August 15
GUEST: Chuck Kaufman, long time activist and editor of NicaNotes, a blog for those interested in Nicaragua, published by the Nicaragua Network/Alliance for Global Justice, talks about how the US suppresses popular movements for democracy in Latin America.NicaNotes is a blog for Nicaragua activists
Chuck and I have a lot in common. We both spent time in Nicaragua during the Contra War, and will never forgive our government for what it did to the Sandinista revolution. In those days, the US media was captured by the Pentagon, much the same as it is today. The New York Times shuffled its reporters until each and every one of them parroted government talking points: that the Sandinistas were Communists and a danger to democracy.
Those years helped both of us in understanding how a false narrative is created and then sold to the American public. If a Latin American leader supports US big business interests, why anything goes no matter how many are tortured and killed. If a leader supports equality and true democracy, why it is time for the CIA assassins.
We both knew about the School of the Americas, even though our government has changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. That is where dictators and death squad assassins have been learning their trade for the last 40 years. Of course, that truth is not part of the accepted story being so skillfully fed to us.
When it comes to empire, the truth never dares raise its head in the nation's schoolbooks or newspapers. Like a nation of sheep, millions of Americans don't really want to spend time researching a different narrative. And there is always a price to pay for truth telling that runs counter to what is red, white and blue.
Maybe that is how empires have always been. The Germans cheered while a racist madman led them into a disastrous and unwinnable war. Our own madman president is leading us into climate extinction, another unwinnable conflict with our life supporting mother earth. Isn't it time we created a new narrative of what our country is, and what is should be?
