Latin America breaks away from the tutelage of the US, which has increasing difficulties in managing itself

The presence of the United States, the former great dominating power in Latin America, is constantly shrinking and disappearing

After World War II, the US became the main power, both from a military, economic and political point of view.

In July 1944, when the Second World War was practically defined, a Monetary and Financial Conference was held with the assistance of 730 delegates from the 44 allied nations in the conflict at the Mount Washington Hotel, located in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, seeking regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of the War.

These were the bases for the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The following year, once the war was over, the United Nations Organization was founded, initially made up of 51 founding member states, now there are 193.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as the UN itself established their headquarters in the United States where they still are.

The World Bank is currently headquartered at 1818 H Street NW. Washington, DC, US and is made up of 189 countries.

For its part, the IMF has its headquarters at 720 19th Street, NW, in Washington, DC and has 190 member states.

Similarly, the UN, founded on October 24, 1945 in San Francisco, California, established its headquarters at 760 United Nations Plaza, Manhattan, New York City. Originally there were 51 Member States in 1945 today there are 193

The World Bank Group or World Bank Group, which was created in 1944 as part of the Bretton Woods Agreements, also has its headquarters in the city of Washington at 1818 H Street NW in the US capital. It is made up of 189 countries.

For their part, at the regional level and shortly after the end of the War, in 1948, the countries of the American continent also agreed to establish an international organization. This was finalized at a meeting in Bogotá, where the Organization of American States was created. As it could not be otherwise, they also established the headquarters in Washington.

on 17th Street corner Constitution Ave of that city.

It is currently made up of 35 member states.

In addition to the OAS, on April 8, 1959, the Inter-American Development Bank was created and, of course, its headquarters were located at 1300 New York Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. The IDB currently has 48 members.

All these institutions that in a certain way shaped and shape a leadership spectrum at the highest economic and political level of a global and continental character. They are all located in the US and of course that way the US is in the best position to control them.

And we must insist that it is in these institutions that strategies, incentives and limits are defined for everyone, and

much more particularly for the entire American continent.

Due to this historical and circumstantial context, the control that the US exercised and to a certain extent still exercises over all the states of Latin America was almost total, leaving no room for the governments of the area to make their own decisions.

100 years before they had taken over half of Mexico, from 1898 they occupied Cuba for more than two decades, Haiti was also occupied from 1915 to 1934, the occupation in the Dominican Republic lasted 8 years, from 1916 to 1924 and Puerto Rico that was occupied in 1898 and whose occupation still continues 125 years later,

In 1903 the US promoted the separation of Panama from Colombia in order to build the interoceanic canal including a territorial strip on both sides of it.

In that period, they defined and even directly designated most of the governments of Mesoamerica, bloodily opposing the revolutionary attempts that occurred. In that period including the Mexican revolution of the decade of 1910-20, and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua from 1927 to 1933.

With the creation of the OAS, US policies in relation to Latin America did not change, OAS officials acted as if they occupied a lower level secretariat in the US government itself.

In 1954 the US had overthrown the progressive Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala and a few years later, in 1961, they tried to carry out a coup in Cuba where a revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro had been established since 1959, failing completely.

The attempts continued in the following years, they invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965 against another government that was not to their liking, they started a war to overthrow a revolutionary government in Nicaragua in 1979 to 1990 which they only partially succeeded in, they also invaded the small island Grenada in 1983 to displace a government that made them uncomfortable, and in 1989 they invaded Panama kidnapping its president. The president of Panama named Manuel Noriega was taken to the US to stand trial and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, which was later reduced to 20. He was finally extradited to France and Panama, continuing in prison until his death in 2017. ,

Everything seemed to indicate that this almost total US domination over Latin America would continue indefinitely. But things have been gradually changing.

Incredibly, the government of the Cuban revolution has been resisting sanctions and sabotage for 63 years, in 1998 there was a change of government after which Hugo Chavez took office, who was a president clearly opposed to the interests of the United States in Venezuela and his successor Nicolás Maduro also it resists despite sabotage and sanctions and at the same time Nicaragua was returning to its revolutionary Sandinista roots.

To continue weakening US control in recent years, the left recently won several elections, first in Mexico with López Obrador, also in Bolivia, with Evo Morales and Luis Arce, then in Argentina with Alberto Fernández, and more recently in Chile with Gabriel Boris, in Peru with Pedro Castillo and in Honduras with Xiomara Castro.

At this time, it is thought that Brazil and Colombia are about to change their governments, electing leaders with clear progressive orientations who could continue to expand this trend.

Political evolution does not seem to stop, rather it accelerates. No Latin American country followed the US and Europe in sanctions against Russia, and now, recently, most Latin American states did not attend or were reluctant at the continental Summit organized by the US in Los Angeles.

