This take is just as accurate as the CNN’s “mostly peaceful protests” last year. To begin with, Duque’s government is as conservative as Biden’s. They are comparing a centrist to very left wing ideologues.
I am a Colombian with family in bogota and Barranquilla. These protestors have destroyed public and PRIVATE properly, attacked private shop owners, burned down businesses and are being agitated by supporters of Maduro. they are being led by faction of Petro’s henchmen, the ex-mayor of Bogota, a crooked, power hungry politician who is again trying to win the presidency next year. Petro was a disaster for Bogota. He is an inept leader whose Marxist beliefs and sympathy with Venezuela will ensure that Colombia WILL be the next Venezuela.
My brother’s business is paralyzed. He cannot transport materials that are waiting at the port and he cannot transport his good out for delivery. He cannot get paid, but he has to pay storage penalties at the port. During the pandemic, he has kept his employees working in safe and stable conditions, but he is unable to pay his rent and is losing business daily.
These so called protests are disruption the life of the country more than the pandemic, and if my brother has to close his business, many people will be put out of work. Many businesses are under this same stress. It is not sustainable and it is not genuine. People are being manipulated into believing that these protests are reasonable, but they are riots.
This is the consequence of the so called peace plan. After over 8 years of “taxes for the rich” where capital was taxed at disproportionate rates in order to pay for the peace deal, the country has not only seen the the rich and also international investors flee, losing jobs and opportunities, but it is still at war, still completely bankrupted and unable to help the vulnerable, and now the economy is handicapped.
young people in this video don’t understand what they are protesting for or against. They don’t understand the history of Marxism in the region, and they don’t seem to understand that this is the road to total collapse like in Venezuela.
That’s exactly what the oligarchic news outlets in Colombia report. It’s interesting to hear you parrot it. The Uribistas are the ones who will turn Colombia into Venezuela. The problem was never lefty vs rightly but rule of law vs corruption. You seem awfully concerned about your family’s business and property destruction but you don’t mention the disappearances, torture, murders, and rapes by government forces. I hope you decide to put people over things and money.
Hmm while we have political prisoners languishing in solitary confinement for essentially “aggravated trespassing”. Oh I forgot they are the “wrong type” of protestor/person.
Erik, Every Colombian person understands the human cost of our history. Whether it is people like me who lost cousins and friends to botched kidnappings or killings, who lost homes and family when they had to flee to be safe. There are others in the countryside whose children were forcefully conscripted into the FARC, those who lost family and land to the paramilitaries, plenty of women who were raped and involuntarily made to abort or birth a child by either group. We've seen it all, and we feel it. I understand what you are saying, and most people, whether business owners or their workers feel the plight of the most vulnerable. Colombia is throughly corrupt country, it runs from the president to the mailman, but the truth on the ground of these protest is much more complicated than left v. right or law v. corruption. there are many agents of chaos involved, and these naive students who are out there burning down business that took families generations to build, overturning buses, and disrupting the last economic lifeline that is barely keeping the country together, are being used and misled. Isn't Matt's podcast aptly names 'useful idiot'? Yes, they protest a 10cent tax on a food item, but the blocking of roadways and disruption of life has caused inflation and increase of 200% on that item. Many of these people out there protesting for free education ask to get paid in cash so they can evade taxes. In the meantime, my brother's workers pay all their taxes and get little in return. Duque is not the savior, but Petro will destroy Colombia. I'm not saying I have the answer, but thinking about this in the stereotypical American way is totally wrong.
Ah, yes, Erik the Red. Did you read what RcW wrote? Economic activity paralyzed by Maduro-istas. I know you Marxists never have an issue with Marxist behavior. RcW has first hand knowledge. And you have? Squat, like all Marxists.
the poor in Colombia have no voice. Compare it to Israel, like the article does, where corruption exists, but the citizens won't stand for it. It's our mentality and our legacy. But even so, our democratic tradition has persevered through the worst. Most Colombians have a good character and a positive nature, and want to live a peaceful, productive life structured around family and community.
That is what "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious cis-heteronormative white patriarchy culture" actually is:
retrograde suburbanite consumers living in a hellish culture that is undergoing a "crisis of meaning"---or PGC (Peckerwood Grievance Culture)
*The result: incoherent cultural responses that rely on vague, historically-tinged anti-semitic categories: "cultural marxism."
*Which then are deployed to denigrate those who disagree with them, and to dismiss "disparate calls for social change on the behalf of marginalized people" as conspiratorially, far-left, marxist calls to further marginalize "peckerwood grievance culture" adherents.
*Champion peckerwood grievance culture grifters such as Christopher Rufo and James Lindsay as spoke-person truth tellers, who in reality are just marginally savvy on-the-make charlatans more than happy to make a quick buck off the "unawake" PGC adherents.
*Humorously believe that a suite of hitherto obscure academic critical theories (CRT, postmodernism) are being surreptiously injected into elementary school curriculums by a tightly organized, radical, far-left, marxist cadre as a recruitment tool for marxist sunday schools, new black panther party picnics, critical race theory spelling bees, socialist carnivals, and DNC bake sales.
*What will NOT result: the end of the world as we know it..
*What will NOT result: The end of e. pierce's all-cap PSYCHOTIC ASSHOLE TROLL rejoinders.
Matt, I think you're really straying out of your wheelhouse when talking about Colombia. And it's clear that some of your readers are equally clueless and buy the trope that all Latin American governments that support the rule of law are right wing dictatorships. To the people like Erik that argue from apparently zero foundation that what Rcw is saying is false, I would say learn the language and culture, go there and spend some time (as I have), then come back and tell us all about it. I'm pretty harto of American liberals whining about Latin American and knowing absolutely nothing about life there.
I was surprised I hadn't seen any more info on this but I think the news has skewed more domestic since the pandemic and even more so since January. Wishing the best for your brother and hope this settles down soon.
So frustrating to me how little coverage of the world we get. Japans deputy prime minister recently averred that Japan would defend Taiwan. That seems important. Our policy towards Taiwan seems important.
dd, no entiendo- comparar la situación de Colombia hoy en día con Cuba de Batista? No se comparan. Colombia es un país con 5x la poblacion de Cuba, con regiones muy diferentes en cultura y topología. Cuba era una isla bastante homogénea, controlada por intereses americanos de una manera muy directa. Colombia tiene una larga y fuerte cultura democrática independiente, Cuba era colonia y después dictadura. Se puede decir que los dos sufren de problemas mayores de corrupción, pero la situación en Colombia se complica mucho por una guerra entre 4 facciones: ejercito nacional, FARC, narcotrafico, y paramilitares que arrasa con los pueblos y la gente que se les cruza.
Se puede decir que los costeños Colombianos tienen mucho en común con los Cubanos en cuanto a su manera de ser y su música, baile, etc. Generalizando, yo diría que los dos países comparten una cultura vibrante y creativa, con gente alegre y buena de fondo. Politicamente, no se si veo similaridades.
RCW - Your complaint sounds very much like Anti BLM Americans who ignore the underlying CAUSE of the anger and focus only on the property destruction. Claiming the protestors are ignorant, which is what you do, or dangerous which is what anti BLMers in the US do...
I think if you could articulate a better understanding of the anger from the protestors you might have more credibility, no?
Pierce - is your name calling reserved for anyone that does not 100% agree with everything rattling around in your mind or does it extend to people that agree with you as well....
Are Americans that TRULY think Trump had the election stolen from him TRIBAL too or is it just liberals in general?
Yes, it is. But e. pierce, while a vigorously committed ideologue in exclusive service to screeching phantoms and hollering ghosts that can only be found in the dark recesses of his own mind, is also a very troubled soul---and actually the cousin of one the site monitors, so we keep him around for laughs.
Are we asking if Latouche is a wannabe Ignatius Reilly, or that all of this might be a Reillyesque satire by Latouche, or if Latouche's missives often appear as John Kennedy Toole-like sketches of what Reilly might sound like in 2021 at Matt Taibbi's substack threads? Were he paying five bucks month to read and comment? None of the above.
Don't sweat it---coincidentally it happened to me just last night, in a dissimilar fashion with another commenter. It's what makes this ballroom the ballroom it is.
By the way, am I the only one here with a malfunctioning thread response email thing? I get many, if not all, of the responses to e.pierce's comments. And I just received a comment from more than a month ago from someone whose comment I did not comment on. Anybody?
Booga-booga! Booga-booga! Booga-booga! War whoops and the beating of drums echo through the grassy steppes, as the tribalist cultural-marxists, bedecked in war paint and bonnets---and fashionable buckskin loincloth---gather in the distance...to do battle with the PGG'ers! Booga-booga! Booga-booga! Booga-booga!
Democratically leftist leaders.... you mean like Ortega? Maduro? Castro? The quality of life in those countries is pessimo, and it has nothing to do with the "USA". Go spend some time there, Mango. Pretty cool name, by the way.
My cousin worked down in El Salvador as a photo journalist for the San Francisco Examiner during the FNLA revolution against an USA backed fascist military regime. The junta had a battalion trained at the US School of Americas. The "Atlacatl" battalion was especially brutal when they fought the FNLA. They had no problem massacring indigenous civilians, Jesuit priests, etc.... This battalion was responsible for the El Mozole massacre, the El Calabozo massacre, and the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests. Also including dozens of people killed in Tenancingo and Copapayo in 1989. Including sixty-eight people killed in Los Lianitos in 1989. My cousin was on the ground and said this was true. We back some real SOB's for "strategic purposes". Daniel Ortega(Sandinista Commander Zero), Castro(El Comandante.), Maduro, and others took corruption to new levels at the expense of their people. Same for Pinochet, Noriega, Duerte, Stroesner,Somosa, etc... Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Indeed.
