"In [civil war-era] Guatemala, Israel, acting on behalf of
the Reagan administration, stepped in to supply military equipment, including
helicopters and Galil rifles, and training that had been cut off during the
previous Carter administration. Israel also supplied [the Guatemalan regime
with] computers, software, and other equipment used for surveillance. This was
at the height of the genocide, which ultimately left 200,000 dead, including
many Mayans." ~ acclaimed author and historian Greg Grandin
They’re back… The
criminal cabal that wreaked havoc in South America during the Reagan
Administration really never left. What
Tucker Carlson aptly called Bureaucratic Tape Worms, Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams
continued to do their dirty work during the administrations of W. Bush and
Barack Obama, sometimes through “Stink Tanks” and sometimes through the State
Department. They are responsible for the
throngs of illegal immigrants charging through our borders to escape the
U.S.-Israeli backed death squads in throughout South America, particularly
where elected leaders have been replaced with CIA installed strongmen.
These criminals should be prosecuted for treason as they
really hate America and want to destroy our once great nation in their service
to Zionist controlled Israel. Donald
Trump is right to want to stop the flow of the indigenous people of South
America but the way to do that is to fire the Bolton/Pompeo/Abrams cabal and
let the people of South America be ruled by their elected leaders not the
tyrants installed by the Bureaucratic Tape Worms. Americans need to learn the history of what
has been happening in South America since the 1970’s. From Belen Fernandez in Aljazeera (2013):
Excerpt:
Death by 'security': Israel's services in Latin America
The country has supported
repressive governments in the region to suppress indigenous movements and
uprisings.
According to a Mexican news article
that surfaced in May, the Israeli
military will begin training the police force in Mexico's southeastern state of
Chiapas, where the predominantly indigenous Zapatista National Liberation
Army is based.
Yaron Yugman, Israel's defence
ministry representative in Mexico, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, is
quoted as affirming that "a country's
security is fundamental to its growth" and that human rights would be one
of the focuses of military instruction.
Of course, "security" and "growth" aren't luxuries usually
intended for domestic indigenous groups. A May article in The Electronic
Intifada recalls the aftermath of the 1994 Zapatista uprising, which coincided
with the inauguration of the North American Free Trade Agreement:
"The Mexican government found itself needing to respond to the
dictates of foreign investors, as a famously leaked Chase-Manhattan Bank memo
revealed: 'While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental
threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the
investment community. The government
will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of
the national territory and of security policy'."
As for the alleged focus on human
rights, Israel's expertise in oppressing
indigenous populations and squelching dignity happens to be more marketable. The Israeli embassy in Mexico has
reportedly denied military machinations in the southeast, but not even Fox News
Latino is convinced:
"The Israeli Embassy's
denial of its government working in Chiapas is puzzling, given the long history
that Israel's government has of working with Mexico. Since the early 1970s, the Mexican
government has purchased airplanes, helicopters, missile boats, small arms and
other weapons from either the Israeli army or Israeli military
contractors."
Contributions to genocide
Mexico's indigenous Mayans are not the only group to have found
themselves on the receiving end of Israel's arsenal. In an email to me, acclaimed author and
historian Greg Grandin outlined a previous episode of such charitable regional
intervention:
"In [civil war-era] Guatemala, Israel, acting on behalf of the
Reagan administration, stepped in to supply military equipment, including
helicopters and Galil rifles, and training that had been cut off during the
previous Carter administration. Israel also supplied [the Guatemalan regime
with] computers, software, and other equipment used for surveillance. This was at the height of the genocide,
which ultimately left 200,000 dead, including many Mayans."
Investigative reporter Jeremy
Bigwood, who as a photojournalist covered Latin American civil wars in the
1980s and 1990s, confirmed that the
Israelis were "up to their ears in the genocide" in Guatemala. He
said the Israelis had supplied the military with Arava STOL planes and armoured
personnel carriers, and established an ammunition factory in the city of Coban.
Bigwood added: "The Israelis used
telephone analysis - similar to what the NSA is now doing - and were able to
utterly destroy the Guatemalan urban guerrillas. They assisted in the
countryside by mapping out each family
farmhouse and identifying the politics of the inhabitants."
A 2012 report entitled Israel's
Worldwide Role in Repression by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
notes that Israel's extensive experience
in displacing Palestinians enabled the state to assist in the planning and
implementation of "scorched earth" policies in both Guatemala and El
Salvador.
According to the report, the
Guatemalan operations "were combined with 'development poles' -
concentrated villages of displaced populations that allowed for greater
government control over the popular movement and the repression of any
grassroots organising".
Going back further, a 1986 article
by the Middle East Research and Information Project quotes a former member of
the Knesset foreign affairs committee as defending Israeli involvement in
Guatemala: "Israel is a pariah state. When people ask us for something, we
cannot afford to ask questions about ideology. The only type of regime that Israel would not aid would be one that
is anti-American".
From Palestinian laboratory to
'trail of terror'
One advantage to being forced to
comply "[w]hen people ask us for something", obviously, is that sizable profits accompany weapons sales.
As for Israel's alleged
pariah-hood, this tragic scenario is seemingly contradicted by Bigwood's 2003
article for Al Jazeera, Israel's Latin
American trail of terror, in which he lists countries in the region where
Israel has supplied, trained, and advised right-wing groups and regimes: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia,
Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. So much for
lonesomeness.
Ideology's negligible importance is
confirmed in Bigwood's article by Israel's
support for the Argentine military junta's dirty war of 1976-1983 - which was
characterised by mass forced disappearances and torture - despite, as
Bigwood notes, the junta's anti-Semitic orientation.
Ideological overlap is, however, seen in the case of Colombia, where
President Juan Manuel Santos has not only appeared in a promotional video for
an Israeli private security firm but has also announced: "We've even
been accused of being the Israelites [sic] of Latin America, which personally
makes me feel really proud."
Inside Story - The shift in the
global arms trade
Beyond verifying Santos'
clunessness, this statement is particularly relevant given that Carlos Castano - the founder of modern Colombian
paramilitarism - was trained in Israel and acknowledged copying the
paramilitary concept from the Israelis.
Israel's hobby of collective
punishment has, it seems, proven especially instructive; although formally
disbanded, Colombian paramilitaries
continue to terrorise civilian populations, often reportedly in concert with
the military - which is itself famous for slaughtering civilians and dressing
the corpses up as anti-government guerrillas. A primary goal of this terrorisation is to clear land of indigenous
groups, campesinos, and other people whose existence impedes the proper
exploitation of resources.
In Chiapas, meanwhile, the indigenous movement has rudely
imperiled the flourishing of neoliberalism. The Electronic Intifada article
explains: "The Zapatistas took
back large tracts of land [from the government] on which they have since built
subsistence cooperatives, autonomous schools, collectivised clinics and other
democratic community structures."
Enter the Israeli army.
John Collins, chair of the Global
Studies Department at New York's St Lawrence University, describes Israeli
military collaboration with the Mexican
government in Chiapas as "further evidence of how tools of surveillance
and repression field-tested on Palestinians are being used throughout the
world", quoting Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper's assessment that
"[t]he Israeli economy is based on exporting the occupation [of
Palestine]".
Although Israel may contend that
"a country's security is fundamental to its growth", the
fact is that global insecurity is fundamental to Israel's growth.
There is no way to secure our southern border when these
murderous thugs are causing the mass migration from the South American
countries they are pillaging. These
so-called “Judeo-Christians” murder indigenous people on a massive scale and do
not value human life at all. They seized
back control of the United States government in 2000 and will not give up their
power easily. They hate the American
people and have become extremely wealthy feeding off the U.S. treasury. They run a shadow government worth trillions
of taxpayer dollars. These are very
dangerous zealots. From Whitney Webb at
Mint Press:
Excerpt:
The Untold Story of Christian Zionism’s Rise to Power in the United
States
Well before Theodore Herzl founded
political Zionism and published The Jewish State, Christian Zionists in the United States and England were already
seeking to direct and influence the foreign policy of both nations in
service to a religious obsession end times prophecy.
The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not
composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of
7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American
Jewish community.
Members of this organization,
Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting
thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo,
Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI’s leader, controversial evangelical
preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and
was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the
administration’s upcoming “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine.
CUFI is but one of many organizations
throughout American history that have
promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish
ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times
prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth — an event
Christians often refer to as “the Second Coming.”
While organizations like CUFI and
its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948,
and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the
fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there
is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only
thing standing between them and the Second Coming.
There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these Christians,
often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are
a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.
As was explored in previous
installments of this series, these
Christian Zionists, much like religious Zionist extremists in Israel, believe
that the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock must be replaced with a Third
Jewish Temple in order to usher in the end times…
This alliance, based on a mutual
obsession with hastening the coming of the Apocalypse, continues to this day
and now, more than at any other time in history, these groups have reached the heights of power in both Israel and the
United States…
Yet, this fire-and-brimstone vision
of the end times has long been a guide for prominent figures in American
history and the American elite, even predating Zionism’s founding as a
political movement. Thus, Christian
Zionism’s influence on Trump administration policy is merely the latest of a
long list of examples where prophecy and politics have mixed in American
history, often with world-altering results.
Puritans, Prophecy and Palestine
Accounts of the role of European
and North American Christians in the creation of the state of Israel often
begin with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but the efforts of certain Christian groups in England and the United
States to create a Jewish state in Palestine actually date back centuries
earlier and significantly predate Zionism’s official founding by Theodore
Herzl.
Among the first advocates for the
physical immigration of European Jews to Palestine were the Puritans, an
offshoot of Christian Protestantism that emerged in the late 16th century and
became influential in England and, later, in the American colonies. Influential Puritans devoted considerable
interest to the role of Jews in eschatology, or end-times theology, with
many — such as John Owen, a 17th-century theologian, member of parliament, and
administrator at Oxford — believing that the physical return of Jews to
Palestine was necessary for the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.