It seems that the influence of the United States in the Latin American subcontinent is weakening, and that there is no longer that all-powerful economic and political influence that was the rule in the past.

I don't know if this situation reflects the empowerment of Latin American countries or the accelerated weakening of North American power. Maybe both.

We do not know what will happen in the next few years, but we will probably witness a continuation of these processes and perhaps, hopefully, we will witness a radical and historical insubordination of the South Americans who may finally be able to become masters of their own destinations.

 

 

The US was sick long before coronavirus          

At the end of Marchi, as coronavirus deaths in the United States began to spiral out of control, President Donald Trump broadcast some important news on Twitter. Displaying his signature pathological attachment to unnecessary capitalisation, the president boasted that - according to the New York Times - the "Ratings" of his "News Conferences etc" were so off the charts as to rival "Monday Night Football" and the finale of "The Bachelor".  Granted, car accidents also get a lot of views - which does not mean they are good.

As if things were not bad enough, Trump's coronavirus performance quickly became an even more horrifying spectacle with the ascension of Jared Kushner - first son-in-law and preferred presidential adviser - to the position of de facto commander of the US response to the pandemic. And how are Kushner's own "ratings"? Well, at least he is keeping viewers on their toes.

'Shadow' taskforce 

After initially reportedly assuring Trump that coronavirus was no big deal, Kushner was naturally deemed to be the best person to attend to the ensuing disaster - despite his own role in fuelling it and his utter lack of qualifications in any relevant field. (Judging from Kushner's numerous other assignments resolving everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the opioid crisis, "qualifications" are perhaps no longer a thing.)

He is now heading up a "shadow" coronavirus taskforce, not to be confused with the official coronavirus taskforce headed by Vice President Mike Pence. Kushner's force involves his own former roommate - current US foreign investment tsar Adam Boehler - as well as a bevy of private-sector executives.

By all lucid accounts, the Kushner group's manoeuvrings have simply bumped an already chaotic government response up to obscene new levels of confusion. Kushner is furthermore "essentially operating without accountability", as Jordan Libowitz - communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - pointed out in an April 6 article for NBC News. The shadow taskforce is being run "off the books, with closed-door meetings and private email accounts" - which, Libowitz suggests, could potentially be a good way to "steer emergency government funds into your family's bank account without people finding out". After all, there is no better time than a global pandemic to make the rich richer.

Kushner will 'get us all killed'

Kushner's latest enterprise has prompted news headlines like: "Lawmakers Want to Know: WTF Is Jared Kushner Doing?" As for his known activities, these include scoffing at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's claim of a ventilator shortage (New York now has almost 20,000 coronavirus deaths) and throwing a hissy fit over the outrageous presumption by individual US states that they might somehow be entitled to access the national stockpile of medical equipment.

In a super-sketchy sequence of events, a health insurance company linked to Kushner and his brother was tasked with developing a coronavirus website for the US government - before the project was "mysteriously scrapped".

As it so happens, the Kushner family real estate business could also "be a prime beneficiary of a provision in the federal [coronavirus] recovery bill that allows owners of apartment buildings to freeze federal mortgage payments on low- and moderate-income properties", according to a Politico analysis. 

In the midst of Kushner's coronavirus machinations, even the New York Times felt compelled to run an op-ed titled "Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed" (though the heading was later toned down). 

But while this concern is certainly valid, we should not forget that the US has been in the business of killing people for a long time - and that the prioritisation of profit over human life far predates the existence of Kushner, as transparently repugnant a figure as he may be. 

All sorts of death sentences

Beyond the matter of the US's predilection for waging wars that have slaughtered unthinkable numbers of people across the globe, it is worth recalling that the US military is also one of the primary polluters on the planet - and as such has made significant contributions to climate change, which was what was getting us all killed before the coronavirus interlude.

Meanwhile, the fact that the US throws gargantuan sums of money at its military killing machine rather than at, you know, domestic healthcare programmes or other more helpful endeavours is itself effectively a death sentence for many Americans.

It is also how we end up with US nurses wearing rubbish bags to protect themselves from coronavirus - and the news that uninsured Americans could be slammed with $75,000 in medical fees if hospitalised for the disease. 

Of course, poverty - another defining feature of the landscape in one of the world's "richest" countries - has long been proved to be deadly. And sure enough, coronavirus has hit low-income communities the hardest. "Above all," a Bloomberg editorial notes, "it disproportionately kills black people."

Over at the Wall Street Journal, a short dispatch on "coronavirus capitalism" and its "darker side" laments that, in March, a two-pack of Purell hand sanitiser was listed on Amazon for $99.95. The author concludes that, while epidemics may come and go, "human nature, unfortunately, stays the same" - a rather sweepingly inaccurate assessment given that the history of the world shows plenty of good examples of non-capitalist human populations. 

