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F Champ Receives Lifetime Ban, Racism in the FGC/USA, and Other Prevalent Social Discussions

KingHippo

Alternative-Fact Checker
I'm not silly enough to play into moral equivalence, I'm saying that in ten states of the US there are no laws protecting minors from forced marriages, and our carceral system is profoundly discriminatory and an extension of slavery.

We have huge civil rights issues still.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Despite my strong objections to this kind of content.. Anyone who tries to portray 'cancel culture' as some sort of 'liberal' thing now looks completely foolish:


So with that said, maybe we can put that kind of talk to bed in this thread, and get back to issues of racism, classism, and civil rights.

It's just more proof that left/right and all this nonsense is a false dichotomy, and a distraction that covers people when it's convenient for them.
 

Swindle

Philanthropist & Asshole
This thread has been about racism in the FGC and the USA. I am not really a member of the FGC. I watch some tournaments when I can and some here to watch tip videos when I have the time to play. However, I have never been to a tournament and probably never will. I am too busy with life to ever make that happen. Most of my free time goes to animal rescue and conservation. So, I can't really speak to what happens in the FGC. What FChamp did was gross and he should have been banned. While I initially think people should get a second chance, apparently FChamp has a history of doing things like this so he should been banned for repeated actions.

Now back to the USA. The reason I feel the need to be so hard on the USA is because the United States and its people constantly and routinely talk about how the US is a land of freedom and supporter of human rights throughout the world. Yet, we all know the truth is far from it. With this in mind, I don't have time for whataboutism from some posters here. "I succeeded in America." "So many immigrants come here from all over the world." This can all be true.

However, we should be talking about how the US does not live up to its ideals and never has. We can easily list the crimes of other cultures and nations such as Russia, China, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, etc. We can look up the rampant racism of non-European countries like China and Japan that goes on to this very day. We can look up the colonial crimes of the UK and France. In many ways, the US is superior to these countries. But, nobody believes for a second that Russia or China are actually bastions for human rights. And even the UK and France don't go on and on about being the cradle of liberty. But this thread is about the US, not these others countries.

The United States should get extra criticism because it constantly makes the claims of being a champion of human rights and liberty and never living up to it. First off, it was founded on a lie. "All men are created equal." Yet, it was founded on the genocide of the First Nation peoples and the slavery of African peoples. These are the two original sins of the US and it has never EVER dealt with them with the scrutiny and moral clarity it deserves.

If you can seriously watch the videos of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, and not acknowledge that there are still deep-seated racial issues in this country, we really are at a loss. Kyle Rittenhouse can walk up to the police with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder and they ask him where the shooting happened instead of telling him to get his ass on the ground. Amadou Diallo pulls out his wallet, gets shot 41 times, and all of the officers are acquitted. Dylann Roof murders 9 African Americans while they were praying, runs across state lines, and gets arrested without incident. Do you really think a black guy would simply get arrested if he killed 9 white people in a church and then fled across state lines? Eric Garner gets choked to death on camera for selling loose cigarettes. All of the officers get acquitted. This has been going on for 400 years.

And of course, we don't even mention the mistreatment of First Nation peoples in this country. Look up the Standing Rock protests. The Dakota access pipeline was being put straight through 380 archaeological sites that are considering sacred to native peoples. Not only were they purposefully and systematically murdered in the past, but now even their cultural and grave sites are being desecrated. Many different indigenous nations peacefully protested citing treaties with the US government. They were treated with drones, police in military gear, water hoses in sub-degree temperatures, attack dogs, and removed by force. The protestors were strip-searched, had numbers marked on their arms, and were held in dog kennels.

Meanwhile, a bunch of armed militia members and white supremacists led by Ammon Bundy seize the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in order to protest the convictions of local reactionaries who committed arson on public lands. This went on for 6 weeks. The police actually let them come and go for the first few weeks. What happens? Most get to surrender peacefully and serve little to no jail time. Several of them even lead the police on a high speed chase. The cops still use rubber bullets and only shoot LaVoy Finicum after he tries to run a road block, is caught on tape taunting the officers to shoot him, ignores their orders several times, and finally gets shot after he reaches for a gun that he actually had. Do you really think if a group of black or latino men did the same thing it would have ended the same?

All of these instances demonstrate, over and over and over again, the double standards and racism that still go on in the United States. If you are black, you get choked to death for selling loose cigarettes. If you are white, you can lead an armed standoff with the FBI for six weeks and get probation. If that is not white privilege, I don't know what else it could possibly be.
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scarsunseen

RIP TYM 6/11/2021
Despite my strong objections to this kind of content.. Anyone who tries to portray 'cancel culture' as some sort of 'liberal' thing now looks completely foolish:


So with that said, maybe we can put that kind of talk to bed in this thread, and get back to issues of racism, classism, and civil rights.

