Tensions with Iran are escalating. Prof. Brownson will give an historical and current overview of the United States complicated involvement with the Country of Iran.
Following the presentation we will meet at Monument Square to represent our area in the concurrent:
Racine’s Fourth of July Parade is on Thursday the 4th, and we would like for you to walk with us. We wear and all participants receive free our t-shirt that says “Walking Together in Love” in English, Spanish, and Arabic! We are multicultural, diverse, of various backgrounds, colors, and ages.
The route is 3 miles long, from the Zoo area at 8:30 am, ending at 11 am on 14th Street. We will need some strong folks to help carry our Peace Dove puppet. Children can ride their tricycles, scooters, etc. Adults can have strollers for their young ones and can participate in wheelchairs.
Please LET US KNOW ASAP, by writing to us at <racinepeace@yahoo.com> and then we will get to you our Applications and Waivers. We need them back by May 30th so we can send them into the City by their due date.
This is Dick Kinch’s relevant reflections on the US’s involvement in other countries sovereignty as described in his presentation i.e. Venuzala (*Available in previous posts)
How Do We Intervene? Let Us Count the Ways
The interference of one nation in the internal affairs of another is prohibited. The 200 nations of the world have made formal agreements (human rights treaties, the Geneva Accords, UN Charter, etc.), and established institutions to enforce those agreements (the United Nations, the World Court, etc.) to respect the sovereignty of all nations. This is international law, endorsed by all and observed by few. The United States is a principal violator.
An important exception to the rule of noninterference is sometimes made for what is called “humanitarian intervention,” for example, to protect people from genocide or enslavement.
There are several ways that one country interferes in another country. Here are some of them, with US examples:
Armed Interventions. The most extreme method of intervention is the actual direct armed intervention. Recent examples include the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, of Granada in 1983, of Panama in 1988. Earlier examples were almost habitual incursions into Mexico, where we seized half its national territory, and of Nicaragua, where unofficial US forces hoped to make that country a slave-holding US territory. The most spectacular and outrageous recent examples are the US invasions of Vietnam and Iraq.
Declared War. Some of our interventions are the direct result of a war. This is the way we seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. We still hold Puerto Rico, our largest colony, and we occupy a chunk of Cuba, a grievous offense to the Cuban sense of sovereignty.
Secret Manipulation. At an extreme short of direct military violence, we can contrive to replace a nation’s government through subterfuge and clandestine support of opposition forces, as in Cuba in 1961, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, El Salvador in 1980, and Nicaragua throughout the 80s. In several of these examples, US efforts attempted to unseat an elected president. But in all of them, the US military presence was limited to a few hundred advisors, spies, and provocateurs, rather than entire armies.
Choosing Sides. We sometimes support and finance regimes that we can manipulate, such as El Salvador in the 80s or currently Colombia. These regimes are often conservative and sometimes abusive, but friendly to the US. Our support of right-wing oppositions is sometimes clandestine, as in Nicaragua in the 80s, or shamelessly open, as in Venezuela today. In the case of El Salvador during the 1980s we openly supported a right-wing and murderous regime.
Meddling in Elections. One cheap method of intervention is influencing or distorting elections in other countries. The US does this almost routinely, for example, in the 1990 Nicaraguan elections that replaced the Sandinista president with one chosen and financed by the US government.
Economic Sanctions. A favorite method is an imposition of economic disabilities on nations we don’t like, for example, Cuba from 1961 until now, or currently Venezuela.
A Passive Intervention. We can also damage a nation by not recognizing a legitimate president, such as Mexico’s in 1921, or by recognizing an illegitimate president, as in Honduras in 2009.
Whose Canal? Panama may be a special case. That nation was a province of Colombia until the US decided to arrange for its secession so that we could build a canal there.
How the US media aids and abets these official and clandestine US interventions and aggressions is another topic. Or consult one of many books by Noam Chomsky, such as Manufacturing Consent. There is a long history of US intervention, the propaganda employed to cover it up, and the media’s complicity in this subterfuge and hypocrisy.
Dick And John spoke on Feb 23rd at a nearly packed room at the Bryant Center. It was an informative presentation on the US’s history of overt and subtle destabilization of independent Countries in Latin America and specifically in our contributions to the dangerous situation in Venezuela today.
Excellent presentation with appropriate decor and music provided by Elaine.
Both speakers had very solidly researched and entertaining presentations. The whole presentation was filmed by Sonali and is available on Youtube;
Dick offered a small parable at the end of his speech which resonated with this writer and I attach it here. However, you’ll really want to watch the whole video!
“Lastly, here is a sort of game or parable.
Imagine a patriotic Venezuelan, of whatever politics. He might wish to lay the following indictments at the feet of the United States – that the US electoral system is corrupt, based on money, the manipulation of the franchise, and a system that awards the highest office to the candidate with the fewer votes; that the US is grossly militaristic with 800 bases in seventy countries and military expenditures more than Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, and the UK combined; that it wishes to expand its anti-Russian alliance to the very Russian border; furthermore that this most prosperous country in the world tolerates scandalous inequalities of wealth and income and outrageous inequities in its justice system, especially in criminal justice; condones torture, abuses human rights, undermines the International Criminal Court, and refuses to hold its murderous leaders accountable; that it forbids others to do what it does routinely; that its current leader is racist, nationalist, nepotistic, abusive of others, and the truth is not in him.
These are imperfections with which a patriotic Venezuelan might charge the United States. Still, says the Venezuelan patriot, despite all these high crimes. misdemeanors, and gross failures to realize its promise, we Venezuelans forebear insisting on regime change in the US, or the replacement of the current US president. But we also insist that he does not have the right to select our president.”
Please check out some of these articles on the US’s involvement in the Venezuelan Crisis.
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