and others like me who struggled hopelessly
to make that point back then were called "doomsayers" by media
that never identified or quoted us. But now it appears that Mother
Nature, who can't be ignored, is starting to make our point for
us.
-Glen Roberts
The
day before they made their stupid mistake,
25
May 2009: I vainly explained what the California Supreme Court should do. But I wasn't first in line. Through daily editorial telepathy, the media
have been trying hard for weeks to conjure up a wrong state constitutional
decision tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26) and, considering that they
and the men and women who'll render the judgement belong to the
same godly race, I can't hope to out-conjure them. But sometimes
humans at least know the rules of their own jobs, so if the logic
that's supposed to underlie both California and American law prevails,
the Supreme Court will disappoint the majority tomorrow and erase
the latest of many religious stains that mar their constitution.
When I was told by an angry Christian
that we had to "keep queers from getting married," I told him
there's no way it hurts me, so it's none of my business. A guy
who'd been arguing with him asked me, "Are you religious?" I told
him I'm not, and the relevance was obvious even to the Christian.
He was angry as a Christian, not as a participating member of
a secular civil state.
The purpose of law in a secular civil
state is not to serve anyone's god. It's not to serve the state
as a foolishly exalted deputy deity, either. It's to serve the
members of the state, of course, but ONLY as participants in a
social/economic contract which defines and upholds the purposes
NOT of irrational and irrelevant religion but of a hopefully very
rational secular civil state focused on secular civil matters.
Librarians don't shush priests in
church and orating priests don't disturb the peace in libraries.
Religions are for separately superstitious subgroups crossing
state lines. States are mechanisms for unified community members
trying to take care of real-world civil matters together that
they can't easily deal with separately. State law therefore should
only regulate participation in the economic contract underlying
the state and enforce the social contract that underlies the state.
Economic contract matters are confused in America, but the social
contract is as old as civilization and perfectly clear. I will
not hurt you if you will not hurt me and therefore we will live
in peace together as equal members of a civilized state. Any law
that exceeds that purpose is invalid, even if it has been foolishly
inserted into the state's constitution by a confused majority.
If the Supreme Court does not tell
Californians exactly that tomorrow, then the court will have failed
as a mechanism of the state, just as the majority failed as members
of the state when they passed Proposition 8 and inserted a primitive
religious commandment into their supposedly secular constitution.
A particular church may marry anyone
it wishes but no church has the right to tell other churches or
the state who to marry. Religion that doesn't violate the economic
and social contract underlying the state is not the state's business,
but NO state law or procedure can be tainted by religion. If the
court does not tell California exactly that, then the validity
and further viability of the state itself as a civilized institution
will be in doubt.
-Glen Roberts
California
Supreme Court Surrenders Its Credibility
26
May 2009: Wrongly believing they were deciding who can
marry, which is none of their business, the California Supreme
Court this morning foolishly upheld a breach of the integrity
of the Constitution they are supposed to be guarding, letting
stand a lumpen inspired law that obviously violates logic and
intelligent legal precedent in two ways: it carves a religious
commandment into a secular constitution, and it sets one more
dangerous precedent (unfortunately there are already others) by
approving a law that is NOT intelligently grounded in the social
and economic contract that should underlie any civilized secular
state. If you don't understand that, go back to the home page
and read my explanation and definition of a Civil State.
As usual, the regressive judges were
aided and abetted (and undoubtedly confused and pressured) by
California media which continually characterized the controversy
as a circus confrontation between the judges as moderators and
the public as a Jerry Springer show type audience deciding through
a volume detector which couples they liked the best. In fact,
the judges should not have even considered the anti-gay mob purpose
of the phrase they were being asked to OK for the Constitution.
They should only have considered the legitimacy of the phrase
as an unacceptable intrusion into a secular constitution. Just
in case it helps promote more intelligent dialogue next time,
read the article (below) which I posted yesterday.
-Glen Roberts
North Korea's return to arms shouldn't have happened
27
May 2009: NORTH KOREA'S RETURN TO ARMS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED
if the Obama administration had kept its promise to "change" the
US stance toward the world. But only Obama's and Clinton's facial
expressions changed as they went on menacing North Korea and Iran
in Bush's own words. Everyone knows that kind of bluster led to
the invasion of Iraq. So why wouldn't North Korea want to share
Pakistan's and China's immunity from attack?
They say they only want a deterrent
and whatever Obama thinks, it would be a lot smarter to ASSUME
that's true, to start "listening" as he promised he would, and
to convince North Korea (and the disbelieving world) that the
new "changed" US wants to join the UN and help its neighbors achieve
total world nuclear disarmament, and NOT to scare anyone into
starting a new arms race through continued belligerent confrontation.
The tribal American media keep on
playing this story as part of the comic book saga they've always
pushed and which Obama has unfortunately fallen for. But by mistaking
himself for Flash Gordon, "the leader of the free world," precisely
because the world had hoped for better things from him, Obama
is doing more now than George Bush did to split the world between
the US and its uneasy allies on one side and a world sick and
tired of US bullying on the other.
-Glen Roberts
Reports
of Hugo Chavez threatening banks need some shading
3
June 2009: Hugo Chavez is in the news for threatening Venezuelan
banks with "sanctions.' Of course, that's as deep as the story
goes. American media are satisfied if their well brain washed
readers just get the impression that Chavez is perversely harassing
the poor banks.
In fact, the privately owned Venezuelan
banks are reluctant to cooperate with Chavez' plans to spread
the wealth. The best solution would be to go ahead and nationalize
them, but the Venezuelan president doesn't want to do that yet.
Chavez is a courageous, intelligent, capable man with the best
civilized intentions, but he's not quite an irresistible force
and, besides being unavoidably up against some (not at all immovable
but) certainly very stubbornly entrenched old guard and economic
and social infrastructure, he is also handicapped by a real need
to accommodate his allies - an admirable group of new Latin American
presidents with a mandate and a huge poor majority behind them
but (in some cases) with less courage and will than he has.
So Chavez thinks he must transition somewhat
gradually away from the capitalist jungle toward civilization.
The goal he shares with Fidel and other leftist presidents is
surely a fully civilized state with a communist economic sector
(see Civil State and Communism under Definitions),
but he thinks that for now he must speak only of socialism, a
transitional phase which, as long as it persists, is always vulnerable
to lingering regressive capitalist institutions. In fact, given
the regressive character of Venezuela's still intact wealthy minority,
potentially disastrous subversion may be unavoidable without speeding
up the transition.
I'm sure anyone qualified to be reading
this website can think of dangers that could arise from speeding
up the transition. But I hope it's also apparent that a long history
of procrastination hasn't done the world much good, either.
-Glen Roberts
Americans
'spying' for Cuba get long prison sentences
5
June 2009: Naturally, a BBC story of a Washington couple
arrested for spying for Cuba quotes nobody who questions why they
should be in trouble. Yet I'm sure most rational people often
wonder why any state has secret information about other peaceful
states or ANY secrets from its own citizens.
In this case, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers,
who face 20 years in prison, are accused of uncovering US spy
reports on Cuba (or secret US plans AGAINST Cuba) - of being spies
spying on spies. But, while it does make sense for any honest
human to think Cuba has the right to know if the US, which is
NOT a peaceful country and has no business spying on Cuba, is
secretlyplotting against Cuba, US spying on clearly peaceful Cuba
is unjustifiable, dishonorable, and expensive wheel spinning deserving
exposure, since (1) Cuba's only military secrets have to be defensive;
(2) Cuba's only threat to the US, its leadership in the forging
of a new hemispheric economic order less vulnerable to US looting,
is just peaceful competition and isn't secret; and (3) US spying
apparently does no good, anyway, since, even with all that "intelligence"
at their disposal, Obama's, Clinton's, and Biden's speeches prove
that those unworthies still know almost nothing about Cuba and
understand less.
What makes sense is for Washington to
tell all of us what the "200 sensitive or classified intelligence
reports on the subject of Cuba" that the Myers supposedly leaked
are about. It's certainly Cuba's business and the American taxpayers'
business to know, because collecting Miami lies, which undoubtedly
make up the bulk of the material, is a waste of time and space
and money which can't possibly lead to anything good, and many
of the government's Cuba related secrets are probably about what
the US is doing or is thinking about doing that it shouldn't be
doing.
-Glen Roberts
Delayed
civil court trial can't excuse Guantanamo
9
June 2009: Monday's news that one Guantanamo detainee will
finally be tried in a real court in New York is OK, but I think
he was chosen because he's uniquely suspected of a real crime
(a blown up building) and his trial will distract readers from
the fact that most inmates still in Guantanamo (never having been
charged) are technically innocent and may BE innocent victims
kidnapped by a rogue US state and stuck in a dungeon for years
for no reason that will stand the light of a public trial.
The still delayed closure of Guantanamo shouldn't
license the American people to forget that. The US Attorney General's
boast, when he announced the trial, that "the Justice Department
has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting
terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will
bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case,"
is, given the circumstances, embarrassing.
-Glen Roberts
And the wars
go on
12
June 2009: Clearly, the US is fighting ANOTHER war in Pakistan.