It's just more proof that left/right and all this nonsense is a false dichotomy, and a distraction that covers people when it's convenient for them.
lol I've heard from multiple rightwingers say that the left is trying to "normalize" the sexualization of children. Probably just a few people talking out their asses, idk. I can't generalize and say something like "the rightwing thinks all lefties are pedos" lol.

This lefty cancelled her Netflix subscription. That shit's GROSS. You can't criticize the sexualizing of children while taking part in the sexualizing of children. Most paying subscribers do not want to witness preteens acting sexy. I understand the intention behind the film but the delivery went horribly wrong.

^This isn't a left/right issue, or a centrist issue, or liberal, or anything. Regardless of politics, no normal adult wants to witness this.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
^This isn't a left/right issue, or a centrist issue, or liberal, or anything. Regardless of politics, no normal adult wants to witness this.
Yup, and this is how the culture is supposed to work -- and that gets back to the original topic of this thread. There's some stuff that we just shouldn't put up with, regardless of who we are.
 

scarsunseen

RIP TYM 6/11/2021
Yup, and this is how the culture is supposed to work -- and that gets back to the original topic of this thread. There's some stuff that we just shouldn't put up with, regardless of who we are.
Exactly. We can disagree all we want but I'd like to still think most of us aren't complete shit goblins on at least a basic level. Maybe I'm wrong, it's just frustrating. We can definitely find common ground on some things lol.

I really can't stand radical responses. I hate the whole "if you aren't with me, you're a Marxist." As far left as I am, I can't stand lefties who do that too: "If you aren't with me, you're Hitler." Even outside of politics, "if we don't agree, you're my MORTAL ENEMY." These extremes really suck. Society feels like a death cult right now and I'm not into it lol.
 

KingHippo

Alternative-Fact Checker
I agree that it can feel like a death cult, but when the party of the people running the country do things like encourage a cancer-survivor's decision to "own the libs" and attend a super spreader event during a pandemic, which lead to his fairly swift death, I also get the feeling that this is what they want.
 

Pangolin-man

My trusty sidekick is not amused!
As far as the United States failing to live up to standards in terms of freedom and equality, I disagree, but your point is taken. I think few people, even liberals, would deny that the United States has been trying hard to correct the sins of the past.

However, if social justice warriors intend to make genuine difference in the world, why not focus on parts of the world where black people are legally discriminated against, women are forced into marriages and polygamy, and gay men and women are executed?

Every single social justice warrior who prioritizes one over the other is a massive hypocrite and anti-American.
I focus on the United States first because I am an American citizen and have the most chance of making differences in the world by trying to affect my own society first. Chomsky talks about this in detail. I can talk about the Chinese governments abuse of the Uighur people but I am less likely to make an impact on that because I am not a citizen of China and have no real way of influencing their government. Moreover, China is a totalitarian society that doesn't give a damn about its own people. How much impact is someone from another country going to have on their policies? The same goes for oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.

The United States needs to be held to a higher standard for the reasons I have already stated. Moreover, the US funds and protects brutal regimes all over the world for military and economic reasons. The Saudis only control Arabia because they are fully funded by the United States. They would not exist otherwise. Ergo, the United States is culpable for the Saudi regime.

This is why history is so important as I have said several times before. If you don't bother to really look up what your own country has done in the past, and still currently does, then you can't make any serious statements for change. With this in mind, you might want to look up all of the regimes and wars that the United States has sponsored and caused over the last 200 years.

Can you guess how many countries in the Western Hemisphere where the United States has overthrown democratically-elected governments, sponsored military juntas, supported brutal right-wing dictatorships, funded proxy wars, and invaded and occupied sovereign soil? I won't leave you in suspense. The answer is pretty much all of them. Literally.

Remember folks, this is just the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, this is just the situations that the US admits to, have been leaked, or proven. There are probably many more instances that are not known. Also, this is not including all of the atrocities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. And, it does not include the for-profit prison slave labor here in the US. Look up the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander for this abomination.

So, when you say the US promotes human rights and is trying to correct the sins of the past, history and reality disagree. This is why people throughout the rest of the world laugh their asses off when the US claims to be the land of freedom.

Lastly, I apologize for the length of this post, but I feel this needs to be completely demonstrated.


17393

1846 The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory. 1850, 1853, 1854, 1857 U.S. interventions in Nicaragua. 1855 Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.
"Los yankis... have burst their way like a fertilizing torrent through the barriers of barbarism." --N.Y. Daily News
He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.
"The enemies of American civilization-- for such are the enemies of slavery-- seem to be more on the alert than its friends." --William Walker
1856 First of five U.S. interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.1898 U.S. declares war on Spain, blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. 1903 The Platt Amendment inserted into the Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit. 1903 When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution. 1904 U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt. 1905 U.S. Marines help Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora. 1905 U.S. troops land in Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years. 1906 Marines occupy Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war. 1907 Marines intervene in Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua. 1908 U.S. troops intervene in Panama for first of 4 times in next decade. 1909 Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company. 1910 U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime. 1911 The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army. 1912 U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers. 1912 Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925. 1914 U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns. 1915 U.S. Marines occupy Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.
"Think of it-- [ban incoming]s speaking French!" --secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, briefed on the Haitian situation
1916 Marines occupy the Dominican Republic, staying till 1924. ! 1916 Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.
"Am sure Villa's attacks are made in Germany." --James Gerard, U.S. ambassador to Berlin
1917 U.S. troops enter Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him. 1917 Marines intervene again in Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI. 1918 U.S. Marines occupy Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order. 1921 President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply. 1925 U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order. 1926 Marines, out of Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.
"That intervention is not now, never was, and never will be a set policy of the United States is one of the most important facts President-elect Hoover has made clear." --NYT, 1928
1929 U.S. establishes a military academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
"There is no room for any outside influence other than ours in this region. We could not tolerate such a thing without incurring grave risks... Until now Central America has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not recognize and support fall. Nicaragua has become a test case. It is difficult to see how we can afford to be defeated." --Undersecretary of State Robert Olds
1930 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the Dominican Republic. 1932 The U.S. rushes warships to El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100). ! 1933 President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy. 1933 Marines finally leave Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.
"The Nicaraguans are better fighters than the Haitians, being of Indian blood, and as warriors similar to the aborigines who resisted the advance of civilization in this country." --NYT correspondent Harold Denny
1933 Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman. 1934 Platt Amendment repealed. 1934 Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. ! 1936 U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in Panama. 1941 Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.
It was "a great relief to us, because Arias had been very troublesome and very pro-Nazi." --Secretary of War Henry Stimson
1943 The editor of the Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government. 1944 The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans. 1946 U.S. Army School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere. 1948 José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica. 1954 Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.
Guatemala is "openly and diligently toiling to create a Communist state in Central America... only two hours' bombing time from the Panama Canal." --Life
The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.
"This is the first instance in history where a Communist government has been replaced by a free one." --Richard Nixon
1957 Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces. ! 1959 Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.
"Castro's continued tawdry little melodrama of invasion." --Time, of Castro's warnings of an imminent U.S. invasion
1960 Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment. 1960 The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training. 1960 A new junta in El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.
"Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing communist penetration in Latin America." --John F. Kennedy, after the coup
1960 Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.] 1960s U.S. Green Berets train Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."
"If it is necessary to turn the country into a cemetary in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so." --President Carlos Arana Osorio
1961 U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it. 1961 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba. 1962 CIA engages in campaign in Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress. 1963 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic. 1963 A far-right-wing coup in Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.
"It is difficult to develop stable and democratic government [in Guatemala], because so many of the nation's Indians are illiterate and superstitious." --School textbook, 1964
1964 João Goulart of Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup. ! 1964 The free market in Nicaragua:
The Somoza family controls "about one-tenth of the cultivable land in Nicaragua, and just about everything else worth owning, the country's only airline, one television station, a newspaper, a cement plant, textile mill, several sugar refineries, half-a-dozen breweries and distilleries, and a Mercedes-Benz agency." --Life World Library
1965 A coup in the Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
"Representative democracy cannot work in a country such as the Dominican Republic," Bosch declares later. Now why would he say that?
1966 U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.
"To eliminate a few hundred guerrillas, the government killed perhaps 10,000 Guatemalan peasants." --State Dept. report on the program
1967 A team of Green Berets is sent to Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara. 1968 Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of El Salvador's death squads. ! 1970 In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million. 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens elected in Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election. 1972 U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.) 1973 U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms. 1973 Military takes power in Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons. 1974 Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques. ! 1976 Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to El Salvador. ! 1979 Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to Panama by 1999.
"Once again, Uncle Sam put his tail between his legs and crept away rather than face trouble." --Ronald Reagan
1980 A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.
The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.
"The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on." --Ronald Reagan
1980 U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.
Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state. 1981 The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua. 1981 Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba. 1982 A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign. 1983 Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities. 1983 U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism. 1983 Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates. 1984 CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case. 1984 U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president. 1989 U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs. 1996 The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.
 

