Time and time again... a weakling stands up to a more powerful adversary and against all logic defeats him. Recent history is full of stories about US puppets getting the bum's rush from their countrymen.
Vietnam, that small, poor, Third World country, took on the French, the U.S., and troops of other nations. More firepower pounded that little land than was needed to defeat the Germans and Japanese in World War II. Years of unceasing attacks by the mightiest military power was insufficient to crush that valiant nation. Could any election possibly equal such a commitment to democracy than was shown by the Vietnamese sacrifices during those years?
How in the world can the anomaly of citizens overthrowing democracies and defending tyrannies be explained?
Propaganda!
The US government has always played it fast and loose when describing their friends and foes. George Bush went even farther when he uttered one of the most stupid phrases ever to fall from the mouth of a fool... "Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists". The mainstream media, by echoing and amplifying those distortions, has been able to fool most of the American people most of the time.
Most... not all. Some of us still know how to reason and come to logical conclusions, right?
Why do you think Castro's Cuba, despite constant political and militant harassment by the U.S., outlast so many subsidized favorites? An answer might be revealed by comparing how that poor sanctioned country and the wealthy sole superpower treats their citizens when emergencies arise.
When the Soviet Union finally crumbled, vital trade and other benefits that Cuba received from the Soviet bloc ceased and an ensuing financial crisis made it look like the end for Cuba. To clinch that result the U.S. slapped more onerous sanctions on the island. The consequences for Cuba were tough austerity measures. The military budget was slashed almost in half, but high priority social spending for health and education, was maintained. Food subsidies and rationing assured a minimum of essential nutrition to all.
Then we had 9/11 and Bush and the neocons finally had an emergency to exploit. Pre-emptive wars with accompanying increases in the military budget fattened the military-industrial complex but brought death to the poor kids who had "volunteered" for the military... as Orwell called it - The Poverty Draft. Benefits such as tax reductions and subsidies were dolled out to corporations and the wealthy. The revenue loss was partially offset by reductions in essential social services. Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties went bye-bye.
Isn't it self-evident why Cubans would strongly support their country? And why the U.S., with all the bonuses and promises that military service holds out, is unable to meet its recruiting quotas... and why MANY career soldiers are leaving and refusing reenlistment?
People are beginning to stand up to the Big Bullies. Hugo Chávez, like Castro, has his people behind him. He wins elections overwhelmingly, overturns a coup, and withstands his opponents' organized strike. With eighty percent of the population who live in poverty finally getting a break, the Venezuelan elite and
their American allies have met their match. Protests in other Latin American countries have also been successful. The oppressive overlords were resisted or ousted.
Peoples around the world are getting pissed off. People who have been subjected for years and years to the abuses of neo-colonial rule of the U.S., its allies and puppets have had enough. I imagine that Howard Beale's familiar outcry "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" may be resonating in their thoughts. Bush's approval numbers have dropped below 40 percent now so it's pretty obvious that people are beginning to wake up and realize they were duped... and that they need to confront those that did the duping.
The indoctrinated, Fox News fed public will instinctively characterize such actions as criminal terrorism. But is it? I don't think so and I don't think Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, would think so either. Here are pertinent excerpts from that hallowed document that
justified the colonists' rebellion against their lawful government (emphasis added):
. . . Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, --
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security . . .
The New Insurgents can certainly find justification in those venerated assertions. We must join the millions of others who are no longer patsies to the PR campaigns of the media are regularly protesting in major cities around the world.
We are the New Insurgents. We must help others find the courage to question their beliefs and views... and question those they support.
Think about it... left to their own selves many Americans wouldn't know what to die for... let alone what to live for.
Do you know?
I'm just askin'...
WRITE MORE!