US and US-friendly media may hide this fact behind jargon, but
it's a fact. Obama continues to mirror George Bush as a double
talker, in his mishandling of US foreign policy, and as a war
president.
-Glen Roberts
Like
Bush Like Obama on North Korea
16
June 2009: Obama's claim that "a nuclear-armed North
Korea poses a "grave threat' to the world" is insidious, since
it's basically a lie and comes from another US president who is
himself clearly a threat to the world. In stark contrast to the
US, not just under George Bush but always and still under Obama,
North Korea has no recent history of "threatening its neighbors"
except in defensive rhetoric. Obama is fast adding his own warring
history to a long and bloody US record, and he's the one who seems
to be provoking and literally baiting North Korea. The UN should
step in and Obama should shut up.
This story reminds me of the lies told
by Colin Powell and George Bush before the attack on Iraq. Why
do the media always help beat the war drums? Besides quoting US
hawks, honest reporters can surely find experts on North Korea
as sober as Al Bareidi was on Iraq to quote. Once again, the US
is usurping the UN, literally baiting North Korea, and there must
be experts who can be quoted on that. Shallow news coverage helps
promote shallow and bloody history.
-Glen Roberts
Media
fail to provide context for Honduran crisis
or report Obama's part in it
2
July 2009: You can't elect the truth. You can't determine
whether there's a god or whether Barack Obama is a hero or a worm
by asking for a show of hands in a coffee house or a barber shop.
You can't get at the truth in Iran or Honduras today by counting
protesters. There's more to it than that.
The media who report thousands of pro-coup
demonstrators in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula facing only hundreds
of pro-Zelaya demonstrators are leaving out the hard fact that
the Hondurans openly for Zelaya KNOW they are also against the
army and the cops. This isn't like when you (maybe) and I marched
in LA and San Francisco against Ronald Reagan. We faced only a
slim chance of being clubbed by an over-zealous right-wing cop,
NOT the very different risk of disappearance, torture, and death.
Honduran labor unions, oppressed indians, and would-be socialists
know what they're up against, because what's happening in Honduras
isn't new. The army has even thrown out presidents before. And this time, Barack Obama had something to do with it
To understand what's going on in Honduras
today, there are contextual matters you need to know of that go
beyond arithmetic. The media are telling you daily (actually very
energetically teaching you talking points) that Honduras is "divided
- polarized" but not that the split is between a small upper-lower
to upper class minority in bed with Washington and a very poor
majority - among the poorest people in the world - who have suffered
for generations from US exploitation.
Some stories, more in Al Jazeera than
in the LA Times, have noted, deep down in the gray copy and without
elaboration, that there is a long-time connection between the
Honduran army and US military. Besides leaving out the US embassy,
the CIA, and huge US businesses there, all of which regularly
tell Honduran officials when to breathe (I stole that from Fidel's
column yesterday), that's putting it mildly, since the force that
arrested and exiled President Zelaya WAS the always US proxy and
puppet Honduran army.
Maybe you've forgotten (or were always
oblivious) that in the 80's, while surrounded by rebellion against
a red-white-and-blue system that's never worked for anyone but
the insiders, Honduran officialdom stayed doggedly loyal to Washington
and were richly rewarded for their dog-like treachery to the region.
I remember buying a proud Honduran post
card back then that showed a squadron of new jet fighters Reagan
had just given them. In spite of their poverty, most US aid to
Honduras went to their military, because the Honduran army was
helping corporate America fight Nicaragua, the FMLN in Salvador,
and the (in their opinion) greedy poor. Since 1990 when, following
the neutralization of Nicaragua, US media disappeared Central
America from the news, you may have forgotten Honduras existed.
But the multifaceted US team on the spot didn't, and the Honduran
military, like the South Korean military, has always been maintained
as a puppet "bulwark against communism."
That's why it's hard to believe that
last week's army coup against President Zelaya, after he broke
a cardinal rule of that army's sponsor by apparently joining Latin
America's vigorous new move toward socialism, wasn't instigated
by Washington. Of course it was. And it wasn't done behind Barack
Obama's back. Obama made it clear in Trinidad (see 21 April below)that
he has a capitalist insider's view of Latin America, and after
the US-backed Honduran army's brutal predawn ouster of Zelaya,
the wording of his initial expressions of "concern" were about
BOTH the coup AND the political disagreement that prompted it,
just as if the acceptability of a president being yanked out of
bed at the point of a gun might be negotiable if Zelaya could
relieve some of Obama's "concern" by conceding a degree of legitimacy
to the armados who yanked him out of bed. Since then, under pressure
from the world (and I hope from his naive pseudo progressive constituency),
he has relatively lamely dissed the coup, but an underplayed graph
deep down in the LA Times story today (July 2) went "Click!" for
any reader paying attention.
US officials said they would not take
action on a threatened aid cutoff until after the OAS secretary-general
reported to the organization on his attempt to negotiate a settlement.
The United States expects Zelaya to agree to change his approach
enough for him to work with the political opposition that threw
him out, a senior Obama administration official said, speaking
on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity
of the issue.
Clearly Obama, as worried as any Republican
about the move toward civilized equality in Latin America, has
decided to draw a line in the sand in the handiest place, an already
thoroughly compromised banana republic with a docile population
and a possibly shady president whose ouster may be justified.
I almost hate to go on (I've been through
Honduras many times and have a lot of my own resources and this
could become a book), but I have to tell even those readers who
think they're agreeing with me that the context is deep in some
other ways. I'm sure Hugo Chavez, who immediately shamed the OAS
into stepping in, is also drawing a line on principal, both about
sovereignty AND about the legitimate need of Latin American leaders
to eliminate term limits to achieve the continuity of leadership
that made Cuba's success possible. But Honduras and President
Jose Manuel Zelaya are at least questionable chess pieces for
his side.
I was up late last night (almost until
Wimbledon) re-reading Medea Benjamin's 1987 book (that you should
read), "Don't Be Afraid, Gringo," about the depth of poverty
and official brutality in Honduras, and I came to an anecdote
about Jose Manuel Zelaya - not the current president, his father
of the same name - and his at least reputed involvement in the
torture murder of several union leaders in 1975. Sons sometimes
rebel against their fathers, but follow-up research on the internet
(you can do it, too) verified that Mr. Zelaya entered the presidency
as a conservative, has been convincingly accused of profiteering
and worse, and may be illegitimately now riding the coattails
of honest leftist presidents in hopes of redemption. Of course,
his very recent left turn may be real, too.
Also, excuse me but I have to say it
(I know pseudo progressives hate this kind of thing), the Honduran
people are questionable. Popular belief that all "peoples" are
equal is nonsense. Traveling repeatedly through Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, and Nicaragua in the 80's and 90's, I found each nationality
distinctive, but I found the Hondurans starkly different. The
absence of any insurgency there, while surrounded by revolution,
was partly because they had a tradition of trade union activity
instead. But the Hondurans are simply not like the Nicaraguans
or the Maya or the independently thinking Mexicans.
For one thing, there's a much larger
and poorer (and thus more resentfully and even sometimes belligerently
ignorant) poor majority there. The middle class is tiny and the
upper LOWER class tend to look down on the really poor. Being
in the huge army is about the best deal the poor can get, and
Honduran soldiers I've unhappily met are particularly eager to
lord it over their less fortunate country men - and any tourists
who unfortunately meet them. It's as though Hondurans with any
kind of power feel compelled to take out their inferiority complexes
on anyone they can. All bureaucratic encounters in Honduras are
absurdly oppressive. Getting arbitrarily stopped by cops who invent
a reason to extort a bribe is common, and border crossing experiences
are the worst I've encountered anywhere.
As for ordinary Hondurans, frankly, I've
always found most of them not very likeable, but unlike the poetic
and talkative Nicas, the irrepressibly talkative Cubans, or the
humorously cynical Mexicans, probably because they take more guff
from their officialdom than I do, Hondurans are reticent, evasive
and suspicious, and when I've gotten anyone to apparently trust
me enough to speak, I then wondered if they were just going along
with me. At least since 1980, the seeds of anti-communist propaganda
have certainly been energetically planted and grown spectacularly
there. It's ironic that anti-communist propaganda always works
better than it should among the poor (including in America), but
it works best of all in Honduras, where too many otherwise ordinary
people have either swallowed it whole or consider it safer to
pretend they have or just find that it suits them. The result
is an air of fascism that is bound to be to some extent self fulfilling.
My point is that, though it seems wrong,
the majority in Honduras might really BE (or think they are) in
favor of the army coup. If so, the situation could work well for
Obama and backfire on Chavez. On the other hand, the army's rush
to carry out the coup before the people could vote on a review
of the Honduran constitution which would probably have led to
suspension of presidential term limits may mean Obama and the
Honduran army give the Hondurans more credit than I do.
But what I'm really worried about, and
this worry may be quickly extinguished on Saturday (I hope so),
is the plan of several Latin American presidents (on July 2) to
accompany Zelaya overland from Nicaragua back into Honduras. I've
been across that very uncivilized border many times, and I REALLY
fear what the soldiers manning it might do. I'll be glad to be
wrong about that. But I hope they change their minds.
But, to return to the beginning. Neither
the success or failure of Obama's or Chavez immediate strategies,
nor the legitimacy of President Zelaya, nor the crowd counts or
vote counts in Honduras can change this: that Honduras needs to
join Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and the rest of Latin America in
their move away from US colonialism and the barbarism of capitalism
toward civilized socialist equality. ¥ou can't count that truth
up. You've got to understand it.
-Glen Roberts
Continuing
Honduran crisis calls for finesse, not high noon confrontations
2
July 2009: Once in Santa Rosa de Copan, a group of laughing
soldiers asked me to take their picture in front of their fort.
Why not? Then they told me I was in trouble because the picture
I'd snapped was forbidden. While I protested with all the good
humor I could muster, one ran to the fort and brought back an
officer. The officer told me to open my camera and surrender the
film or they'd take me inside and break my arms. Since then, I've
never trusted the Honduran army.
I remembered this as President Zelaya
circled the Tegucigalpa airport an hour ago urging the soldiers
below to let him land and protect his plane. And I also thought,
even if some of them seriously tried to do that, one sniper could
turn triumph into disaster.
I'm gratified to see the huge crowd of
Zelaya supporters in Narco News photos from the scene (scroll
way down on the front page and link Narco News), but I'm glad
the mission was aborted today without a tragedy. ALBA is in the
right. One thinks they must somehow prevail. But surely they could
think of better ways to pressure the Honduran usurpers than by
provoking a high noon type showdown.
Of course, Obama had easier options, and
if there had been a catastrophe today (and maybe there still will
be - even two dead demonstrators is unacceptable), it has to be
laid at Obama's feet. He could have sent a US Marine guard in
with Zelaya, telephoned the head presidential hi-jacker, and ordered
up some cooperation. I have no doubt of that.
But that would constitute a victory for
the wrong side of the apparent but not (in my opinion) real triangle.
Much better if the Latin American "axis of good," as Chavez once
aptly called them, handle the situation themselves. Seal the...
STOP!
I just erased the rest of what I'd posted
because, on second thought, I don't think Honduras should be sealed
off. Sanctions never seem to work and they hurt too many bystanders.
I'm not even sure Honduras should have been expelled from the
OAS, at least not in alliance with ALBA. The action legitimizes
the OAS, which ISN'T legitimate, and it will appear to legitimize
the compromises Obama will impose in coming negotiations.
What's called for, under the aegis of
ALBA (which all progressive Latin American countries should promptly
and ostentatiously join) is a lot of conversation, no matter how
long it takes - stern dialogue, with no sympathy or compromise
offered, about president Zelaya's case AND about the case for
universal dignity and economic and social equality throughout
Latin America, always with overt diplomatic support for the Honduran
poor, but, at the same time to promote ALBA - a long and public
conversation about Latin American (and Earth) reality vigorously
promoting ALBA and civilization (some day) everywhere south of
the Rio Bravo, including Honduras. But, in contrast to the American
and proxy American way (exemplified by Obama's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, probably Honduras and maybe soon North Korea and Iran),
this should be ostentatiously done with less bluster and more
finesse.
-Glen Roberts
Exiled
Honduran president is going to the dog owners in Washington
7
July 2009: Why is Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya
in Washington (see front page link to www.chavezcode.com)? Daniel
Ortega's 80's explanation that, if the neighbor's dog is a problem
you talk to the neighbor not the dog, was fine for Daniel, because
Reagan wasn't GOING to talk to him, and his point was well made
and is still worth quoting. But Obama's not Reagan. Reagan was
a straight backward regressive. Obama's the "change" guy - remember?
Zelaya, like Obama's naive constituents,
needs to get it straight that the little smile Obama wears is
a smirk. He's a velvet gloved/iron fisted, say-this/mean-that,
smirking hypocrite. Instead of plausible denial, he has other
equally transparent gimmicks: like smilingly telling Iran or Venezuela
or Cuba the outright lie that he's going to actually "listen"
to them - SO THAT, having been charmed by the promise they'll
then shut up and do what they're told. Since he says almost those
very words (both parts) every time, nobody has been fooled yet
except his hopeless constituency. Though the trick is even less
convincing when it's turned by his stooges, Republican Joe Biden
and know-nothing Hillary Clinton, maybe because he's leery of
Latin America, he's now left town to peddle his smile elsewhere,
leaving Zelaya nobody to talk to but Hillary, and, for some reason,
the fool seems to be falling for it.
Here's what she'll tell him, with an
obviously phony smile (trying but failing to imitate her much
slicker boss): "Jose, we really want to help, because we are against
all badness and anti freedomanddemocracyness, and we're going
to try our best to get you back home, but, of course, it's got
to be give and take and we've got to consider the Honduran army's
feelings, too. Oh, we'll somehow work it out with them, because
we all want to be friends, so don't worry, 'cause I'm sure we
can persuade them to let you come back and even run for election
again - or something like that - we'll see - maybe four years
down the line, hmmm? But we have to give them a little something,
too, like a promise that you're going to stop talking to that
awful Hugo Chavez. Gee, wouldn't that fill the bill?"
I suspect, since I can't figure out
why else Zelaya is IN Washington, that it MIGHT fill HIS little
bill, if all he really wants is to be president. I wouldn't want
the job. What if the next time the armado who jerked him out of
bed jerks him out of bed he shoots? Then we'll be reading Joe
Biden's explanation that "we" don't tell sovereign nations what
to do. If they want to bomb Iran just in case it might bomb them
some day or shoot their presidents when they have good reason
to suspect the rats are "going Castro"s way," that's up to them.
-Glen Roberts
Negotiation
farce lets US interpret Honduras crisis
9
July 2009: The cross-town "meeting" of Honduran crisis
principals and Oscar Arias in Costa Rica today shouldn't be happening.
It is a media event faked by Washington to legitimize a US puppet
police state by treating its coup-appointed leader and the exiled
president as equals. And there's another more obvious purpose
which WILL be served and which, by being so obvious, as predictable
media coverage will certainly demonstrate, should both reveal
itself as the real issue and reveal who instigated the coup.
The motive and opportunity belonged to
the US - to Obama and Clinton and the insiders they represent.
It doesn't matter how straight Arias plays it (and I have no faith
in him), in the media this will become a clash between an "emerging
free enterprise democracy" and a president who wanted to "go Castro's
way." Zelaya, by foolishly going to Washington and turning himself
over to Hillary Clinton, put the issue firmly into US and OAS
(a US front) hands, and that's the way the US, which desperately
wants to stop Hugo Chavez and his allies from "destabilizing"
Latin America, wants it.
In US foreign policy lingo, a stable
country is a country from which most of the important resources
and most of the profits flow away smoothly to somebody somewhere
else who runs the world, the people stay desperately poor enough
to accept whatever wages are offered without complaint, and any
labor or rebel organizers who try to disturb that pleasant arrangement
are promptly neutralized. That's what stable means.
Almost all Latin America used to be "stable,"
and the beneficiaries were US insiders, who have long hated Fidel
Castro and are now infuriated with Hugo Chavez for trying to take
a continent and a half out of their clutches. So, however innocently
Jose Manuel Zelaya may have stumbled into his predicament, he
provided the US a perfect chance to strike back because the US
virtually owns Honduras - which is still "stable," by the way.
Ma-a-aybe the US puppet Honduran army's contribution was not made
in the USA, but US/Honduras history tells me that it was.
In any case, the US quickly took advantage
of the situation, with Obama making slippery statements aimed
at morally neutralizing the conflict and then Clinton taking over
stage management of negotiations in a way that also obscures the
reasons a president would go left and want to change the constitution
to help him do that. In whatever newspaper or whatever TV news
show you watch now, in connection with the Honduran situation,
watch for a lot of flag waving for democracy and the opportune
demonization of Hugo Chavez and ALBA, but don't expect any clear
explanation of ALBA's purposes.
Zelaya erred by going to Clinton and
falling into her trap. Arias is wrong to participate. ALBA presidents
are wrong to continue cooperating with the OAS, which they should
be rushing to replace with ALBA. They should have persuaded Zelaya
to stay in Managua and used his situation as a platform to promote
and explain their progressive revolution to the world (including
poor Hondurans) and to encourage the slower leftist presidents
in the region to join, making enough noise about it to collaterally
(without any actual subversion) encourage progressives in Honduras
to keep protesting and the peoples of other countries to elect
progressive presidents.
-Glen Roberts
US president
bows to high priest
10
July 2009: If I were a president visiting Rome, I'd try
to meet Sophia Loren. It wouldn't even occur to me to visit the
pope. At least, unlike Nancy Pelosi, Obama didn't have his picture
taken today kissing the pope's ring. And truthfully, the story
of the president at the Vatican didn't offend me as much as the
inauguration day story in January of Obama starting his term by
going to church to pray, because that came first, so I no longer
expect anything better of him.
But, come on! I haven't even forgiven
Fidel for talking to the pope, though, in his case, I knew it
was just protocol. It's not a matter of putting the pope in his
place. Popes and Dalai Lamas and other imams and high priests
of mysticism, denial and regressive and disruptive pseudo morality
have no place in a civilized world. Neither do the kind of presidents
who don't realize that. And that this is not yet a civilized world
is proven by a lot of things, of course, but among them the fact
that a philosophically realistic human could not run for and win
a presidential office in most countries.