Marlow

Premium Supporter
Premium Supporter
I focus on the United States first because I am an American citizen and have the most chance of making differences in the world by trying to affect my own society first. Chomsky talks about this in detail. I can talk about the Chinese governments abuse of the Uighur people but I am less likely to make an impact on that because I am not a citizen of China and have no real way of influencing their government. Moreover, China is a totalitarian society that doesn't give a damn about its own people. How much impact is someone from another country going to have on their policies? The same goes for oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.

The United States needs to be held to a higher standard for the reasons I have already stated. Moreover, the US funds and protects brutal regimes all over the world for military and economic reasons. The Saudis only control Arabia because they are fully funded by the United States. They would not exist otherwise. Ergo, the United States is culpable for the Saudi regime.

This is why history is so important as I have said several times before. If you don't bother to really look up what your own country has done in the past, and still currently does, then you can't make any serious statements for change. With this in mind, you might want to look up all of the regimes and wars that the United States has sponsored and caused over the last 200 years.

Can you guess how many countries in the Western Hemisphere where the United States has overthrown democratically-elected governments, sponsored military juntas, supported brutal right-wing dictatorships, funded proxy wars, and invaded and occupied sovereign soil? I won't leave you in suspense. The answer is pretty much all of them. Literally.

Remember folks, this is just the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, this is just the situations that the US admits to, have been leaked, or proven. There are probably many more instances that are not known. Also, this is not including all of the atrocities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. And, it does not include the for-profit prison slave labor here in the US. Look up the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander for this abomination.

So, when you say the US promotes human rights and is trying to correct the sins of the past, history and reality disagree. This is why people throughout the rest of the world laugh their asses off when the US claims to be the land of freedom.

Lastly, I apologize for the length of this post, but I feel this needs to be completely demonstrated.


View attachment 17393

1846 The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory. 1850, 1853, 1854, 1857 U.S. interventions in Nicaragua. 1855 Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.

He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.

1856 First of five U.S. interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.1898 U.S. declares war on Spain, blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. 1903 The Platt Amendment inserted into the Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit. 1903 When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution. 1904 U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt. 1905 U.S. Marines help Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora. 1905 U.S. troops land in Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years. 1906 Marines occupy Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war. 1907 Marines intervene in Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua. 1908 U.S. troops intervene in Panama for first of 4 times in next decade. 1909 Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company. 1910 U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime. 1911 The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army. 1912 U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers. 1912 Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925. 1914 U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns. 1915 U.S. Marines occupy Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.

1916 Marines occupy the Dominican Republic, staying till 1924. ! 1916 Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

1917 U.S. troops enter Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him. 1917 Marines intervene again in Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI. 1918 U.S. Marines occupy Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order. 1921 President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply. 1925 U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order. 1926 Marines, out of Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.

1929 U.S. establishes a military academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

1930 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the Dominican Republic. 1932 The U.S. rushes warships to El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100). ! 1933 President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy. 1933 Marines finally leave Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.

1933 Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman. 1934 Platt Amendment repealed. 1934 Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. ! 1936 U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in Panama. 1941 Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.

1943 The editor of the Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government. 1944 The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans. 1946 U.S. Army School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere. 1948 José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica. 1954 Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.

The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.

1957 Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces. ! 1959 Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.

1960 Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment. 1960 The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training. 1960 A new junta in El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.

1960 Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.] 1960s U.S. Green Berets train Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."

1961 U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it. 1961 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba. 1962 CIA engages in campaign in Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress. 1963 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic. 1963 A far-right-wing coup in Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.

1964 João Goulart of Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup. ! 1964 The free market in Nicaragua:

1965 A coup in the Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

1966 U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.

1967 A team of Green Berets is sent to Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara. 1968 Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of El Salvador's death squads. ! 1970 In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million. 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens elected in Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election. 1972 U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.) 1973 U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms. 1973 Military takes power in Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons. 1974 Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques. ! 1976 Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to El Salvador. ! 1979 Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to Panama by 1999.

1980 A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.
The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.

1980 U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.
Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state. 1981 The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua. 1981 Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba. 1982 A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign. 1983 Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities. 1983 U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism. 1983 Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates. 1984 CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case. 1984 U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president. 1989 U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs. 1996 The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.
I was just about to say the same thing.
 

KingHippo

Alternative-Fact Checker
Meanwhile, in things that totally aren't stochastic terrorism, the Texas Municipal Police Association has put up billboards outside Austin after the city voted to slash its police budget from 450+ million to roughly 300. Texas is already trying to give the state total control over the Austin PD, proving once and for all that voting and democracy can just not matter if you're a big enough shithead

17395
 

Lt. Boxy Angelman

I WILL EAT THIS GAME
Meanwhile, in things that totally aren't stochastic terrorism, the Texas Municipal Police Association has put up billboards outside Austin after the city voted to slash its police budget from 450+ million to roughly 300. Texas is already trying to give the state total control over the Austin PD, proving once and for all that voting and democracy can just not matter if you're a big enough shithead

View attachment 17395
What a fucking bunch of children.