But in the US, capitalism is not just dark; it is a veritable plague.

Underlying conditions

Although Trump and his co-star Kushner are certainly committed as can be to the darkest sides of capitalism - eg, a willingness to throw countless Americans onto the coronavirus pyre to save the economy - it turns out they are not even that good at managing the system to effect their nefarious ends.

In a recent email to me, evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu, remarked that, while bourgeois political economy dictates that the state "act as capital's handmaiden", Trump & Co are dropping the ball: "A family who has had every underwear picked up by ill-paid staff can't even envision what's involved in servicing the logistics and infrastructure capital needs to accumulate from one side of the world to the other."

American power, he wrote, is "on the hook for cleaning up pandemics" that capital helps to create, thereby keeping the world on the same catastrophic developmental path. But as it currently stands, we are down to Jared Kushner, who, "reading a couple articles, is cleaning up the COVID fix with what is tantamount to mass murder." 

Ultimately, though, Kushner's pathologies could be diagnosed as symptomatic of the US's underlying conditions. Long before coronavirus, the country was critically ill.

by Belen Fernandez

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/sick-long-coronavirus-200505090657572.html

The United States is an unsustainable society

It is time to stop looking at the US economy from Wall Street

Standard economic growth measures ignore the economic precarity that the majority of American live in.

Crises have a way of turning existing cracks in political and economic systems into fault lines. They bring to light what has been hiding beneath the surface. This is why the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, the most serious global health crisis in a century, has exposed the many pre-existing weaknesses of the US economy and laid bare the nation's failure to judge the economy by what actually matters: How it works for working and middle-class Americans. 

In a matter of weeks, the pandemic left 26 million Americans unemployed and food banks overwhelmed. As one in four workers in the country are not entitled to a single day of paid sick leave, COVID-19 also forced many Americans to choose between staying healthy and putting food on their tables. It brought to the surface the growing economic precarity of tens of millions of Americans which Wall Street, and many in Washington, have long been ignoring. 

While some economists and politicians, such as Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs Executive Steven Mnuchin, claim that the American economy was doing just fine before the start of the pandemic, the truth is many Americans have been living on the verge of economic collapse long before COVID-19 reached the country. After the 2008 economic crash, Wall Street and big corporations rebounded quickly, but millions of Americans did not.  

The likes of Mnuchin get away with claiming the US economy was doing brilliantly before the outbreak because they judge economic success merely by the success and profitability of big corporations and not the economic stability and wellbeing of ordinary Americans, such as small business owners, warehouse workers and delivery drivers. 

If Mnuchin judged the health of the US economy by how well everyday people are coping, he would have seen that things were not so rosy on "Main Street" even before COVID-19.

 Long before the US recorded its first coronavirus-related death on February 29:

Nearly 60 percent of Americans had $1000 or less in savings, meaning they had no safety net for an emergency. 

Half a million Americans were going bankrupt every year, due in part to medical bills. 

Just 35 percent of student loan debt holders were able to make regular payments and one in four Americans had already defaulted on their student loans. 

Half of Americans over the age of 55 had no retirement savings.

Had our economy been judged by these measures rather than stock gains on Wall Street, our political leaders would have understood that our economic ecosystem was already on the verge of collapse long before the beginning of this pandemic. 

The economic devastation the US is experiencing today is not solely caused by COVID-19. The long-ignored weaknesses of the economy have turned a public health crisis into an economic catastrophe. 

Earlier this year, I ran for US Senate in Texas. I ran as an unabashed progressive and spoke about the economic realities that most politicians from both political parties ignore in this state. Everywhere I travelled, people of different backgrounds asked me over and over again why no one cares about their struggle. They told me that they feel like they are fighting for their economic survival alone, without any support from the people who are in positions of power. 

Americans are not struggling with individual health or finance problems. They are in a collective struggle for economic survival in a country where the government refuses to take care of its own people. Today in the US, not only most of the wealth but also most of the political power is consolidated in the hands of a privileged few. Powerful players like the Koch Brothers and De Vos family are working to reset the rules and regulations that govern this economy to the detriment of everyday Americans. 

For too long the suffering of the masses has been ignored by their elected representatives. But there is opportunity in crisis. COVID-19 can eventually pave the way for a system that puts the wellbeing of ordinary Americans above corporate profits.

The coronavirus pandemic forced the nation to confront the vulnerabilities of the economy. It made it impossible for anyone to ignore the depressing fact that nearly one-third of all American workers are part of the gig economy, and have no job security or benefits.

