The Anti-Empire Report
Some things you need to know before the world ends
October 19, 2006
by William Blum
The jingo bells are ringing
"Who really poses the greatest danger to world peace:
Iraq,
North Korea or the United States?"
asked Time magazine in
an online poll in early 2003, shortly before the US invasion of Iraq.
The final results were:
North Korea 6.7%, Iraq 6.3%, the United States 86.9%;
706,842 total votes
cast.[1]
Imagine that following
North Korea's recent underground nuclear test neither the United States
nor any other government
cried out that the sky was falling.
No threat to world peace
and security was declared by the White House or any other house.
It was thus not the lead
story on every radio and TV broadcast and newspaper page one.
The UN Security Council
did not unanimously condemn it.
Nor did NATO. "What
should we do about him?" was not America Online's plaintive all-day
headline alongside a
photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Who would have known
about the explosion, even if it wasn't baby-sized?
Who would have cared?
But because all this
fear mongering did in fact take place,
www.vote.com was able to
pose the question -- "North Korea's Nuclear Threat:
Is It Time For An
International Economic Blockade To Make Them Stop?"
-- and hence compile a
93% "yes" vote.
It doesn't actually take
too much to win hearts and mindless.
Media pundit Ben
Bagdikian once wrote:
"While it is
impossible for the media to tell the population what to think,
they do tell the public
what to think about."
So sometime in the
future, the world might, or might not,
have nine states
possessing nuclear weapons instead of eight. So what?
Do you know of all the
scary warnings the United States issued about a nuclear-armed
Soviet Union? A
nuclear-armed China?
And the non-warnings
about a nuclear-armed Israel?
There were no scary
warnings or threats against ally Pakistan for the nuclear-development
aid it gave to North
Korea a few years ago, and Washington has been busy this year enhancing
the nuclear arsenal of
India, events which the world has paid little attention to,
because the United
States did not mount a campaign to tell the world to worry.
There's still only one
country that's used nuclear weapons on other people,
but we're not given any
warnings about them.
In 2005, Secretary of War Rumsfeld, commenting about large
Chinese military expenditures,
said: "Since no
nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?"[2]
The following year, when
asked if he believed the Venezuelans' contention that their large weapons
build up was strictly
for defense, Rumsfeld replied: "I don't know of anyone threatening
Venezuela
- anyone in this
hemisphere."[3]
Presumably, the
honorable secretary, if asked, would say that no one threatens North Korea
either,
Or Iran, Or Syria. Or
Cuba.
He may even believe
this.
However, beginning with
the Soviet Union, as one country after another joined the nuclear club,
Washington's ability to
threaten them or coerce them declined, which is of course North Korea's
overriding reason for
trying to become a nuclear power (or Iran's if it goes that route).
Indeed, it was the
initial stationing of US tactical nuclear artillery shells along the
demilitarized
zone between North and
South Korea in the late 1960s that prompted North Korea to begin a nuclear
program.[3a]
Undoubtedly there are
some in the Bush administration who are not unhappy about the
North Korean test. A
nuclear North Korea with a "crazy" leader serves as a rationale for
policies
the White House is
pursuing anyway, like anti-missile systems, military bases all over the map,
ever-higher military
spending, and all the other nice things a respectable empire bent
on world domination
needs. And of course, important elections are imminent and getting real tough
with looney commies
always sells well.
Did I miss something or
is there an international law prohibiting only North Korea
from testing nuclear
weapons?
And just what is the
danger? North Korea, even if it had nuclear weapons and delivery systems,
and there's no evidence
that it does, is of course no threat to attack anyone with them.
Like Iraq under Saddam
Hussein, North Korea is not suicidal.
And just for the record, contrary to what we've been told a million
times,
there's no objective
evidence that North Korea invaded South Korea on that famous day
of June 25, 1950. The
accusations came only from the South Korean and US governments,
neither being a witness
to the event, neither with the least amount of credible impartiality.
No, the United Nations
observers did not observe the invasion.
Even more important, it
doesn't really matter much which side was the first to fire
a shot or cross the
border on that day because whatever happened was just the latest incident
in an already-ongoing
war of several years.[4]
Operation Because We Can
Captain Ahab had his Moby Dick. Inspector Javert had his Jean Valjean.
The
United States has its Fidel Castro.
Washington
also has its Daniel Ortega.
