With the power of the telecom thieves and my cellular phone, and, viola, I am conversing via text and downloaded images with my 21 year old daughter on the Island of Cozumel, with her mother, stuck in the maelstrom of tourists and a denuded ecosystem.
Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta
Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back.
US empire building depends on regional regimes’ support, especially in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. These proxy regimes fulfill valuable military roles securing control over neighboring regions, populations and territory.
In recent times, however, we witness the same proxies developing their own tendency toward expansionist policies – in pursuit of their own mini-empires.
China and the United States are moving in polar opposite directions: Beijing is rapidly becoming the center of overseas investments in high tech industries, including robotics, nuclear energy and advanced machinery with collaboration from centers of technological excellence, like Germany.
In contrast, Washington is pursuing a predatory military pivot to the least productive regions with collaboration from its most barbaric allies, like Saudi Arabia.
Amid raging corruption, social pathologies and outright political thuggery, a new gang of vassal regimes has taken-over Latin America. The new rulers are strictly recruited as the protégé’s of US financial and banking institutions. Hence the financial press refers to them as the “new managers” – of Wall Street.
The US financial media has once again provided a political cover for the vilest crimes committed by the ‘new managers’ as they launch their offensive against labor and in favor of the foreign and domestic financiers.
This week we catch up on the multi-layered insurrection taking place in France, where the state is struggling to get a handle on things, amidst regular protests, strikes, fuel shortages, and the general drunken chaos of soccer hooliganism.
For the musical break, we’ve got Skalpel (of Première Ligne), with Le Rap, La Soul, La Vie…
What does it mean when the US and British financial systems launder hundreds of billions of dollars of illicit funds stolen by world leaders while their governments turn a ‘blind eye’, and yet the very same Anglo-American officials investigate, prosecute, fine and arrest officials from rival governments, rival banks and political leaders for corruption?
President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America.
In the last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear arsenal on the frontiers of Russia. The Pentagon has designed a high tech anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses.
Mapping the emerging global economic, political and military configurations requires that we examine regions and countries along several dynamic policy axis:
1. Capitalist versus anti-capitalist
2. Neoliberal versus anti-neoliberal
3. Austerity versus anti-austerity
4. War command centers and war zones
5. Political change and socio-economic continuity
6. New Order and political decay
Of Guatemalan origin and an undocumented resident in Chicago, Ilka Oliva Corado is a prolific writer inspired by social struggles for the rights of the undocumented and of sexual diversity and against gender and racial discrimination in the heart of the empire.
