Has Washington's Power Peaked? Truth is Our Country

March 16, 2015

Has Washington's Power Peaked?

Truth is Our Country

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS


PCR was given the International Award for Excellence in Journalism. Here is a transcript of his acceptance speech at the Club De Periodistas De Mexico, March 12, 2015.



Colleagues,

Thank you for this recognition, for this honor. As Jesus told the people of Nazareth, a prophet is without honor in his own country. In the United States, this is also true of journalists.

In the United States journalists receive awards for lying for the government and for the corporations. Anyone who tells the truth, whether journalist or whistleblower, is fired or prosecuted or has to hide out in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, like Julian Assange, or in Moscow, like Edward Snowden, or is tortured and imprisoned, like Bradley Manning.

Mexican journalists pay an even higher price. Those who report on government corruption and on the drug cartels pay with their lives.

The Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has as an entry a list by name of journalists murdered in Mexico. This is the List of Honor. Wikipedia reports than more than 100 Mexican journalists have been killed or disappeared in the 21st century.
Despite intimidation the Mexican press has not abandoned its job. Because of your courage, I regard this award bestowed on me as the greatest of honors.

In the United States real journalists are scarce and are becoming more scarce. Journalists have morphed into a new creature. Gerald Celente calls US journalists “presstitutes,” a word formed from press prostitute. In other words, journalists in the United States are whores for the government and for the corporations.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/16/truth-is-our-country/

Organised crime is biggest security and humanitarian threat to Colombia - U.N.

Organised crime is biggest security and humanitarian threat to Colombia - U.N.

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:44 GMT
Author: Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA, March 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Colombia's criminal gangs pose the biggest threat to Colombians and are responsible for human trafficking, rights abuses and for forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes each year, the United Nations said.

While the government holds peace talks with leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in a bid to end 50 years of civil war, the main security threat to the Colombian people comes from organised crime - often perpetrated by ex-paramilitary fighters, according to a U.N. report.

Criminal gangs, composed of former right-wing paramilitaries and common criminals, are bent on maintaining and expanding their stakes in the cocaine trade and in illegal gold and silver mining along Colombia's Pacific coast.

"The main public security challenge remains violence by post-demobilisation armed groups linked to organised crime," said the annual human rights report released on Monday.

More:
http://www.trust.org/item/20150316194524-4uy8h/?source=fiOtherNews2

(My emphasis.)

The American Fingerprints on Colombia’s Dead

February 24, 2015

A Historian Instructs Peace Negotiators on U.S. Role in Colombian Civil War

The American Fingerprints on Colombia’s Dead

by W.T. WHITNEY Jr.


Colombia is seemingly a “no-go” zone for most U. S. media and even for many critics of U.S. overseas misadventures. Yet the United States was in the thick of things in Colombia while hundreds of thousands were being killed, millions were forced off land, and political repression was the rule.

Bogota university professor and historian Renán Vega Cantor has authored a study of U.S. involvement in Colombia. He records words and deeds delineating U.S. intervention there over the past century. The impact of Vega’s historical report, released on February 11, stems from a detailing of facts. Communicating them to English-language readers will perhaps stir some to learn more and to act.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government have been at war for half a century. Vega’s study appears within the context of negotiations in Cuba to end that conflict. Negotiators on both sides agreed in August, 2014 to form a “Historical Commission on Conflict and its Victims” to enhance discussions on victims of conflict. The Commission explored “multiple causes” of the conflict, “the principal factors and conditions facilitating or contributing to its persistence,” and consequences. Commission members sought “clarification of the truth” and establishment of responsibilities. On February 11 the Commission released an 809 – page report offering a diversity of wide-ranging conclusions. Vega was one of 12 analysts contributing individual studies to the report.

Having looked into “links between imperialist meddling and both counterinsurgency and state terrorism,” he claims the United States “is no mere outside influence, but is a direct actor in the conflict owing to prolonged involvement.” And, “U. S. actions exist in a framework of a relationship of subordination. … The block in power had an active role in reproducing subordination, because, (Vega quotes Colombia Internacional, vol 65), ‘there existed for more than 100 years a pact among the national elites for whom subordination led to economic and political gains.’” As a result, “Not only in the international sphere, but in the domestic one too, the United States, generally, has the last word.”

