Category: American Empire

By Marc Ash / Reader Supported News / Feb. 06 2019

What the US corporate media is not telling you about the situation in Venezuela is why the Venezuelan economy is in such trouble.

Since 1999, the US has waged economic warfare against Venezuela in an attempt to destabilize and deconstruct the Socialist Revolution started by former Venezuelan president and close Fidel Castro ally Hugo Chavez.

The US wants Venezuela, with its rich oil reserves, to be a compliant client-state. That was what motivated the Cuban Revolution and that is what drives anti-colonialist sentiment in Venezuela today.

By Marjorie Cohn / TruthOut / Feb. 2, 2019

As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

From engineering coups in Chile and Guatemala, to choreographing a troop landing at the Bay of Pigs intended to establish an exile government in Cuba, to training Latin American strongmen at the School of the Americas in torture techniques to control their people, the United States has meddled, interfered, intervened and undermined the democracies it claims to protect.

Now, Vice President Mike Pence, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and the infamous Elliott Abrams are working with opposition groups in Venezuela to carry out a coup d’état.

By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

With detention facilities overflowing due to President Donald Trump’s monstrous immigration policies—which have sent the number of children detained by the U.S. government soaring to a record 12,800—the Trump administration is reportedly carrying out dead-of-night “mass transfers” of children from foster homes and shelters to a crowded Texas tent camp, where they have no schooling and limited access to legal services.

According to the New York Times, more than 1,600 “migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in South Texas.”

Is Trump barreling towards a high-stakes confrontation with the FBI and Department of Justice?

A confrontation that could unfold within the next several days is about to overtake the news cycle and signal yet another abuse of power move by Trump. But this one could be the trigger – as FBI Director Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – decide how to respond to the president’s latest attempt to subvert the investigation into whether the Russian sabotage of the 2016 election included Trump and his people.

Did you miss the memo on the latest installment in the continuing American constitutional crisis? On Monday Trump ordered the FBI and the DOJ to release – without redaction

A malignant megalomaniac facing no countervailing power will continue to expand his terrain until he is stopped

by Robert Reich / Common Dreams

“He berates judges who disagree with him, and journalists and news organizations that criticize him.”(Photo: Screenshot)
I keep hearing that if Trump fires Mueller, we’ll face a “constitutional crisis.” Or if Mueller subpoenas Trump to testify and Trump defies the subpoena, it’s a “constitutional crisis”. Or if Mueller delivers substantial evidence that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia or of obstructing justice, and the House does nothing to impeach him, we have a “constitutional crisis.”

Well, I have news for you. We’re already in a “constitutional crisis.”

by Ernie McCray

“No collusion,”
the man, with way more talk
than walk says.

And he flies across
waters to Helsinki
to meet and greet
a Russian of ill repute
who is seen
as our number one enemy,

a man who slapped our country
upside the head
like a Mafia Godfather
putting an underling
in his place,

From Indivisible San Diego

The only way we get to the truth on Russia, save health care, save the environment, save Planned Parenthood, civil rights, women’s rights, stop the wall, protect immigrants is to #FlipCongress2018!

The Republican National Committee 2017 Spring Meeting will be held at the Hotel del Coronado May 10 – 13. Join Indivisible for a peaceful protest to let the GOP know that we simply can’t wait to vote them out of office in the 2018 mid-term elections. Participants will spell out “2018” on the beach near the hotel for an aerial photo.

The San Diego Audubon Society is gearing up for a weekend of organizing volunteers to help restore the natural habitat on Fiesta Island.

On both Saturday, April 1st and Sunday, April 2nd, teams of volunteers will work to restore the nesting habitat of the endangered California Least Tern and to protect Nuttall’s Lotus, an endangered sand dune plant on Fiesta Island.

Here’s the break-down:

When the 3 two-story modular units planed for the south-east corner of Voltaire and Abbott were approved by the OB Planning Board in early September 2014, one of the applicant-owners stated to the Board unequivocally that he planned to live in one of the units. Now that they have been built, it appears that the units – at least one of them – are listed on Airbnb – for $229 to $349 a night.

President Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who leaked American military and diplomatic activities in 2010, and who had become a cause celebre over those years. This act likely saved her life.

According to the New York Times: