In his book, Colombia: the Genocidal Democracy, Father Javier Girardo, a Jesuit priest and long-time human rights activist in Colombia, estimated that, between 1988 and 1995, more than 60,000 Colombians lost their lives to the internal conflict in Colombia – most of them at the hands of the state, either in the form of the official Colombian military or the paramilitary forces supported by the state.

As for the Colombian state’s support for the paramilitaries, also known as “death squads,” that is well-known. Thus, as the U.S. State Department has concluded in its annual human rights reports, the paramilitaries have received active support from the Colombian government and from the Colombian military which has provided the paramilitaries with weapons, ammunition, logistical support and even with soldiers. Given that the U.S. has aided the Colombian military with over $7 billion in military assistance since 2000, all the while knowing the military’s close collaboration with the murderous paramilitaries, the U.S. itself is complicit in the paramilitaries’ crimes.

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“I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at,” he says. “I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me.” Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors–including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge–was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.

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The Empire will stop at nothing to find mechanisms and techniques to achieve its final objective, and we cannot disregard the possibility of a military conflict in the near future. If the US places Venezuela on the “terrorist list” this year, we could be on the verge of a regional war.

Latin America has suffered constant aggressions executed by Washington during the past two hundred years. Strategies and tactics of covert and overt warfare have been applied against different nations in the region, ranging from coup d’etats, assassinations, disappearances, torture, brutal dictatorships, atrocities, political persecution, economic sabotage, psychological operations, media warfare, biological warfare, subversion, counterinsurgency, paramiliary infiltration, diplomatic terrorism, blockades, electoral intervention to military invasions. Regardless of who’s in the White House – democrat or republican – when it comes to Latin America, the Empire’s policies remain the same.

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~ Ambrose Bierce

It is not surprising that, when culture is in collapse, so too is the level of thinking upon which it is based. This is doubtless the social equivalent of the proposition that water can never rise higher than its source. For a civilization to be creative and to thrive, it must have a substructure capable of producing the values that can sustain it. Our present civilization is dying because it no longer has such a base of support.

Western society has become so thoroughly politicized that it is difficult to imagine any area of human activity that can be said to be beyond the reach of the state. People’s diets, weight levels, child-raising practices, treatment of pets, how he can express anger, whether one can make alterations to his/her home – including replacing a lawn with rocks or plants: these are but a handful of private decisions intruded upon by the state. Other than complaints voiced by those directly affected by the state’s intervention, there are few who consistently defend the liberty of individuals to live as they choose.

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While Eric Margolis’ entire comment in the Toronto Sun is a must-read, the following two quotes really hit the nail on the head:

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion…

If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.

Margolis is right.

As I have repeatedly shown, war is bad for the economy. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist, the head of JP Morgan and others, the Iraq war and the war on terror in general were huge factors in destroying our economy.
America is a dying empire, destroying the last of its resources to fight unnecessary wars. Instead of rebuilding our economy so that we can once again be a strong nation, we are wasting trillions fighting those unnecessary wars, thus guaranteeing that we do not have the economic resources to defend ourselves in the future from real threats.

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President Barack Obama’s 2011 fiscal budget projection was released Monday for initial debate and eventual approval. There are some obvious winners and losers in purely budgetary terms. Education, small businesses, stimulus projects, air travel, and other areas go extra funding. Big banks, the NASA Moon program, and moves to curtail climate change got less funding.

Usually the “winners” and “losers” in the budget are pretty cut and dry, but one area is always less easily categorized. The Pentagon and Department of Defense saw a 3.4 percent increase in the 2011 fiscal outlook, but it remains to be seen whether this is a good or a bad thing for the U.S.

In this time of financial upheaval and massive fiscal deficits so-called “spend thrift” politicians are clamoring to cut spending in virtually every direction. However very few, including the current Obama administration, seem willing to pull the plug on America’s inflated defense budget.

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Terrorism is a strategy of the weak. Without power of their own, terrorists seek to goad states into overreactions that bestow favors on their otherwise inconsequential movements and ideologies.

When a state goes to war, for example, this wastes its own blood and treasure, driving the costs of its own policies higher and weakening its own military and economy. Overreaction drives support to terrorism when innocents or perceived innocents are harmed or killed by overreacting states. And overreaction tends to energize and promote terrorism worldwide by confirming the narrative that incumbent powers are evil—the portrayal of the United States as an occupier of Muslim lands and exploiter of Muslim people is an example.

With the logic of terrorism in hand, the appropriate responses come into focus. Constant pressure on terror groups worldwide; cool, phlegmatic response to terrorist attacks; constant study of terror groups, their relationships, plans, and methods; counter-rhetoric exposing the venality and bloodiness of terror groups themselves; exploitation of fissures among the many different groups that have been drawn to the “al Qaeda” brand; and so on.

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Why is Washington spending so much on the military?

The U.S. dominates the globe militarily. America’s reach exceeds that of the Roman and British Empires at their respective heights. The threats facing the U.S. pale compared to its capabilities. So why is Washington spending so much on the military?

The military budget is the price we pay for the nation’s foreign policy. The U.S. currently is spending nearly as much as the rest of the world. In real terms, Washington is spending more today than at any time during the Cold War, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War.

In 2010 the U.S. will spend roughly $700 billion on the military. The Obama administration’s original non-war defense budget was $534 billion. The latter is an increase of $20 billion, or 4 percent (2 percent after inflation). Yet conservatives attacked Obama for “cutting” military outlays. Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace charged that the administration was signaling that “the American retreat has begun.”

It is a curious form of “retreat.” The U.S. is ramping up the war in Afghanistan. American troops continue to occupy Iraq. The U.S. remains the principal member of every major Cold War alliance: NATO, U.S.-Japan, and U.S.-Korea. America is allied with every major industrialized power outside of China and Russia. U.S. troops are stationed at hundreds of installations in scores of nations around the globe. The American secretary of state continues to circle the globe instructing other nations how to order their economies, reform their political systems, and behave in international relations.

Retreat indeed.

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This America in which we live is not the country it once was. Our military is fighting wars in foreign lands to, supposedly, protect us. And yet the American society is beset by a growing feeling of fear and dread. How can the people who live in the most powerful nation in the history of the world not feel safe?

I have previously written about the fear that has been planted into the American psyche. The art of spreading fear through a constant barrage of propaganda was perfected and taken to new heights during the deceitful Bush administration. The problem is that even though those architects of perpetual fear and war have departed, the great fear machine in Washington continues without missing a beat. It continues with its message, only the faces and voices are different.

Joseph Goebbels, Reichsminister of Propaganda for Germany in the buildup to World War II said: “Propaganda is a means to an end. Its purpose is to lead the people to an understanding that will allow it to willingly and without internal resistance devote itself to the tasks and goals of a superior leadership. If propaganda is to succeed, it must know what it wants. It must keep a clear and firm goal in mind, and seek the appropriate means and methods to reach that goal.”

I’d say that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney must have read and absorbed nearly every word ever uttered by Goebbels, the all-time champion promoter of propaganda that was used to spread fear into the people of Germany. Rove and Cheney, the modern-day promoters of propaganda and fear are not the equals of Goebbels, the best in history, but they successfully used his teachings to promote constant fear for eight very stressful and painful years. But all that should have come to an end when the Obama team came on board; it didn’t.

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