I suspect Mango and those like him would suggest that it is US sabotage that causes the poor quality of life in those countries. I disagree, but I believe i'm accurately reflecting the viewpoint. I seem to remember the same slings and arrows from the Eastern Bloc, if we'd just treat them like we do our capitalist class enemies *cough* I mean allies, they'd be all peachy economically.
It was Capitalism that made US different from all those FAILED South/Central American economies. They never sent a man to the moon and what great scientific contributions have they made for civilization.... leaving their unwanted babies at out border??
e. pierce is a geneticist, not a phrenologist. He dabbles in CRT and Marxist theory also. Autodidact. Not just conversant, but fluent, in all the crucial academic disciplines---history, philosophy of history, philosophy, history of philosophy, geography, history of geography, postmodernism, history of postmodernism, genetic regionalism, regional genetics, history of genetic regionalism, history of regional genetics, etc.
The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits.
And growing with the open border where Biden is giving
Free Medical
Free Legal Council
ALL WELFARE.
No one in the US get's all that.
Is that what's dragging Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia down?
Labor Unions that were busted by CHEAP immigrant labor.
Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant.
.American construction workers today make $5 an hour less than they did 40 years ago after adjusting for inflation.
In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70% of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were babies of undocumented mothers, and 45% of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30% in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 babies undocumented mothers in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36% of all Medi-Cal [California’s Medicaid program] births.
Now [2005] they account for substantially more than half. The parents of infant citizens still qualify for welfare in order to protect the children
More booga-booga shit. It's quite easy to cherry-pick statistics that reinforce and dovetail with one's politics and cultural prejudices, and many of them, like yours here, are meaningless in the aggregate and needlessly obscure the real causes of the cascading penury that is menacing 90% percent of all Americans.
You fail to make a connection between the vast income inequality at work in the U.S., a result of the 40-year upward capture of the vast majority of income gains made possible by the "new model efficiency" directed from far above---in short, the wholesale capture of the economy and the political system by an elite corporate and political class, a distinct and well-defined class, which has come to more and more reflect the "dominate" culture and class of a third-world nation. Why shouldn't the U.S. look like a third-world nation?
Read the link below. You mention $250 million of maternity costs for Latino babies, but how about the $2.2 trillion dollar Trump tax cut for the upper income tax "bracketeers"? And on and on.
"....Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant....."
So you're pro-union? Good. Who the hell do you think busted up all the unions in the U.S.? Mexican revolutionaries from Chiapas? Yet another cute little 40-year financial leveling project of the lords and masters.
And here's a personal anecdote. I work in agriculture on the east coast, live in an area that's best described as a mix of rural pockets dotted by small towns. Fairly active farming community. The majority of the farm labor are Mexicans and Guatemalans. Fair number of young gringoes, but it's mostly Latinos who do the heavy lifting, the majority of them undocumented, who sow the fields, weed the fields, spread the horseshit, drive to the markets, harvest the lettuce and tomatoes, etc.
The early morning roads are filled with vans of these laborers, vans often bearing "Tennessee" license plates, where, I'm told, an arcane licensing system is in place that makes it easier for undocumented workers to obtain driver's licenses. They are never pulled over by law enforcement even though the Tennessee plates are a dead give-away. In fact, they are more likely to evade being stopped for minor traffic violations. Know why? Because they comprise the bulk of the workforce in a vital economic sector of these communities. Absent of their presence and labor, a lot of work wouldn't get done and a good deal of commerce would not take place. They not only are hard workers, but they are typically the ONLY ones willing TO DO the work. And their employers?---neighbors and friends of the local law enforcement.
Your conspicuous search for boogiemen in all the wrong places for all the wrong people utilizing all the wrong numbers implies a bit of ethnic profiling at work, no?
In Scandinavia their Corporate tax is only 20% - 21%. The individual tax is 50% to 70%.
US corporate tax is 21%.. 60% of our workers receive more back in credits from IRS than they paid in taxes, 20% barely pay for themselves and the top quintile pays 87% of the taxes. and that doesn't count 21% of the US population is on Welfare, Switzerland 7.9%, Sweden 3.7%, Denmark 12%
All those countries have 80% -90% their OWN culture.
"Richer countries more likely to be homogenous." The more ethnically homogeneous the more successful
Right now, We are in debt. The IMF is going to produce their own currency to replace the US dollar. We will be a NON country of 358,000,000 poverty stricken people. You think importing and being responsible for them financially is sound. You are crazy!
I don't see anyone raising taxes on Companies. What makes you think that's going to work.
All you have to do is look at successful countries and compare them to failing countries and observing the differences in policy. Start with Scandinavia. You only have to have marginal intelligence to see they are paying 50% - 70% income tax, have NO diversity, Their corporate tax is 21%. Now calculate that and see if it makes any difference.
Capitalism doesn't need communist help destroying capitalism and western civilization"....capitalism is a self-immolating system and will destroy itself and takedown western civilization with it....if it "continues."
We will NEVER have free healthcare as Biden is on course to admit 8,000,000 people (if the open border crossings continue. We simply do not have enough money to house, feed, educate, and employ our own, even if you take the TOTAL yearly income of the top 10%. And yet we are cattleing in millions. WHY?
It's too late now. DACA alone spawned 260,000 kids since they have been here. Do you know what it costs to raise 260,000 with a parent who has an average income of $30,000 an average?
Scandinavia does not have a huge foreign invasion of Welfare problem and their taxes are 50% - 70%. They have almost NO diversity. The US will never survive. Our education system has collapsed, kids entering college are so unprepared they're teaching high school in college before they can take a college course. Our wages have stagnated and even dropped, in some cases, from what they were 40 years ago. If that isn't transplanting the 3rd into a first world. I don't know what is.
The US spends nearly 1TRILLION dollars a year on the defense budget alone. We have the money to do whatever we wish.Healthcare and education for it's people are not on the list.
You have no sense of Budget and no sense of the American essence. WE emphasize exceptional, we cultivate exceptional. we are responsible for our selves and our OWN families and that's what made US strong.
This is what this country was built on:
Massachusetts in 1700 kept out the infirm and disabled who had no security against becoming public charges. The law required ship captains to post bonds for "lame, impotent, or infirm" passengers who were "incapable of maintaining themselves." The bond requirement sought to prevent the new arrival from becoming reliant on public relief. Without a bond from the captain, the vessel had to return the person to his home country.
In the 19th century, before the existence of a federal agency responsible for immigration policies, eastern seaboard states such as New York and Massachusetts enacted state laws that restricted the immigration of aliens deemed likely to become dependent on public institutions such as poor houses. These states also charged steamship companies a “head tax” for each foreign passenger they landed in order to defray the cost of caring for, and sometimes removing, indigent immigrants who ended-up in state-funded facilities. Ellis Island waylaid certain arrivals, including those likely to become public charges, such as unescorted women and children.
Immigrant families caught illegally crossing the Mexican border told U.S. immigration agents they made the dangerous trip because they believed they would be permitted to stay in the United States and collect public benefits.
We did not choose these people and I don't feel responsible for them. and yet 60% of the working people get more back in their taxes then they paid in. the 4th Quintile pays for what they use in taxes and about 10 % more. the top 20% pay 87% of the taxes.
WE ARE IN DEBT. Where do you suppose we get the money to offer the 8,000,000 more people Biden has pledged to let in and the 20,000,000 illegal aliens already HARBORED in the US? Just in Health care it will cost $312,816.000.000. These are people propagating as we speak (DACA) spawned 260,000 Citizens all on welfare. Average DACA income is $30,000.
Total Profit margin for all Health Insurance companies was $4.4%. The total profit for ALL companies was $968.000,000,000 (not including expenses like payroll advertising.)
At the average cost of $11,172 per capita Just for the 28,000,000 Unauthorized it would be $313 B which does not count the other 80 Welfare programs they will be enrolled in.
Insurers that sell individual and small group health coverage must spend at least 80% of premiums on medical claims and quality improvements for members. No more than 20% of premium revenue can be spent on total administrative costs, including profits and salaries.
You are a long-winded idiot. Try doing some research on the REAL REASON all those people from central america are fleeing their home country(s) I'll give you a hint: US Government meddling in the affairs of foreign countries where they have no business being. And don't lecture me on "what this country was built on". I have served my country proudly but also will call it out when it's warranted.
When more people begin to understand this one salient fact about how how our political and economic system works, things might change, reform made possible. Until this day arrives, though, it's all whistling in the wind. It's not just about maintaining economic power for the elites, it's maintaining political power for the purpose of controlling the "narrative." Everything flows from the effort---and ability---to control the narrative.
It is the general public that pays most of the taxes in successful countries. Their general public is affluent paying 50% to 70% taxes and they are 80% -90% the same culture, no diversity, no division.
