This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/musings-on-two-of-the-dumbest-wars-the-us-has… No, this won’t be about Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan or any other US military war of choice
UPDATED: 11 July — The white working class in the US has been decimated through an epidemic of ‘premature deaths’ – a bland term to cover-up the drop in life expectancy in this historically important demographic. There have been quiet studies and reports peripherally describing this trend – but their conclusions have not yet entered the national consciousness for reasons we will try to explore in this essay.
The homeless people’s suffering belongs to amusement of our political order under a game over the right of marginalized group being transformed into citizens for merely punishment and humiliation. The Public Space Protection Orders is a penalty over one’s condition suffering – it is a fine over the disempowered for being disempowered. This act allows power to fragment the homeless into sub-humans punishable for the state of utter misery.
— Bruno De Oliveira
Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.
– Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power“, Voices of Democracy, 1966
Step right up folks and see the greatest show on the planet. El Chapo is his name, and magic is his game. Is he saint or is he sinner? Watch in awe as this vertically challenged boy from Sinaloa transforms himself from lowly peasant to powerful prince before your very eyes. Gaze in amazement as El Chapo escapes daringly from not one, but two maximum security prisons, only to be captured and imprisoned once again.
CARACAS – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro firmly rejected recent statements by US Southern Command Chief John Kelly on Tuesday, which he dismissed as unacceptable interference in the South American nation’s internal affairs.
Speaking on CNN Español, the head of US military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean described Venezuela as on the brink of “implosion” due to “inflation” and “drug trafficking” and expressed willingness to provide assistance in the event of a “humanitarian crisis”.
The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with American’s imperial Open Door policy and the belief that the government had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.
I am re-watching the first episode of Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary on PBS. The documented history is composed of still pictures, historical quotes, letters written to family by combatants, all accompanied with haunting music and voices heavy with pathos. It takes us to a time a century and a half ago when families and friends fought one another for a cause.
In conjunction with many geopolitical interests, general stability and prosperity in the Western hemisphere (i.e., the stratification and disparity in wealth) have kept Latin America, in Washington’s eyes, ripe for free trade and economic alignment. There exist unimaginable caches of resources, such as Venezuela’s oil stores, which could foreseeably feed into America’s global capitalist system over the course of its now decline. Hence the free trade agreements and America’s subversive efforts throughout the region.
U.S. support for the Government of Colombia (GOC) is designed to attack every element of the drug trade and to assist the GOC to re-establish government control and the rule of law in areas threatened by drug-related violence.
– Fact Sheet, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, US Department of State, Washington, DC, August 12, 2002