And that's not just a flow to go with. We live
in a real world that needs our attention, which it's not getting
precisely because philosophically unrealistic humans are led by
philosophically unrealistic politicians, whose blunders are chronicled
by philosophically unrealistic editors and historians, and there's
no appeal process apparent.
-Glen Roberts
Announced
Honduran sanctions aren't the bottom line
12
July 2009: At the end of
his very quickly published denial of responsibility for the Honduran
coup, in an essay well written enough to have been waiting in
a drawer, Otto Reich, a hard-wired US right-hand man whose name
is, as far as I can tell, only a miraculously appropriate coincidence,
assures us that IF he'd instigated it, A, B, and C would have
ensued and then acknowledges that A, B, and C did, indeed, ensue.
Hmmm.
I can't turn that into a confession,
but the Cuban news agency accusation he was denying is certainly
credible, because (a) he was also credibly accused of involvement
on behalf of the US in the 2002 Venezuelan coup, (b) he was certainly
in position and in the mood for involvement in both coups, and
(c) the US has a history of using fanatically bitter X-Cubans
like Reich, "Brothers to the Rescue," and the Alpha-66 mini-Gestapo
to do dirty deeds even the CIA is (sometimes) too fastidious to
touch.
Though any proof of such complicity by
a former deputy Secretary of State (under Bush) who is still an
agent or associate of very relevant Washington subsidiaries in
Venezuela and Honduras would amount to a US smoking gun, I don't
think it's necessary. I expect a paper trail to show up sooner
or later leading from US officialdom through somebody like Reich
to the coup. But that some or all US agencies and entities in
Honduras at the time were at least virtual accessories before
the fact is certain anyway. They had to be.
Obama's Obamaesque announcement that
he's cutting military "ties" with Honduras (now, or rather right
away - after the fact) is like promises to pull out of Iraq, convincing
proof of his innocence and sincerity only to his eager-to-hope
groupies. Right now it's only words. Obama is getting famous for
words that aren't executed. His verbal cutting of Honduran military
ties and other aid can't be instantaneous, and as soon as a US
engineered compromise between exiled Honduran President Zelaya
and the Honduran junta achieves US aims, all the press conference
blather can be forgotten while the military ties and aid go on
uninterrupted. You can SAY he can't take the chance Zelaya won't
double cross him by refusing to compromise, but he IS taking that
chance. Embedded American media, after all, can be counted on
to blur everything over later or bury it under another celebrity
death or something.
All this is eyewash anyway, because the
US embassy (always in contact and collusion with their bureaucratic
Honduran protegés), US business interests (always chummy and influential
with their rich insider Honduran business friends and associates),
the CIA (which you surely know does and keeps doing what it does),
and US military personnel (who are deeply integrated with Honduran
military IN AN ADVISORY CAPACITY) ARE there and were there before
and during the coup, which was gestating and known by insiders
(including outsider insiders) to be gestating for some time, during
which Obama's office certainly received reports (which I can accurately
call progress reports) from all and sundry, including Republican
congressmen with Honduran connections. Even US aid is conditional
(something Obama is making a show of now but it was conditional
while coup plans were being hatched and reported to him, too).
And the goal of the coup, NOT to punish an Honduran politician
for manipulating the law (come on dammit!), but to stop or "foil"
Hugo Chavez and ALBA (to preserve international usury*), and (as
Fidel wrote yesterday**) to encourage other such coups in Latin
America, was and is a US goal, not a Honduran goal.
All such actors who knew what was happening
and what was going to happen, whether they said, "Wow!" or "Right
on!" or "OK - you're following my instructions perfectly," sure
as hell didn't rush in or ring up and shout, "Stop!" or it would
have stopped. So they had guilty knowledge and didn't call
the cops in time, which legally translates to complicity.
They were all, including Obama, accessories to a major international
crime.
I knew all that, and you should have,
as soon I read Obama's PUBLIC initial response, that he was "deeply
concerned" and called on "ALL (my emphasis) political and
social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule
of law and the tenets of the inter-American Democratic Charter"
and to take care of their own problems "through dialogue free
from any outside interference." This was AFTER the violent kidnapping
of the president and yet easily translated to any Latin American
news watcher not imitating a sleeping stump only as "I sincerely
hope the coup masters will let the president come back and that
he will agree to stop defying the legislature and the court and
hereafter ignore the influence of Hugo Chavez." In other words,
compared to the response of the rest of the world, his greeting
card verse was worse than just self incriminating. It was wormy,
i.e. typically Obamaesque.
-Glen Roberts
*see capitalism
**see www.chavezcode.com
US wants
to rescue Zelaya with conditions
that will discourage Latin American reform
14
July 2009: I don't read unsigned editorials, but, since
I fell for the headline, I'll alert you that one sentence in today's
LA Times Honduras editorial,"Zelaya should give up on
his proposed referendum to tamper with the constitution and on
the idea of extending presidential term limits," is THE
pill. The rest is sugar coating. The writer even refrained from
demonizing Hugo Chavez to smooth the pill's way down for California
readers whose own idea of term limits is irrelevant to Latin American
realities.
Usurpers of the government in Honduras
are now talking to US congressmen through lobbyists suspected
of being fellow usurpers,which is OK with Congress, since they
and their president regularly usurp Latin American governments,
and since most congressmen are bound to sympathize with usurpers
sympathetic to US business, anyway, and will see nothing wrong
with the conditions the usurpers want to impose on exiled President
Zelaya.
Anyway, their conditions for Zelaya's
return, as reported yesterday (July 13) by Eva Golinger, framed
by an American ideologue and, according to Golinger, approved
by Hillary Clinton, DO EXACTLY CORRELATE WITH AND PROBABLY CONFIRM
all my analyses and predictions since the coup came off.
The "5 main terms" of the reported conditions
(my source is Golinger) are that: 1. Zelaya can return to the
presidency, but not to power; 2. Zelaya must not pursue any plans
to reform the Constitution; 3. Zelaya must
distance himself substantially from President Chávez; 4.
Zelaya must share governance with the Congress and those in the
coup regime; 5. Zelaya must give amnesty to all those involved
in the coup.
OK. Remember that the grounds for the
coup were supposedly Zelaya's ILLEGAL intention to stage a public
vote for a review and possible overhaul of the Honduran constitution,
a supposedly ILLEGAL act because the Honduran legislature and
top court had nixed it, and also supposedly because THEY feared
that for unmentionable egomaniacal reasons he wanted to change
the LAW so he could be reelected for more than one term. Comparing
him to Hugo Chavez didn't shore up any supposed legal case in
Honduras, but Chavez' name come up I think obviously because Washington
and the US business community feared he meant to lift presidential
term limits for the same very good but unmentionable reasons Hugo
Chavez and Evo Morales did that.
NOW COMPARE the list of conditions above
to my July 12 explanation of Obama's initial reaction to the obviously
barbaric, illegal and unacceptable coup when Obama only very lamely
said - "that he was 'deeply concerned' and called on 'ALL political
and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the
rule of law and the tenets of the inter-American Democratic Charter'
and to take care of their own problems 'through dialogue free
from any outside interference.'" (I pointed out that) "this
was AFTER the violent kidnapping of the president and yet easily
translated to any Latin American news watcher not imitating a
sleeping stump only as 'I sincerely hope the coup masters will
let the president come back and that he will agree to stop defying
the legislature and the court and hereafter ignore the influence
of Hugo Chavez.'"
COMPARE to my July 9 explanation of virtually
certain US motives for the coup: "the motive and opportunity
belonged to the US - to Obama and Clinton and the insiders they
represent. It doesn't matter how straight Arias plays it (and
I have no faith in him), in the media this will become a clash
between an 'emerging free enterprise democracy' and a president
who wanted to 'go Castro's way.' Zelaya, by foolishly going to
Washington and turning himself over to Hillary Clinton, put the
issue firmly into US and OAS (a US front) hands, and that's the
way the US, which desperately wants to stop Hugo Chavez and his
allies from 'destabilizing' Latin America, wants it."
COMPARE to my July 7 fanciful speculations
on what Hillary would tell Zelaya that day: "with an obviously
phony smile (trying but failing to imitate her much slicker boss):
'Jose, we really want to help, because we are against all badness
and anti freedomanddemocracyness, and we're going to try our best
to get you back home, but, of course, it's got to be give and
take and we've got to consider the Honduran army's feelings, too.
Oh, we'll somehow work it out with them, because we all want to
be friends, so don't worry, 'cause I'm sure we can persuade them
to let you come back and even run for election again - or something
like that - we'll see - maybe four years down the line, hmmm?
But we have to give them a little something, too, like a promise
that you're going to stop talking to that awful Hugo Chavez. Gee,
wouldn't that fill the bill?'"
COMPARE to my July 2 analysis of Obama's
attitude toward the Honduran coup when, after initially shrugging
his shoulders: "under pressure from the world (and I hope from
his naive pseudo progressive constituency), he (then) relatively
lamely dissed the coup, but an underplayed graph deep down in
the LA Times story today (July 2) went 'Click!' for any reader
paying attention."