While the Puritan roots of what
would later become known as Christian Zionism are often overlooked in modern
accounts of where and why American evangelical support for Israel began, its
adherents still clearly acknowledge its legacy. For instance, on Monday at the
CUFI conference, Pompeo, himself a
Christian Zionist known for his obsession with the end times, told the group
the following:
Christian support in America for
Zion — for a Jewish homeland — runs back to the early Puritan settlers, and it
has endured for centuries. Indeed, our second president [John Adams], a couple
years back, said… ‘I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent
nation.’
These Puritan beliefs, which
persist today and have only grown in popularity, became more entrenched in England and colonial America with time,
especially among the monied political class, and led to a variety of
interpretations regarding exactly what the Bible says about the end times…
Hagee is the pastor of Cornerstone
Church in San Antonio, Texas, which has an active membership of over 22,000. A
charismatic Christian who believes in dispensationalist eschatology and thinks
that Christians are biblically required to support Israel, Hagee has long been a major advocate for Israel within evangelical and
charismatic Christianity circles and has raised over $80 million for Israel
since he first began hosting “A Night to Honor Israel” events in the early
1980s.
In 2006, Hagee sought to create the
“Christian AIPAC” and revived a then-defunct organization previously founded in
1975 known as Christians United for Israel, or CUFI, mentioned at the beginning
of this installment. Since its
re-founding, CUFI has grown exponentially, now counting 7 million members, a
figure that exceeds the Jewish population of the United States, which
stands at around 5.7 million. Hagee chairs its executive board, which
included Jerry Falwell up until Falwell’s death in 2007.
CUFI is exempt from paying U.S. taxes and from publicly disclosing its
finances because it is officially registered as a church, though it is
often likened to an arm of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and actively promotes and funds illegal
West Bank settlements. CUFI also advocates for Israeli sovereignty over
all of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and the construction of a Third Temple.
Much has been written about CUFI’s influence in the Republican Party,
which began under the George W. Bush administration soon after its founding. As
journalist Max Blumenthal noted in a 2006 article for The Nation: “Over the
past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings
about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for
Israel (CUFI).”
As a result of these meetings, CUFI aligned itself tightly with the
neoconservatives that were well represented in the Bush administration, even
appointing neoconservative and Christian Zionist Gary Bauer to its board
and naming Bauer the first director of its lobbying arm, the CUFI Action Fund.
Bauer is a founding member of the highly controversial and now-defunct
neoconservative group, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and
has also served on the executive board of the neoconservative group Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).
CUFI has since won powerful
allies and counts neoconservative Elliott Abrams; former CIA
director James Woosley; neoconservative archon Bill Kristol; former Arkansas
Governor Mike Huckabee; Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and
Ted Cruz (R-TX); Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and U.S. Vice President
Mike Pence among its staunchest supporters. At a CUFI summit last year, Netanyahu described CUFI as a “vital part
of Israel’s national security.”
In addition, CUFI has close ties to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the top donor to
President Trump and the entire Republican Party. Adelson even received a
special award from Hagee at a 2014 CUFI event. “I’ve never had a greater warm
feeling than being honored by Pastor Hagee,” said a beaming Sheldon Adelson at
the time.
At the most recent CUFI summit, held on Monday, the Trump
administration sent Pence, Pompeo, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman,
Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International
Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, all of
whom spoke at the summit…
While Hagee’s influence and the
influence of his organization CUFI are stronger than ever with Trump in the
White House, his political clout with
the Trump administration is, at least partially, due to the presence of staunch Christian Zionists in two of the top
offices in the executive branch: vice president and secretary of state.
Pence and Pompeo push “holy war”
Though several Trump officials spoke at the recent CUFI summit, two
stand out — not just for their high-ranking positions but also for their open admissions that their
Christian Zionist beliefs guide their policies. These officials are Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State
and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
After Trump chose his running mate, Pence’s religious fervor came under media
scrutiny, with several outlets noting that he was known to be an ardent
Christian Zionist. Pence’s faith gained particular attention owing to his
past statements on Israel, which he has often described in prophetic terms…
Though many of the initial concerns
about Pence revolved around his likely effects on domestic policy, much of his
influence has instead been seen in foreign policy, including the
administration’s Middle East policy. His
public identification as a Christian Zionist and his speech to the 2017 CUFI
summit, the first vice president to ever speak at the annual event, have led
some to worry that the Christian Zionist view of prophecy is guiding Pence’s
political actions.
Following Pence’s first speech at
CUFI, Daniel Hummel, a scholar and fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told the
Washington Post:
Christian Zionism has a long history in American politics, but it has
never captured the bully pulpit of the White House. Past administrations
often used general biblical language in reference to Israel, but never has the evangelical theology of
Christian Zionism been so close to the policymaking apparatus of the executive
branch…
Though Mike Pence is the
highest-ranking member of the Trump administration who is openly a Christian
Zionist, it is Pompeo that is the most
overt and open about how his religious beliefs regarding the end times guide
his decision-making as head of the U.S. State Department.
For much of his political career, Pompeo has framed U.S. counterterrorism
policy as a “holy war” between Christianity and Islam, which he believes is
the earthly equivalent of a cosmic battle between good and evil. In 2017, as
CIA director, Pompeo claimed:
Radical Islamic terror [will]
continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and
fight and make sure that we know that
Jesus Christ is our savior [and] truly the only solution for our world.”