We adopted our son from Medellin in 1987. Yes, 1987 when the country was Thunderdome. I spent time in Medellin and Bogota w/ Carlos before bringing him to Miami to meet his new mom. The country of Colombia is flawed, like all countries. But, the people are good, hardworking, religious, people. I saw the darkside of Colombia first hand as I saw the the good hearted side. People were so nice to me as I, a new dad, stayed in hotels w/ a 2 year old boy who spent the first 2 years of his life in orphanages and foster homes. The brave attorneys, judges, and journalists took their country back from billionaire sociopathic drug kingpins. It wasn't pretty! We need to care about Colombia. You see, our cocaine habit turned their country into chaos. Yes, the coke industry just moved elsewhere. But, we owe a debt to these people. Thanks Matt for writing this. I have been following the conflict, mostly from foreign sources. Please follow Matt's prompt and keep apprised of what is happening in that beautiful country.
Thank you for sharing. In case you’re curious, the cocaine money stopped flowing to stopped flowing to Colombia when water-based interdiction became very effective and smugglers had to use overland routes. The money is in the movement after all. This is why the violence hasn’t ended so much as been displaced. Colombia still exports cocaine but only a tiny fraction of the street price goes to producers.
That said, I hope all is well with you and your family.
It wasn't the habit. Change that to "our failed attempts to interdict the flow of money associated with a disfavored cash crop" and then i'd agree with you. We didn't care who we destroyed in the process.
Colombia is not just launching pad for Venezuela coups but a long-standing US military fortress built on Colombian soil to destroy FARC and non-CIA cocaine trade, using military trained at US School of the Americas. Pure terrorism.
So, we'll either see a police state or maybe another Venezuela. Don't you think its about time we let people figure out what they have to do without sticking our noses in it. Armed with ideology, weapons, cockeyed self serving strategy, wrapped in a wonderful narrative....in the end it always ends up like this: Chaos or a Police State. Greenwald had a recent funding on how our gov't is spending $2 billion on capitol police...and not just in Washington. So same is beginning to happen here.
Sad to think those are the only choices, but much of central and South American history seems to confirm. What makes rule of law and equal rights under the law so difficult for them?
It's about cultural mores, not anything intrinsic. Think about it this way: if your history involved Spanish colonization, the thumb of the Catholic Church and rule from Madrid, would you perhaps be different than a fundamentalist Protestant who was used to home rule from the US?
The interesting part of this is that your thoughts on this are not at all out of the question, but people don't like to think of determinism by genetics much. I suppose the thought that your fate is sealed by decisions made long ago and encoded in your DNA is unfashionable.
«If they’re technically allies, protests tend to be portrayed as illegitimate»
The eternal difference between "freedom fighters"/"resistance" and "terrorists"/"enemy combatants".
«The usual “Democracy Promotion” script involves the U.S. backing this or that politician with money, weapons, and sometimes even military manpower, turning a blind eye to corruption or other excesses connected to that politician»
Nothing new again, here is my usual quote from George Orwell in 1945:
“The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade. There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis.”
There are differences between authoritarian regimes. A lot of right wing authoritarians content themselves with controlling the levers of government and gladly permit their left-wing opponents to exile themselves, while non-political actors go about their commercial life in relative freedom. Nobody would describe Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, Park's South Korea, Franco's Spain or Pinochet's Chile as places with impeccable civil rights, but at least they didn't turn their countries into wholesale prison states, with severe curtailment of information about the outside world, like Cuba, North Korea and the Soviet Union. That seems like an almost uniquely left-wing objective. On the whole, if forced to choose between a military junta and revolutionary leftists determined to re-order society, go with the junta.
Since the US doesn't appear to be very successful at stopping chaos in its own streets why does it feel compelled to butt its nose into other country's chaos? Does anyone think that Joe Biden could sit down & coherently explain what's happening in Columbia without a teleprompter?
Matt, any chance we get some commentary on the demise of that piece of shit Donald Rumsfeld? The willfully ignorant take of the Wapo in situations like this reminds me of them washing their hands of the mess they cheered on in 2003.
One of the things that saddened me most of the Obama administrations early missteps was the fact of the Bush/Rumsfeld doctrine of "Fuk this whole bill of rights/rule of law thing" being codified into official policy forever. It breaks my heart that not a single MSM journalist out there has the fortitude to do a deep dive on this POS- but even worse, because he was in the Never-Trump camp, he got Muh Strahgne new respect from all the talking heads at one point. I'd love a MT takedown as well.
For me, there is some to agree with in your comment and some to discuss, both more discreetly attempted on a topic dedicated to a related subject; ideally, as you imply, hosted by MT himself.
However your claim, in pertinent part, "...that not a single MSM journalist..." has written on this subject, is simply not accurate.
George Packer, is one of several reputable journalists who you can easily refer to for informed and dependable reporting.
About a hour or so after your comment, NatteringNabob9 cited a sort of inverted "eulogy" by Packer that may appease your disappointment.
Yeah, I read that article. It was really well done, kind of counter to the usual woke stuff Atlantic is going on recently.
I freely admit to succumbing to hyperbole vis-a-vis ....not a single MSM Journalist... (this does happen to be a comment section on the internet, after all, and I might ackshully be a Labrador Retriever with Q clearance)
But as far as the spirit of my original criticism of Rumsfeld- no regerts. Neo Conservatism is foul idiocy and Rumsfeld should have been around a century earlier to tell soldiers on the Western Front "Over the top, lads, and on the whistle!" Which is where his sort of military doctrine belongs- in the wastebin of foolish military disasters.
Yeah, there is no doubt that "..this does happen to be a comment section on the internet, after all...";
however, it is one venue that is ostensibly offering professional journalistic offerings & encouraging informed topical discussions to those not attracted to the Wild West arcade of Social Media and the Internet writ large. My reply to you proffered no disrespect, and I'll be more measured in any future sharing of opinions. At the least we can agree that the NeoCon PNAC Cabal "is foul idiocy".
Why does Rummy get blamed for what Cheney and company were busy doing? Rummy was focused on the DoD. If you are going to attack him, attack him for what he actually did, rather than what the guy who couldn't shoot straight did.
Well, for one thing he gets "blamed" precisely because he was a charter member of the Cabal along with Cheney and others in the PNAC debacle.
In spite of what you may probably view as my lack of comedic acumen allow me to riddle you this option.
If we hearken back to to those ethical & esteemable days of the reign of Tricky Dick the 1st, we must not miss the appearance of that RAT John Dean. Beings your boy "Rummy" and Tricky Dick the 2nd, along with several lessor miscreants, were in Dick #1's cabinet, it would seem that any competent stable of deranged narcissistic NeoCons would be well advised to blame all of the ensuing malfeasance and misfeasance on The Rat John Dean. The wokesters can refer to this as AVDS (Aggravated Vindictive Dick Syndrome).
I assume you mean Colombia, and not the university or federal district?
He's not, at least directly, merely asking a question on Matt's forum if he intended to weigh in on the demise of America's 21st century Himmler. I'd be interested to hear his take.
Rumsfeld hasn't been relevant since 2003. You are 18 years late in spitting out your poison. No one is likely to do a critical eulogy of Mr. Rumsfeld unless you decide to write a blog and tell the world how much you hate him.
Um, things from 18 years ago (and even further!) can be very relevant and important to understand. Don’t mistake your date of birth with the beginning of time.
An often forgotten fact is that Time Magazine approached Rumsfeld, intent on naming him their Man of the Year in 2003. They were smart to ask first. Rumsfeld said “no”, and pushed them to name not one person, but “The American Soldier” instead. The cover remains an iconic image that honored the rank and file, not the high and mighty.
Yes, it is easy to criticize things that happened decades ago. Rumsfeld was not the only one who believed Saddam's claims that he had WMD's. All of America's pitifully incompetent "intelligence" agencies believed that he did. Rumsfeld is probably most famous for streamlining the American Army and making it more efficient and dependent on small, deadly units of Special Forces.
Democrats still blame Ronald Reagan for the growth of corporations in 2021, even though Reagan was elected president of the United States more than 40 years ago.
Since it is inconceivable that Matt Taibbi or anyone else will ever write an article condemning the late Mr. Rumsfeld, why don't you just add your venom in your next comment?
Secretary Rumsfeld willingly withheld funds to up-armor Humvee's that could have save the lives of American Soldiers/Marines. Secretary Rumsfeld did not push for flame resistant uniforms at the point in the war when it became obvious that they would have resulted in those same troops not losing their genitals/faces/lives in a fire when those un-armored Humvee's turned into raging infernos. Secretary Rumsfeld withheld the true numbers of deployed troops in the Iraq combat theater by not counting deployed Nat Guard and PMC contractors. Secretary Rumsfeld then cashed in on a book deal about how awesome he was for doing all this.
About the "flame resistant uniforms", they just dipped them in more chemical that promptly washed out in military laundry. Yes, really. They stank to high heaven when first issued.
No, they weren't around when I served 2000-2004. I was in when convoy's in Kabul started to switch to flight suits for the extra flame repellent.
The greater point I'm trying to make is that Rumsfeld downplayed the cost in blood/treasure of the Iraq War specifically, in order to preserve his own reputation and advance his own career. This is a classic Lions led by Donkeys situation, see also, Vietnam, the Great War, etc.
He was assisted in this by the Apathy of the American public, and by the complete disassociation of modern life from the modern military. And now he has a Strange New Respect.
I had a friend from my unit who did two deployments active, when we got out he did three deployments in the Reserves. After his fifth deployment ended he went into his garage with a Remington and blew his brains out. My friend doesn't get a Strange New Respect. Fuck Rumsfeld.