For
27 years, the most powerful nation in the world has found it impossible to
share the
Western
Hemisphere with one of its poorest and weakest neighbors, Nicaragua,
if
the country's leader was not in love with capitalism.
From
the moment the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the US-supported Somoza
dictatorship
in 1979, Washington was concerned about the rising up of that long-dreaded
beast
--
"another Cuba".
This
was war.
On
the battlefield and in the voting booths. For almost 10 years, the American
proxy army,
the
Contras, carried out a particularly brutal insurgency against the Sandinista
government
and
its supporters. In 1984, Washington tried its best to sabotage the elections,
but
failed to keep Sandinista leader Ortega from becoming president.
And
the war continued. In 1990, Washington's electoral tactic was to hammer home
the simple
and
clear message to the people of Nicaragua:
If
you re-elect Ortega all the horrors of the civil war and America's economic
hostility
will
continue. Just two months before the election, in December 1989, the United
States
invaded
Panama for no apparent reason acceptable to international law, morality,
or
common sense (The United States naturally called it "Operation Just
Cause");
one
likely reason it was carried out was to send a clear message to the people of
Nicaragua
that
this is what they could expect, that the US/Contra war would continue and even
escalate,
if
they re-elected the Sandinistas.
It worked; one cannot overestimate the power of fear, of murder,
rape,
and
your house being burned down. Ortega lost, and Nicaragua returned to the rule
of
the free market, striving to roll back the progressive social and economic
programs
that
had been undertaken by the Sandinistas. Within a few years widespread
malnutrition,
wholly
inadequate access to health care and education, and other social ills,
had
once again become a widespread daily fact of life for the people of Nicaragua.
Each presidential election since then has pitted perennial
candidate Ortega
against
Washington's interference in the process in shamelessly blatant ways.
Pressure
has been regularly exerted on certain political parties to withdraw their
candidates
so
as to avoid splitting the conservative vote against the Sandinistas.
US
ambassadors and visiting State Department officials publicly and explicitly
campaign
for
anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening all kinds of economic and diplomatic
punishment
if
Ortega wins, including difficulties with exports, visas, and vital family
remittances
by
Nicaraguans living in the United States. In the 2001 election,
shortly
after the September 11 attacks,
American
officials tried their best to tie Ortega to terrorism,
placing
a full-page ad in the leading newspaper which declared, among other things,
that:
"Ortega has a relationship of more than thirty years with states and
individuals
who
shelter and condone international terrorism."[5]
That
same year a senior analyst in Nicaragua for the international pollsters Gallup
was
moved to declare: "Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador
get publicly
involved
in a sovereign country's electoral process, nor have I ever heard of
it."[6]
Additionally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
--
which would like the world to believe that it's a private non-governmental
organization,
when
it's actually a creation and an agency of the US government
--
regularly furnishes large amounts of money and other aid to organizations in
Nicaragua
which
are opposed to the Sandinistas. The International Republican Institute (IRI),
a
long-time wing of NED, whose chairman is Arizona Senator John McCain,
has
also been active in Nicaragua creating the Movement for Nicaragua,
which
has helped organize marches against the Sandinistas.
An
IRI official in Nicaragua, speaking to a visiting American delegation in June
of this year,
equated
the relationship between Nicaragua and the United States to that of a son to a
father.
"Children
should not argue with their parents." she said.
With the 2006 presidential election in mind, one senior US
official wrote in a Nicaraguan
newspaper
last year that should Ortega be elected, "Nicaragua would sink like a
stone".
In
March, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the UN under Reagan
and
a prime supporter of the Contras, came to visit.
She
met with members of all the major Sandinista opposition parties and declared
her belief
that
democracy in Nicaragua "is in danger" but that she had no doubt that
the
"Sandinista dictatorship" would not return to power.
The
following month, the American ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli,
who
openly speaks of his disapproval of Ortega and the Sandinista party,
sent
a letter to the presidential candidates of conservative parties offering
financial
and
technical help to unite them for the general election of November 5.
The
ambassador stated that he was responding to requests by Nicaraguan
"democratic parties"
for
US support in their mission to keep Daniel Ortega from a presidential victory.
The
visiting American delegation reported: "In a somewhat opaque statement Trivelli
said
that if Ortega were to win, the concept of governments recognizing governments
wouldn't
exist anymore and it was a 19th century concept anyway.
The
relationship would depend on what his government put in place."