Good grief.
 

ItsYaBoi

Noob
As far as the United States failing to live up to standards in terms of freedom and equality, I disagree, but your point is taken. I think few people, even liberals, would deny that the United States has been trying hard to correct the sins of the past.

However, if social justice warriors intend to make genuine difference in the world, why not focus on parts of the world where black people are legally discriminated against, women are forced into marriages and polygamy, and gay men and women are executed?

Every single social justice warrior who prioritizes one over the other is a massive hypocrite and anti-American.
Yes, people should totally focus on fixing other parts of the world instead of their own country first /s

Logic like that is why the US sees themselves as the world police and invades countries for monetary gain under the guise of ‘justice’.

Let’s focus on our shit first yeah?
 

ItsYaBoi

Noob
I focus on the United States first because I am an American citizen and have the most chance of making differences in the world by trying to affect my own society first. Chomsky talks about this in detail. I can talk about the Chinese governments abuse of the Uighur people but I am less likely to make an impact on that because I am not a citizen of China and have no real way of influencing their government. Moreover, China is a totalitarian society that doesn't give a damn about its own people. How much impact is someone from another country going to have on their policies? The same goes for oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.

The United States needs to be held to a higher standard for the reasons I have already stated. Moreover, the US funds and protects brutal regimes all over the world for military and economic reasons. The Saudis only control Arabia because they are fully funded by the United States. They would not exist otherwise. Ergo, the United States is culpable for the Saudi regime.

This is why history is so important as I have said several times before. If you don't bother to really look up what your own country has done in the past, and still currently does, then you can't make any serious statements for change. With this in mind, you might want to look up all of the regimes and wars that the United States has sponsored and caused over the last 200 years.

Can you guess how many countries in the Western Hemisphere where the United States has overthrown democratically-elected governments, sponsored military juntas, supported brutal right-wing dictatorships, funded proxy wars, and invaded and occupied sovereign soil? I won't leave you in suspense. The answer is pretty much all of them. Literally.

Remember folks, this is just the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, this is just the situations that the US admits to, have been leaked, or proven. There are probably many more instances that are not known. Also, this is not including all of the atrocities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. And, it does not include the for-profit prison slave labor here in the US. Look up the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander for this abomination.

So, when you say the US promotes human rights and is trying to correct the sins of the past, history and reality disagree. This is why people throughout the rest of the world laugh their asses off when the US claims to be the land of freedom.

Lastly, I apologize for the length of this post, but I feel this needs to be completely demonstrated.


View attachment 17393

1846 The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory. 1850, 1853, 1854, 1857 U.S. interventions in Nicaragua. 1855 Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.

He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.

1856 First of five U.S. interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.1898 U.S. declares war on Spain, blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. 1903 The Platt Amendment inserted into the Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit. 1903 When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution. 1904 U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt. 1905 U.S. Marines help Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora. 1905 U.S. troops land in Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years. 1906 Marines occupy Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war. 1907 Marines intervene in Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua. 1908 U.S. troops intervene in Panama for first of 4 times in next decade. 1909 Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company. 1910 U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime. 1911 The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army. 1912 U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers. 1912 Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925. 1914 U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns. 1915 U.S. Marines occupy Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.

1916 Marines occupy the Dominican Republic, staying till 1924. ! 1916 Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

1917 U.S. troops enter Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him. 1917 Marines intervene again in Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI. 1918 U.S. Marines occupy Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order. 1921 President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply. 1925 U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order. 1926 Marines, out of Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.

1929 U.S. establishes a military academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

1930 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the Dominican Republic. 1932 The U.S. rushes warships to El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100). ! 1933 President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy. 1933 Marines finally leave Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.

1933 Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman. 1934 Platt Amendment repealed. 1934 Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. ! 1936 U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in Panama. 1941 Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.

1943 The editor of the Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government. 1944 The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans. 1946 U.S. Army School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere. 1948 José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica. 1954 Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.

The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.

1957 Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces. ! 1959 Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.

1960 Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment. 1960 The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training. 1960 A new junta in El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.

1960 Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.] 1960s U.S. Green Berets train Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."

1961 U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it. 1961 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba. 1962 CIA engages in campaign in Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress. 1963 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic. 1963 A far-right-wing coup in Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.