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/24/why-is-colombia-a-no-go-zone-for-american-reporters/

Breaking News: NYT Reports on What the Rest of the Western Hemisphere Thinks About the Conflict Betw

Published on Friday, March 13, 2015
by The Americas Blog (CEPR)

Breaking News: NYT Reports on What the Rest of the Western Hemisphere Thinks About the Conflict Between the US and Venezuela

by Mark Weisbrot

In a significant change in reporting at The New York Times, the newspaper yesterday became the first major news outlet in the English language media to report on what the rest of the governments in the Western Hemisphere think of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

This is potentially important because this part of the story, which has heretofore been ignored, could begin to change many people’s perceptions of what is behind the problems in U.S.-Venezuelan relations, if other journalists begin to report on it. The Obama administration is more isolated in Latin America than even George W. Bush was, but hardly anyone who depends on the major hemispheric media would know that, because the point of view of governments other than the U.S. is not reported.

The Times article contains this very succinct and eloquent comment on the new U.S. sanctions against Venezuela from Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa:

“It ought to be a joke in bad taste that reminds us of the darkest hours of our America, when we received invasions and dictatorships imposed by the imperialists,” Mr. Correa wrote. “Can’t they understand that Latin America has changed?”

The last line really sums up the situation: They really don’t understand that Latin America has changed. One can follow all the foreign policy debates in Washington about Latin America, in the media or in journals such as Foreign Affairs, and there really is almost no acknowledgment of the new reality. In this sense the discussion of hemispheric relations is different from most other areas of U.S. foreign policy, e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, even Israel and Palestine – where there is at least some debate that reaches the intelligentsia and the public. (The new Cold War with Russia is perhaps exceptional in the pervasiveness of a sheep-like mentality and uniformity of thinking – as Russia expert Stephen Cohen of Princeton has pointed out reminiscent of the 1950s; but it remains to be seen how long this can last, and even in this robust display of groupthink there is a small smattering of exceptions that break through.)

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/13/breaking-news-nyt-reports-what-rest-western-hemisphere-thinks-about-conflict

What Are They Hiding? UN Official Slams US for Limiting Access to Prisons

Published on Thursday, March 12, 2015

by Common Dreams

What Are They Hiding? UN Official Slams US for Limiting Access to Prisons

'Overuse of solitary confinement in the United States is cruel and shameful but hiding or denying it just makes it worse,' says ACLU

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

A United Nations investigator has accused the U.S. of blocking access to prisons—including state and federal facilities where an estimated 80,000 people are in solitary confinement and the military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba—leading civil liberties experts to wonder, "Is the United States hiding something?"

Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, told reporters in Geneva on Wednesday that for two years he has asked to visit federal prisons in New York and Colorado and state prisons in New York, California, and Louisiana, among others.

Meanwhile, UN human rights experts have asked to visit Guantanamo since 2004. But responses from the U.S. have been unsatisfactory, Méndez said Wednesday.

He rejected the terms offered by U.S. authorities to visit Guantánamo, which he described thusly: "The invitation is to get a briefing from the authorities and to visit some parts of the prison, but not all, and specifically I am not allowed to have unmonitored or even monitored conversations with any inmate in Guantanamo Bay."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/03/12/what-are-they-hiding-un-official-slams-us-limiting-access-prisons

Attempted Coup And Misguided U.S. Sanctions in Venezuela

Attempted Coup And Misguided U.S. Sanctions in Venezuela
Saturday, 14 March 2015, 10:52 am
Press Release: COHA Staff

Attempted Coup And Misguided U.S. Sanctions in Venezuela

On February 11, 2015, the government of President Nicolas Maduro, along with a number of his senior officials, declared that Venezuela had faced an attempted coup. Contrarily, the mainstream media in the United States and in Europe viewed such allegations as ridiculous, opposing the arrest of alleged conspirators, calling these arrests human rights violations. However, the history of coups and attempted coups in Latin America since 2002 proves paramount, and there is significant evidence to support their reality.1 Recent diplomatic moves carried out by United States President Obama impose sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials and qualify the country as a “national security threat,” calling attention to a growing isolation of the United States within the hemisphere.2 With the exception of Canada, every other government in the region has condemned U.S. interference in Venezuela through the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, UNASUR).3

History of coups in Latin America

According to Maurice Lemoine with Le Monde Diplo, as a member of the counter-hegemonic organization the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA), Honduras has been a laboratory for such “constitutional coup[s]”.4 This type of coup is typically tolerated by the international community and leads to the “forced resignation” of elected and legitimate authorities by eliciting the support of the private media, the military, and the corporate sector.5

Former president of Honduras Zelaya wanted to hold a non-binding consultation to convene a national constituent assembly, and pressure his political opponents into redrafting the Constitution.6 However, the political opposition to President Zelaya, consisting mostly of conservatives, claimed that the president was looking to secure his re-election, and also violating the Constitution in doing so. Thus, the opposition staged a coup against Zelaya to protect their economic and political security.

This coup enjoyed support from the Honduran Supreme Court, which had ordered to place President Zelaya under military arrest and exile him to Costa Rica, considering his decision to held a referendum un-constitutional. Romeo Vasquez, a Honduran general, subsequently took power, and immediately transferred it to the president of the country’s Congress, Roberto Micheletti. Vaquez’s actions attempted to mask the military’s participation in the coup by placing it under civilian control causing it to appear “constitutional.”7 In the meantime, the Honduran Supreme Court stated that President Zelaya was “abusing his authority” and committing “treason against the fatherland” because he could not constitutionally hold a referendum.8 However, the President maintained that he was merely trying to seek non-binding consultation and not a referendum, insinuating the hypocrisy of the Supreme Court.

Micheletti claimed its regime was a transitional government. President Zelaya enjoyed overwhelming support in his country, throughout the hemisphere, and internationally, including from the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the European Union.9

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1503/S00129/attempted-coup-and-misguided-us-sanctions-in-venezuela.htm

The CIA and America’s Presidents

Weekend Edition March 13-15, 2015

Some Rarely Discussed Truths Shaping Contemporary American Democracy

The CIA and America’s Presidents

by JOHN CHUCKMAN


Many people still think of the CIA as an agency designed to help American presidents make informed decisions about matters outside the United States. That was the basis for President Truman’s signing the legislation which created the agency, and indeed it does serve that role, generally rather inadequately, but it has become something far beyond that.

Information is certainly not something to which any reasonable person objects, but the CIA has two houses under its roof, and it is the operational side of the CIA which gives it a world-wide bad reputation. The scope of undercover operations has evolved to make the CIA into a kind of civilian army, one involving great secrecy, little accountability, and huge budgets – altogether a dangerous development indeed for any country which regards itself as a democracy and whose military is forbidden political activity. After all, the CIA’s secret operational army in practice is not curtailed by restrictions around politics, many of its tasks having been quite openly political. Yes, its charter forbids operations in the United States, but those restrictions have been ignored or bent countless times both in secret programs like Echelon (monitoring telephone communications by five English-speaking allies who then share the information obtained, a forerunner to the NSA’s recently-revealed collection of computer data) and years of mail-opening inside the United States or using substitutes to go around the rule, as was likely the case with the many Mossad agents trailing the eventual perpetrators of 9/11 inside the United States before the event.

As with all large, powerful institutions over time, the CIA constantly seeks expansion of its means and responsibilities, much like a growing child wanting ever more food and clothing and entertainment. This inherent tendency, the expansion of institutional empire, is difficult enough to control under normal circumstances, but when there are complex operations in many countries and tens of billions in spending and many levels of secrecy and secret multi-level files, the ability of any elected politicians – whose keenest attention is always directed towards re-election and acquiring enough funds to run a campaign – to exercise meaningful control and supervision becomes problematic at best. The larger and more complex the institution becomes, the truer this is.

Under Eisenhower, the CIA’s operational role first came to considerable prominence, which is hardly surprising considering Eisenhower was a former Supreme Commander in the military, the military having used many dark operations during WWII, operations still classified in some cases. In his farewell address, it is true, Eisenhower gave Americans a dark warning about the “military-industrial complex,” but as President he used CIA dark operations extensively, largely to protect American corporate interests in various parts of the world – everything from oil interests to banana monopolies in Central America. Perhaps, he viewed the approach as less destructive or dangerous or likely to tarnish America’s post-WWII reputation than “sending in the Marines,” America’s traditional gang of paid-muscle for such tasks, but, over the long term, he was wrong, and his extensive use of CIA operations would prove highly destructive and not just tarnish America’s image but totally shatter it. It set in motion a number of developments and problems that haunt America to this day.

In the 1950s, the CIA was involved in a number of operations whose success bred hubris and professional contempt for those not part of its secret cult, an attitude not unlike that of members of an elite fraternity or secret society at university. The toppling of disliked but democratic governments in Guatemala and Iran and other operations had, by about the time of President Kennedy’s coming to power in 1960, bred an arrogant and unwarranted belief in its ability to do almost anything it felt was needed. The case of Cuba became a watershed for the CIA and its relationship with Presidents of the United States, President Eisenhower and his CIA having come to believe that Castro, widely regarded by the public as a heroic figure at the time, had turned dangerous to American corporate and overseas interests and needed to be removed. Fairly elaborate preparations for doing so were put into place, and parts of the southern United States became large secret training grounds for would-be terrorists selected from the anti-Castro exile community by CIA officers in charge of a project which dwarfed Osama bin Laden’s later camp in the mountains of Afghanistan.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/the-grand-illusion-about-terrorism/

A New Dawn in US Foreign Policy or Hypocrisy as Usual? US Sanctions in Latin America

Weekend Edition March 13-15, 2015

A New Dawn in US Foreign Policy or Hypocrisy as Usual?

US Sanctions in Latin America

by ALAN MacLEOD


Glasgow, Scotland.

The Obama administration’s easing of sanctions against the small island nation of Cuba was met with a mixed response at home, to say the least. Could this be the beginning of a new dawn in a more humane foreign policy? Many establishment figures welcomed the move. John Kerry was one of them, stating “it is time to try something new” to give “the best opportunity for the people of Cuba to improve their lives and to take part in the choices about their lives.” Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird agreed, “The more American values and American capital [my emphasis] that are permitted into Cuba, the freer the Cuban people will be,” he said.

However, many po-faced articles attacked the President as a spineless leader, guilty of faulty logic. There was also a good deal of concern about the fate of “free speech advocates” and “human rights campaigners” in Cuba. One Washington Post editorial laments that “with no consequences in sight, Cuba continues to crack down on free speech” while one Times article gives voice to another dissident’s opinion: “This is a blank check for the Castros and their heirs in power.” President Obama himself explained the embargo thus: “This policy has been rooted in the best of intentions…it has had little effect.”

Many, even on the left, have hailed the decision as a historic shift in US foreign policy.

While there does appear to be considerable debate among the elite on the subject, a number of key assumptions remain unchallenged and unexplored in the debate and many crucial facts remain unspoken. Firstly, the notion that United States is an honest broker, and its foreign policy has always been designed to improve the freedom and standard of democracy of those in foreign countries is apparent in virtually every article. No opinion column that this author has found challenges the concept of the United States’ ethical foreign policy. Remarkable, considering the US props up some of, if not most of, the world’s most violent dictatorships. Among these being Saudi Arabia, where beheadings are common and women are not allowed to drive a car, Egypt, which has seen “unprecedented state violence” to “quash dissent”, according to Amnesty, and Israel, currently carrying out the world’s longest-running occupation of another country. Indeed, as far back as 1981, Lars Schoultz found that the more a Latin American country tortured its own population, the more US foreign aid it would receive.

Another key assumption underlying the mainstream commentary is that the United States has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations. As William Blum has chronicled, the United States has overthrown more than 50 foreign governments since 1945. Yet, it is Cuba’s record with regard to its history of human rights abuses and state-sponsored terrorism that is under scrutiny.

This is a shocking reversal of the facts. For one thing, the greatest human rights abuses on Cuba occur at US-controlled Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of political prisoners have been tortured. Furthermore, no mention is made to the fact that the United States has been waging a unilateral terrorist war against Cuba for more than 50 years. This is a war that has included widespread use of banned bio-chemical weapons resulting in a trillion dollars of damage to the island, according to the United Nations.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/us-sanctions-in-latin-america/

The Venezuelan “Threat”

Weekend Edition March 13-15, 2015

The Mental Ideology of Revolution

The Venezuelan “Threat”

by ANDREW KAHN


We are being told by President Obama that Venezuela is a national security threat to the United States of America. Some say it is necessary for this to be claimed so that Obama can legally take punitive actions against Venezuelan officials. Pause for a moment and let the phrase sink in. “National security threat”.