My first encounter with an up-armored humvee was in rollover training in Kuwait. Now, the provision of rollover training is indicative of the expectation that we _would_ be rolling over in this thing. Some salient points: the up-armored humvee weighed a lot more than its slimmer cousin. You could see how low it was to the ground on its suspension. It was also less maneuverable, as you'd expect. They were slow to accelerate. The doors - no idea how much they weighed but they felt like a really big safe door, like the ones they use for comsec or banks. About as easy to open too. They also had long bent rods in each door as a release. The rods required you to push forward a few inches to open them, and wasn't particularly easy. More on that though.
Rollover training had a humvee body on a longitudinal pole (connections in the grille and rear) being spun by a motor. They'd flip us a few times before we had to perform the escape, and if you didn't escape you failed. All 5 positions were filled, right and left front and back, with someone riding in the MG harness in the center of the back.
There were some elements of unreality to this. For instance, we were all wearing our harnesses...seat belts. Without that, everyone's neck would have gotten broken when we flipped or you'd at least get a nasty shot to the head, helmet or no.
So the finish is that we are upside down after a few revolutions and meanwhile the rear seat people (I was right rear) have to stick an arm into the MG guy's harness to keep him from flopping to one side or another while we flip - and have the presence of mind to do this as soon as we start tipping. Presumably he wasn't brained or cut in half while we did this rollover. We have to hang onto him upside down in our harness. I'm tall (6'7") so my helmet is hitting the roof. This is probably a benefit I have that no one else did. He gets free first. Then we can attend to ourselves. The first task is to hit that door release, not easy upside down, and slooowly open the door, because doing it fast really isn't feasible with it weighing so much. Then, unbuckle from the harness, drop to the ground and crawl out. We made it. I think the metric was 10 or 15 seconds or somesuch.
After doing that, I realized something. If that humvee had landed at any angle except straight up or straight down, you probably weren't getting one side's doors open without outside assistance, they just weighed too much. I have a hard time imagining someone didn't die or suffer injury for that reason.
They showed us a bunch of TSIRT videos which depicted people escaping IED explosions. What this mainly entailed was some young soldier driver with the kind of skills you usually associate with videogames being alert, on point and making the right move, swinging the wheel to skirt the edge of the crater. I rolled with some EOD types, some had been with TF Troy and they said similar things about how to not die - mostly don't go into the crater. And it was rare that they'd set off the explosion and capture a vehicle in the explosion, it was usually someone driving in.
Now it stands to reason that an up-armored humvee was actually worse at that than a standard humvee because it was less maneuverable and underpowered.
The actual thing that stopped most IED attacks was first, well in Iraq, the Anbar awakening. Then after that it was patrolling. Then after that it was Warlock systems. The up-armored humvees were kind of pieces of shit, as were the MRAPs.
So Rummy was kind of an asshole in how he presented these things. But before and after I went, I worked in acquisition - still do. There are a lot of assholes in acquisition. Everyone is championing some cause. Some are doing it for soldiers, some for money, some for ego. The contractors who get the big bucks for doing these materiel upgrades are pretty good at using Congress and the media to get people fired up about their cause du jour. Rummy got a lot of shit for saying no to boondoggles is my view. And being an asshole. But I wouldn't plant my flag on the hill of up-armored humvees.
So we are leaving Afghanistan and the heroin trade. Are we going to lose control of the cocaine business as well? Is this a result of America going soft on drugs and legalizing marijuana? Come on people, we have a recreational economy going to Hell and no one is minding the store!
Thank you for any insight and coverage of foreign affairs. The history of South America seems heart breaking. So much potential so much poor/dysfunctional leadership sometimes abetted by the USA. I am of the mind that we should, in general, mind our own business and seek amity with all peoples and sometimes their leadership.
And Americans will respond with outrage to the fact that those people hate us for supporting an authoritarian regime they suffer under, just like they did when the Shah of Iran was overthrown many years ago. "How dare those ingrates not love us! Dammit, we're the good guys!"
"And Americans will respond with outrage to the fact that those people hate us for supporting an authoritarian regime they suffer under,.."
Will you provide a factual evidentiary reference to the "the fact that those people (the Colombian people?) hate us (the U.S. American people ?) for anything?
If this is just simply some sort of hyperbolic imaginary (alternative fact), why claim it is true?
Neither "those people" or 'our people' are that stupid or uninformed, they are all, to varying and different degrees, aware that it is their governments that are the sources of their economic and socio-political concerns. Did you listen to the two Colombian girls who spoke in the video about the demonstrations? Did either one of them talk of hating U.S. citizens?
Michael, it wasn't about us. The Shah was a typically flawed leader, and SAVAK's excesses were real. But 99% of Iranians would go back to those days in a heartbeat. Women had real opportunity and careers, veils were optional, university graduates volunteered in remote rural areas, the middle class was growing rapidly. The Shah's mistake (really his father's) was to remove political decision making from the Bazaar and set up an elected legislature, and to take land from the (Islamic) church and redistribute it to peasants. That pissed both of those groups off. Guess where the revolution started, and who was behind it? Now you have a theocracy that imprisons and tortures anyone who challenges it. Care to go visit? I thought so...
You sort of skip over the point that the Shah never would have been in power, thus creating the conditions for his overthrow by the mullahs, had we not overthrown a democratically elected government of Mossadegh back in 1953.
I suppose we could look a bit east, over to Afghanistan, and see how our decision to give the USSR its own Vietnam back in the 80's eventually blew back in our faces with 9-11, the botched invasion of that country and then, being unable/unwilling to realize our limits and admit the all powerful US military is not the answer to all foreign policy issues. Now, we are trying to find a way to save face, as we face yet another military defeat, one we could have avoided had we any conception of what a military can and cannot do. God knows, this country has had enough military disasters to learn from but the pencil necked combat virgins who run it, seem afraid to admit they were wrong, as it would reflect poorly on their own suspect masculinity.
Would submit for consideration as well the first major op the CIA ever ran - engineering a coup against Al-Quwati in 1949 against the first democratically elected president in post-independence Syria. So we could build the Trans Arabian Pipeline. Makes you wonder what the ME would have looked like if these post war democracies, most of them built on the US constitution had been allowed to flourish.
Let's recall Queen Bee Hillary Clinton's remark regarding Hamas winning the election in the Gaza Strip when she said we shouldn't allow elections unless we know who's going to win.
We've been totally opposed to any sort of democracy in the ME, as we know it would invariably interfere with the only thing we care about over there; the oil under all that sand. When someone like Neil Hokanson posts comments like he did, it boggles the mind how anyone can be so cynically disingenuous, pretending that we've ever cared about anyone in the ME, other than Israelis, and they mostly because they serve as an outpost from which we can have an excuse as to why we must involve ourselves in what goes on over there.
In a few decades, when we've mastered renewable energy, as we will have to as fossil fuels are finite, the ME will become a backwater we couldn't care less about. It will then be interesting to see whether the Israel lobby has any ability to keep us involved over there. My guess is not.
So human history is replete with aggression? Thanks for the info. The difference with the US and those other states/tribes, is they didn't pretend to be the great moralizing force we try to represent ourselves as being.
Viewed purely in terms of true national self interest, our fixation on endless militarism, in trying to militarily control the world, especially given our military's woeful post WWII record, as meanwhile the PRC concentrates laser like on economic development, in financing foreign resource projects while maintaining a military that is regional in nature, is destined to see the US empire collapse all the sooner.
Ironic that a totalitarian one party state should be far less militaristic and more concerned with long term economic realities than our supposed democratic republic.
Excellent take, especially when it ignores reality, and what should truly matter in our foreign policy, and not just in the ME, where you seem to think nothing has changed in 5,000 years, an opinion that in no way reflects history, unless you're referring to human nature, which is unchanged throughout the world.
Time will tell all, but the Chinese don't waste their money and technology on pointless wars, something the US does, especially when we have an all volunteer military who do all the heavy lifting, while we go shopping, as that patriotic Vietnam draft dodger advised us to do nearly 20 years ago. That turned out as well as did Shock and Awe.
Am a Canadian who has lived and worked in Bogota, and agree that at the root of this is class conflict. You will hear very different perspectives on the protests if you speak with a Medellin business owner or a factory worker. The truth is businesses in Colombia exert a disproportionate amount of power over the labor force, one that Amazon can only wish it had. Two hundred union and human rights activists were killed in the country in 2020, which goes to show the US should have demanded more be done during negotiations of the bilateral trade agreement - calls for same fell on deaf ears at the time. We need some inequality to drive innovation, but we are seeing what happens when a country heads north of 50 on the Gini index. This should concern us as the USA has slid by 10 to 40 in the last few decades, when most of the wealthy stable western democracies are in the 20 to 30 band. We don't need a complex regression analysis to see where we are headed unless we make some structural changes sooner rather than later. It is also far past time for Uribe to retire from the field. I was as pro Uribe as most of were when he wore down the FARC to the point where the later negotiated deal could be negotiated - but the dynastic control he has fought behind the scenes to retain undermines this legacy. I challenge anyone to argue that Duque's presidency is more than a copy-paste of Medvedev - and now his son is running? Colombia is a fantastic place, with really great people. They are in dire need of real leadership and is disheartening that there does not even seem to be the base conditions for such a unicorn to flourish even if they did exist.