US
officials said they would not take action on a threatened aid
cutoff until after
the OAS secretary-general reported to
the organization on his attempt to negotiate a
settlement. The United States expects
Zelaya to change his approach enough for him
to work with the political opposition
that threw him out, a senior Obama administration official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because of the political sensitivity
of the issue.
Quoting myself again, "Clearly Obama, as worried as any Republican
about the move toward civilized equality in Latin America, has
decided to draw a line in the sand in the handiest place, an already
thoroughly compromised banana republic with a docile population
and a possibly shady president whose ouster may be justified."
OK. I'm duly noting (right here, right
now) that there are some determined Obama fans who are appalled
by people like me who are pointing the finger at their president.
But this isn't a conspiracy theory. The case for certain US complicity
in the Honduran coup was laid out mathematically in my July 12
posting, based on well known general truths just as hard as any
more specific facts.
Even without any new anonymous quotes
or intercepted State Department memos, it's a general but very
hard fact that the move to stop Hugo Chavez and ALBA, a hemispheric
phenomenon, is a US mission, and Barack Obama, who has not demonstrated
ANY comprehension of Latin American issues (of Cuba for instance),
with every opportunity to demonstrate a really "changed" stance,
has instead shown Latin America and the world only the same old
US anti-communist attitude that always mandates such missions.
There couldn't be anything more lock-brain Republican than his
declaration that he won't lift the Cuban embargo "until the Cuban
people are free." That's the very Miami gusano babble that George
Bush embraced.
To his determined supporters who think
his supposed cut off of Honduran aid and cut off of military ties
proves his honesty, HEY! Honduran aid is only in a pause mode
(according to the LA Times today) and US/Honduran military
ties have NOT been cut and won't be, and you can put THAT in the
bank.
-Glen Roberts
To resolve
Honduras crisis, Latin American leaders
must cut US and OAS out of the deal
20 July
2009: Now that Oscar Arias and Hillary
Clinton have failed at their supposed goals for Honduras but may
be poised to deliver a coup de grâce, that will include both sides
surrendering to US stage management, while another Latin American
country's leftward movement is stymied, a coalition of ALBA members
still seeking justice for Honduras should cut the US out of the
loop, take over the project and proceed in a manner more in keeping
with the 21st century Latin American socialist revolution.
Zelaya should encourage his supporters
to continue peacefully protesting and growing but give up his
wild plan to return to Honduras as a real-life Victor Laszlo and
bring his family to Managua. At the same time, all ALBA and potential
ALBA countries should cut diplomatic ties with Honduras but encourage
the US to continue aid to the pariah nation, while a task force
headed by Zelaya but backed by Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and
Alvaro Colom of Guatemala work together in an internationally
legal way to find a Fidel Castro among the protest leaders in
Honduras to run for president there in October in the company
of enough other protesters running to re-align the legislature.
But re-read my July 2 commentary on Honduras
and Hondurans. Right now, nobody really knows if the Honduran
majority are ready for a civilized revolution, and if they're
not, a wrong move by Zelaya could provoke a lot of bloodshed for
LESS than nothing, since it would be a black mark on the credibility
of a continent-wide revolution that is doing very well peacefully.
Skipping the bloody theatrics, however,
with an internationally observed election in the air, other Hondurans
not now in the streets, who want to join, can be aroused by Hondurans
abroad, by world wide publicity, and by the candidacy of an open
Zelaya compañero not yet vulnerable to arrest, and then if he
is elected, he can immediately tell Barack Obama (vainly I'm sure)
to end the Cuban embargo, suspend all plotting against Venezuela
and Bolivia, and seriously support the Latin American movement
toward social and economic equality for everyone or get out of
the way.
And then in January, as the legal and
peaceful head of a de facto counter coup (if the US marines haven't
taken over by then), he can appoint Zelaya as his vice president;
sternly pardon all the June 2008 traitors; unequivocally cut military
ties with the US and immediately eject all US military personnel,
along with all CIA agents, from the country; and offer the people
another chance to approve a revision of the constitution.
Maybe, probably, that's an impossible
dream, but it's critically important that the US be cut out of
at least the Latin American part of the loop, because right now,
here's what's on tap. The Honduran usurpers have offered to accept
other terms but to let Zelaya return only as a prisoner facing
jail. Next, Arias (Clinton) will say, well then, to avoid angering
the whole world any further (which can't help any Honduran government),
why not let him return NOT as president but (to save your own
face) with a full pardon - as an ordinary citizen with the same
rights as other citizens? And if everyone including Zelaya accepts
that deal or anything like it the US will have won the chess game
and Fidel's prediction will have come true - that other right
wing insurgencies in Latin America will have a green light to
proceed.
There may be no way to avoid that result
but it certainly shouldn't be allowed to happen. A civil war isn't
the answer. It almost never is. But US (AND OAS) involvement should
be dramatically and pointedly condemned all over Latin America,
the world, and even inside the US ignorance bubble. Instead of
letting this Honduran fiasco become a stumbling block, turn it
into a spotlighted exposé of US meddling for the purpose of stopping
the advance of civilization away from the primitive (profitable)
jungle of capitalism.
-Glen Roberts
Hollywood
Honduras solution scenario m-a-a-ay work
23
July 2009: When I posted
my own Honduran solution three days ago (20 July, see above),
I hadn't thought of the kind of plan reported today by Narco
News (see link at the bottom of my front page) for enough
Hondurans (many thousands) to meet exiled President Zelaya at
the border tomorrow (or the next day or the next) to pacify the
police and army just by their presence and then escort him to
the capital with such a show of moral force that the fascists
will back down. It's a long walk from the border to Tegucigalpa,
and walk they must, to maximize the drama, gather marchers, and
let the enemy sweat. It sounds like a movie, but it could work
without bloodshed, and I hope it does.
-Glen Roberts
As Honduran
flap dies, media revise their lies
3
September 2009: Western
media reported today that the US had just announced its decision
to suspend non-humanitarian aid to Honduras. But did any live
reporter on hand ask, or did any editor receiving the press release
call up and ask, "What about military aid?"
Do you think you've read this story before?
You have - though not quite. The insiders in the government and
media who play with your mind often repeat themselves in order
to redefine history so you won't be rebelliously confused about
things. But if you're not too confused to remember things you're
not supposed to remember without official help, you're right.
The first time around on this merry-go-round, Obama did indeed
declare that Honduran Military aid would be cut off. Obviously,
that was nonsense then (as I explained on this website at the
time) and nonsense it would remain if ever mentioned again. This
doesn't necessarily mean the media have forgotten the issue. The
US military connection with Honduras has always been and still
is of critical importance. And they can't shoot a reporter if
he or she asks about it. But the embedded media play the game
their way, not your way. Always.
And the game today was not to let you
know what's up. Very little is apparently up, except for those
who think the end-all and be-all of social history is for "the"
people to rise up and shout slogans together. You can find out
what's up in that vein (even if the mainstream media doesn't tell
you) by reading the Narco News every day - which I link
to even though I don't share that site's excitement about the
current protest activity in Honduras. And by reading Narco
News and Chavezcode.com and Fidel's columns in Granma
(all linked at the bottom of the front page) for the last two
months, you can find out a lot your regular embedded news source
hasn't been telling you about the Honduras situation.
But the truth is that the Honduras situation
has bogged down. Hope that Honduras would rise up and go "Castro's
way" is just about dead. Exiled President Zelaya's continued flocking
together with Hillary Clinton type birds indicates he isn't another
Hugo Chavez and strongly suggests he does not really believe his
people would follow him if he tried to lead a serious revolution.
I think I agree with him on that, because I don't think the people
in the Honduran streets right now constitute a resolute majority.
And the fact that actually (hopefully really) progressive Latin
American leaders are focusing on US meddling in Colombia instead
now suggests they may agree, too. Their insistence that the Honduran
elections coming up in November not be recognized unless Zelaya
is returned to office (which will only be BY the US for US purposes,
after all) is uninspired (which is why the US has co-opted the
position). What if somebody THEY (the Latin American leaders)
like is elected?
Anyway, the US is certainly not breaking
ties with Honduras, especially not military ties, and today's
news was only part of a game being played by the Obama administration,
which looks exactly like the Latin American game played by all
his regressive predecessors to protect US business and profits
at ANY cost. The media's job is to prepare YOU for any new "Operation
Condor" (or even military action) your misleaders come up with.
They'll keep doing their job and the American people will keep
falling for their big lies again and again and again.
-Glen Roberts
Honduras "truth" comes via media from DC oracles
8
October 2009: It's hard
to tell if embedded media have the final word now from their favorite
insiders or if they're just conjuring an outcome in Honduras that
they, as good Republicans, want. I'm reading between the lines.
But today's embedded press reports have coup president Roberto
Micheletti "softening" his stance and ousted President Manuel
Zelaya probably already signed onto the final deal - that is,
he gets to be first for peace (and maybe president) rather than
right. To the media and their gullible audience all conflict is
generic conflict and peace talks leading to peace are the only
conceivably desirable end.