That same year, Pompeo created a new CIA “mission center”
targeting Iran headed by Michael D’Andrea, whose CIA nickname is “The Prince of
Darkness.” Pompeo, like many Christian Zionists, believes that war between
the United States and Iran is part of the end times, a belief that is outright
alarming given his prior control over CIA covert operations and his focus on
Iran, as well as his current role as the U.S.’ chief diplomat, in
which he has also been laser-focused on promoting an aggressive policy towards
Iran.
In addition to his views on “holy
war,” Pompeo also frequently discussed his views on the rapture while serving
as CIA director. TYT reported last
year that Pompeo had spoken about the rapture so frequently that it had
reportedly frightened top CIA officials.
According to Michael Weinstein —
founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group on
issues of religious freedom in the military and intelligence community — who
was quoted in the TYT report:
He [Pompeo] is intolerant of
anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist Christian. The people that worked under
him at the CIA that came to us were never confused — they never had time to be
confused. They were shocked and then they were scared shitless.”
A 2015 video of Pompeo that
surfaced while he was CIA director also
shows the former congressman describing politics as “a never-ending struggle …
until the rapture.”
Sheesh, if the CIA agents are scared shitless of Pompeo what
chance do the American people have? This
guy is seriously mentally ill and he’s America’s top diplomat. Trump needs to dump these people fast, like
yesterday. These are the same people who
are terrorizing South American indigenous people who are now storming our
southern border. Trump’s “special envoy”
to Venezuela is war criminal and Zionist Elliott Abrams. From Branko Marcetic at Jacobin Mag.
Excerpt:
The Tragic Life of the War Criminal Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams was once an innocent
child. And then he decided to spend the rest of his life covering up brutal
atrocities and defending right-wing dictatorships. Elliott
Abrams once said the animating force behind his and Ronald Reagan’s foreign
policy was that the world is “an exceedingly dangerous place.” And this is
true, largely because men like Elliott Abrams exist in it.
Last month, Abrams was tapped by Trump to serve as his special envoy to Venezuela,
to essentially help steer the Trump administration’s slow-burn effort to topple
that country’s government — or as Mike Pompeo put it, “restore democracy”
in the country.
It should go without saying that
the idea the Trump administration is
pursuing regime change in Venezuela for the sake of democracy and human rights
is as laughable as calling Jamal Khashoggi’s murder a surprise party gone
wrong. But in case you need to explain this to politically confused friends and
relatives, here are eight good reasons
why the appointment of Abrams, in particular, makes a mockery of any such
high-minded rhetoric.
1. He was knee-deep in human rights atrocities
Let’s start with the most obvious
point, which is that Abrams’ chief claim
to fame is his role in Ronald Reagan’s blood-soaked foreign policy in Central
America in the 1980s, for which he earned the nickname, “contra
commander-in-chief.” The contras were the brutal right-wing paramilitary
groups in Nicaragua who terrorized civilians throughout the decade, cutting a swath of torture, rape, and
murder aimed at everyone from the elderly to children.
Their methods were similar to those
of right-wing paramilitaries in the other countries of the region, including El Salvador and Guatemala, all of
which were supported by the Reagan administration. If you have the stomach to
read about them, there’s no shortage of sources that outline their barbarity…
2. He covered up brutal acts of terror
Key to Abrams’ role under Reagan
was playing down and denying the copious
human rights abuses being committed by the forces and governments he and the
administration supported.
As Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
pointed out in her grilling of Abrams
earlier this week, part of the Reagan administration’s “fabulous achievement”
in El Salvador was the horrific El Mozote massacre, which took place shortly
before Abrams took up his post.
In his attempt to convince the
Senate to certify that El Salvador’s government was improving its human rights
record — a precondition for receiving US aid — Abrams testified that the massacre had been “publicized when the
certification comes forward to the committee,” and was “being significantly
misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.” He claimed he had sent
military officers to investigate the reports, and that the massacre couldn’t be
confirmed.
Another incident was the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero,
killed on the orders of Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, one of the administration’s
partners in the country. “Anybody who thinks you’re going to find a cable
that says that Roberto d’Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool,” said
Abrams. In fact, two such cables existed…
Meanwhile, as Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt embarked on a campaign of
genocide in the country, Abrams said he had “brought considerable progress” on human
rights. He defended Reagan’s lifting of a military aid embargo on Montt’s
government, claiming the slaughter of
civilians was “being reduced step by step” and that it was “progress” that had
to be “rewarded and encouraged.”
3. He’s an unrepentant liar
Abrams told Omar that it is “always the position of the United States”
to protect human rights, including in Venezuela, and he stressed the US didn’t
want to arm anti-Maduro forces. Besides his well-documented record of doing
exactly the opposite, Abrams’ words are even less relevant when you consider
his history of outright lying.
