Look South

We pay so much attention to China, Korea, Russia and the Mid East and, for reasons I don't understand, we pay little attention to South and Central America and the Islands in the Gulf and Caribbean..
Those Nations are our neighbors, they are all based in Western Civilization and they can be a great boon to us or our worst nightmare.
The boon? They gave an abundance of resources, oil, minerals, timber and crops. Plus, they are a huge market, with many millions eager to buy quality products.
The nightmare? Well, they don't much like or trust us. With good reason. Over the years, we have supported brutal governments ib their lands so long as they supported our businesses. Remember Somoza in Nicaragua. Batista in Cuba. Remember how we led the overthrow and assassination of Allende in Chile (by the CIA's own admission). Don't remember? They do. And these were not isolated incidents. Add that enmity into a hellish impoverishment and you have a fine recipe for terrorism, Terrorists are not all Islamic.
Nothing to do about the past except move on and we can do that by helping these Countries when we cam. WE do this by treating them like adults, Do business when both sides are ready to trade as equals. Stop telling them how to run their own governments. Refuse to deal with them when they brutalize their own people and do nothing to end extreme poverty. Brazil has vast wealth, but most live in deep poverty, while the elite party in Rio.
And definitely refuse to deal with them when they tolerate drug smugglers shipping their products to the US. Cut off Nations like Peru, Columbia and Mexico until they get a grip on the production and smuggling of drugs in their own back yards,
In addition, we, Americans, need to learn more about our neighbors. They have rich and fascinating cultures. Understanding them will enrich us all.

American Gullibility - Part 1

America sees itself as a worldly, sophisticated country. Well, sorry folks. I love this Nation for many reasons, one of which is our childlike innocence. Many Americans still live in a world of limitless possibilities, and this does give us an exuberance, an enthusiasm. This idea that if we work hard and follow our dreams, we will achieve greatness, is a wonderful attitude and even when we fail, we pride ourselves on our ability to  pick ourselves up, dust off our clothes and get back to it.

However, it is a fine line between optimism and idiocy. We, often refuse to accept hard truths and we can never get back to moving forward until we take some time, look back a little and really see what has happened.

Lord knows, I do not want to dwell on the past, so let me hit a few of the main points. World War 1 was a bit of lunacy, fought over European colonial disputes. We never should have entered it and did so only because huge money German bankers, the Rothschild's, wanted a Jewish state in Israel They betrayed Germany by getting England to pass the Balfour Resolution in exchange for having their man in Washington push Woodrow Wilson into the War. By this time they had pushed Wilson onto creating the Federal Reserve, an un-Constitutional body, and in effect, they owned him.

Then, these same folks, in collusion with big time investors, made a ton of money by manipulating markets. The bottom finally fell out of these markets, after a bunch of folks made a bunch of money, and we were in the middle of the nightmare of the Great Depression.

In the meantime, these same interests, who loathed Tsarist Russia, started funding a new social movement, and the Soviet Union was born. Then to keep them in check, and, I truly believe a love of mischief was also a factor, as the Depression worsened, they funded that little fool, Hitler. The Powers that run the World, love to see a good fight because by manipulating the outcome, they grab more wealth and more control. Keep in mind, America, through such luminaries as the Harriman's and Prescott Bush, yes the Daddy of George Herbert Walker Bush and the Grandfather of George Walker Bush, were still trading with Nazis throughout the War. This is not Conspiracy Theory. This is well documented and Americans just do not want to admit it.

Then, when the War ended, we decided that we needed an Enemy and that our Wartime Ally, the Soviet Union was it. So, we hired the ex-Nazi spy master, Rudy Gehlen, to come up with something scary, and the whole stupid Cold War, in which both sides spent unthinkably huge amounts of money on arms, was born. All we got out of it was a huge pile of bombs that no one can use, unless, of course, we finally decide we're tired of the fuss and blow the World to bits.

All of that wealth, all of that time, wasted, by both sides. I really do not fault the Soviets. After WW2, why would they think they could trust us. Remember, without their nightmarish, but successful, defeat of Germany, we could not have pulled off the Normandy Invasion that clinched the deal in Europe. From their point of view, we stabbed them in the back. Just think, we could have well fed, healthy and superbly educated populations had we not wasted all of our efforts on unusable weapons. We could be colonizing the Solar System and setting sail to the stars.