So, if today's reports are right, peace
may soon be restored to Honduras, between three and four months
after the coup, probably before the elections there in November,
under the exact terms set forth by Barack Obama on June 28.
Terms of agreement reportedly anticipated
today make it clear (to me) that an end to "repression of the
people" (meaning only that the cops will stop beating up anti-coup
demonstrators) will take the place of any concern for the historic
plight of the poor; Zelaya's support of US compromise terms will
take the place of his supposed former intentions to move Honduras
to the left; Micheletti, after a suitable delay, will obey US
embassy orders and accept the original Arias/Obama/Clinton plan;
media will report peace and reconciliation; and Latin American
history will go on as before in Honduras UNDER the familiar US
thumb and "FREE" of any pesky influence by Hugo Chavez.
On June 28 (see July 2 below), after being
PUBLICLY surprised by the coup and claiming to be "deeply concerned,"
Obama called on "ALL (my caps) political and social actors in
Honduras to respect democratic norms (by which he meant business
as usual), the rule of law and the tenets of the inter-American
Democratic Charter" and to take care of their own problems "through
dialogue free from any outside interference (by which he meant
Hugo Chavez)."
This was typical wormy Obamaesque which
meant what I told you it meant on July 2 and which, in fact, the
LA Times, also on July 2, told you it meant in a buried paragraph
which, even if it had been printed in red, probably couldn't have
gotten past the politically correct denial bump of the pseudo-progressive
Obama supporters.
US
officials said they would not take action on a threatened aid
cutoff until after
the OAS secretary-general reported to
the organization on his attempt to negotiate a
settlement. The United States expects
Zelaya to change his approach enough for him
to work with the political opposition
that threw him out, a senior Obama administration
official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because of the political sensitivity
of the issue.
The subsequent desperate certainty of
US pseudo-progressives that it was Hillary Clinton in peace broker's
costume who then betrayed her boss by manipulating the situation
to block Honduran participation in the recent Latin American movement
to the left is pure denial based on no evidence except their mystic
rapport with the Obama myth they still think they elected.
The embedded media won't even touch the
question, but if I'm right, and I probably am and will be eventually
in any case, I will be left mystified as to why Brazil let its
embassy be used to promote the swindle.
-Glen Roberts
Peace
exactly as usual may be close in Honduras
9
October 2009: I'm in
accord with Le Duc Tho on the Nobel Peace Prize (which he declined
because there was no peace), except that if they offered it to
me, since I've been as effective as Barack Obama in my efforts
to civilize the world, I'd take it, rename it the Juan Almeida
Civilization Prize and pass it on to Hugo Chavez for his truly
constructive leadership of the "free" world away from the capitalist
jungle toward civilized socialism.
As for Obama, he should take the Ringer
Prize. He didn't end the Cuban embargo. He didn't close Guantanamo.
He's not going to end the war; he's started his own new war in
Pakistan. And he's about to deploy his military might to Colombia
from where he may very well be planning to launch a fourth war
on Latin America. He's not going to give
us health care; he's going to subsidize insurance companies.
He didn't bail out homebuyers; he went on bailing out mortgagers.
He won't end torture; he excused it. He didn't change Bush's snarling
foreign policy; he just took away the snarl and continued the
same policy with a smirk. He's not going to protect us from religious
laws against lifestyles and abortion; he's going to be neutral.
He won't oppose regression; he'll compromise with Republicans.
He's not an environmentalist; he'll protect business first. He
didn't even give us the word hope, which I take it is the
sole basis for his taking the prize; it was already in the dictionary,
where you can still find it. He's a ringer.
-Glen Roberts
Honduras
story posted Oct. 8 still works
2
November 2009: (You COULD
just re-read the October 8 story posted below.) If things go as expected (as intended by Washington
all along), maybe this week, maybe the next or the next, leaving
out Hillary Clinton's blather and your favorite embedded newspaper's
claim that the US has finally restored democracy in Honduras,
the ousted president Zelaya's days of dangling out in the cold
will be done, his chief nemesis Micheletti will (a) stop stalling
or (b) end his assigned charade, and all will be as before, with
this month's elections somehow magically purified.
In fact,if the elections have already
been rigged, they're rigged.If all the candidates were already
US approved puppets, they're all still US approved puppets. But
the official story is that if it happens after an obediently smiling
Zelaya is back in office (even if sans balls), the elections are
OK.
Remember how a just elected and immediately
ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristides was kept dangling in exile for
4 years until the US put him back in office and restored democracy
in Haiti just before the next election of a more familiar and
manageable former prime minister. This has been a capsule version
of the same comedy.
The point is that Honduras goes on
as before, US dominance has been reasserted, Hugo Chavez has been
foiled (your favorite newspaper will imply), the new leftist revolution
in Latin America will have apparently stumbled, and, if Fidel
is right (which he usually is}, more such regressive coups will
have been encouraged.
However, off your severely censored
screen, the new leftist ruling party of Uruguay has just won a
second term without lifting term limits, and Daniel Ortega has
just won the right to run again in Nicaragua. Keep tuned in here
and through this website's links.
Now read the October 8 story below,
pretend it was posted today, and you'll be right up to date.
-Glen Roberts
Was new Honduran
script always up US sleeve?
4
November 2009: I don't know. Today's Al Jazeera report
of a Clinton spokesperson's denial of any US determination to
restore the ousted Presitdent Manuel Zelaya to office as part
of the re-stabilizing of Honduras DOES seem to contradict yeserday's
understanding of the deal, but whose understanding was it? It's
interesting that Zelaya didn't accuse his usurpers of treachery
today; he wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton begging her to assure
him he hadn't understood HER wrong.
This means he knows who's boss. And
apparently so does interim President Roberto Micheletti, since
his just issued resignation announcement, especially the part
about him stepping aside to clear the way for "a government of
national reconciliation" (not for Zelaya) didn't necessarily contradict
anything Washington has said before and the implication that Micheletti
and Zelaya are equally in the way fits perfectly into the comic
book story of the US as the virtuously neutral peacemaker, a story
that American news consumers, certainly including pseudo progressive
Obama supporters, will eagerly swallow. Last week's many implications
that the US would put Zelaya back into the presidency can be easily
blurred over and forgotten in the US. US media specialize in that
kind of stuff, and international media will probably cooperate,
too. Al Jazeera is already doing it.
Zelaya's reported request that Clinton
"clarify to the Honduran people if the [US] position condemning
the coup d'etat has been changed or modified" seems well calculated
to embarrass her and Obama, but it might not. In my July 7 posting,
I imagined Clinton only assuring Zelaya that she'd get his usurpers
to let him come home with a clean slate, and I still think I imagined
right, because, while the rest of the world was clearly enough
appalled by the coup makers who barbarously yanked Zelaya out
of bed and exiled him in the middle of the night, Obama's first
reaction on June 28 had been just as clearly directed at "ALL
actors" in the Honduran tiff, as if he were less concerned by
the coup than by the disagreement that led to it.
Al Jazeera, which is not as sharp
as a tack on Latin American affairs, quotes a Cato Institute source's
doubt that "the Honduran congress (will) bend to US pressure on
Zelaya's planned return to power," and the same source's disingenuous
assertion that If Zelaya isn't reinstated, "it certainly will
be a diplomatic embarrassment for the United States since they
pressured so much for his reinstatement and even threatened to
not recognise the election results." The point of that absurdity
is to con Americans that the US isn't telling the Honduras Congress
what to do.
But they certainly are. The final
negotiations, regardless of how long they were dramatically dragged
out, began with a night time meeting at the US Embassy (this WAS
reported, folks) where the coupsters got their marching orders.
The four member panel that contrived the deal was stacked, certainly
by the US State Department, 3-1 against Zelaya, consisting of
his rep, the usurpers' rep, a US cabinet minister, and a Chilean
conservative.
As for the elections, which are probably
already safely rigged, international observation of the voting
procedure will satisfy most critics (it always does), Micheletti's
resignation will be enough to assure a world eager to be assured
that NOT being held under his regime (sort of) will serve just
as well as BEING held under a Zelaya regime to purify them; and
Zelaya's return to private life (not jailed after all) will seem
to counter Hugo Chavez' supposed attempt to subvert another Latin
American country, which is the most important US objective.
Couldn't the Honduran people get so
angry at this swindle (it was already a swindle) that they really
revolt big time? Yeah. That could happen. But I don't think it
will.
-Glen Roberts
I can't
suspend my disbelief in the Times
11
November 2009: What I'm reading today is the LA Times,
but it could be almost any main stream Times, Chronicle, Bee,
Examiner, Post, Herald, Record or other Republican (or "bi-partisan"
Democrat) owned Daily Horn in America. It probably wouldn't
change the headlines or even the front page alignment much if
they all merged as, say, The Regressive Times. But the
front page with almost nothing believable on it today, or the
one I'm talking about, just happens to be the LA one.
A TIME TO MOURN,
Starting with the cutline under a top-of-the-page
photo of Obama as he "passes" tribute (I wish the media would
learn the English language) to the victims of the Ft. Hood shooter,
what I can't believe is that he said "it was 'incomprehensible'
that they were killed at home in a time of war" - at a time when
HIS military is dropping bombs and shells on people through the
roofs of their own houses in three countries already, and he's
starting to deploy troops again in Latin America, too.