There is an entire spectrum of functional governance models that exist between the current status quo and Cuba, and the numbers are very revelatory. There is a reason that freedom of association/ collective bargaining rights are built into The Bill of Rights of most modern democracies - a lone worker cannot negotiate in any meaningful way with an Amazon. The US middle class was built on Bretton Woods & the New Deal with a 30% union workforce. We had labor violence in Canada in 1919 which led to collective bargaining rights and improved working conditions for the middle class without becoming Soviet Russia. The countries today that have the most equality, have retained higher union participation - Sweden 67%, Canada 27%, UK 25% etc. It has fallen to 10% in the US and is 4% in Colombia. Unions are by no means a panacea, but by constantly citing "Cuba" as a slippery slope argument, we may be forging the instruments of our future demise. As JFK stated, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." We should not forget where Fidel began his revolutionary career - being arrested for handing out pamphlets as a student, hearing of Gaitan's assassination upon release and the Bogotazo. All in Colombia. There is a way forward if we have the will and wherewithal to learn from our mistakes.
While I share your concern of the rise of SJW and Foucault, the stats I share above run would seem to counter to your argument - western democracies with higher union participation rates have more stability and equality, and healthier middle class. They would seem to be doing a better job of representing their members than the 90% non-union workers in US are able to fending for themselves.
Have added the Kotkin piece to my reading list, not familiar with thanks for the recommendation.
Have already stated my agreement that postmoderism is a concern, and agree they will continue to try to exert influence along the lines you describe. That doesn't mean we should let them. I am having difficulty parsing whether you agree that unions are beneficial to the working class, but the neolibs won't let them gain influence, or that they are undesirable in their own right. I provided corollary examples earlier that would appear to show they have value - they are organizations peopled with humans however and again are not perfect. Believe the data supports increased social instability when we remove them and do not replace them with something else.
Believe SJW is just a tool wielded by corporate special interests to increase shareholder value, and mask the class aspect of our current travails. A Bretton Woods II if done right would address neolib capture issue you raise, as well as the cheap/expensive corporate decision as we would not leave it up to them.
btw - was surfing comments last night...am jealous of the amout of free time you have! You must have like a dozen of these threads going at the same time!
“Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason — the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit — and, most of the time, genteel — oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. [...] The government, in its race to stop the bleeding, will typically need to wipe out some of the national champions — now hemorrhaging cash — and usually restructure a banking system that’s gone badly out of balance. It will, in other words, need to squeeze at least some of its oligarchs. [...] Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk — at least until the riots grow too large.”
There is some speculation as to in how many years “until the riots grow too large” in the USA itself. So far they are easily contained and racialized.
When did the media abdicate their traditional role? When did they stop reporting what is going on in the world? When did they become extensions of government power?
Okay. Interesting. So the media have been curating the story my entire lifetime. Nothing has changed in my 57 years?
I’ve been reading substack stuff for less than a year. I have to conclude that everything I know has been fed to me like pablum,at least in so far as it came from the media.
The media are liars, overtly, through omission, through wilful mischaracterization, compromised by economic necessity, people, self appointed windbags, shrouded in self righteous glory who do what they are told by editorial staff who kowtow to power.
At the time of the Alien and Sedition acts in the 1790s, newspaper editors were being tarred and feathered and run out of town if they didn't toe the government line.
In the 1860s they were getting thrown in jail if they didn't play ball.
A lot of our speech protections are really horseshit when the government really wants something badly enough.
Journalism, including especially the US 'paper of record' could be said to be yellow going back probably to it's inception, so 'traditional role' is probably a term that has different meanings depending on who you're asking.
To be fair, my friend Gary, who worked the NYT in the 60s and 70s and was working at the Asbury Park Press as the legal editor upon his death in the very early 2000's, believed fiercely in the whole objective journalism myth. He meant it, I know he did. But, i'm sad to say Gary was wrong. Everyone has a bias, and our newspapers only used to try to conceal it, and not very well.
It seems only fair to acknowledge that the industry of journalism, even when dealing with smaller subunits down to individuals, does enjoy some variability in the degree to which they behave as 'extensions of government' or any other power (or else I wouldn't be spending my money on TK). But there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to large-scale bad faith journalism..
Do you think that the theoretical framework of critical race theory is adequate to explain the available meta-narrative studies on Ivermectin? Or would posit, in general, that this is a sophist's gambit and that the anti-parasite treatment is more properly evaluated through a more pragmatic, less existential "tinted" lens, as it were?
We're both on a Kon-tiki-like raft, negotiating the warm currents of the Gulf of Mexico, destination Cuba, where we intend to remake the island into a capitalist paradise! No more of this egalitarian leftist shit for me! Banana plantations and seaside casinos are the ticket for me! Aloha!
Actually this is a good question since I'm probably misusing the term a bit. Traditionally 'yellow' refers to sensationalism over real information. Here I'm also/in addition referring to propaganda (sensationalized or not) over real information.
Thank you for covering this important topic. This has gotten marginal, equivocating press in the USA. We bear more responsibility because our tax dollars fund the government and end up supporting some human rights violations so we need to know what’s going on. I hope you cover some of the affected news outlets in depth.
You may want to check in on Colombia Reports, a small English language news outfit recently hit with a SLAPP-style suit and being defended by Primera Linea Juridica, which seems like a hastily constructed Colombian ACLU.
Ah, yes, "Columbia Reports' the outlet that "Colombia Reports' editor-in-chief Adriaan Alsema published a series of articles claiming that between 2003 and 2007, US military personnel and contractors had sexually abused many Colombian children. By June 2015, it was discovered that the source for these articles was faulty and Alsema was forced to retract those stories, expressing regret that he "felt responsible for having spread an urban myth". That one? That Marxist outlet? Run by a guy "https://arielsheen.com/index.php/2019/12/09/colombia-reports-fake-news-written-by-a-dutch-anarchist/" who is over the top in his leftist/Marxist/anarchist credentials? Hmmmm
This take is just as accurate as the CNN’s “mostly peaceful protests” last year. To begin with, Duque’s government is as conservative as Biden’s. They are comparing a centrist to very left wing ideologues.
I am a Colombian with family in bogota and Barranquilla. These protestors have destroyed public and PRIVATE properly, attacked private shop owners, burned down businesses and are being agitated by supporters of Maduro. they are being led by faction of Petro’s henchmen, the ex-mayor of Bogota, a crooked, power hungry politician who is again trying to win the presidency next year. Petro was a disaster for Bogota. He is an inept leader whose Marxist beliefs and sympathy with Venezuela will ensure that Colombia WILL be the next Venezuela.
My brother’s business is paralyzed. He cannot transport materials that are waiting at the port and he cannot transport his good out for delivery. He cannot get paid, but he has to pay storage penalties at the port. During the pandemic, he has kept his employees working in safe and stable conditions, but he is unable to pay his rent and is losing business daily.
These so called protests are disruption the life of the country more than the pandemic, and if my brother has to close his business, many people will be put out of work. Many businesses are under this same stress. It is not sustainable and it is not genuine. People are being manipulated into believing that these protests are reasonable, but they are riots.
This is the consequence of the so called peace plan. After over 8 years of “taxes for the rich” where capital was taxed at disproportionate rates in order to pay for the peace deal, the country has not only seen the the rich and also international investors flee, losing jobs and opportunities, but it is still at war, still completely bankrupted and unable to help the vulnerable, and now the economy is handicapped.
young people in this video don’t understand what they are protesting for or against. They don’t understand the history of Marxism in the region, and they don’t seem to understand that this is the road to total collapse like in Venezuela.
That’s exactly what the oligarchic news outlets in Colombia report. It’s interesting to hear you parrot it. The Uribistas are the ones who will turn Colombia into Venezuela. The problem was never lefty vs rightly but rule of law vs corruption. You seem awfully concerned about your family’s business and property destruction but you don’t mention the disappearances, torture, murders, and rapes by government forces. I hope you decide to put people over things and money.
Hmm while we have political prisoners languishing in solitary confinement for essentially “aggravated trespassing”. Oh I forgot they are the “wrong type” of protestor/person.
Erik, Every Colombian person understands the human cost of our history. Whether it is people like me who lost cousins and friends to botched kidnappings or killings, who lost homes and family when they had to flee to be safe. There are others in the countryside whose children were forcefully conscripted into the FARC, those who lost family and land to the paramilitaries, plenty of women who were raped and involuntarily made to abort or birth a child by either group. We've seen it all, and we feel it. I understand what you are saying, and most people, whether business owners or their workers feel the plight of the most vulnerable. Colombia is throughly corrupt country, it runs from the president to the mailman, but the truth on the ground of these protest is much more complicated than left v. right or law v. corruption. there are many agents of chaos involved, and these naive students who are out there burning down business that took families generations to build, overturning buses, and disrupting the last economic lifeline that is barely keeping the country together, are being used and misled. Isn't Matt's podcast aptly names 'useful idiot'? Yes, they protest a 10cent tax on a food item, but the blocking of roadways and disruption of life has caused inflation and increase of 200% on that item. Many of these people out there protesting for free education ask to get paid in cash so they can evade taxes. In the meantime, my brother's workers pay all their taxes and get little in return. Duque is not the savior, but Petro will destroy Colombia. I'm not saying I have the answer, but thinking about this in the stereotypical American way is totally wrong.
Ah, yes, Erik the Red. Did you read what RcW wrote? Economic activity paralyzed by Maduro-istas. I know you Marxists never have an issue with Marxist behavior. RcW has first hand knowledge. And you have? Squat, like all Marxists.
Thank you for your comment. The voices of affected people are better than the news that official sources give us.