It made it impossible to ignore that the majority of Americans are only one pay cheque away from going broke. It made it impossible to deny that the policies that progressives have long been fighting for - universal healthcare, paid family and medical leave, guaranteed employment, cancelling student debt, guaranteed housing, and bailing out working families in economic recessions - would have made this crisis more manageable. 

That is why we, progressive Americans, must seize this moment. We should not only support short-term fixes, like those outlined in the recent stimulus package, but also fight for more fundamental economic changes that would bring economic security and stability to the lives of working and middle-class families. 

Our real task in the face of this unprecedented public health emergency is to build an economy and government that works for all of us. To start this transformation, we should first change the way we measure the strength of our economy. We need to understand that the strength of our economy, and our nation, is dependent not on the profitability of large corporations, but the financial stability of the rest of us - the American people.

by Cristina Tzintzun Ramírez

2 May 2020

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/time-stop-economy-wall-street-200428100706818.html

The guacamole famine, the Super Bowl, and other American dramas

By Belén Fernández

As the US frets 'the guacpocalypse', its delusions about - and addiction to - undocumented migration remain untreated.

As part of a crackdown on corruption and crime, Mexico's new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has revamped the national fuel distribution system to deter petrol theft - a move that has resulted in temporary shortages across various Mexican states.

The United States media have turned up to highlight the real takeaway: the shortages may affect the transport of Mexican avocados and the availability of guacamole for the annual massively hyped, televised sporting event known as the Super Bowl to be held this year on February 3. 

A recent Reuters headline blared: "Holy guacamole! Mexican fuel shortage threatens Super Bowl snack." Other outlets followed suit. CNN warned that "Super Bowl guac may be off the table if gas shortage sidelines Mexican avocados," Maxim magazine foretold a "major guacamole crisis", and the Eater website took the (foot)ball and ran with it: "Cue the guacpocalypse." 

In short, while the avocado dip may be in short supply, the cheesiness definitely isn't. And speaking of cheesy, concerned Super Bowl viewers are reminded that at least there's always queso - that staple dish of Texas that often involves "cheese" that is not actually cheese.

America's 'addiction' 

While Americans fret over the loss of a favourite snack food, US President Donald Trump, of course, has his own border-related obsessions - and is forging ahead with his campaign to erect a bigger and better wall on the US-Mexico frontier. According to Trumpian analysis, the latter nation is primarily composed of drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.

To be sure, there's nothing like a good migrant scapegoat to detract public attention from elite pillaging of the country and other unpleasantries.

But it's not so simple, as it seems that - aside from guacamole cravings - there are other, much stronger forms of cross-border dependence at play. As a January Washington Post article noted: "A wall can't solve America's addiction to undocumented immigration." 

The author, Julia G Young, traces the past century of addiction, observing that, although "politicians and media have consistently cast undocumented immigration as a national security crisis … the demand for undocumented immigrant labor - and consumers' demand for the low prices that this labor makes possible - have continued apace".

And a January item on the CBS News website - courtesy of Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Programme at Cornell University - lists some of the US industries that "can't work without illegal immigrants". 

For example, she writes, the US Department of Agriculture has calculated "that about half of the nation's farmworkers are unauthorised". 

It's no secret that undocumented workers often perform jobs that Americans won’t do - including ones entailing substantial physical risk. They generally work for less pay and no benefits, hence the appeal to profit-driven businesses.

US consumers, though perhaps unwittingly, are also addicted to the exploitative system; Dudley brings up a dairy industry study indicating that a "total elimination of immigrant labor would increase milk prices by 90 percent".

No doubt many Americans would find such prospects considerably more frightening than the potential guacpocalypse. 

Checking the facts

Additional food for thought comes in the form of a November PBS intervention, titled "4 myths about how immigrants affect the US economy", which undertakes to replace Trump's tall tales with such facts as that "immigrants contribute more in tax revenue than they take in government benefits".

Citing US census data, PBS reports that, as of 2015, immigrants accounted for no less than "24 percent of nursing, psychiatric and home care aides". Then again, everyone knows that the best way to sabotage a nation is by taking care of its inhabitants.

A December NBC News "fact chack" on the "costs" of illegal immigration furthermore references the estimate by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that US "state and local governments take in $11.74bn a year from undocumented immigrants". 

The bigger picture

Beyond the issue of hypocritical US dependence on so-called "illegal" immigration, it is worth considering how the "great guacamole famine of 2019" stacks up against other border-related catastrophes - like the US vilification and exploitation of Mexicans and Central Americans who were forced to migrate northward thanks in large port to US regional machinations in the first place. 

Indeed, under normal circumstances, those avocados enjoy superior cross-border freedom of movement compared with, say, the seven-year-old girl who recently died in US Border Patrol custody  after journeying from her native Guatemala - a country the US has devoted much time to screwing over politically and financially.