We’ve already seen how Abrams
regularly lied to cover up or play down abuses by the right-wing forces he
supported. This practice would ultimately land him in trouble when he misled Congress about the Iran-Contra
affair with statements that ranged from outright lies (“we’re not in the
fund-raising business”), to lawyerly parsing of the truth (“I said no foreign
government was helping the contras, because we had not yet received a dime from
Brunei,” he would write later)…
4. He hates democracy
Abrams has also shown a lifelong
contempt for the very thing he’s now meant to be advancing: democracy.
When the Uruguayan military government imprisoned Wilson Ferreira, the
country’s most popular politician and a fierce liberal opponent of its rule,
Abrams defended the Reagan administration’s meek response, which the New
York Times had called “stunning.” Abrams explained that “the transition [to
elected government] itself is more important than the immediate situation of
any individual politician.” Abrams had
earlier insisted there was no evidence the Uruguyan military was stifling
political freedom, even as it closed newspapers, arrested its opposition, and
continued to ban political leaders, among other things…
In 2002, Abrams reportedly “gave a nod” to the military coup that
attempted, ultimately unsuccessfully, to remove the democratically elected Hugo
Chavez from power. The Observer, which broke the story, called Abrams “the
crucial figure around the coup.” Abrams has had his eye on toppling Venezuela’s
government for some time.
When Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, Abrams,
then the point man for George W. Bush’s Middle East policy, helped implement a
scheme to nullify the results by fomenting a Palestinian civil war which, they
hoped, would remove Hamas from power. When the plan backfired, with Hamas
emerging victorious and in full control of Gaza, Abrams accused Hamas of staging a “coup.”
5. His only political principle was anticommunism
Abrams’ disregard for democracy is part and parcel of his general
philosophy, which views left-wing governments uniformly as threats to be
stamped out…
In 1984, Abrams quite candidly
explained to Policy Review that his human rights policy was one of double
standards: fierce opposition to
communist rights abusers, and coddling of oppressors friendly to the US…
In other words, no matter how brutal or outright fascist a
government, it was by default preferable to a communist one, a philosophy he
applied in obvious ways to his work in the Americas. It was also evident in
his treatment of Cuba, whose prisons he denounced in 1984 as “barbaric” and
whose leader, Fidel Castro, he labeled “oppressive” and accused of “betrayal…”
At literally the same time he was
doing this, Abrams publicly defended Turkey, a key regional ally, from
criticism of its human rights record. Abrams
praised Turkey, which had recently been pilloried in an Amnesty International
report for widespread torture of its people, for “extraordinary progress,” charging
that “some who criticize Turkey’s human rights situation have no interest in
human rights in Turkey or anywhere else,” but “simply use this issue as a
weapon with which to attack a vital member of the Western alliance.”
6. He dislikes journalists and accountability
Abrams no doubt sympathized with
Turkey’s rulers because he himself had
first-hand experience dealing with pesky journalists and human rights groups…
While Abrams didn’t have a police
state at his disposal, that didn’t prevent him from lobbing heavy-handed
broadsides against reporters he didn’t like. He refused to be questioned by or
debate certain journalists he perceived as critical. Most infamously, from 1986 to 1987, Abrams accused left-wing Colombian
journalist Patricia Lara of being a “Cuban agent” and “an active liaison”
between Colombian terrorist organization M-19 and “the Cuban secret police.”
In October 1986, Lara was stopped by New York immigration officials and
imprisoned, before being sent back home, without explanation.
Abrams claimed to have “concrete evidence” that Lara was “heavily
engaged” with M-19, but when challenged to reveal evidence, claimed it was
based on “intelligence information” that he couldn’t reveal. The Colombian
Defense Ministry, then battling M-19, categorically denied they had any such
information, and assigned her a bodyguard because Abrams’ accusation had put
her in danger. The country’s foreign minister said “we don’t know where the
US government obtained” such information.
7. He’s a fan of regime change
Like any neoconservative worth his
salt, Abrams has an abiding faith in the
US government’s ability to simply remove world leaders it dislikes at will. (He’s also continued the neocon tradition of never personally
fighting in any war, avoiding Vietnam thanks to a hurt back that
happened to clear up once the war was over.)
When Abrams wanted to remove former
ally Manuel Noriega from power in Panama, the former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff under Reagan wrote, he threatened sanctions, then actually imposed sanctions, then
established a Panamanian government-in-exile on a US military base. Abrams
finally called outright for the US military to topple Noriega, in an op-ed
titled “Noriega Respects Power. Use It,” which is what George H. W. Bush
ultimately did. It was a chilling
preview of where US policy on Venezuela may now be heading if Maduro stays in
power…
In 2013, Abrams told a House Armed
Services Committee hearing that the US had to get militarily involved in Syria.
Why? Because “a display of American lack
of will power in Syria will persuade many Iranian officials that while we may
say ‘all options are on the table,’ in reality they are not — so Iran can
proceed happily and safely toward a nuclear weapon...”
8. He’s beloved by the Right
In case anyone still believes the
fiction that “anti-Trump” conservatives actually oppose Trump, Abrams is a living reminder that there’s no
daylight between Trump and the establishment Right that pretends to dislike
him.
