Tag: RICHARD NIXON

Tales of the American Empire: The Destruction of Laos

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Laos is a sparsely populated country of less than three million people that was never a threat to the United States. Yet from 1964 to 1973, the United States military dropped more than two million tons of bombs on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions — equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. The United States dropped more bombs on Laos than it dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II. These bombings were part of a secret war in Laos to support the Royal Lao Government and to interdict supplies to southern Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail. The bombings destroyed many villages, killed 50,000 civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands. During this massive destruction, the American government insisted that it was not bombing Laos.

Tales of the American Empire

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Biden Betrays Another Campaign Pledge—Admits that U.S. Will Continue to Bomb Afghanistan

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Biden Betrays Another Campaign Pledge—Admits that U.S. Will Continue to Bomb Afghanistan

When the President refers to “over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added,” he is referring to a plan, that appears might cost $10 billion, to fly drones and manned attack aircraft from bases as far away as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to assist the current Afghan central government in defending itself against the Taliban.

Related:

A hybrid war to replace Afghan ‘forever war’?

Stability — Media Codeword for ‘Under US Control’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

An entire lexicon of terms has been built up in corporate media to justify and launder violence. Enemy states are controlled by “regimes,” not “governments” (FAIR.org, 8/20/18); it is “aggression” when they do it, but “defense” when we do the same—or worse (FAIR.org, 4/30/21). It is not “torture,” it is merely “enhanced interrogation techniques” (FAIR.org, 4/2/14). We “stabilize” countries with our “muscular” foreign policy (FAIR.org, 8/28/20), while they destabilize regions merely by existing.

How Steve Bannon Tried to Destroy Pope Francis

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How Steve Bannon Tried to Destroy Pope Francis

Another role, geopolitical in measure, entails McCarrick’s diplomatic entreaties to China, having at one point worked with President Jiang Zemin (1993-2003) to normalize relations with Rome. (The Cardinal later played a role alongside Pope Francis in the diplomatic backchannel that led to President Obama’s opening to Cuba, much to the chagrin of the conservatives.) The conservative wing of the hierarchy seeks to revive Cold Warrior strains of rhetoric about persecuted religious minorities, a gesture synoptic with the neocon saber rattling towards Beijing. For example, Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong has links with the CIA-backed National Endowment for Democracy and previously expressed public skepticism of Pope Francis’ diplomatic overtures to the mainland. In contrast, the liberals have a much more nuanced and pragmatic approach, perhaps in part due to realization that, unlike the days of the adamant Polish patriot upon Peter’s Throne, it is very unlikely that an indigenous Chinese Catholic popular movement will dislodge the Communist Party in the fashion of Lech Wałęsa and Solidarność three decades ago. (Where the secular cynicism of the neocon militarist impulse diverges from the theological wishful thinking of over-zealous believers and clerics waiting on the divine intervention of St. John Paul II is hard to determine.)