1964 João Goulart of Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup. ! 1964 The free market in Nicaragua:

1965 A coup in the Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

1966 U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.

1967 A team of Green Berets is sent to Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara. 1968 Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of El Salvador's death squads. ! 1970 In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million. 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens elected in Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election. 1972 U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.) 1973 U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms. 1973 Military takes power in Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons. 1974 Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques. ! 1976 Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to El Salvador. ! 1979 Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to Panama by 1999.

1980 A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.
The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.

1980 U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.
Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state. 1981 The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua. 1981 Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba. 1982 A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign. 1983 Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities. 1983 U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism. 1983 Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates. 1984 CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case. 1984 U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president. 1989 U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs. 1996 The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.
This dude right here has consistently made great, informative posts ITT. It’s telling that anybody who disagrees barely engages with you, because they quite simply can’t.
 

jokey77

Character Loyalist
We can have academic discussions about Luhmann and Foucault. Hell, I enjoy that stuff a lot. However, this stuff matters very little in the real world and is irrelevant to the poor and oppressed. All too often, it is just mental masturbation. This is why I prefer people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Chris Hedges. First, they communicate in a clear and concise manner that everybody can understand. Second, they actually go out into the real world, protest, get arrested, make sacrifices, etc.

This relates to someone like Thomas Paine, who is the most important Founding Father and the only one who was not a hypocrite on some level. He wrote Common Sense in everyday language that people understood and gave all of the money to support the Continental Army. He was for abolition, women's suffrage, direct democracy, secularism, and a universal social safety net BACK THEN. History smiles favorably upon him. Not so much for Thomas Jefferson. Yet, there is still not a single national monument to Thomas Paine in the United States. There was piece of legislation that was signed by Bush I that secured funds for one, but nothing has been done since. Considering Paine went after people like Washington and Jefferson, was against the aristocracy of the time, believed in actual equality for all, was the only one to protest slavery, and vehemently went after organized religion, I think it is pretty obvious why there are no national monuments to him and he barely gets mentioned in basic American history classes in schools. By the way, he died alone in New York and only 6 people went to his funeral. 2 of those people were freed black men because of his stance on abolition.


With all of this in mind, and since several people here have decided to share personal anecdotes about their life experiences, I want to address the following from @jokey77

I have been working with animal rescues and conservation for 24 years, since I was 14. I have a degree in biology. I have worked at several major zoological institutions accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. Long story short, some of the places, not all, I worked at had severe animal care and welfare issues. One had a rabies outbreak. Another had five endangered mammal specimens die in one week.

I worked at a major aquarium that had severe animal welfare issues. Their idea of pest control was shooting birds with BB guns. Several of the exhibits were falling apart and one of the animals, a mammal, almost drowned through negligence. I blew the whistle on this place to the USDA. They were fined over a million dollars and had to fix all of their violations or get shut down permanently. I quit in protest after this. They know I am the one that blew the whistle. So, now as a result, I am blacklisted. I don't want to work in the field anymore due to several bad experiences. But, if I found another place that I liked and wanted to work, I won't get in because I am a whistleblower. I can't prove it, but I have had several discussions with people who basically confirmed it. So, in other words, I gave up the only job I ever wanted in my life to try to do the right thing. I still do trainings with places that let me and I keep several endangered rescued animals at my house, but no one is ever going to give me a full-time job again.

I would be more than willing to give up more money in taxes to fund social programs or sacrifice something else in order to end systemic racism. I am white but I realize that I still do not have to deal with certain situations that minorities have to put up with on a daily basis.

In other words, talk is cheap. You have to be willing to do something about it. I have before and am willing to do it again.
The most important thing first: I have deepest respect for people with different opionion, if they are capable of bringing arguments. Besides I especially like left leaning people who are willed to sacrifice something for their ideals (and not just call for others to solve their problems). - So I appreciate your posts!

That being said: they are quite long for someone who is against "mental masturbation". ;)

However I don't exactly get your point this time: Interventions abroad is something that the U.S. did ever since (for the better or for the worse). No matter whether the President was a Democrat or a Republican. - What are you trying to say? How does this affect the BLM?
 

M2Dave

Zoning Master
Despite my strong objections to this kind of content.. Anyone who tries to portray 'cancel culture' as some sort of 'liberal' thing now looks completely foolish:


So with that said, maybe we can put that kind of talk to bed in this thread, and get back to issues of racism, classism, and civil rights.

It's just more proof that left/right and all this nonsense is a false dichotomy, and a distraction that covers people when it's convenient for them.
Your false equivalencies in a desperate attempt to justify cancel culture continue to amuse me.