Abrams was once an “anti-Trump”
Republican who signed a letter opposing his candidacy in 2016. He tutored Paul
Ryan in foreign policy when he was Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate, and served on Marco Rubio’s so-called National
Security Advisory Council in 2016. It’s no surprise the Florida senator,
long viewed as an establishment-friendly, “sensible” conservative alternative
to Trump, is now all but directing Trump’s Latin American policy, sounding
virtually indistinguishable from Abrams.
Abrams has now served in every Republican administration since he first
entered government bar one. In between, he’s worked at the Heritage
Foundation (whose head of Latin American policy just called him “a patriot and
dedicated voice for repressed communities”), helped found “anti-Trump” Bill
Kristol’s Project for the New American Century, was a fellow for the Council on
Foreign Relations, and was a board member of the National Endowment for
Democracy, the US government’s arm for foreign political meddling…
That someone like Abrams, who’s now
leading Trump’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, is warmly embraced by the
coterie of establishment and “never-Trump” conservatives should tell you
everything you need to know about these groups.
Yes Elliott Abrams is a Bureaucratic Tapeworm who never
really left the body politic and whose specialty is overthrowing democratically
elected governments in South America and supplying arms to murder indigenous
people. Don’t for a second believe that
the Democratic Party is any different.
Self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden’s presidency would not look any
different from that of a Republican. It
was the Obama Administration that overthrew the democratically elected
government of Honduras. From Stephen
Zunes at NCR Online:
Excerpt:
The US role in the Honduras coup and subsequent violence
On March 3, Berta Cáceres, a brave
and outspoken indigenous Honduran environmental activist and winner of the
Goldman Environmental Prize, was gunned down in her hometown of La Esperanza.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director for Amnesty International, noted how "For years, she had been the victim of
a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the
rights of indigenous communities."
She is just one of thousands of indigenous activists, peasant
leaders, trade unionists, journalists, environmentalists, judges, opposition
political candidates, human rights activists, and others murdered since a
military coup ousted the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya in
2009.
Despite being a wealthy logger and
rancher from the centrist Liberal Party, Zelaya had moved his government to the
left during his four years in office. During
his tenure, he raised the minimum wage and provided free school lunches, milk
for young children, pensions for the elderly, and additional scholarships for
students. He built new schools,
subsidized public transportation, and even distributed energy-saving light
bulbs.
None of these were particularly
radical moves, but it was nevertheless disturbing to the country’s wealthy
economic and military elites. More frightening was that Zelaya had sought to organize an assembly to replace the 1982
constitution written during the waning days of the U.S.-backed military
dictator Policarpo Paz Garcia.
A non-binding referendum on whether such a constitutional assembly
should take place was scheduled the day of the coup, but was cancelled when the military seized power and named
Congressional Speaker Roberto Micheletti as president.
Calling for such a referendum is
perfectly legal under Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran Civil Participation Act,
which allows public functionaries to perform such non-binding public
consultations regarding policy measures. Despite
claims by the rightist junta and its supporters, Zelaya was not trying to
extend his term. That question wasn’t even on the ballot. The
Constitutional Assembly would not have likely completed its work before his
term had expired anyway.
The leader of the coup, Honduran General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, was a
graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, a U.S. Army training program nicknamed “School of Assassins” for the sizable number of
graduates who have engaged in coups, as well as the torture and murder of
political opponents…
There is no evidence to suggest
that the Obama administration was behind the coup. However, a number of U.S. officials -- most notably
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- played an important role in
preventing Zelaya’s return to office and the junta consolidating its power
in the face of massive nonviolent protests.
Clinton insisted the day after the
coup that "all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying
problems that led to yesterday’s events."
When asked if her call for "restoring the constitutional order" in
Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself, she didn’t say it necessarily would.
State Department spokesperson Ian
Kelly evaded reporters' questions as to whether the United States supported
Zelaya's return, placing the United States
at odds with the Organization of American States, the Rio Group, and the U.N.
General Assembly, all of which called for the "immediate and unconditional
return" of Zelaya.
U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo
Llorens, reflecting the broad consensus of international observers, sent a
cable to Clinton entitled "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran
Coup," thoroughly documenting that "there is no doubt" that Zelaya’s ouster "constituted an
illegal and unconstitutional coup."
Similarly, Ann-Marie Slaughter, then serving as director of Policy Planning at the
State Department, sent an email to Clinton strongly encouraging her to
"take bold action" and to "find that [the] coup was a 'military
coup' under U.S. law."
However, Clinton's State Department refused to suspend U.S. aid to
Honduras -- as required when a democratically-elected government is ousted in
such a manner -- on the grounds that it wasn’t clear that the forcible
military-led overthrow actually constituted a coup d'état.
Emails released last year by the
State Department also show how Clinton
rejected calls by the international community to condemn the coup and used her
lobbyist friend Lanny Davis -- who was working for the Honduran chapter
of the Business Council of Latin America, which supported the coup -- to
open communications with Micheletti, the illegitimate interim ruler installed
by the military.
Leaders of Latin American nations, the U.N. General Assembly and other
international organizations unambiguously demanded Zelaya’s immediate return to
office. However, in her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton admits that she worked
to prevent restoring the elected president to office: “In the subsequent days
[after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including
Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in
Honduras and ensure that free and fair
elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the
question of Zelaya moot.”