Ditto for migrants from Honduras and other locales where the US habit of backing  violent regimes and increasing widespread poverty - pardon, "capitalism" - means that daily existence can often constitute an apocalyptic scenario unto itself and has driven entire families in to participate in one of the largest mass migrations in recent history.

Anyway, back to serious news and the real existential question: "No guac for the Super Bowl?", as USA Today puts it. 

But whether the guacamole materialises in time or viewers have to make do with gobs of non-cheese cheese, there is plenty about the current spectacle in the US that should make one sick to one's stomach.

Reproduced from  Aljazeera.com

United States, cruel and clumsy imperialism

Afghanistan: seventeen years of war and still going

The shock of 9/11 drove the United States to apoplexy. The immediate aftermath left Americans with little appetite for namby-pamby contemplation of the attackers’ grievances, much less a desire to u+nderstand the internal political dynamics of the country on which they were keen to vent their outrage. (Which would have been difficult in any case, considering that, in 2002, only 1 in 6 young American adults aged 18 to 24 could locate Afghanistan on a map.) It certainly wasn’t the moment to ask, rhetorically, what Jesus would have done. It was time for vengeance, served at the sizzling temperature of a white phosphorus incendiary bomb. All but blind to the indigenous cultural landscape, they went in swinging.

Afghanistan hosts a complex web of rival tribal factions; the 2004 constitution recognizes 14 different ethnicities. In 1992, a coalition of Tajiks and Uzbeks wrested power from the Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group. In response, the late Mullah Omar formed the Taliban in order to reassert Pashtun hegemony and establish strict Islamic law in place of what had been virtual anarchy during the civil war and communist rule before that. Ali A. Jalali and Lester W. Grau recall that the Taliban — which, in Pashto, translates literally to “students” — “received extensive support from Pashtuns across the country who thought that the movement might restore their national dominance.” The Taliban is as much an ethnic movement as it is an Islamist organization.

American leaders might have realized this, too, had they bothered to ask questions first and shoot later. Instead, Chua explains:

The United States… joined forces with the Northern Alliance, led by Tajik and Uzbek warlords and widely viewed as anti-Pashtun. The Americans then set up a government that many Pashtuns believed marginalized them.

… Although many Pashtuns loathed the Taliban, few were willing to support a government they viewed as subordinating their interests to those of their deeply resented ethnic rivals.

Needless to say, it was a poor recipe for winning the trust of the people among whom the U.S. and its allies would be operating for the next 17 years and counting.

Blood and Treasure

The human cost of the Afghan adventure has been staggering. If and when statistics of the war’s casualties receive public attention, they’re almost always those of Western forces: over 3500 coalition fatalities as of 2018, more than 2,400 of whom were American, and over 20,000 injuries to U.S. troops.

Unless you go out of your way to seek the data, you’re unlikely to encounter the rest of the story — which is to say the bulk of it. Since 2001, over 30,000  Afghan civilians have died violently, and more than 100,000 have died in total with another 40,000 civilians injured on top of that. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) notes that in 2018, civilian casualties numbered above 5,000 for the third year running, more than double the 2009 level.

The full human toll is also not entirely visible. More than 138,000 U.S. veterans of Afghanistan are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2009, it was reported that 2 in 3 Afghans had mental health problems. Worse still, as the world’s main source of opium and heroin, Afghanistan is gripped by a drug addiction crisis.

The United Nations estimated in 2015 that there were perhaps 1.6 million drug users living in Afghan cities — a 70 percent increase from 2009 — and as many as 3 million more in the countryside. That would represent a jaw-dropping 13 percent of the country’s population, dwarfing the opioid crisis currently ravaging parts of North America. Land use dedicated to poppy production in Afghanistan has tripled since the war began. Efforts have been made to destroy the poppy fields to deny the Taliban a source of revenue, even though doing so could be financially ruinous to many ordinary Afghans as well since opiate exports make up a quarter of Afghanistan’s GDP.
Author: Brad Stollery
Reproduced from:
https://medium.com/s/story/the-graveyard-of-empires-eac97e6af1c

United Staes is not a normal country

After reimposing crippling sanctions on Iran this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened that Iran should “act like a normal country, or see its economy crumble.” But, how exactly does a ‘normal’ country act?

Since the dictad was issued from Washington DC, it seems only fair to start there. Is the United States itself a ‘normal’ country? What makes a ‘normal’ country as opposed to an ‘abnormal’ one?

If the US is indeed a 'normal' country, there is a lot we can glean from that, including that a militaristic and bullying foreign policy, which regularly features bombings, invasions and the sponsorship of regime change operations around the world, is normal behavior. If this is normal, is Mike Pompeo suggesting that Iran should start invading its neighbors and engineering foreign coups?

