Tag: Khmer Rouge

EDSA1: The Snap Revolution

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Christopher Hitchens: Hitch 22

Off to the side was a more youthful Wolfowitz. He told me that this picture, which had pride of place in his office, was of exactly the moment when the Reaganites had narrowly voted to dump the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986 and to recognize the election victory of his opponent Cory Aquino.* “It was the first argument I won,” said Wolfowitz proudly. “I said that if we supported a dictator to keep hold of a base, we would end up losing the base and also deserving to do so. Whereas,” he went on, “by joining the side of ‘people power’ in Manila that year, we helped democracy movements spread through Taiwan and South Korea and even I think into Tiananmen Square in 1989.“

* See, for the best account of this upheaval in real time, James Fenton’s book The Snap Revolution.

Related:

*The Snap Revolution (Part One: The Snap Election) | James Fenton

*The Snap Revolution (Part Two: The Narrow Road to the Solid North)

*The Snap Revolution (Part Three: The Snap Revolution)

Previously: PH’s EDSA1 AKA People Power Revolution

Google Document: PH’s EDSA1 AKA People Power Revolution & Chile’s 1988 Plebiscite

Tiananmen Square

Don’t Deify Jimmy Carter

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Jimmy Carter, out of office, had the courage to call out the “abominable oppression and persecution” and “strict segregation” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He dedicated himself to monitoring elections, including his controversial defense of the 2006 election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and championed human rights around the globe. He lambasted the American political process as an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

Don’t Deify Jimmy Carter

The Soviet Union was asked by the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan to intervene to help fight against the Afghan mujahideen that the US was arming: Soviet-Afghan War

Carter, Charter 77, and Solidarność (Solidarity):

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Kissinger at 100: New War Crimes Revealed in Secret Cambodia Bombing That Set Stage for Forever Wars

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A bombshell new investigation from The Intercept reveals that former U.S. national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was responsible for even more civilian deaths during the U.S. war in Cambodia than was previously known. The revelations add to a violent résumé that ranges from Latin America to Southeast Asia, where Kissinger presided over brutal U.S. military interventions to put down communist revolt and to develop U.S. influence around the world. While survivors and family members of these deadly campaigns continue to grieve, Kissinger celebrates his 100th birthday this week. “This adds to the list of killings and crimes that Henry Kissinger should, even at this very late date in his life, be asked to answer for,” says The Intercept’sNick Turse, author of the new investigation, “Kissinger’s Killing Fields.” We also speak with Yale University’s Greg Grandin, author of Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman.

Kissinger at 100: New War Crimes Revealed in Secret Cambodia Bombing That Set Stage for Forever Wars

Red Scared: Revising history at the Victims of Communism Museum

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

“THERE IS NO WAY he is a victim of communism,” my partner quips, pointing to a photo of the late Pope John Paul II. We are near the end of our visit to the new Victims of Communism Museum, standing in an elevator-size lobby with photographs of “victims” screen-printed all over the walls. Among the many victims and honorees: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Dalai Lama, Romanian writer Herta Müller, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, and Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán.

Red Scared: Revising history at the Victims of Communism Museum (archived)

It’s Different, They’re White: Media Ignore Conflicts Around the World to Focus on Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A MintPress News analysis found that in a single week Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC ran almost 1,300 separate stories on the Ukraine invasion, two stories on the Syria attack, one on Somalia, and none at all on the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

It’s Different, They’re White: Media Ignore Conflicts Around the World to Focus on Ukraine

CIA veteran hosting anti-China ‘Uyghur diaspora’ podcast funded by US government

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The “WEghur Stories” podcast claims to speak on behalf of “the Uyghur diaspora,” and uses intersectional feminist rhetoric to demonize China. But it’s co-created and hosted by an ex CIA agent, with funding from the US embassy in France.

CIA veteran hosting anti-China ‘Uyghur diaspora’ podcast funded by US government

Reminder:

Chinese- and Russian-funded journalism is ‘disinformation,’ but when Washington spends millions on ‘independent’ news outlets and buying journalists to get favourable coverage of its policies, it’s called ‘spreading information.’

The cynical hypocrisy of the world’s No1 propagandist: US pledges $300mn to fund massive global anti-China media machine

Syria war: Who are the real anti-imperialists?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Syria war: Who are the real anti-imperialists?

Chomsky today, of course, is not the Chomsky of the 1970s. While he remains an opponent of US imperialism and a critic of some Israeli policies, his position is less than radical on a number of questions.

In the last decade, he has vociferously and actively opposed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement’s call to boycott Israel, though he supports boycotting Israeli settlement goods. In addition, and this is most relevant today, he has always been an anti-Soviet cold warrior, even at the height of his anti-US imperialism (anti-Sovietism, and today anti-Russianism, has always been endemic to the US liberal and socialist left).

Chomsky’s anti-imperialist political commitments never relied on any explicit or accepted theory of the nature of imperialism as based on capitalist economic exploitation, which is why he often casually accused the Soviets of also being an “empire”. That he is a signatory to a letter that accuses opponents of US and NATO intervention in Syria of being apologists for Assad has clearly transitioned him to the very same position his enemies occupied when they called him an apologist for the Khmer Rouge.