The elections, held under military rule and marred by violence and
media censorship, were hardly free or fair. The Union of South American
Nations (UNASUR) declared they would not recognize elections held under the de
facto government and the Organization of American States drafted a resolution
that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the
dictatorship, but the State Department
blocked its adoption.
In the subsequent six years, the horrific repression and skyrocketing
murder rate -- now the highest in the world -- has resulted in tens of
thousands of refugees fleeing for safety in the United States. Ironically,
as Secretary of State, Clinton
rejected granting political asylum and supported their deportation.
Clinton’s role in supporting the
coup in Honduras is a reminder that the Middle East is not the only part of the
world in which she is willing to set aside principles of international law and
human rights to advance perceived U.S.
economic and strategic interests. Indeed, it may be a troubling indication of
the kind of foreign policies she would pursue as president.
So where are we going with all of these wars that the U.S.
is waging across the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia? The Christian Zionists have bankrupted
America and these wars for Empire are not sustainable. From Umair Haque at Eudaimonia and Co
Excerpt:
(Why We Should All Celebrate) The End of American Empire
America Fought a World War Against
Social Democracy. It Lost. Will the World be Better For It?
There’s a strange myth Americans are
taught, which is also a simple one. It goes like this: having an empire is good for them, and good for the world, too. It’s not so odd when you think about it. Every
empire from Rome to Britain has told itself this myth. Sometimes, it’s even
true — in ways. But in America’s case,
both parts are false.
One of the conditions necessary for
America to make progress again — instead of the grim, bleak, light-speed
regress it’s currently making — is to give up on empire. Let’s take those points one by
one, and along the way, I’ll explain what I mean by “American empire” —
though I’d bet you already have a hint.
Was American empire good for the
world? Let’s think about the long, long list of countries America destabilized, toppled, and destroyed. Chile, Argentina,
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua…the list is almost endless.
It’s a myth — and a particularly dangerous one that American empire was
some kind of gift to the world. DC insiders and American pundits see
America as some kind of benevolent policeman, standing guard over the world,
leading its peoples to freedom.
Americans are weaned on the milk of
this myth. But ask a Chilean how they
feel about Pinochet’s death squads, an Iraqi how they felt about Saddam — and
then being bombed to remove Saddam, anyone from southeast Asia about
America’s decades long wars against them.
America was never a benevolent
guardian of global peace or freedom. In fact, what was happening was this. Much
of the rest of the world — almost every
single country on my list above, in fact — didn’t want to choose the American
path: capitalism, greed, violence, narcissism. It wanted something very
different: social democracy.
Why? Because while Americans — at
least white ones — might have enjoyed the fruits of global capitalism, it was the
rest of the world which paid the price. With
its labour, with its raw materials, with endless drudgery. And more crucially,
with a lack of human rights, basic freedoms, or democracy. Hence, this rest
of the world was much more influenced by European thinkers than American ones.
From Marx to Fanon to Adorno. Latin Americans would name their kids Lenin, and
Asia saw powerful socialist and unionist movements arise.
America wasn’t giving the world
freedom. It was taking it away. The
world wanted social democracy. But America wasn’t about to have it. Because American capitalism couldn’t work
in isolation. It needed cheap oil, minerals, trees, meat. It needed
capital and labour and markets, the more speculative and destabilizing, the
better. But this was exactly what the world didn’t want.
Outside America, the fans of extreme, aggressive, predatory
capitalism were few and far between. Almost nonexistent, in fact. What
other region of the world chose it? Europe didn’t. Canada didn’t. Australia
didn’t. But see the point: these were
regions of the world that were free to choose — countries too rich, powerful,
and altogether white for America to interfere much with. Yet if a
country wasn’t any of those things — bang!
I really want you to reflect on
this point. Outside America, nearly
nobody on earth wanted to be a capitalist society. For good reason: they’d seen the ills firsthand that
capitalism brought with it, from pollution to inequality to despair.
America wouldn’t see them until the 2010s or so.
So what did America do? Well, it
set to work forcing the world to become capitalist societies, anyways. Any way
its elites deemed necessary. And if they
couldn’t be capitalist ones, then America would settle for authoritarian ones. Hence,
dictators like Saddam and Pinochet were installed — at least they were people
Americans could “do business” with, aka people who would sell oil and labour
cheap.
But this — America installing
authoritarianism in country after country, to ensure capitalism’s health — also
meant that the world never evolved the way it wanted to. It meant that the
world was less free than it should have been. Think about it, if you’re
American. If Chileans or Iraqis wanted
social democracy — who are you to tell them they can’t have it?
And yet that’s exactly what
American institutions did. In hard ways — they
made war, with bullets and bombs. In soft ways — they used propaganda and money
and disinformation.
Let me come to the point. Over the
last century or so, the world has not become as free as it should have been: the net effect of American hegemony is
that the growth of global social democracy was stifled and suffocated and
strangled. Simply ask the question: if America hadn’t acted like a violent,
greedy, bully — how many countries would have been stable social democracies
long ago? A long, long list — just the same list above…
Do you see how starkly opposed the
myth and the reality are? American empire is seen in America as a moral crusade
— “we bring peace and prosperity to the world!” But the world laughs at this
kind of naivete — precisely because the
reality is that America’s missiles and bombs have brought not just death and
despair, but decades of the lack of progress the world should have rightly
seen, wanted, and freely chose for itself, over and over again.
Now. If American empire had a steep
price for the world — country after country wanted to be a social democracy,
but America used force and power to make them capitalist societies, or
authoritarian states — what about America? Did
America pay a price for empire, too?
Can you already see it coming?...
It’s true — America spent trillions on wars, sacrificed countless lives, wasted its
time and energy, its “human capital.” There was a deeper price. Just as America denied the world the
chance to progress into social democracy — it never could, either.
Today, America is the world’s first poor rich country. A 15 year old in Bangladesh has a higher
chance of living to 50 than an American boy does. Think about that for
a second. Isn’t it staggering? But how did it happen? It wasn’t just because
America was busy making war on the world. There was a subtler effect happening.
The more that America fought against what the world wanted — social
democracy — the less it could ever have it at home. It’s collective mind —
its public sphere, its discourse, its ideas, its thinking — all became stunted,
polluted, crippled. The basic ideas of social democracy were presumed to be sinful,
horrific crimes — in a kind of Soviet way.
Nobody could ever argue for, say, public healthcare, education,
retirement — and hope to have a career as an American thinker, academic,
intellectual, pundit. But that was only logical. America was fighting a
global war against social democracy — though nobody in America could ever even
that much — and a society can’t allow itself to argue for the thing its
fighting against.
It was only left able to think in
terms of violence, in the end. “Which country should we bomb this year, Morning
Joe?” “I don’t know, Ezra Klein — maybe Iraq?” “Let’s see what David From and
Max Boot think!” “They love the idea!” “Let’s run it by Paul Ryan and the gang!” America’s intellectual class became a
cesspit of the world’s most foolish, violent, and clueless men. Men who wouldn’t stand a chance as thinkers in any other country at
all. But what do you expect when you’re fighting a war against what the world
wants?
In the end, something genuinely
bizarre and remarkable happened. Something that history will remember — and
shudder — but something we don’t understand yet.
America built the most perfect killing machine ever made. Click, tap,
swipe — Wham!! An entire village, town, city goes up in flames. From the
comfort of an air-conditioned room, by pressing a button, just by glancing at a
screen, the operator could kill literally anyone, anywhere on earth…
But at the same time, Americans didn’t have any of the following.
Healthcare. Retirement. Affordable education. Stable incomes. Savings. Community,
trust, happiness. Their lives
cratered.
The average American lived paycheck to paycheck, couldn’t raise $500
for an emergency, and, shockingly, died in a mountain of debt. He never
broke even his whole life long. And yet American economists — Soviet, by now —
pronounced that all was well in the empire.
But all wasn’t well. The price of American empire for America
was that it could never progress to the stage of social democracy — because
that was the very thing it was fighting a world war against. All it could
do were violent things, which had precisely no benefit to anyone, really
whatsoever. Like building the most
perfect killing machine in history. But not hospitals, schools, retirement
systems, and so forth.America regressed as a society — because it couldn’t
advance.
It grew more and more violent,
focused on violence, in love with violence, until at last, authoritarianism
arose. The very kind it had installed around the globe. But that wasn’t a
surprise, either. Capitalism had to be kept afloat. By any means necessary. If authoritarianism was ok with Americans
in Chile, Iraq, Argentina — why wouldn’t it be in America, too, in the end?
We’ve barely begun to understand
the price of America empire yet, as a world — or as Americans. But that price has been crippling. It has
been ruinous. Shattering. American empire cost the world freedom, development,
happiness, peace, maturity — the
world chose social democracy, but America prevented it, violently.
It fought a world war against
social democracy. But the price for America was that it never became a social
democracy, either. It became a more and
more predatory, extreme, aggressive capitalist society — what else could it
become.
America became the kind of society that built history’s most perfect
killing machine. But couldn’t give its own people insulin, an education,
healthcare, retirement. And that
kind of society, my friends, implodes — just as America’s doing today.
America’s world war against social
democracy failed. America lost — not
because an enemy defeated it, but because the costs were too steep to ever be
borne. And so we should all celebrate — if we are thinking, decent, humane,
worldly people — the end of American empire.
President Trump ran for president on a platform of social
justice. President Trump said he was
going to end these endless wars that have devastated America. Yet the very people who are responsible for
America’s decline, the Bureaucratic Christian Zionist Tapeworms have hijacked
his foreign policy that is the key to Make America Great Again.
The people charging our southern border do not want to leave
their beautiful, resource rich home countries, they just want what they voted
for, a social democracy. Regime change
begins at home and if Trump want to stop the flood of refugees storming our
border, fire the Bureaucratic Christian Zionist Tapeworm Criminal Cabal and
restore our Democracy in America.
Bolton/Pompeo/Pence and Elliott Abrams must be fired and tried for
treason. These tapeworms should be
excised from the body politic for good.
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