The ideology of ‘American exceptionalism’, the belief that the US is inherently good and unique among nations, is so pervasive in American society and media, that any politician who does not strictly adhere to it will find themselves labeled as un-American or unpatriotic.

American exceptionalism also makes it ‘normal’, celebrated even,  for the US government to spend more than $650 billion on the military every year - more than the next seven countries combined. Pompeo himself is a strict adherent to this ideology, recently discussing the “essential rightness” the US in global affairs. But hey, one man’s normal is another man’s imperialist militarism.

The US regularly issues travel advisories to citizens traveling to other countries, warning them about crime rates, instances of political violence etc., but what ratings the US get if other countries were dishing them out as frequently?

There have been over 300 mass shootings in the US in 2018 alone. That’s nearly one mass shooting every day so far this year (we’re on day 311). These shootings have become so ‘normal’ that there’s a website which does nothing but trackthem as they happen.

There were 11,000 gun-related deaths in 2016 and statistics show that Americans are twice as likely to die from gun violence than they are to die while riding inside a car, truck, or van, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Police brutality

Police in the US shot dead 987 people last year. By contrast, German police shot dead 14 people in the same year. Germany’s population is four times smaller, but if it matched that of the US, only 56 people would have been killed at this rate. In the US, statistics also show that black men are shot at disproportionately high rates compared to the rest of the population.

In fact, black men (armed and unarmed) made up 22 percent of the total number of people killed by police in 2017 - but they make up just six percent of the population. Harrowing videos have shown police shoot unarmed black men in the back as they attempted to run away or choking them to death for selling untaxed cigarettes. Yet, rarely do police face trial for these shootings - and fewer still are convicted. Maybe that’s what Pompeo means by ‘normal’?

Americans spent roughly 3.4 trillion on health care in 2017, which would work out at about $10,350 per person if you divided it equally. That number is twice what any other developed country spends - and yet, the system is so inefficient and broken that there are still about 30 million Americans without health insurance.

Some of them are forced to choose between buying food or buying medication because the costs of prescription drugs are so high. It’s estimated that 45,000 Americans die every year simply because they can’t afford health cover. Is that how things work in a ‘normal’ country? It is also the only developed country that does not provide maternity leave.

Receiving a good college education in the US can be an expensive affair.

So expensive in fact, that students often end up saddled with debt for decades. Americans currently owe 1.5 trillion in student loan debt.

That is also normal?

There have been over 300 mass shootings in the US in 2018 alone. That’s nearly one mass shooting every day so far this year (we’re on day 311). These shootings have become so ‘normal’ that there’s a website which does nothing but track them as they happen.

There were 11,000 gun-related deaths in 2016 and statistics show that Americans are twice as likely to die from gun violence than they are to die while riding inside a car, truck, or van, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Police in the US shot dead 987 people last year. By contrast, German police shot dead 14 people in the same year. Germany’s population is four times smaller, but if it matched that of the US, only 56 people would have been killed at this rate. In the US, statistics also show that black men are shot at disproportionately high rates compared to the rest of the population.

Danielle Ryan

Adapted from: rt.com

Russian pipeline natural gas is much cheaper (for Germany)

Washington is fiercely fighting for Germany’s energy market, trying to sell more of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the country, and to wrestle one of the biggest energy consumers away from Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Germany currently gets around 60% of its natural gas imports from Russia. Berlin has been sharply criticized by US President Donald Trump for being a “captive to Russia.” In an attempt to push American LNG to German consumers, the White House threatened to sanction European companies for participating in the Gazprom-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

Read more

Earlier this week, US Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette announced ambitious plans to enter the German energy market in the near future. “US liquefied natural gas is coming to Germany,” he said, as quoted by German media. “The question is not if, but when.”

RT talked to energy experts to get to the bottom of the issue.

The current market conditions are not favorable for the US, as American LNG gets inevitably outplayed by cheaper Russian natural gas delivered via pipelines, according to Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas Assistant Professor Sergey Eremin.

The analyst stressed that Germany still doesn’t have the necessary facilities for receiving liquefied fuel, and is likely to avoid extra financial losses through paying fees for transits of LNG through other European countries.

Earlier this week, German Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier pledged to decide by the end of the year where to locate the country’s first terminal for receiving liquefied natural gas (LNG). The minister called the step “a gesture to our American friends.”

“It’s hardly likely that Germany would stop importing gas from Russia, which is cheaper than US gas, which it’d have to import either by new LNG infrastructure which will come at the very high cost or use other LNG terminals in Europe, and then the other pipelines,”  Professor Gerhard Mangott of the University of Innsbruck told RT.

“So, from the business point of view, it would be absolutely ridiculous for Germany to buy US LNG and no longer buy Russian pipeline gas,” Professor Mangott said, stressing that Russian gas is delivered directly to Germany, with no need to pay other countries for transit of the fuel.