There is a distinction between a boycott, which is what people engage in to protest the actions of a company, and cancel culture, which is what people engage in to smear those with whom they disagree politically. The abstention from purchasing products from a company because of objectionable yet apolitical content is called a boycott, which is what is presently happening to Netflix. On the other hand, the Twitter mob of social justice warriors encouraging the dismissal from your job for political reasons such as someone tweeting "All Lives Matter" is cancel culture.

I focus on the United States first because I am an American citizen and have the most chance of making differences in the world by trying to affect my own society first. Chomsky talks about this in detail. I can talk about the Chinese governments abuse of the Uighur people but I am less likely to make an impact on that because I am not a citizen of China and have no real way of influencing their government. Moreover, China is a totalitarian society that doesn't give a damn about its own people. How much impact is someone from another country going to have on their policies? The same goes for oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.

The United States needs to be held to a higher standard for the reasons I have already stated. Moreover, the US funds and protects brutal regimes all over the world for military and economic reasons. The Saudis only control Arabia because they are fully funded by the United States. They would not exist otherwise. Ergo, the United States is culpable for the Saudi regime.

This is why history is so important as I have said several times before. If you don't bother to really look up what your own country has done in the past, and still currently does, then you can't make any serious statements for change. With this in mind, you might want to look up all of the regimes and wars that the United States has sponsored and caused over the last 200 years.

Can you guess how many countries in the Western Hemisphere where the United States has overthrown democratically-elected governments, sponsored military juntas, supported brutal right-wing dictatorships, funded proxy wars, and invaded and occupied sovereign soil? I won't leave you in suspense. The answer is pretty much all of them. Literally.

Remember folks, this is just the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, this is just the situations that the US admits to, have been leaked, or proven. There are probably many more instances that are not known. Also, this is not including all of the atrocities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. And, it does not include the for-profit prison slave labor here in the US. Look up the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander for this abomination.

So, when you say the US promotes human rights and is trying to correct the sins of the past, history and reality disagree. This is why people throughout the rest of the world laugh their asses off when the US claims to be the land of freedom.

Lastly, I apologize for the length of this post, but I feel this needs to be completely demonstrated.


View attachment 17393

1846 The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory. 1850, 1853, 1854, 1857 U.S. interventions in Nicaragua. 1855 Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.

He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.

1856 First of five U.S. interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.1898 U.S. declares war on Spain, blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. 1903 The Platt Amendment inserted into the Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit. 1903 When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution. 1904 U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt. 1905 U.S. Marines help Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora. 1905 U.S. troops land in Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years. 1906 Marines occupy Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war. 1907 Marines intervene in Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua. 1908 U.S. troops intervene in Panama for first of 4 times in next decade. 1909 Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company. 1910 U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime. 1911 The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army. 1912 U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers. 1912 Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925. 1914 U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns. 1915 U.S. Marines occupy Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.

1916 Marines occupy the Dominican Republic, staying till 1924. ! 1916 Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

1917 U.S. troops enter Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him. 1917 Marines intervene again in Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI. 1918 U.S. Marines occupy Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order. 1921 President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply. 1925 U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order. 1926 Marines, out of Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.

1929 U.S. establishes a military academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

1930 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the Dominican Republic. 1932 The U.S. rushes warships to El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100). ! 1933 President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy. 1933 Marines finally leave Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.

1933 Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman. 1934 Platt Amendment repealed. 1934 Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. ! 1936 U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in Panama. 1941 Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.

1943 The editor of the Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government. 1944 The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans. 1946 U.S. Army School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere. 1948 José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica. 1954 Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.

The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.

1957 Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces. ! 1959 Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.

1960 Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment. 1960 The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training. 1960 A new junta in El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.

1960 Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.] 1960s U.S. Green Berets train Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."

1961 U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it. 1961 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba. 1962 CIA engages in campaign in Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress. 1963 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic. 1963 A far-right-wing coup in Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.

1964 João Goulart of Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup. ! 1964 The free market in Nicaragua:

1965 A coup in the Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

1966 U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.

1967 A team of Green Berets is sent to Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara. 1968 Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of El Salvador's death squads. ! 1970 In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million. 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens elected in Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election. 1972 U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.) 1973 U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms. 1973 Military takes power in Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons. 1974 Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques. ! 1976 Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to El Salvador. ! 1979 Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to Panama by 1999.

1980 A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.
The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.

1980 U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.
Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state. 1981 The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua. 1981 Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba. 1982 A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign. 1983 Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities. 1983 U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism. 1983 Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates. 1984 CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case. 1984 U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president. 1989 U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs. 1996 The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.
The U.S. has been known to intervene in other nation's affairs in order to protect its political and financial interests, as every empire has done throughout history. However, I do not condone foreign interventionism so I largely agree with your criticism of the U.S. in this instance. U.S. foreign policy has always had unintended consequences, even if the military action is benevolent. The most prominent example, which has nothing to do with interventionism in Latin America, involves the financing and arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s, before and during the USSR's military intervention. Of course, the mujaheddin later formed Al Qaeda who orchestrated attacks against the U.S. on September 11th. Unfortunately, U.S. foreign policy is indeed flawed and full of blowback, as both Democrats and Republicans subscribe to the same principles. Nonetheless, I think most democracies around the world prefer that the U.S. assume the role of the global police officer instead of China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. I would not be surprised if some far-leftists thought otherwise.
 