While all of this was going on, we spent the lives of countless young men in a series of wars that have never been logically explained. I have never heard explanations that made any sense for our behavior in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Every reason we have been given for the lunacy of these military adventures has been shown to be lies.

Look at our behavior in our own hemisphere. We have intervened in Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, El  Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua. Why? Always because we were defending 'American Business Interests.' Well guess what? These are the same businesses who yanked the jobs out from under good, hard working Americans and sent them to places where people will work for $2 a day under slave-like conditions.

And yet, still, I hear on a day to day basis, about how wonderful our military is. Are they good soldiers? Yes. Brave? Beyond a doubt. But, they are being used to extort other countries into doing the bidding of the Powers That Be, the Corporate Elite who want to rule the World. We are fighting for the very people who want to control us, to see us weak and impoverished. The 1% who control most of this Country's wealth, and most of the World's wealth are tightening their control on the backs and with the blood of those who they are taking wealth from

It makes no sense, and yet, in this the year of our elections, no one talks about what is right in front of our noses. Instead we have a never ending paraded of idiots prattling on about how much they are going to change things, about how they are going to make us great again. And the worst thing, the American public is still buying it.

In Part 2, I am going to go over some domestic history and in Part 3, I am going to discuss some of the things about our Presidential Candidates you will not hear on the CNN and Fox News or any of our other producers of news-like programming. 

America and its Southern Neighbors

I am confused about something, but of course that's nothing new. For my entire life, this Nation has concerned itself with Europe, the Mid-East and, to lesser degrees, Asia and Africa, We have, mostly, ignored our neighbors to the South. Why?

The only President I remember paying a lot of attention to the region is JFK, whose Alliance for Progress was a great idea that became lost in LBJ's Great Society and Viet Nam pushes. Oh sure, every now and then we give lip service to the area, mostly when a natural disaster occurs. Nixon did turn his attention to Chile but only to allow Kissinger to unseat and execute their properly elected President, Salvador Allende, a move that hardly won us friends. Clinton's NAFTA deal did nothing to help them or us. Our occasional mucking about in the affairs of Haiti has been disastrous for those poor folks. Mexico, who should be a dear friend, is only thought of when we get riled about illegal immigrants (they have been coming here to work farms as long as we have had farms) and when we want to pretend we are fighting a war on drugs.

Venezuela is a case in point. When heating oil was going through the roof, Hugo Chavez offered to sell cheap oil to the US. His efforts at good will were rebuffed and he was treated like an unwanted step child. Look at Cuba. Our sanctions have done great harm to the Cuban people. Forget Castro. Yes, he is a monster, but no worse than a bunch of other monsters we have supported. Remember, after we ousted Allende in Chile, we supported, avidly, Pinochet, a cruel creature who sent death squads through the streets slaughtering opponents, except for a select few who he had tortured to death.

But these, blessedly, are exceptions. Most of the time we pretty much ignore Latin America and we will regret that. Nations like Brazil and Argentina could be great allies and trading partners, as could Bolivia, Peru, and, now that I think about it, any country down there. Yet, we are so damned interested in the mid-East. I can't imagine why. It's not about oil. Mexico and Venezuela have huge oil reserves. Instead, China does a lot of business with Latin America, and not just oil. Several of those countries have large reserves of rare minerals, the kind that are used in almost every high tech industry. Yet, we seem to have no interest in cultivating relations with them.

If things go as usual, we will continue ignoring Latin America until we desperately need something from them, and that day will come. Then we will have to go either with hat in hand, begging, or we will try our frequent strategy, bullying. Those folks aren't dumb, they will remember and we will pay for our neglect

If I were a young person, entering college, I would study Spanish and Portuguese. I would learn everything I could about Latin America's history, culture and economics. I would study their climates and geography and natural resources. Because then, I believe, about the time the studies are finished, we will be looking more and more at Latin America, either as a very lucrative trading partner and ally or as a serious and perhaps even deadly rival. Either way, that knowledge would be indispensable and I would have a fine professional life ahead of me. But, you know, wouldn't it be nice if for once, we used a little foresight and entered into a new era of relations with our Southern Neighbors as friends.