A poem by the late Salvadoran radical Roque Dalton helps to clarify what is going on in Venezuela, writes Vijay Prashad. By Vijay Prashad Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research As the United States and its allies put pressure on Venezuela, a…Read more →
Both of my parents were assassinated by death squads in our country. My siblings and I fled because we were afraid. We entered the U.S illegally. We crossed the river, and once inside the U.S., we applied for asylum. We were among the very few who were granted asylum. In 1988 I graduated from Bowie and studied at UTEP, receiving a bachelor’s of science.
In 1985, an activist for the relatives of the disappeared [persons in Guatemala], named Rosario Godoy, was abducted by the army. She was raped. Her mutilated body was found alongside that of her baby. The baby’s fingernails had been torn out. The Guatemalan army, when asked about this atrocity, said, “Oh, they died in a traffic accident.”
US Congress member Ilhan Omar asked Trump’s new Venezuela special envoy Elliott Abrams if he would oversee genocide and war…
The post Will you support genocide in Venezuela?: Congress member Ilhan Omar challenges notorious coup-monger Elliott Abrams appeared first on The Grayzone.
Friend of the show Hugo Turner joined me this week to discuss Elliot Abrams and his legacy in Central America and role in the Iran-Contra affair. We began by discussing the roots of Iran-Contra and why it is still largely ignored by the media. Hugo discussed the origins of the affair going all the way back to the October Surprise in 1980. We talked about the other events that opened the door into Iran-Contra including the attempted assassination of Contra leader Eden Pastora in Costa Rica. Hugo and I then explored Abrams role in Iran-Contra itself.
Photo: John Zangas, DC Media Group.
Two things stand out about the US coup in Venezuela. First, it is unusually open. Typically, the US tries to hide its coups. Second, the coup is built on a series of obvious falsehoods, yet the bi-partisans in Washington, with a few exceptions, keep repeating them.
The intense focus on the “ills” of Nicaragua completely misses the deep issues of continued US intervention – imperial neocolonialism – into the sovereign lives of other countries, as here with Nicaragua. Whether you love or hate Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, their personalities and personal lives are not the issue, whatsoever.
In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb discovered links between Nicaragua’s Contra rebels and the CIA’s cocaine drug-running operation in the 1980’s. Webb wrote the Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News which exposed the CIA’s Contra rebels cocaine shipping into the US, which ended up as crack cocaine flooding cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco – and with the proceeds from the sales of those drugs being funneled back to fund the Contra militants.