Yes, but the poor don’t even have the means to chat here. So you’re still gonna get a skewed picture. But I hear you; it’s good to hear from citizens.
the poor in Colombia have no voice. Compare it to Israel, like the article does, where corruption exists, but the citizens won't stand for it. It's our mentality and our legacy. But even so, our democratic tradition has persevered through the worst. Most Colombians have a good character and a positive nature, and want to live a peaceful, productive life structured around family and community.
That is what "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious cis-heteronormative white patriarchy culture" actually is:
retrograde suburbanite consumers living in a hellish culture that is undergoing a "crisis of meaning"---or PGC (Peckerwood Grievance Culture)
*The result: incoherent cultural responses that rely on vague, historically-tinged anti-semitic categories: "cultural marxism."
*Which then are deployed to denigrate those who disagree with them, and to dismiss "disparate calls for social change on the behalf of marginalized people" as conspiratorially, far-left, marxist calls to further marginalize "peckerwood grievance culture" adherents.
*Champion peckerwood grievance culture grifters such as Christopher Rufo and James Lindsay as spoke-person truth tellers, who in reality are just marginally savvy on-the-make charlatans more than happy to make a quick buck off the "unawake" PGC adherents.
*Humorously believe that a suite of hitherto obscure academic critical theories (CRT, postmodernism) are being surreptiously injected into elementary school curriculums by a tightly organized, radical, far-left, marxist cadre as a recruitment tool for marxist sunday schools, new black panther party picnics, critical race theory spelling bees, socialist carnivals, and DNC bake sales.
*What will NOT result: the end of the world as we know it..
*What will NOT result: The end of e. pierce's all-cap PSYCHOTIC ASSHOLE TROLL rejoinders.
Matt, I think you're really straying out of your wheelhouse when talking about Colombia. And it's clear that some of your readers are equally clueless and buy the trope that all Latin American governments that support the rule of law are right wing dictatorships. To the people like Erik that argue from apparently zero foundation that what Rcw is saying is false, I would say learn the language and culture, go there and spend some time (as I have), then come back and tell us all about it. I'm pretty harto of American liberals whining about Latin American and knowing absolutely nothing about life there.
I was surprised I hadn't seen any more info on this but I think the news has skewed more domestic since the pandemic and even more so since January. Wishing the best for your brother and hope this settles down soon.
So frustrating to me how little coverage of the world we get. Japans deputy prime minister recently averred that Japan would defend Taiwan. That seems important. Our policy towards Taiwan seems important.
I think so too but I neither watch nor read US News anymore. It is all propaganda.
I watch Ancient Aliens on the History Channel instead. It's much more believable.
I do find Japan's eagerness to defend Taiwan intriguing.
Looks like Antifa has come to Columbia . . .
Lol.
No, they’re under your bed.
They're busy elsewhere .... burning down Seattle and Portland. and waiting for Biden's "Let them go" Prosecutors.
Thank you for this post. We hear so little about this situation.
Rcw, Hablas espanol? Puedes comparar la situacion en Colombia con Cuba.......?????
dd, no entiendo- comparar la situación de Colombia hoy en día con Cuba de Batista? No se comparan. Colombia es un país con 5x la poblacion de Cuba, con regiones muy diferentes en cultura y topología. Cuba era una isla bastante homogénea, controlada por intereses americanos de una manera muy directa. Colombia tiene una larga y fuerte cultura democrática independiente, Cuba era colonia y después dictadura. Se puede decir que los dos sufren de problemas mayores de corrupción, pero la situación en Colombia se complica mucho por una guerra entre 4 facciones: ejercito nacional, FARC, narcotrafico, y paramilitares que arrasa con los pueblos y la gente que se les cruza.
Se puede decir que los costeños Colombianos tienen mucho en común con los Cubanos en cuanto a su manera de ser y su música, baile, etc. Generalizando, yo diría que los dos países comparten una cultura vibrante y creativa, con gente alegre y buena de fondo. Politicamente, no se si veo similaridades.
RCW - Your complaint sounds very much like Anti BLM Americans who ignore the underlying CAUSE of the anger and focus only on the property destruction. Claiming the protestors are ignorant, which is what you do, or dangerous which is what anti BLMers in the US do...
I think if you could articulate a better understanding of the anger from the protestors you might have more credibility, no?
e.Pierce - What tribe is that. The one that puts facts and truth ahead of misinformation and feelings? That tribe is what you call "toxic". Right?
Pierce - is your name calling reserved for anyone that does not 100% agree with everything rattling around in your mind or does it extend to people that agree with you as well....
Are Americans that TRULY think Trump had the election stolen from him TRIBAL too or is it just liberals in general?
Yes, it is. But e. pierce, while a vigorously committed ideologue in exclusive service to screeching phantoms and hollering ghosts that can only be found in the dark recesses of his own mind, is also a very troubled soul---and actually the cousin of one the site monitors, so we keep him around for laughs.
Latouche - Is he the modern version of Ignatius Jacques Reilly?
Are we asking if Latouche is a wannabe Ignatius Reilly, or that all of this might be a Reillyesque satire by Latouche, or if Latouche's missives often appear as John Kennedy Toole-like sketches of what Reilly might sound like in 2021 at Matt Taibbi's substack threads? Were he paying five bucks month to read and comment? None of the above.
Just knockoff the tribal reiterations, will ya?
Embarrassing... I fell into his web... My bad
Don't sweat it---coincidentally it happened to me just last night, in a dissimilar fashion with another commenter. It's what makes this ballroom the ballroom it is.
By the way, am I the only one here with a malfunctioning thread response email thing? I get many, if not all, of the responses to e.pierce's comments. And I just received a comment from more than a month ago from someone whose comment I did not comment on. Anybody?
You have the deets---the deets are in the devil, and the devil are in the deets---all of' em.
Booga-booga! Booga-booga! Booga-booga! War whoops and the beating of drums echo through the grassy steppes, as the tribalist cultural-marxists, bedecked in war paint and bonnets---and fashionable buckskin loincloth---gather in the distance...to do battle with the PGG'ers! Booga-booga! Booga-booga! Booga-booga!
Agradezco su respuesta. Vine de Cuba a la edad de 9 anos...tengo 65.
Entonces usted sabe más que yo!
Hope it works.
Democratically leftist leaders.... you mean like Ortega? Maduro? Castro? The quality of life in those countries is pessimo, and it has nothing to do with the "USA". Go spend some time there, Mango. Pretty cool name, by the way.
My cousin worked down in El Salvador as a photo journalist for the San Francisco Examiner during the FNLA revolution against an USA backed fascist military regime. The junta had a battalion trained at the US School of Americas. The "Atlacatl" battalion was especially brutal when they fought the FNLA. They had no problem massacring indigenous civilians, Jesuit priests, etc.... This battalion was responsible for the El Mozole massacre, the El Calabozo massacre, and the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests. Also including dozens of people killed in Tenancingo and Copapayo in 1989. Including sixty-eight people killed in Los Lianitos in 1989. My cousin was on the ground and said this was true. We back some real SOB's for "strategic purposes". Daniel Ortega(Sandinista Commander Zero), Castro(El Comandante.), Maduro, and others took corruption to new levels at the expense of their people. Same for Pinochet, Noriega, Duerte, Stroesner,Somosa, etc... Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Indeed.
I suspect Mango and those like him would suggest that it is US sabotage that causes the poor quality of life in those countries. I disagree, but I believe i'm accurately reflecting the viewpoint. I seem to remember the same slings and arrows from the Eastern Bloc, if we'd just treat them like we do our capitalist class enemies *cough* I mean allies, they'd be all peachy economically.
It was Capitalism that made US different from all those FAILED South/Central American economies. They never sent a man to the moon and what great scientific contributions have they made for civilization.... leaving their unwanted babies at out border??
Africa, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, have massive government programs. Scandinavia has massive government programs.
See how silly you look!
IDIOT! All of the Countries included in the Continent of AFRICA!
Exactly. You make my point!
e. pierce is a geneticist, not a phrenologist. He dabbles in CRT and Marxist theory also. Autodidact. Not just conversant, but fluent, in all the crucial academic disciplines---history, philosophy of history, philosophy, history of philosophy, geography, history of geography, postmodernism, history of postmodernism, genetic regionalism, regional genetics, history of genetic regionalism, history of regional genetics, etc.
Amateur scholar of sorts
They the Cartels, the street gangs, the illegitimacy. the violence That's what's dragging US down.
Murder Rate for Hispanics Is Twice the Murder Rate for Whites
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/murder-rate-for-hispanics_b_5309973 Murder Rate for Hispanics Is Twice the Murder Rate for Whites 05/12/2014 11:32 am ET
34% of all Welfare Recipients live in California which is 40% Latino.
Look at San Francisco.... people p00ping in the streets.
On the contrary WE need a little more of OUR TRIBALISM instead of yours!
Late stage capitalism, "that's what's dragging US down."
The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits.
https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-%20Welfare%20Spending%20The%20Largest%20Item%20In%20The%20Federal%20Budget%20-%20shortened.pdf
And growing with the open border where Biden is giving
Free Medical
Free Legal Council
ALL WELFARE.
No one in the US get's all that.
Is that what's dragging Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia down?
Labor Unions that were busted by CHEAP immigrant labor.
Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant.