Moreover, LNG supplies are commonly temporal in comparison with the gas that is permanently delivered through pipelines, according to Eremin. He stressed that LNG is historically aimed at offsetting demand swings, while piped gas is preferable in the ordinary course.

“Russian gas has the advantage over the American LNG just because the huge pipeline system has already been created and successfully works,” the expert said.

From:

https://www.rt.com/business/439154-us-lng-germany-russia-gas/

More billions of dollars for Israel war machine

In an event largely overlooked by the U.S. media, the Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would provide Israel with $3.3 billion in military aid along with over $500 million for missile defense over the course of the next year. The bill, officially titled the “United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018” is expected to be voted on by the House within the week. If approved and signed into law by President Trump, it would represent the “single largest military aid package in American history.”

The massive amount of funding being allocated to Israel’s military is ultimately the result of the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding on security assistance between the Israeli and U.S. governments, which called for $3.8 billion in funding for Israel on an annual basis over the next ten years.

Though this startling figure — which translates into $23,000 for every Jewish family living in Israel — was supposed to be the limit for U.S. military aid to Israel, the figure is actually set to be higher this year, given Congress’ recent passage of a massive $716 billion defense bill that provides an additional $550 million in US aid for Israeli missile defense systems. The defense bill also authorizes an additional $1 billion for U.S. weapons stockpiles in Israel.

Over the past several years, U.S. military aid to Israel has ballooned, with U.S. funding of Israeli missile defense alone quadrupling since 2009. Ironically, many of those missile defense systems, besides being clumsy and costly, frequently malfunction, including the “Iron Dome” defense system — jointly developed by Raytheon and Israeli defense company Rafael — and the “Arrow—3” system — jointly developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing.

“Largest aid package ever” to be given to Israel despite jarring human-rights abuses

The massive amount of aid the U.S. government is set to give to Israel comes during Israel’s unprecedented crackdown on unarmed protesters and a looming Israeli military operation aimed at “conquering” the Palestinian enclave. Indeed, since March 30, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — the very forces set to receive billions in U.S. taxpayer funding — have killed 164 Palestinians, including 26 children as well as journalists and medics.

In addition, over that same time frame, the IDF has injured upwards of 17,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, over half of whom had to be hospitalized for their injuries — including more than 1,400 children. All of those killed and injured were unarmed. In contrast, there has been a single Israeli death and nine Israeli injuries over that same time period.

Such grave violations of human rights would normally prevent the U.S. government from providing aid to Israel, given that the Leahy Laws enable the U.S. to withhold military assistance from units and individuals in foreign security forces if they have committed a gross violation of human rights (GVHR). GVHR offenses include: extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges and trial; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons; and other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person.

However, given that Israel has been engaged in gross violations of human rights since its founding in 1948, and yet has received over $133 billion in aid from the U.S. during that time, the U.S. government has made it clear time and again that it is willing to bend the rules when it comes to Israel.

Written by Whitney Webb; Originally appeared at MintPress News

Feeding the industrial-military monster of the USA.

The attacks and bombings continue. Everything is justified in ordere to feed the industrial-military machine of the USA.

A few months ago, with the complicity of the United Kingdom, France, and of course Israel (which has not ceased its attacks) the US launched more than a hundred Tomahawks missiles against Syria.

Of course, from afar, on the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf.

The success of these attacks has been doubtful, some goals achieved, a few fatalities.

However, the bombing continues in Afghanistan, Iraq, eastern Syria and other areas of the world (always far from US territory).

It is a practice that lasts several decades.

The United States believes to solve the (their) problems by bombing populations more or less indiscriminately.

In reality, these military actions continue to fuel the armament production complex in which their economy and politics are being supported.

To this is added the insistent request of Israel to carry out an attack on Iran. Maybe it will happen although is not sure.

A widespread bombing of Iran would cause tens of thousands of deaths, and unpredictable geopolitical consequences.

These consequences are already being felt.

For starters, an unexpected alliance is brewing.

The three empires, historical enemies, the Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Tsarist-Russian Empire, now transformed into the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Republic of Turkey and the Russian Federation, are beginning to coordinate actions.

An unforeseen Turkey-Iran alliance (Sunni, Shiite) is brewing. And of course, with the support of Russia.

Things are not going to be that easy.

Donald Trump is encountering powerful enemies.

Not only Iran, Russia, and perhaps Turkey, but also China in East Asia. They begin to realize that today their enemy (and the enemy of all mankind) are the USA, and of course Israel, which is their advanced foothold in the Middle East.

We will see how it continues, but difficult times can be predicted for the peoples of that region of the world.

Destroying the world

US bombing has been killing millions of people for 80 years.