As you let this statement marinate in your mind, consider the abstract idea of working backwards to reach a conclusion. A child determines that vegetables are poisonous. The vegetables aren’t poisonous because they are poisonous but because the child has decided that he or she does not want to eat the vegetables. A reason is needed to justify an action – in this case, the illogical idea that the vegetables are not to be eaten because, well, it doesn’t matter why. So, the vegetables have conveniently become poisonous and the child screams to his or her mother that “They are poison! I will get sick and go to the hospital and turn purple and orange and green if I eat them!” Clearly, none of this is accurate, but a pretext is needed to justify the action of not eating the vegetables. Is this rational?

So it is with Venezuela. There is no national security threat to the United States. Period. As the child who claims the vegetables are poison, so President Obama has decided that the Bolivarian Republic is a national security threat to the United States to justify an escalation in what has become a perpetual war against the socialist revolution that began over a decade.

The ruling United States regime – backed in its mission against Venezuela by the nominal opposition party – has made various claims regarding Venezuela since “We don’t like that the Revolution has been democratically elected for 15 years” is not the most politically tenable reason for claiming a national security threat.

Chief among the claims are that Venezuela has cracked down on dissent, imprisoned opposition leaders, allowed impunity for murderous national police and is engaged in corruption. While these questions have been refuted, it should be stated once again why they are not only incorrect but are hopelessly hypocritical – if they were correct – in light of United States’ policy regarding Venezuela’s neighbors.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/the-venezuelan-threat/

Lima's mayor confesses to cover-up of downtown murals

Lima's mayor confesses to cover-up of downtown murals
By Mitra Taj
LIMA Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:36am IST


(Reuters) - First a mural in downtown Lima that depicted indigenous Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Katari was painted over. Then one of a boy stacking bricks on top of books suffered the same fate.

Lima's arts community was incensed. And suspicious: The yellow paint covering the works evoked the hallmark colour of the new mayor's political party.

On Wednesday, after a third mural turned yellow, Mayor Luis Castaneda confirmed his government was behind the effort, literally covering up the traces of a predecessor who had welcomed the pieces. "They don't go with the historic centre," Castaneda said in a televised news briefing on Wednesday, shrugging off criticism.

~ snip ~

Castaneda, a conservative and populist leader, said erasing the artwork was merely part of his government's bid to revamp the historic centre.

More:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/03/12/peru-art-idINKBN0M82J820150312?rpc=401

[center]









Mayor Luis Castaneda,
a man of the people.
What people?
Conservative people.[/center]
Can't afford to have any images around the city of indigenous Peruvians, the original people.

[center]

Tupac Katari





Artist:
Jade Rivera – Mural in Lima, Peru

Jade Rivera was born in Junin, Peru in 1983. At seven months old and his mother migrated to Lima. Rivera grew up in the district of Chorrillos, attended a national school, where his curiosity was aroused by art, when he was eleven. Poor teaching of his school and his growing interest in art motivated him to devote more time to drawing and painting. [/center]
Here's an article on the great artist, Jade Rivera, the creator of the boy with bricks mural:

Jade Rivera’s Murals Explore Spiritual Connections Between People and Animals

by Nastia Voynovskaya
Posted on January 7, 2015



Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic

Peruvian artist Jade Rivera pays homage to the locals of his native Lima and other cities he visits in his travels with large-scale murals, watercolors, and oil paintings. His work typically starts with a realistically rendered human figure. Rivera adds surreal details by smudging the colors and adding ghostly silhouettes. He is particularly interested in the connection between humans and animals. Depicted in masks or as apparitions, the creatures in his work seem to function as spirit guides for the people he paints.









Lima, Peru

More:
http://hifructose.com/2015/01/07/jade-riveras-murals-explore-spiritual-connections-between-people-and-animals/

As you can see, the Lima mayor is destroying artwork admired throughout the Americas.