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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 7/22/21

Imagine the Outcry If Cuba Acted Like U.S. Right Wing Clients in Colombia or Saudi Arabia!

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Colombia protesters set fire to police station as anger intensifies | DW News In Colombia, more than two weeks of protests against the government - and most recently against alleged police violence - have intensified. In one city ...
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Since April 28th, the people of Colombia have virtually shut down the nation with repeated general strikes. For nearly three months, thousands have been in the streets all over the country demanding that its right- wing president, Ivan Duque, step down. They also want economic reforms, including higher wages, and increased taxes on the rich. Their demands include reduction in transportation fares and better health care.

And the response of the Colombian government? Absolute repression from its police and military including sexual assault, use of live ammunition (with 42 killed so far), deployment of tear gas, bashing in the heads of peaceful protestors, and even the criminalization of those who supply medical assistance to the wounded and food to activists in the street.

And what about the response of the U.S mainstream media (MSM), the president and "our" representatives in Congress? Given their outrage over comparatively minor protests in Cuba, surely, they'd express support for Colombians battered in the streets.

But no, there hasn't been a peep out of them - no word of solidarity with demonstrators nor criticism of the hugely unpopular Colombian administration. No calls for regime change or U.S. intervention. Not even the beginnings of public conversation led by our intrepid MSM.

And then there's the involvement of Colombian paramilitaries in the assassination of Haiti's president just last week. Turns out that several of the well-financed assassins were from Colombia and had actually trained in the United States with ties to the CIA, DEA and U.S. military establishment.

Just imagine if the Haitian assassination had involved Cuba and Cubans. Imagine if the paramilitaries implicated had been trained in Russia or China?

What do you suppose would have been the response of our "leaders"?

Go even further . . . Ask yourself how the United States would have responded had a Washington Post reporter been killed and dismembered in Cuba as Jamal Khashoggi was in the Saudi Arabian embassy less than three years ago.

What if such a crime had occurred in a government office in Havana with the proven direct involvement of Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel? Would the White House and Congress have responded as they did when Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Crown Prince (no democrat he), was shown to be directly responsible for Khashoggi's butchering? Would our officials with their heart-wrenching concern for democracy and human rights in Cuba have thrown up their hands in helpless impotence as they did in the case of MBS?

Finally, what do you think would have happened if 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11 came from Cuba? (Remember, 15 of them actually came from Saudi Arabia -- and so did Osama bin Laden himself.) Instead of Cuba, would the U.S. have attacked Afghanistan - as the White House chose to do instead punishing Saudi Arabia? Of course not. It would have invaded or bombed Havana without a second thought.

We need no more than considerations like those to reveal the hypocrisy of the United States government, academic establishment and "free press." They care not a whit about human rights, basic freedoms, democracy, or government repression - unless the alleged violations can be connected to a government that refuses to fulfill its expected role as vassal of the United States in service of its country's rich and powerful strongly allied to their counterparts in "America."

The exact opposite happens when any government (like Vietnam's, Cuba's, Venezuela's, Nicaragua's or China's) shows concern for ordinary people - mothers and children, the houseless, the hungry, the sick, workers, and the elderly. Ditto when governments in question assert ownership and control over their own resources.

Such "regimes" are quickly marked for change. Regardless of their accomplishments, they're dismissed as "socialists," or "communists," subversives or terrorists. So, the United States routinely interferes in their elections, finances demonstrations of the well-off (which are publicized by the media those same elite control), organizes paramilitaries as "freedom fighters," and (if push comes to shove) invades the country to finish the job.

Until "Americans" are willing to recognize that shameful pattern, till we can look in the mirror and recognize that the United States is indeed the world's greatest force for chaos and disruption and the cause behind most of its conflicts, we'll continue to naively buy "official stories" about the designated enemies of the rich and powerful. We'll continue in our delusions about our country's exceptional virtue, about U.S. consistency in supporting democracy, rights and freedoms.

In other words, we'll continue to be patriotic. But we'll have morphed into oppressors ourselves! Maybe we're already there. I suspect we are.

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Mike Rivage-Seul is a liberation theologian and former Roman Catholic priest. Retired in 2014, he taught at Berea College in Kentucky for 40 years where he directed Berea's Peace and Social Justice Studies Program. His latest book is (more...)
 

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