During the Second World War the Allies threw  some 3.4 million tons of bombs on the Axis countries (Germany, Italy and Japan). At the same time Germany had made several intense aerial raids on the English cities, particularly London. It is estimated that about half of the bombs dumped in Germany and other cities dominated by the Axis powers were done by the US Air Force.

In Japan, in 1945, conventional bombing by the United States on Japanese territory reached 2 million tons. Several Japanese cities suffered much destruction (Tokyo and Yokohama, for example, were destroyed by 50%).

At the end of World War II the US dropped the only atomic bombs that were used in war situations, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with almost half a million dead and total destruction of these cities.

In the Korean War (1950-53) the United States dumped 4 million tons of bombs. The city of Pyongyang, the capital was destroyed by 70%.

In the Vietnam War (1955-1975) more than five million tons were thrown at the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese government (4 million in South Vietnam and 1 million in North Vietnam).

In the Cambodian War (1957-75) the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs against the Khmer Rouge movement and other revolutionary groups.

In Laos War (1963 to 1975) 2 million tons of bombs were thrown at Pathet Lao and Hochimin route (this makes Laos the country that suffered the largest bombardment per inhabitant in history).

In Afghanistan, the bombing began in 2002 and continues today. The novelty is that part of the bombings is made with drones and those who manage the drones do it from their confortable offices in the United States.

In 1991, 250,000 tons of bombs were dropped in Iraq. Since 2003, the United States have been continuously bombing Iraqi cities and targets to this day. Although the numbers are not available, it is known that in 2003 alone there were 41,000 aircraft sorties and 21,000 bombs were dropped.

In Libya and Somalia, elected targets were bombed during the last 25 years. In both Libya and Somalia, American aircraft made several thousand sort ies with tens of thousands of bombs against predefined targets.

In Syria, bombing began recently, but the US has been supporting rebel movements against the government of Damascus since 2011. For 3 years they are directly bombing Syrian territory and in recent months there has been an attack of 70 tomahawks missiles from one US ship in the Mediterranean Sea to a Syrian government air base.

The United States continues to bomb Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and threatens to re-bomb Korea (North)

The United States threw more bombs and created more destruction in the last 80 years than ALL armies throughout the history of mankind.

It seems their role is to destroy the world and kill as many people as possible. This mission, which we would almost dare call genocide, has become the main strategic objective of US international politics.

Lack of geographic knowledge ot some presidents of the United States

At the highest level, the United States have a problem identifying foreign countries, even those that are going to be bombed or attacked by their armed forces.

Recently, when Donald Trump ordered to bomb a target in Syria he confused Syria with Iraq.. A few years ago, George W. Bush, confused Austria with Australia, and even some decades earlier Ronald Reagan confused Bolivia with Colombia. This lack of knowledge at the presidential level may easily lead to make the wrong decisions. In the following paragraphs we reproduced an ironic article from Russia Today refering to the subject.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin lamented the poor level of diplomatic competence demonstrated by Washington lately, saying Moscow found it difficult to work with people who cannot tell Austria and Australia apart.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Putin said the Americans were acting like bullies by shutting down Russian diplomatic facilities.

“The Americans were in their right to reduce the number of our diplomatic facilities. But they did it in an obviously bullying manner, and that does no credit to our American partners,” he said.

“It’s difficult to have a dialogue with people who confuse Austria and Australia. There is nothing to do about it. Apparently that’s the level of political culture of a certain part of the American establishment.”

The jibe was referring to a gaffe made by then-US President George W. Bush during an APEC summit in Australia in 2007. In a series of blunders, the Republican leader thanked Sydney for “being such a fine host for the OPEC summit,” and later recounted how then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard had gone to visit “Austrian troops” in Iraq.

“America is really a great nation and the Americans are a great people if they can endure so many people [in the government] with such a low level of political culture,” Putin remarked.

The Russian leader was commenting on the latest diplomatic row with the US.

On August 31, the US State Department announced that by September 2 Russia must vacate its consulate in San Francisco and two auxiliary facilities in Washington and New York.

The eviction was closely followed by searches of the Russia-owned buildings, including the residences of Russian diplomats and their families. Moscow considers the search a violation of diplomatic immunity.

The eviction order was apparently meant to maintain the principle of parity of the diplomatic missions of two nations, as requested by Russia. Putin said technically Russia could up the ante in this game and have 155 more American diplomatic staff removed.

“We have agreed with our partners that there should be parity of the number of diplomatic staff in Russia and the United States. There were some 1,300 diplomats from the US; we had 455. We corrected this.”

“But among those 455 diplomatic staff working in the United States there are 155 people working at the United Nations. Strictly speaking, they are not part of the diplomatic corps accredited by the US State Department,” he added.