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Great article, the internet is spreading freedom of the mind.
Columbus Day is a relic. Unfortunately, every day in the US is Columbus Day
It is a shame that we even consider resting or honoring that butcher in any way. But a reality check reveals we honor his culture everyday by our actions of vast consumption and glorifying violence for profit.
I recently had an operation and spent a lot of time watching television. It sickened me.
Violence and unbalanced – this medium poison ones mind by representing images that the young or uneducated would believe to be normal, such as look at me I am a star (as if that is going to make one satisfied) and sex, sex and sex.
We are still perpetuating the Columbus mentality. To me Columbus represents colossal – as in colossal mistake.
US culture is making a colossal mistake regarding materialism and lack of community. Family has taken a back seat and time is used to compete so we can buy MORE. How much more does the US citizen want. When I am in CR, I find it relaxing to be with the locals in my area. I do not hang out with the gringo – big fish in a small pond – types. My favorite friend is an older farmer and we hang out on his hillside telling stories. The CR I love with its importance on family and community relations is fading with the spread of US evilism through its art of TV.
If there is going to be a nuclear explosion in the US, and I believe there will, it is because of or sick culture, sucking up the worlds resources and praising violence and murder through our art (TV???).
Funny how we still emulate Columbus!!
There is a website at where you can see the interventions and exploitations by the US and UK Governments since 1945. You can see similar information at
Is it any wonder our actions abroad are now coming back to haunt the USA? And no! I believe a biological weapon will be used next time in the US, the US authorities that caused the twin towers to collapse will probably not allow that much phyiscal damage to be caused again… It is too expensive, we’ll have some kind of massive biological attack caused and released by the US authorities and inflicted on their own people which is why they have been over publicizing this avian flu shit… More people die of bee stings every year than the entire total of people who have allegedly died of avian flu
My new next door neighbors use their air conditioning about 18 hours per day. In comparison, I have used mine for about 18 hours in total during the past two years and that was when a guest of mine had a high fever – they are the only people in this building that use their AC because the climate here in Escazu is just about perfect.
But, if you think about this total lack of concern for the environment, this complete selfishness and wonder how many hundreds of millions of Americans & Europeans are just like them?
Is it any wonder that although the United States represents less than 5 % of the world’s population, it consumes approximately 30% of global resources?And the U.S. Department of Energy says that “the United States is the world’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for 23 percent of energy-related carbon emissions worldwide.”
Our present path of “interventions”, ridiculous consumption, fascination with ‘celebrities’ (most of whom have no real talent) and their sex lives, endless wars and destruction – it’s simply unsustainable! The whole capitalism “on steroids” system based on ever increasing growth must be dramatically modified for no other reason that we will not have enough “fuel” for that growth never mind the damage that this growth entails/
But we just keep racing faster and faster towards those steep cliffs of Armageddon as if we didn’t know that they were there.
And William Blums sums it up nicely at Many people call him a left wing liberal but ‘facts are facts’:
A Brief History of United States Interventions, 1945 to the Present. By William Blum
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
1) making the world safe for American corporations;
2) enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
3) preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
4) extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a “great power.”This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period. Among these were the following:
China 1945-49: Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the world war. The U.S. used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. The communists forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan in 1949.Italy 1947-48: Using every trick in the book, the U.S. interfered in the elections to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power legally and fairly. This perversion of democracy was done in the name of “saving democracy” in Italy. The Communists lost. For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations, continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was haunting Europe.
Greece 1947-49: Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.
Philippines 1945-53: U.S. military fought against leftist forces (Huks) even while the Huks were still fighting against the Japanese invaders. After the war, the U.S. continued its fight against the Huks, defeating them, and then installing a series of puppets as president, culminating in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
South Korea 1945-53: After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive forces in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This led to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.Albania 1949-53: U.S. and Britain tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist government and install a new one that would have been pro-Western and composed largely of monarchists and collaborators with Italian fascists and Nazis.
Germany 1950s: The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Iran 1953: Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S. and British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.
Guatemala 1953-1990s: A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims — indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn’t even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala’s social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Middle East 1956-58: The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States “is prepared to use armed forces to assist” any Middle East country “requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism.” The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, “communist.” In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-sported governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.
Indonesia 1957-58: Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United States could not abide by. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power. And he refused to crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the legal, peaceful road and making impressive gains electorally. Such policies could easily give other Third World leaders “wrong ideas.” Thus it was that the CIA began throwing money into the elections, plotted Sukarno’s assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phoney sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it all.
British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64: For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist — more so than Sukarno or Arbenz — his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington’s greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics — from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U.S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.
One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.
Vietnam, 1950-73: The slippery slope began with siding with the French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America’s help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. For he was some kind of communist. Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with … ” But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of communist.Twenty-three years, and more than a million dead, later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S. lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth and the gene pool for generations, Washington had in fact achieved its main purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.
Cambodia 1955-73: Prince Sihanouk, yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret “carpet bombings” of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the fray. Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had caused Cambodia’s traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been destroyed forever.
Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery upon this unhappy land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot, militarily and diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.
The Congo/Zaire 1960-65: In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo’s first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth in Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had financial ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies before a host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation’s economic as well as its political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the natives by the white owners of the country. The poor man was obviously a “communist.” The poor man was obviously doomed.
Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September Lumumba was dismissed by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in January 1961 he was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower. There followed several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power of Mobutu Sese Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.Brazil 1961-64: President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing “communists” to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was … yes, it’s unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil … but, still, the country has been saved from communism.
For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship which Latin America has come to know and love were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for “political crimes” was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants’ homes were burned down, priests were brutalized … disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture … the government had a name for its program: the “moral rehabilitation” of Brazil.
Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States’ most reliable allies in Latin America.Dominican Republic, 1963-66: In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy’s liberal anti-communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch’s government was to be the long sought “showcase of democracy” that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform; low-rent housing; modest nationalization of business; and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country; and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about the thing called civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congressmen expressed their discomfort with Bosch’s plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that “creeping socialism” is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.
Cuba 1959 to present: Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National Security Council meeting of 10 March 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing “another government to power in Cuba.” There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargos, isolation, assassinations … Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a “good example” in Latin America.The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent, the internationalism were all there. But we’ll never know. And that of course was the idea.
Indonesia 1965: A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began immediately — of communists, communists sympathizers, suspected communists, suspected communist sympathizers, and none of the above — was called by the New York Times “one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.” The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million.
It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of “communist” operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. “It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands,” said one U.S. diplomat. “But that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”
Chile, 1964-73: Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist. He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power — an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.
After sabotaging Allende’s electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.Thus it was that they closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown to the bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that “In Chile women wear dresses!”; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check-books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.
Greece 1964-74: The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece. The 1967 coup was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a “communist takeover.” Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that “a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand” the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.
Becket reported the following:
Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: “You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can’t fight us, we are Americans.”
George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the cold war, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.
East Timor, 1975 to present: In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal had relinquished control of it. The invasion was launched the day after U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under U.S. law, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was Washington’s most valuable tool in Southeast Asia.
Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported Indonesia’s claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.
Nicaragua 1978-89: When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast — “another Cuba.” Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington’s proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza’s vicious National Guardsmen and other supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters.” There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.
Grenada 1979-84: What would drive the most powerful nation in the world to invade a country of 110 thousand? Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro’s, Washington was again driven by its fear of “another Cuba,” particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.
U.S. destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts of disinformation and dirty tricks. The American invasion in October 1983 met minimal resistance, although the U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers. What conceivable human purpose these people died for has not been revealed.
At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada’s new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights.In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called “an increasingly authoritarian style.”
Libya 1981-89: Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client state of Washington. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity. He would have to be punished. U.S. planes shot down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as its air space. The U.S. also dropped bombs on the country, killing at least 40 people, including Qaddafi’s daughter. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic sanctions, and blaming Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103 bombing without any good evidence.
Panama, 1989: Washington’s mad bombers strike again. December 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Counting several days of ground fighting against Panamanian forces, 500-something dead was the official body count, what the U.S. and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government admitted to; other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands had died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324 wounded.
Question from reporter: “Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?”George Bush: “Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it.”
Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the only motive for the attack. Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after the very recent dissolution of the “Soviet threat.” The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega’s drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and had not been at all bothered by.
Iraq 1990s: Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and biological weapon storages and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a degree perhaps never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions continued to this day multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million children dead by now from all of these things, even more adults.
Iraq was the strongest military power amongst the Arab states. This may have been their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: It’s been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price.
Afghanistan 1979-92: Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.
El Salvador, 1980-92: Salvador’s dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protestors and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.Haiti, 1987-94: The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers and drug traffickers. With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend — because of all their rhetoric about “democracy” — that they supported Aristide’s return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office
Jees! I would respectfully request ‘bradbard’ that you might consider abbreviating your postings somewhat.
You know hold the record for the longest posting and I would prefer it if nobody (including you) tried to break your record.
Best wishes
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comScott,
Allowing this crap to continue is really diluting the quality of your forum. Your idea of setting up a seperate forum is a good one. I seem to remember this being about Costa Rica not about slamming the US and spinning conspiracy theories…
Jerry
I don’t actually see any “crap” at all and having read many of Mr. William Blum’s books myself, can assure you that William Blum does not entertain “conspiracy theories” but does check his facts and figures carefully before “slamming the US.”
All of our VIP Members are entitled to their opinion no matter how distasteful those opinions might be to others however as suggested, I will investigate how we might create a separate forum for ‘hot topics.’
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comScott,
Please tell me that you think the implication of the following excerpt is not only crap but it is absurd and offensive to the memories of those murdered on 911 and to their families…“the US authorities that caused the twin towers to collapse will probably not allow that much phyiscal damage to be caused again…”
So, I guess the US government is in cahoots with Osama? Oh, it all makes so much sense now… Jerry
I don’t think it’s “crap” at all.
Since that actual catastrophic day, as I sat here in Costa Rica watching the television as those planes hit the WTC, I was one of the few people at the time (now millions of Americans feel the same way) that believed that this was a complete set up.
Every day since then, more and more evidence has convinced me and millions of others that US authorities were directly responsible for that tragic event that killed nearly 3,000 innocent civilians in New York.
Although it was not publicized much in the west, Osama bin Laden denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks ( and ) > The “evidence” that has been brought forward for his involvement was a “confession” video by someone that many facial recognition experts believe to be an imposter
() states that:
“In the video Osama ‘E’ appears to write notes with his right hand, yet the FBI’s description of Osama indicates he is left-handed. Osama ‘E’ wears a ring on his right hand which does not appear on other confirmed photos of Osama (e.g. Osama ‘B’). Another man is seen wearing a large gold ring in the video. Since the wearing of gold rings is forbidden by Islam it shows neither he nor Osama ‘E’ has any devotion to this faith.”
You can see the video at
What I find “offensive” is that so many people don’t want to think for themselves, they accept whatever is easy to accept and refuse to look at the evidence. If you do so, as many people have done, there can only be one sensible intelligent conclusion and the most fantastic “conspiracy theory’ is the official version of the events.
You might want to take a look at 9/11 Statement Signed by 100 Prominent Americans at which is sighed by all sorts of people from Presidential candidates Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate David Cobb to Catherine Austin Fitts, a high-ranking member of the first Bush administration, as well as Washington veterans like Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Other signers include former US Ambassador to Iraq Edward L. Peck and environmentalists like Randy Hayes and John Robbins. There is an ever increasing number scientists and very intelligent human beings that feel the same way as I do …
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. (1918)” Theodore Roosevelt
Scott Oliver
It’s crap Scott. Bush was absolutely clueless in regard to foreign affairs when he first got elected. He purposefully stepped back from the Middle East, and in my opinion had no foreign policy strategy whatsoever. 9/11 gave the man his “vision”. Terrorists and their supported were dancing in the streets afterwards, and aside from the death and human misery it created, the attack was a significant blow to the U.S. economy.
Clearly the Gulf of Tonkin attack was orchestrated by the US government to justify sending troops to Vietnam. No one died in that “attack” though. Conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor abound, but I don’t buy it. Yes there were some warnings, but it seems to me that if we decided to let it happen to provide us with justification for going to war with Japan, we wouldn’t have left ALL of our ships in the harbor. Justification would have been sufficient with just some of the most expendable ships left there. Remember, Japan had more naval resources in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor than we did, and Midway could have gone either way. Nimitz could definitely have used more ships.
Allowing the 9/11 attack to occur, or worse yet orchestrating it, is so far out there it defies credibility. IMHO it also attributes far more strategic thought than Bush was capable of (and bad strategy at that).
No, the Islamic terrorists have it out for us (and the country you fought for Scott), as well as for all western interests around the world. To beat them requires good detective work, garnering international support, and maintaining the moral high ground. Putting a cop on EVERY corner, turning “1984” into a work of non-fiction, and almost unilaterally deciding that we need to remake the Arab world into a western style democracy through military means (the stated strategy imposed without public debate after we failed to discover WMDs in Iraq) is not the option I would have chosen.
We can debate the reasons why they hate us, our immorality, the abuses we committed during the Cold War (the USSR and China too), whatever. Their actions are so much more perverse, it takes an incredibly incompetent administration to make us look like the bad guys around the world.
Come on, these are the guys that thought we’d be received in Bagdad with parades and flowers! The same guys who thought we could forcibly install a functioning, western style democracy through military occupation in a country that’s 80% Shia (or something like that). The same guys who forgot that Suni-run Iraq was the only thing that kept Shia-run Iran from dominance (oops!). The same guys who thought that the phrase “You’re either with us or against us” would be a good marketing slogan.
Don’t mistake cunning with sheer stupidity. Really, what’s more likely…
“Their actions are so much more perverse”
I believe our culture created “their actions” as when people are forced to act, they cannot be held at fault.
I did not write the post to create a debate about who perpetrated 9/11.
It happened period.
I wrote the post to exposes how the Columbus mentality” is pervasive in our culture.
What can we do to prevent terrorism? Start acting like moral people.
That means questioning consumerism, violence, pornography and gambling as legitimate and acceptable topics to be inundated with through the art of television.
There is a TV show called Sunday morning on CBS, it is one of the few decent and thought-provoking television shows on the air. If our culture used its superior technology to create such programming, we would not be having this problem. What do the Hollywood money lovers do – they give us Donald Trump and Parris Hilton. Money and Sex.
Our actions are subversive and insidious through passing our culture around the world. Just like the Europeans spread measles to kill the indigenous. We are poisoning minds with the TV medium, relentless consumerism and lack of tradition.
The Chinese sailed the new world with their treasure fleet(Book / 1421 the year China discovered the world). They exchanged ambassadors and gifts. Killed no one. Then returned to China. We are an extension of the European mindset of domination and perversion hence Columbus Day. What a shame.
You should do a little research about 9/11 before you call anything but the government’s take on it crap!
Have you ever even looked at any of the evidence that proves the government was complicit in the attacks.
I love people that slam the “conspiracy theorists” without knowing anything at all about it.
I have studied it for years and I will right now bet you $1000 that the US government planned and orchestrated the attacks of 9/11/2001.
Is the bet on?
Yes, I’ll wait for this hoax to see the light of day, no matter how long it takes.
I’ll debate you fact for fact on any part of the events of that day including the explosions in the walls of the WTC reported by the firemen, policemen and others as the planes were still stuck in the top of the building,
how about all the debris at the bottom being shipped without investigation on barges with CIA monitoring to India and China to be melted down for pennies on the dollar, against the wishes of the families of the victims, the policemen and the firemen……didn’t even try to find the planes…..Isn’t that standard investigating procedure?
UA flight 93 landing at Cleveland Airport and never taking off again….A missle created a hole in the ground in Shanksville, PA……no bodies or body parts found there……….Oh that’s right everything vaporized………Right!!!!………9 terrorists out of the “19” still alive and working in the Mid-East today…….the 16 foot hole in the side of the Pentagon with the adjacent windows intact (I wonder if it was a missle that hit??? Hmmmmmmm???)…on and on and on…….How about WTC 7 collapsing at 5:20 PM on that day…..look at the film of it…..it’s all over the internet…..a planned demolition if there ever was one……of course that building housed the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and all the cameras that filmed the drone planes hitting the WTC live so that George Bush could watch it from his limo outside the school in Florida and announce to the grade school class before anyone else in the USA knew about it that “I just watched some plane crash into the WTC…..he must’ve been a terrible pilot.” Gee, the only known footage of that first hit was filmed by the Paudet Brothers and wasn’t shown til much later.
How about Bush’s younger brother Marvin quitting his job as one of the heads of security at the WTC on 10/10/2001…..how coincidental……Oh yeah, the bomb sniffing dogs being pulled off duty at the WTC two weeks before 9/11/2001…….I wonder why? Maybe Marvin Bush knows the reason why……….
There is much, much more…..
I’m tired of people slamming something that they know nothing about.
Fact for fact……try to disprove me……
Go to: loosechange911.com and watch the dvd to start with and then check out the multitude of web sites dedicated to 911 truth and you will begin to realize that the current administration in Washington does not have your best interests at heart. They could care less…….
They have their own agenda and it only helps the defense industry, Big Oil, and other corporate interests………the US citizen is way down the list and the US media is in on the scam too………don’t be fooled
by the patriotic call for freedom and democracy……I fought with the Marines in Vietnam and saw what “spreading democracy” does first hand……..we’ve been sold a bill of goods and they are all spoiled and rotten……wake up before it is too late………for your sake and the sake of your family and friends.
Didn’t mean to write this much, but I could write a lot more……
Tired of the truth being stepped on……..
Grateful for the freedom that Costa Rica exudes.
Pura vida…….Diego,
I completely agree with the body of your post, but not the intro. I believe that wantonly and purposefully killing civilians is more perverse than broadcasting Desperate Housewives or even believing ourselves to be the world police and forcibly ousting a cruel dictator. I’m not defending the war in Iraq, I’m just giving my opinion about the scale of perversity.
I’m also surprised that you said “I believe our culture created “their actions” as when people are forced to act, they cannot be held at fault”. To me this is the “victim mentality that people use as justification for not taking responsibility for their own actions. There are other avenues of political dissent to take (though there should be more) before killing people.
BTW, thank you for your civil tone.
jreilly,
I claim no expertise on 9/11 like you do, nor have I seen the source material you refer to. I don’t believe I “slammed” conspiracy theorist, I simply stated my opinion. I’ve seen enough contradictory “source material” on so many issues that I no longer believe any of them. Brush your teeth with a side by side action – no, brush your teeth up and down – no, use a circular motion. Eggs are good for you – no, eggs are bad for you. The Iraq war was about WMD’s – no, it was about oil – no, it was about spreading democracy…
It goes on and on. I long ago tired of all the crap from ALL sources, and feel I have since transcended the traditional political plane of polarizing dogma and endless arguments about the details regarding the symptoms of root causes which are never discussed.
One can be an expert and still be totally wrong. One can be ignorant of specific details and still have a valid point of view.
I don’t believe much of what our government says, I certainly don’t trust the media, and I don’t trust your sources either. It makes no sense, and as I’ve said, stupidity is so much more likely than cunning “stratigery” from our commander in chief. I’m sure you have all the “facts”, but “facts”, like “truth”, can be manipulated and contradictory.
The idea that we would purposefully slam jets into the WTC in order to consolidate public opinion in support of the war against the terrorists, and not only think we would get away with it in this day and age of technology, but also believe that such an act would result in bettering our political position in the world, IMHO is simply ludicrous.
It’s obvious you’re angry at our government, and I am too. But I would caution against demonizing those you consider to be your enemies. It tends to make you go overboard, and clouds the discussion (which is what politicians try to do). I completely disagree with President Bush in regard to the way he’s handling our “War on Terror”. However, he’s more than likely a human being, just like the rest of us, and wrong does not mean evil. In this case I give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to denying that he orchestrated 9/11. Those with more energy can debate the “facts”. Call me when you’re done.
BTW, I’m also grateful for the freedom that Costa Rica offers, and Pura Vida back at you. However, sorry, I don’t bet.
Gringo Tico,
If you back a docile dog into a corner you should expect it to bite. We have been shoving ouu values? down the worlds throat for decades. Finally someone had the cajones and cash to say this is enough, hell of a way to make a statement, but it sure got everybodies attention! Leave other cultures alone, that should be our goal and the globalization that hopefully Costa Rica will resist (CAFTA) is just more folly that will come back to bite us, Ruff, Bark, Ruff Ruff
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