KingHippo

Alternative-Fact Checker
"Nonetheless, I think most democracies around the world prefer that the U.S. assume the role of the global police officer"

There's roughly 100,000 dead Iraqis who would probably disagree, as well as millions of dead Indonesians
 

M2Dave

Zoning Master
There's roughly 100,000 dead Iraqis who would probably disagree, as well as millions of dead Indonesians.
And there are 100 million dead people worldwide who would probably disagree with a communist regime as the world's super power.

But "I am not silly enough to play into moral equivalence."
 

KingHippo

Alternative-Fact Checker
You just did, you goof. There's no moral equivalence between the worldwide global horror that the US has funded and supported for nearly 100 years and those who have died at the hands of Authoritarian regimes. One has been more far reaching and devastating by any stretch of the imagination.

"When we do it it's with good intentions and benevolence" is such gormless garbage, we have so much blood on our hands there's no skin anymore.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Your false equivalencies in a desperate attempt to justify cancel culture continue to amuse me.

There is a distinction between a boycott, which is what people engage in to protest the actions of a company, and cancel culture, which is what people engage in to smear those with whom they disagree politically.
What?

The slogan is literally, 'Cancel Netflix'.

Come on Dave, this is the farthest reach out of you in the entire thread (and that's really saying something at this point). Saying the cancel in 'Cancel Netflix' is a false equivalency to cancel culture is beyond ridiculous.

And also, to add insult to injury:
"Cancel culture or call-out culture describes a form of boycott in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – either online on social media, in the real world, or both. They are said to be "canceled". (From Wikipedia)
 
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Pangolin-man

My trusty sidekick is not amused!
The most important thing first: I have deepest respect for people with different opionion, if they are capable of bringing arguments. Besides I especially like left leaning people who are willed to sacrifice something for their ideals (and not just call for others to solve their problems). - So I appreciate your posts!

That being said: they are quite long for someone who is against "mental masturbation". ;)

However I don't exactly get your point this time: Interventions abroad is something that the U.S. did ever since (for the better or for the worse). No matter whether the President was a Democrat or a Republican. - What are you trying to say? How does this affect the BLM?

I appreciate your point about the long posts. LOL. I get it. However, I feel that is a difference between listing historical events that are concrete and definitively happened then discussing more abstract and obscure ideas like systems theory.

I only listed all of the invasions of Latin America because of M2Dave's constant whataboutisms.

As far as the United States failing to live up to standards in terms of freedom and equality, I disagree, but your point is taken. I think few people, even liberals, would deny that the United States has been trying hard to correct the sins of the past.

However, if social justice warriors intend to make genuine difference in the world, why not focus on parts of the world where black people are legally discriminated against, women are forced into marriages and polygamy, and gay men and women are executed?

Every single social justice warrior who prioritizes one over the other is a massive hypocrite and anti-American.

He deflects points made about the United States and then redirects them into a whataboutism about other countries. He tried to make it international. So, I just decided to post a list of instances of the United States spreading "freedom" and not being racist in Latin America.

I cobbled it together from a few different sites. All of this stuff is common knowledge, you probably knew about a decent amount of it, and can readily be found in countless sources. Obviously, I wrote the first few paragraphs. The rest is from a few different sources.

Lastly, I'm a dick! :D
 

Pangolin-man

My trusty sidekick is not amused!
And there are 100 million dead people worldwide who would probably disagree with a communist regime as the world's super power.

But "I am not silly enough to play into moral equivalence."
If you want to be petty and play the body count game, capitalist countries beat communist countries in a landslide. You can start with King Leopold II's campaign of death and destruction in Congo. Most modern estimates put the death toll at 10 million. All for capitalistic greed. Plain and simple.

Both systems have oceans of blood on their hands. This is why I believe in democratic socialism.
 

trufenix

bye felicia
Just hit the ignore button. Do you really think bigots who've never known persecution can get this point? They literally say systemic racism is not real. They fight tooth and nail to justify everything that might be systemic racism as the fault of the race that caused it, not the whites who always benefit. They will never see it your way, they will never concede. They will never stop justifying one side over the other. Its just who they are. Hit the ignore button.