.American construction workers today make $5 an hour less than they did 40 years ago after adjusting for inflation.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-construction-trump/
Between 2000, - 2014 immigrants accounted for about 70% of the net job growth.
total change in employment was about 8.8 million. Of that, the number of
foreign-born workers grew about 6.2 million and for
native-born, the number was 2.6 million.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/02/peter-morici/economist-immigrants-have-taken-all-new-jobs-creat/
In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70% of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were babies of undocumented mothers, and 45% of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30% in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 babies undocumented mothers in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36% of all Medi-Cal [California’s Medicaid program] births.
Now [2005] they account for substantially more than half. The parents of infant citizens still qualify for welfare in order to protect the children
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-14th_b_1343158
I would say the MASSIVE importation of poverty is the main reason.
More booga-booga shit. It's quite easy to cherry-pick statistics that reinforce and dovetail with one's politics and cultural prejudices, and many of them, like yours here, are meaningless in the aggregate and needlessly obscure the real causes of the cascading penury that is menacing 90% percent of all Americans.
You fail to make a connection between the vast income inequality at work in the U.S., a result of the 40-year upward capture of the vast majority of income gains made possible by the "new model efficiency" directed from far above---in short, the wholesale capture of the economy and the political system by an elite corporate and political class, a distinct and well-defined class, which has come to more and more reflect the "dominate" culture and class of a third-world nation. Why shouldn't the U.S. look like a third-world nation?
Read the link below. You mention $250 million of maternity costs for Latino babies, but how about the $2.2 trillion dollar Trump tax cut for the upper income tax "bracketeers"? And on and on.
"....Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant....."
So you're pro-union? Good. Who the hell do you think busted up all the unions in the U.S.? Mexican revolutionaries from Chiapas? Yet another cute little 40-year financial leveling project of the lords and masters.
And here's a personal anecdote. I work in agriculture on the east coast, live in an area that's best described as a mix of rural pockets dotted by small towns. Fairly active farming community. The majority of the farm labor are Mexicans and Guatemalans. Fair number of young gringoes, but it's mostly Latinos who do the heavy lifting, the majority of them undocumented, who sow the fields, weed the fields, spread the horseshit, drive to the markets, harvest the lettuce and tomatoes, etc.
The early morning roads are filled with vans of these laborers, vans often bearing "Tennessee" license plates, where, I'm told, an arcane licensing system is in place that makes it easier for undocumented workers to obtain driver's licenses. They are never pulled over by law enforcement even though the Tennessee plates are a dead give-away. In fact, they are more likely to evade being stopped for minor traffic violations. Know why? Because they comprise the bulk of the workforce in a vital economic sector of these communities. Absent of their presence and labor, a lot of work wouldn't get done and a good deal of commerce would not take place. They not only are hard workers, but they are typically the ONLY ones willing TO DO the work. And their employers?---neighbors and friends of the local law enforcement.
Your conspicuous search for boogiemen in all the wrong places for all the wrong people utilizing all the wrong numbers implies a bit of ethnic profiling at work, no?
https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/taxes/trumps-tax-cuts/republicans-profit-congress/
In Scandinavia their Corporate tax is only 20% - 21%. The individual tax is 50% to 70%.
US corporate tax is 21%.. 60% of our workers receive more back in credits from IRS than they paid in taxes, 20% barely pay for themselves and the top quintile pays 87% of the taxes. and that doesn't count 21% of the US population is on Welfare, Switzerland 7.9%, Sweden 3.7%, Denmark 12%
All those countries have 80% -90% their OWN culture.
"Richer countries more likely to be homogenous." The more ethnically homogeneous the more successful
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/
NO CONFLICT!
Right now, We are in debt. The IMF is going to produce their own currency to replace the US dollar. We will be a NON country of 358,000,000 poverty stricken people. You think importing and being responsible for them financially is sound. You are crazy!
I don't see anyone raising taxes on Companies. What makes you think that's going to work.
All you have to do is look at successful countries and compare them to failing countries and observing the differences in policy. Start with Scandinavia. You only have to have marginal intelligence to see they are paying 50% - 70% income tax, have NO diversity, Their corporate tax is 21%. Now calculate that and see if it makes any difference.
The vast proportion of U.S. budgetary payments are "welfare" payments to big business and the MIC. Not even close.
Well it was the point since the beginning.
Capitalism doesn't need communist help destroying capitalism and western civilization"....capitalism is a self-immolating system and will destroy itself and takedown western civilization with it....if it "continues."
We will NEVER have free healthcare as Biden is on course to admit 8,000,000 people (if the open border crossings continue. We simply do not have enough money to house, feed, educate, and employ our own, even if you take the TOTAL yearly income of the top 10%. And yet we are cattleing in millions. WHY?
It's too late now. DACA alone spawned 260,000 kids since they have been here. Do you know what it costs to raise 260,000 with a parent who has an average income of $30,000 an average?
Scandinavia does not have a huge foreign invasion of Welfare problem and their taxes are 50% - 70%. They have almost NO diversity. The US will never survive. Our education system has collapsed, kids entering college are so unprepared they're teaching high school in college before they can take a college course. Our wages have stagnated and even dropped, in some cases, from what they were 40 years ago. If that isn't transplanting the 3rd into a first world. I don't know what is.
The US spends nearly 1TRILLION dollars a year on the defense budget alone. We have the money to do whatever we wish.Healthcare and education for it's people are not on the list.
You have no sense of Budget and no sense of the American essence. WE emphasize exceptional, we cultivate exceptional. we are responsible for our selves and our OWN families and that's what made US strong.
This is what this country was built on:
Massachusetts in 1700 kept out the infirm and disabled who had no security against becoming public charges. The law required ship captains to post bonds for "lame, impotent, or infirm" passengers who were "incapable of maintaining themselves." The bond requirement sought to prevent the new arrival from becoming reliant on public relief. Without a bond from the captain, the vessel had to return the person to his home country.
In the 19th century, before the existence of a federal agency responsible for immigration policies, eastern seaboard states such as New York and Massachusetts enacted state laws that restricted the immigration of aliens deemed likely to become dependent on public institutions such as poor houses. These states also charged steamship companies a “head tax” for each foreign passenger they landed in order to defray the cost of caring for, and sometimes removing, indigent immigrants who ended-up in state-funded facilities. Ellis Island waylaid certain arrivals, including those likely to become public charges, such as unescorted women and children.
https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/history-office-and-library/our-history/public-charge-provisions-of-immigration-law-a-brief-historical-background
These are the NEW IMMIGRANTS:
Immigrant families caught illegally crossing the Mexican border told U.S. immigration agents they made the dangerous trip because they believed they would be permitted to stay in the United States and collect public benefits.
https://apnews.com/article/3ef53d48e1544f54b1572d736b1f0852
We did not choose these people and I don't feel responsible for them. and yet 60% of the working people get more back in their taxes then they paid in. the 4th Quintile pays for what they use in taxes and about 10 % more. the top 20% pay 87% of the taxes.
WE ARE IN DEBT. Where do you suppose we get the money to offer the 8,000,000 more people Biden has pledged to let in and the 20,000,000 illegal aliens already HARBORED in the US? Just in Health care it will cost $312,816.000.000. These are people propagating as we speak (DACA) spawned 260,000 Citizens all on welfare. Average DACA income is $30,000.
Total Profit margin for all Health Insurance companies was $4.4%. The total profit for ALL companies was $968.000,000,000 (not including expenses like payroll advertising.)
At the average cost of $11,172 per capita Just for the 28,000,000 Unauthorized it would be $313 B which does not count the other 80 Welfare programs they will be enrolled in.
Insurers that sell individual and small group health coverage must spend at least 80% of premiums on medical claims and quality improvements for members. No more than 20% of premium revenue can be spent on total administrative costs, including profits and salaries.
Scandinavia does not have this expensive problem
You are a long-winded idiot. Try doing some research on the REAL REASON all those people from central america are fleeing their home country(s) I'll give you a hint: US Government meddling in the affairs of foreign countries where they have no business being. And don't lecture me on "what this country was built on". I have served my country proudly but also will call it out when it's warranted.
When more people begin to understand this one salient fact about how how our political and economic system works, things might change, reform made possible. Until this day arrives, though, it's all whistling in the wind. It's not just about maintaining economic power for the elites, it's maintaining political power for the purpose of controlling the "narrative." Everything flows from the effort---and ability---to control the narrative.
The Corporate tax of Scandinavia is 20% to 21.4%
The US is 20%
It is the general public that pays most of the taxes in successful countries. Their general public is affluent paying 50% to 70% taxes and they are 80% -90% the same culture, no diversity, no division.
The great American experiment has FAILED!
We're having a Left Wing coup in this country. How is that going?
As soon as he said "gene pools" he might as well have thrown on a KKK hood lol.
Reads as a snotty 13. ;)
Never go "micro" with e. pierce---always go "macro."
We adopted our son from Medellin in 1987. Yes, 1987 when the country was Thunderdome. I spent time in Medellin and Bogota w/ Carlos before bringing him to Miami to meet his new mom. The country of Colombia is flawed, like all countries. But, the people are good, hardworking, religious, people. I saw the darkside of Colombia first hand as I saw the the good hearted side. People were so nice to me as I, a new dad, stayed in hotels w/ a 2 year old boy who spent the first 2 years of his life in orphanages and foster homes. The brave attorneys, judges, and journalists took their country back from billionaire sociopathic drug kingpins. It wasn't pretty! We need to care about Colombia. You see, our cocaine habit turned their country into chaos. Yes, the coke industry just moved elsewhere. But, we owe a debt to these people. Thanks Matt for writing this. I have been following the conflict, mostly from foreign sources. Please follow Matt's prompt and keep apprised of what is happening in that beautiful country.