COLUMN ONE - Life in Iran, for better,
worse - Years of change test a Tehran couple's ties to each
other and to the hard-line militia in which both once were true
believers
At the top left of the front page is
this overly creative daily feature (COLUMN ONE) that is often
just incoherent enough to suck you into turning to the jump to
figure it out. Today's creation is one of the regular hit pieces
all American media feel compelled to print at least weekly against
Iran, China, North Korea or (most absurdly) Cuba or Venezuela
to keep reminding their readers of their well taught and memorized
patriotic contempt for those countries - with headlines that assume
some common slander is true even though it's not known to be true.
Sometimes these hit pieces sneer at the target country for transparently
trying to adopt an American lifestyle and they always take advantage
of the readers' often rehearsed conviction that things are dramatically
bad there
My first reaction to the sub-headline
about "true believers" is that I never believe true believers
- and when they switch their true belief to another true belief
which the editors assumes will please me, I wonder what they got
out of the deal. In this case, a narrative lead (a trick I taught
my journalism students but advised them to avoid) quickly confirms
my scepticism by telling me how Mr. True-believer lies to his
wife that he's been helping the wounded when he's actually been
wounding them and she dutifully believes his lie because "she
had to." And my next reaction is that I never believe lying thugs,
including supposedly waffling thugs. And I just about cease to
believe the writer when I read in the next clumsily inserted paragraph
that "landlocked Iran lacks a coast" to "escape" from. At this
point, the reader is supposed to adopt his memorized Cuba reaction
mode to convince himself he knows anything at all on which to
base this innuendo. I suspect an editor inserted that paragraph.
As the strenuously creative narrative
continues, the locale unexplainably changes to the mountains,
so I'm not sure if "the young man" is the same young husband when
he says, "I'm a spiritual person," which just about does it for
me. I never believe spiritual persons because what they truly
believe isn't necessarily connected to real world experience,
either before or after they change their minds.
I went to page 19 and read the rest,
learning nothing all of us don't already know or think we know
about the middle east. The story's placement was obviously to
keep the anti-Iran propaganda coming at us. Whether it was very
narrowly or generally or only less narrowly true I don't know.
I have a problem with Iran reporting. I can't go there and see
for myself. I'm too old and couldn't learn the language. I have
to notice that Ahmadinejad is more articulate and convincing than
any American president and that his position on Iran's nuclear
energy plans sounds more reasonable than Obama's and is supported
by the very reliable Muhammad Al-Baradei. I'm sceptical, though,
of the entire middle east, because all the governments there are
so stridently religious, the Iranian president is reportedly as
religious as Bush or Obama, and I not only never believe religious
people, I don't believe any religious person should ever be president
of any country. I don't know how many modern day Omar Khayyams
there are there who'd be willing to take the job. I wish the Times
would do a more honest job of educating people about Iran, but
I don't believe they will.
ARMY IN DARK ON HASAN'S E-MAILS
This upper right corner piece is part
of a series of hmm hmm guessing game stories sort of like the
Simpson trial saga, in which various stern experts and men in
the street speculate about whether the Ft. Hood shooting could
have been prevented. I seriously don't believe it could have.
But, more important, I don't believe the speculations or revelations
of spooks whose job is to misinform us, and assuming we're all
agreed that it's dishonest to open other people's mail, I don't
know why any of us should believe people who spy on other people's
E-mails.
PANEL DRAWS LINE IN THE SEA
Under this mid page headline, I immediately
scribbled, "I don't believe you can draw a line in the sea." Or
bandage it, either. Finding that the story was about a plan to
"restore (some fish) species" by setting aside a few preserves,
I went from amused to angry, because I don't just disbelieve,
I KNOW the crash of the world wide eco-system can't be resolved
by maybe preserving a species here and a species there. Nor by
burning low energy light bulbs. The only way to save the eco-system
is to reduce the human population and the size of the human encampment
starting 60 years ago. But I DON'T BELIEVE the Times will give
any space to that story any time soon.
CALL TO ACTION ON HEALTHCARE
This is under a picture of Bill Clinton
calling Congress to action on healthcare. Except I don't believe
he's talking about healthcare. I also don't believe the Times
is going to stop calling it healthcare in their headlines unless
there is a major readers' revolt. In this very issue, there is
a rare letter to the editor that begins, "Your headline was misleading.
What the House passed was insurance legislation."
Back on Oct. 30, which is about the normal
spacing between glimpses of reality in the media, the Times ghettoized
together on one day (obviously to get them over with and forgotten)
8 letters from people sick and tired of headlines calling insurance
company subsidization "healthcare." But in that same issue and
forever before that and ever since, the Times has gone on relentlessly
headlining Obama's and the Democrats' main scam as a "healthcare
plan." It's not a healthcare plan. It's obviously a plan to pump
money into the pockets of insurance and pharmaceutical companies
while forcing the uninsured to cough up premiums they can't afford.
I believe the Times will keep this deception up and will never
acknowledge that most Americans, if they thought about it, would
prefer socialized medicine.
WHEN DEATH PENALTY MEANS A BETTER LIFE
I don't believe this story is plagiarized
from Fox News because it's definitely written by a Times reporter
I learned not to believe when she was writing about Latin America.
I think she's mainly telling the truth here, but I don't believe
anyone commits murder in order to get in on the privileged living
arrangement on death row, and I don't believe I care enough to
pass on any of the shocking details.
BRITISH LEADER WRITES A WRONG
I can see quickly that the British Prime
Minister was forced by public dismay to apologize for his bad
handwriting and some spelling mistakes, but I can't figure out
what I don't believe about this story without turning to page
A20 and reading it, and I don't believe I will.
-Glen Roberts
Julius
Caesar Obama lets slip the dogs of war
11
November 2009: Right in the middle of today's front page
was a propaganda piece headed "Why he named pullout date." I set
aside my croissant and coffee, took up my pen and printed under
that headline, "He didn't." He in this context meant Barack
Obama, and the totally inaccurate phrase pullout date was
a squinting reference to a supposed but not actual "pledge" to
"pull out" U.S. troops from Afghanistan on a specified "date."
But day before yesterday, under a
banner headline, "Obama vows to break Taliban," and a margin-to-margin
picture of Obama talking to West Point cadets, and another headline
which first trumpeted the myth of the week: "30,000 more troops
to go on 18-month timetable," I'd already caught the nose of truth
poking quietly up at the very end of the lead, i.e. that...
President
Obama ... pledged to begin bringing
home U.S. forces in 18 months."
Dear reader, do you detect the built-in
equivocation in that "pledge"? Hint: I put it in red. If you don't
get it, you're the one whose number the media have and whom they
are confidently snowing every day.
Today, under the headline "Why he
named pullout date," the truth with no asterisk or further comment
was again tucked quietly in at the very end of a second column
paragraph, where "The date, July 2011,..." (which isn't a date
and isn't very good math, either) of the supposedly sure-thing
pull-out, we're told in a low voice, will be...
...
when the Afghan troop buildup is supposed to be working well enough
against the
Taliban-led insurgency that some troops
can start to come home.
You say you understand that. I hope
so. It's simple enough. Obama is expanding the war, lengthening
it by another 18 months and more, and deepening the guagmire. That's
the clear reality. But you got it from six words I dug out and
highlighted for you. All the rest of the last three days of headlines
and multi-page coverage have been drilling you over and over and
in depth to think you believe one of two other comic-book-level
improbabilities.
This is like all the "news" coverage
of the so-called healthcare debates, which relentlessly drilled
you to believe there were only two options - a Democratic so-called
health bill which is really an insurance subsidy bill or a Republican
hijacking of the issue to repeal 50 years of social and philosophical
progress. By the simple strategy of never mentioning it, the press
forbade you to think of the only good option - socialized medicine.
Now, weighed down by headlines and
pix that do NOT recall those six words I've highlighted, and
by whole pages of blather by generals and congressmen pretending
to be war experts (just in case you thnk there is such a thing),
and even by some Obama quotes reminiscent of 1940's cowboy movies
sort of like, "Boys, y'all know I'm a peacable man," you're left
no choice but to join a near imbecile debate about whether (1)
letting the enemy know the US will quit and go home 18 months
from now plays into the Taliban's hands, or (2) telling Afghanistan
the US is not going to go on doing their fighting for them will
get them on their toes at last and inspire our boys, too, by golly.
If you wonder why the Republican media
are supporting a Democratic president by taking him seriously,
keep it in mind that old editors love reliving WWII, that Democrats
ARE Republicans, and that the same people who own the government
and the media also own the arms industry and the banana companies.
Outrageous as it is to add another
18 months to a war that's too often been supposed to end in similar
time spells in the past eight years, US troops are NOT going to
come home in 18 months. Actually, US troops have been continuously
deployed all over the world for most of my long life. And this
is the same Obama talking who pledged to close Guantanamo by next
month and to be out of Iraq by this coming May. He's the same
Obama who's been drone bombing Pakistan for months in what amounts
to a third Middle Eastern war which undoubtedly includes some
clandestine troop deployment. He's the same Obama who promised
to start talking in a civilized way to Iran and North Korea but
certainly didn't. He's the same Obama who promised to cut off
military aid to Honduras five months ago if they didn't stop doing
what he secretly wanted them to do. And he's the same Obama who
was expected by his constituents to end the Cuban embargo on his
first day in office and to start talking intelligently to Latin
American leaders who are justifiably tired of stupid American
presidents he's now exactly imitating by re-occupying old military
bases in Colombia in apparent preparation for ANOTHER war in Latin
America.
-Glen Roberts
"Success" of
Honduran election threatens Latin American political progress
29
November 2009: Embedded internet news
sites barely bothered to report tonight that other Latin American
countries won't recognize today's post coup Honduran election
because its acceptance legitimizes the coup and will encourage
other coups. That's as deep as the reports got. It's probably
as deep as tomorrow morning's western newspapers will go.
I just asked Al Jazeera if they're going
to leave that fear unexplained. I pointed out that their own credibility
hangs on the answer. The same goes for all embedded media that
fulfill my expectations. My own credibility should grow a bit,
though.
That 60% of eligible Honduran voters reportedly
voted (maybe that's not true), almost all of them voting for the
two regressive insider candidates, is a crying shame. But I long
ago predicted it, because I believed based on my own experience
in the country that most Hondurans, like most Americans, are thoroughly
and successfully brainwashed anti-communists.
US media will not explain this, but Barack
Obama supported the coup against President Manuel Zelaya from
the start (Oh yes he did) because, thinking exactly like George
Bush or Ronald Reagan (or, let's face it, like any other Democratic
US president would), he feared that Zelaya was "going Castro's
way," that he was going to succumb to Hugo Chavez' influence,
which, by the way, is exactly what the unfortunately regressive
Honduran voters thought THEY feared.
I doubt Obama or his CIA advisors feared
Honduras would actually be the next domino to fall in the most
under-reported story in the world today, i.e. the movement of
one Latin American country after another away from US domination
and toward civilized socialism. US military presence inside Honduras
is too strong to allow that to happen. But he feared the embarrassment
(to Washington) of even a strong Honduran twist to the left and
the greater embarrassment if the US were forced, in response,
to bare its brutal fascist face there.
That may happen yet, if the probably
minority progressive Hondurans who have been raging in the streets
for the last five months decide not to give up - but to go into
the mountains. Honduras did not have a guerrilla movement in the
80's, as neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala did, but they have
the possible beginnings of one now. That's just a thought I can't
expand on without being there, which isn't in my personal cards
right now. So to get an idea if that or something else less explosive
but maybe still a threat to US hegemony is in the offing, link
from the bottom of my front page to Narco News.
Meanwhile, Jose
Mujica, an unrepentant former leftist guerrilla, by winning a
run-off election in Uruguay today, succeeded Tabare Vazquez
as the second consecutive new left wave president in that country.
An important aspect of the Uruguayan election was that Vasquez
served only the one term allowed by the constitution, but that's
OK because the socialist movement will go on under Mujica. It
has become tacitly accepted in Latin America in recent years that
the success of the Cuban revolution is owed to the continuity
of leadership there. That's why Hugo Chavez sought and got an
end to term limits in Venezuela and Evo Morales did the same thing
in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega has done the same in Nicaragua. In
Argentina, the Kirchners have bypassed term limits by succeeding
each other (only once so far). And what the US puppets in Honduras
who overthrew Zelaya suspected was that Zelaya was going to abolish
term limits so that he could continue in office long enough to
do some good.
All this makes sense because what poor
Latin Americans (the vast majority) need most is not democracy
but a better life. And to achieve that end, democratic elections
that did nothing but change the faces every 4 or 6 years have
never done them any good. They need continuity of progressive
leadership - either one leader like Fidel or Hugo who will stick
to the project or a series of like-minded leaders who do the same
until they successfully escape the capitalist jungle and reach
a state of civilized socialism.
It's too bad that Barack Obama right now
appears unwilling to understand that, because the most serious
obstacle faced by Latin Americans is not the compromising of democracy
but the strong actual probability that the US will try to stop
them. And THAT's why Hugo Chavez is reacting so angrily to the
deployment of US troops in Colombia. It's not, as US media pretend,
that he is jealous of his personal power. It's that Colombia is
the only large fascist country left in South America, and Washington's
stated reasons for a surge of military presence there is, besides
the war-on-drugs scam, to be in position to confront US "enemies"
in the region.
This is the situation that justifies
fears of more attempted coups in Latin America like the one that
just wrapped up its success in Honduras and was very openly approved
by the US State Department today. On November 29 2009, that's
the way it is.
-Glen Roberts
You have
to read between the lines of anti-China news
25
December 2009: The story of a Chinese dissident, a Tiananmen
Square veteran, going to jail for seeking 'political liberalization"
may seem unambiguous to readers as well trained by their media
as Pavlov's dog to frown at China and communism. But in the context
of a daily flow of often near identical embedded media hit pieces
against China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia (in
short against any country the US State Department has designated
as "evil"), even if you don't do some research, you should at
least look more closely at the hit piece itself.
I myself wish there was a single medium
I could read that I knew told the truth, so I didn't have to spend
hours on the computer or in the library filling in the background
for every suspicious story published. I can't speak all languages
and go everywhere, so I don't know, but this story resembles stories
about Cuba and Venezuela and (in the 80's) Nicaragua that I DO
know were grossly dishonest.
I speak Spanish, I've traveled in 16 Latin
American countries, in some of them (like Cuba) VERY extensively,
and I know certainly that Cuban dissidents the US press shed crocodile
tears for and glibly described as "journalists," when they were
tried and jailed in 2003, were in fact willing agents of a clearly
enemy foreign power (the US) passing out materials they were sent
from Miami or handed in the home of the US Interests Officer in
Havana, not to express their opinions but to TRY to stir up a
counter revolution in the one country it would be MOST criminal
to overthrow.
I don't know that much about China. But
when I read on BBC and in Al Jazeera at 1 a.m. this Christmas
morning (as Americans will read in their papers later this morning
or tomorrow) that the case against Liu (Xiaobo) centers on
his co-authoring of a petition titled Charter 08, which calls
for the protection of human rights in China and reform of the
country's one-party communist system, I see some blinking
red lights, as you should.
For instance, I wonder what the very often
misused word reform means. What does centers on
mean - that there was some other less respectable blather all
around the center? What was the tone of the petition to a Chinese
ear? It was on the internet. How many people did it reach and
how many of them were sophisticated enough to see through it -
if by chance it needed seeing through? Lots of people nowhere
nearly as credible as Tom Paine have written warped imitations
of "Common Sense." Most importantly, why are the protection
of human rights in China and reform of the country's one-party
communist system lumped together in the news report as if
the two things were equal in nature. They certainly aren't. One
is perhaps innocuous. The other is subversive.
The Al Jazeera story tells me objectively
in one short paragraph that A Chinese court has sentenced a
leading dissident to 11 years in prison for "inciting subversion
of state power." But the possibly not very objective reporter
tells me in the next paragraph that Liu Xiaobo, a 53-year-old
academic, who was previously jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen Square
protests, had been charged for co-authoring a document appealing
for political liberalization. LOOK AGAIN PLEASE! Inciting
subversion and appealing for political liberalization
aren't quite the same thing, are they?
The reporter's name is Chinese, not Arab
(as you'd expect for an Al Jazeera staff member) or English (as
you'd expect for a translator for Al Jazeera's English edition).
Could she be a Chinese dissident? US media often use Cuban dissidents,
Venezuelan dissidents, Iranian dissidents, and North Korean dissidents
as correspondents or as sources of supposedly reliable information
about those countries. Outside sources quoted in the story include
HRW (the New York based Human Rights Watch), a group I don't trust
at all, which I think may have CIA connections, and the US embassy
in China, which I know has CIA connections.
At the very end of the Al Jazeera story
(this is what you called buried), it is reported that The petition,
which said "we should end the practice of viewing words as crimes,"
specifically called for the abolition of subversion in China's
criminal code - the very crime for which Liu was sentenced on
Friday. CALLED FOR WHAT? The abolition of subversion in
China's criminal code?
Now wait a minute! Every high school
journalist learns to handle the idea that shouting the mere word
"FIRE!" in a crowded theater is a crime. And don't all countries
have laws against subversion? The US does. England does. I'd guess
all Arab countries do. Laws against inciting a riot are considered
very reasonable everywhere. Aren't they? And wouldn't you say
inciting a riot is less intense than inciting nation-wide subversion?
Laws against declaring war on one's own country are surely always
considered reasonable by the concerned countries. Right? And wasn't
Liu, by trying to stir up, justify, and lead a wave of subversion,
declaring war on China? I think he was. Maybe you're well enough
trained to think it's perfectly OK according to Emily Post to
stir up internal subversion against a communist country. But do
you expect China to agree?
-Glen Roberts
UNSPINNING OFFICIAL STORIES 2008
BACK TO THE FRONT PAGE
TO GO ON TO 2010 OR ANY YEAR UP TO THE PRESENT - PICK A YEAR:
2008; 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016
|
