January 7
GUEST: John Perry, writer living in Masaya, Nicaragua whose articles have appeared in FAIR, The Guardian UK, the London Review of Books, and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, talks about the threat of US imperialism directed at Nicaragua.Progressive Media Promoted a False Story
John Perry and I share an interest in Nicaragua. I drove a pickup truck with medical supplies to the country in 1989 as part of the Pastors for Peace Caravan. John spent a lot more time during the 1980s trying to undo some of the damage that the US backed Contras were doing to Nicaragua.
Our sister city in the Hudson Valley is still going strong after 30 years. We have been linked to Larreynaga, Nicaragua for all this time, and have helped hundreds of elementary students stay in school by providing uniforms, shoes and backpacks. We have also funded a number of university students who lacked the means to continue their educations. Check us out at https://mhsistercity.org.
John has worked in Nicaragua itself, researching and writing about the revolution. When many moved on to other progressive causes, John stayed with this country, providing a window of understanding that our mainstream media does its best to ignore. The truths that John writes about go to the core of the US Empire and the many ways it has destroyed democracy in the rest of the world.
There are countries resisting colonial occupation that have not given up, like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina. The countries that the US has occupied in Latin America are its most egregious human rights abusers, like Columbia, Honduras and Guatemala. Once US troops were stationed in these countries, their democratically elected governments were overthrown and replaced by dictators, willing to allow major US corporations to exploit these countries' resources. The result has been US backed death squads that have targeted journalists, labor leaders, and intellectuals. The majority of immigrants seeking asylum in the US are from these destroyed democracies.
The Empire can only survive if enough US citizens are ignorant of the suffering that colonialism has brought to Latin America. If you are reading this for the first time, then welcome to enlightenment about our country, forever preaching about democracy while crushing any aspirations for independence and self governance in the Third World.