One
of the fears of the ambassador likely has to do with Ortega talking of
renegotiating CAFTA,
the
trade agreement between the US and Central America,
so
dear to the hearts of corporate globalizationists.
Then,
in June, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said it was necessary
for
the Organization of American States (OAS) to send a mission of Electoral
Observation
to
Nicaragua "as soon as possible" so as to "prevent the old
leaders of corruption and communism
from
attempting to remain in power" (though the Sandinistas have not occupied
the presidency,
only lower offices, since 1990).
The explicit or implicit message of American pronouncements
concerning Nicaragua
is
often the warning that if the Sandinistas come back to power, the horrible war,
so
fresh in the memory of Nicaraguans, will return. The London Independent
reported
in
September that "One of the Ortega billboards in Nicaragua was
spray-painted
'We
don't want another war'. What it was saying was that if you vote for Ortega
you
are voting for a possible war with the US."[7]
Per
capita income in Nicaragua is $900 a year; some 70% of the people live in
poverty.
It
is worth noting that Nicaragua and Haiti are the two nations in the Western
Hemisphere
that
the United States has intervened in the most, from the 19th century to the
21st,
including
long periods of occupation.
And
they are today the two poorest in the hemisphere, wretchedly so.
Don't look back
The cartoon awfulness of the Bush crime syndicate's foreign policy is enough to
make Americans
nostalgic
for almost anything that came before.
And
as Bill Clinton parades around the country and the world associating himself
with
"good" causes, it's enough to evoke yearnings in many people on the
left who should
know
better. So here's a little reminder of what Clinton's foreign policy was
composed of.
Hold
on to it in case Lady Macbeth runs in 2008 and tries to capitalize on lover
boy's record.
Yugoslavia: The United
States played the principal role during the 1990s
in
the destruction of this nation, republic by republic, the low point of which
was
78
consecutive days of terrible bombing of the population in 1999.
No,
it was not an act of "humanitarianism". It was pure imperialism,
corporate globalization,
getting
rid of "the last communist government in Europe", keeping NATO alive
by giving
it
a function after the end of the Cold War. There was no moral issue behind US
policy.
The
ousted Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, is routinely labeled
"authoritarian"
(Compared
to whom? To the Busheviks?), but that had nothing to do with it.
The
great exodus of the people of Kosovo resulted from the bombing,
not
Serbian "ethnic cleansing"; and while saving Kosovars the Clinton
administration was servicing
the
Turkish massacre of Kurds. NATO admitted (sic) to repeatedly and deliberately
targeting
civilians; amongst other war crimes.[8]
Somalia: The 1993
intervention was presented as a mission to help feed the starving masses.
But
the US soon started taking sides in the clan-based civil war and tried to rearrange
the
country's political map by eliminating the dominant warlord, Mohamed Aidid,
and
his power base. On many occasions, US helicopters strafed groups of Aidid's
supporters
or
fired missiles at them; missiles were fired into a hospital because of the belief
that Aidid's
forces
had taken refuge there; also a private home, where members of Aidid's political
movement
were
holding a meeting; finally, an attempt by American forces to kidnap two leaders
of Aidid's
clan
resulted in a horrendous bloody battle. This last action alone cost the lives
of more
than
a thousand Somalis, with many more wounded.
It's questionable that getting food to hungry people was as
important as the fact
that
four American oil giants held exploratory rights to large areas of Somali land
and were hoping
that
US troops would put an end to the prevailing chaos which threatened their
highly
expensive investments.[9]
Ecuador: In 2000, downtrodden
Indian peasants rose up once again against
the
hardships of US/IMF globalization policies, such as privatization.
The
Indians were joined by labor unions and some junior military officers and their
coalition
forced
the president to resign. Washington was alarmed.
American
officials in Quito and Washington unleashed a blitz of threats against
Ecuadorian government
and
military officials. And that was the end of the Ecuadorian revolution.[10]
Sudan: The US deliberately bombed
and destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in 1998
in
the stated belief that it was a plant for making chemical weapons for
terrorists.
In
actuality, the plant produced about 90 percent of the drugs used to treat
the most deadly illnesses in that desperately
poor country; it was reportedly one of the biggest
and
best of its kind in Africa. And had no connection to chemical weapons.[11]
Sierra Leone: In 1998, Clinton sent Jesse Jackson as his
special envoy to Liberia and Sierra Leone,
the
latter being in the midst of one of the great horrors of the 20th century
--
an army of mostly young boys, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF),
going
around raping and chopping off people's arms and legs.
African
and world opinion was enraged against the RUF,
which
was committed to protecting the diamond mines they controlled.
Liberian
president Charles Taylor was an indispensable ally and supporter of the RUF
and
Jackson was an old friend of his. Jesse was not sent to the region to try to
curtail
the
RUF's atrocities, nor to hound Taylor about his widespread human rights
violations,
but
instead, in June 1999, Jackson and other American officials drafted entire
sections
of
an accord that made RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, the vice president of Sierra
Leone,
and
gave him official control over the diamond mines, the country's major source of
wealth.[12]
Iraq: Eight more years of the economic
sanctions which Clinton's National Security Advisor,
Sandy
Berger, called "the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in
the history
of
mankind",[13] absolutely devastating every aspect of the lives of the
Iraqi people,
particularly
their health; truly a weapon of mass destruction.
Cuba: Eight more years of economic
sanctions, political hostility,
and
giving haven to anti-Castro terrorists in Florida. In 1999,
Cuba
filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for
economic losses
and loss of life during the first forty years
of this aggression.
The
suit holds Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the
wounding
and
disabling of 2,099 others.
Only the imperialist powers have the ability to enforce
sanctions and are therefore
always exempt from them.
As to Clinton's domestic policies, keep in mind those two
beauties:
The
"Effective death penalty Act" and the "Welfare Reform Act".
And let's not forget the massacre at Waco, Texas.
Three billion years from amoebas to Homeland Security
"The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind
passengers that you may not take any liquids onto the plane.
This includes ice cream, as the ice cream will melt and turn into a liquid."
This was actually heard by one of my readers at the Atlanta
Airport recently;
he
laughed out loud. He informs me that he didn't know what was more bizarre,
that
such an announcement was made or that he was the only person that he could see
who
reacted to its absurdity.[14] This is the way it is with societies of people.
Like
with the proverbial frog who submits to being boiled to death in a pot of water
if
the water is heated very gradually, people submit to one heightened absurdity
and indignation
after
another if they're subjected to them at a gradual enough rate.
That's
one of the most common threads one finds in the personal stories of Germans
living
in the Third Reich. This airport story is actually an example of an absurdity
within
an absurdity. Since the "bomb made from liquids and gels" story was
foisted
upon
the public, several chemists and other experts have pointed out the technical
near-impossibility
of manufacturing such a bomb in a moving airplane,
if
for no other reason than the necessity of spending at least an hour or two in
the airplane bathroom.
NOTES
[1] Time European
edition online: http://www.time.com/time/europe/gdml/peace2003.html
[2] Washington Post, June
4, 2005
[3] Associated Press,
October 3, 2006
[3a] Washington Post,
October 14, 2006, p.A14
[4] William Blum,
Killing Hop: US Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II (2004),
chapter 5
[5]
Nicaragua Network (Washington, DC), October 29, 2001
--
www.nicanet.org/pubs/hotline1029_2001.html
and New York Times, November 4, 2001, p.3
[6] Miami Herald,
October 29, 2001
[7]
The remainder of the section on Nicaragua is derived primarily from The
Independent (London),
September
6, 2006, and "2006 Nicaraguan Elections and the US Government Role.
Report
of the Nicaragua Network delegation to investigate US intervention in the
Nicaraguan
elections
of November 2006" --
www.nicanet.org/pdf/Delegation%20Report.pdf
See also: "List of interventions by the United States government in
Nicaragua's democratic process." --
www.nicanet.org/list_of_interventionist_statments.php
[8] Michael Parenti,
"To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia" (2000)
Diana Johnstone, "Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and
Western Delusions" (2002)
William Blum, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower" (2005),
see
"Yugoslavia" in index.
[9] Rogue State, pp.
204-5
[10] Ibid., pp. 212-3
[11] William Blum,
"Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire", chapter
7
[12] Ryan Lizza,
"Where angels fear to tread", New Republic, July 24, 2000
[13] White House press
briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
[14] Story related to me
by Jack Muir
To make a financial donation to support the work of the
Anti-Empire Report you can use the following address.
Thank you.
William Blum
5100 Connecticut Ave., NW #707
Washington, DC 20008-2064
William
Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since
World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions
of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at <www.killinghope.org >
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