Thank you for sharing. In case you’re curious, the cocaine money stopped flowing to stopped flowing to Colombia when water-based interdiction became very effective and smugglers had to use overland routes. The money is in the movement after all. This is why the violence hasn’t ended so much as been displaced. Colombia still exports cocaine but only a tiny fraction of the street price goes to producers.
That said, I hope all is well with you and your family.
It wasn't the habit. Change that to "our failed attempts to interdict the flow of money associated with a disfavored cash crop" and then i'd agree with you. We didn't care who we destroyed in the process.
TY!
Colombia is not just launching pad for Venezuela coups but a long-standing US military fortress built on Colombian soil to destroy FARC and non-CIA cocaine trade, using military trained at US School of the Americas. Pure terrorism.
Seriously Elizabeth? It's pretty obvious you don't know the region.
So, we'll either see a police state or maybe another Venezuela. Don't you think its about time we let people figure out what they have to do without sticking our noses in it. Armed with ideology, weapons, cockeyed self serving strategy, wrapped in a wonderful narrative....in the end it always ends up like this: Chaos or a Police State. Greenwald had a recent funding on how our gov't is spending $2 billion on capitol police...and not just in Washington. So same is beginning to happen here.
Sad to think those are the only choices, but much of central and South American history seems to confirm. What makes rule of law and equal rights under the law so difficult for them?
It's about cultural mores, not anything intrinsic. Think about it this way: if your history involved Spanish colonization, the thumb of the Catholic Church and rule from Madrid, would you perhaps be different than a fundamentalist Protestant who was used to home rule from the US?
The interesting part of this is that your thoughts on this are not at all out of the question, but people don't like to think of determinism by genetics much. I suppose the thought that your fate is sealed by decisions made long ago and encoded in your DNA is unfashionable.
«If they’re technically allies, protests tend to be portrayed as illegitimate»
The eternal difference between "freedom fighters"/"resistance" and "terrorists"/"enemy combatants".
«The usual “Democracy Promotion” script involves the U.S. backing this or that politician with money, weapons, and sometimes even military manpower, turning a blind eye to corruption or other excesses connected to that politician»
Nothing new again, here is my usual quote from George Orwell in 1945:
“The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade. There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis.”
There are differences between authoritarian regimes. A lot of right wing authoritarians content themselves with controlling the levers of government and gladly permit their left-wing opponents to exile themselves, while non-political actors go about their commercial life in relative freedom. Nobody would describe Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, Park's South Korea, Franco's Spain or Pinochet's Chile as places with impeccable civil rights, but at least they didn't turn their countries into wholesale prison states, with severe curtailment of information about the outside world, like Cuba, North Korea and the Soviet Union. That seems like an almost uniquely left-wing objective. On the whole, if forced to choose between a military junta and revolutionary leftists determined to re-order society, go with the junta.
My grandfather bit my head off when I tried to suggest what you are suggesting. In retrospect he was right.
Go with the junta because they’re the lesser of two evil?
Fuck that, fuck the other evil, and fuck you.
So, other than that "they....faced about 40 years of brutal suppression of their Catalan language and culture," Franco was aces straight up?
wow... but Franco killed many...
Since the US doesn't appear to be very successful at stopping chaos in its own streets why does it feel compelled to butt its nose into other country's chaos? Does anyone think that Joe Biden could sit down & coherently explain what's happening in Columbia without a teleprompter?
I wouldnt trust him to describe his last bm without a teleprompter.
I could be mistaken but I thought he named his last bm Hyundai or Hunter or something. I could be wrong.
Matt, any chance we get some commentary on the demise of that piece of shit Donald Rumsfeld? The willfully ignorant take of the Wapo in situations like this reminds me of them washing their hands of the mess they cheered on in 2003.
One of the things that saddened me most of the Obama administrations early missteps was the fact of the Bush/Rumsfeld doctrine of "Fuk this whole bill of rights/rule of law thing" being codified into official policy forever. It breaks my heart that not a single MSM journalist out there has the fortitude to do a deep dive on this POS- but even worse, because he was in the Never-Trump camp, he got Muh Strahgne new respect from all the talking heads at one point. I'd love a MT takedown as well.
Re: M. Gage
For me, there is some to agree with in your comment and some to discuss, both more discreetly attempted on a topic dedicated to a related subject; ideally, as you imply, hosted by MT himself.
However your claim, in pertinent part, "...that not a single MSM journalist..." has written on this subject, is simply not accurate.
George Packer, is one of several reputable journalists who you can easily refer to for informed and dependable reporting.
About a hour or so after your comment, NatteringNabob9 cited a sort of inverted "eulogy" by Packer that may appease your disappointment.
For another current article see: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/
As Usual,
EA
Yeah, I read that article. It was really well done, kind of counter to the usual woke stuff Atlantic is going on recently.
I freely admit to succumbing to hyperbole vis-a-vis ....not a single MSM Journalist... (this does happen to be a comment section on the internet, after all, and I might ackshully be a Labrador Retriever with Q clearance)
But as far as the spirit of my original criticism of Rumsfeld- no regerts. Neo Conservatism is foul idiocy and Rumsfeld should have been around a century earlier to tell soldiers on the Western Front "Over the top, lads, and on the whistle!" Which is where his sort of military doctrine belongs- in the wastebin of foolish military disasters.
Re: M. Gage
Yeah, there is no doubt that "..this does happen to be a comment section on the internet, after all...";
however, it is one venue that is ostensibly offering professional journalistic offerings & encouraging informed topical discussions to those not attracted to the Wild West arcade of Social Media and the Internet writ large. My reply to you proffered no disrespect, and I'll be more measured in any future sharing of opinions. At the least we can agree that the NeoCon PNAC Cabal "is foul idiocy".
As Usual,
EA
Why does Rummy get blamed for what Cheney and company were busy doing? Rummy was focused on the DoD. If you are going to attack him, attack him for what he actually did, rather than what the guy who couldn't shoot straight did.
Well, for one thing he gets "blamed" precisely because he was a charter member of the Cabal along with Cheney and others in the PNAC debacle.
In spite of what you may probably view as my lack of comedic acumen allow me to riddle you this option.
If we hearken back to to those ethical & esteemable days of the reign of Tricky Dick the 1st, we must not miss the appearance of that RAT John Dean. Beings your boy "Rummy" and Tricky Dick the 2nd, along with several lessor miscreants, were in Dick #1's cabinet, it would seem that any competent stable of deranged narcissistic NeoCons would be well advised to blame all of the ensuing malfeasance and misfeasance on The Rat John Dean. The wokesters can refer to this as AVDS (Aggravated Vindictive Dick Syndrome).
As Usual,
EA
That's not the question. Question is how many journalists HAD the fortitude, but couldn't, wouldn't dare...
How is Rumsfeld related to this situation in Columbia?
I assume you mean Colombia, and not the university or federal district?
He's not, at least directly, merely asking a question on Matt's forum if he intended to weigh in on the demise of America's 21st century Himmler. I'd be interested to hear his take.
Rumsfeld hasn't been relevant since 2003. You are 18 years late in spitting out your poison. No one is likely to do a critical eulogy of Mr. Rumsfeld unless you decide to write a blog and tell the world how much you hate him.
Apparently there are quite a few highly critical pieces on Rumsfeld; here’s one (so you’re wrong about that): https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619334/
You’re wrong that he’s irrelevant, and you’re wrong that he was a good man just because his persona was modest at times.
Thanks - but I would rather die than read anything from THE ATLANTIC. Have a nice evening.
I’d simply like to point out sticking your head up your ass doesn’t help your original point no one was likely to criticize Rumsfeld in a eulogy.
I only hope that The Partisan has such clever ripostes. How do you come up with such witty comments?
Hip fire, mostly.
Um, things from 18 years ago (and even further!) can be very relevant and important to understand. Don’t mistake your date of birth with the beginning of time.
An often forgotten fact is that Time Magazine approached Rumsfeld, intent on naming him their Man of the Year in 2003. They were smart to ask first. Rumsfeld said “no”, and pushed them to name not one person, but “The American Soldier” instead. The cover remains an iconic image that honored the rank and file, not the high and mighty.
Yes, it is easy to criticize things that happened decades ago. Rumsfeld was not the only one who believed Saddam's claims that he had WMD's. All of America's pitifully incompetent "intelligence" agencies believed that he did. Rumsfeld is probably most famous for streamlining the American Army and making it more efficient and dependent on small, deadly units of Special Forces.
Democrats still blame Ronald Reagan for the growth of corporations in 2021, even though Reagan was elected president of the United States more than 40 years ago.
Since it is inconceivable that Matt Taibbi or anyone else will ever write an article condemning the late Mr. Rumsfeld, why don't you just add your venom in your next comment?
Okay-
Secretary Rumsfeld willingly withheld funds to up-armor Humvee's that could have save the lives of American Soldiers/Marines. Secretary Rumsfeld did not push for flame resistant uniforms at the point in the war when it became obvious that they would have resulted in those same troops not losing their genitals/faces/lives in a fire when those un-armored Humvee's turned into raging infernos. Secretary Rumsfeld withheld the true numbers of deployed troops in the Iraq combat theater by not counting deployed Nat Guard and PMC contractors. Secretary Rumsfeld then cashed in on a book deal about how awesome he was for doing all this.
About the "flame resistant uniforms", they just dipped them in more chemical that promptly washed out in military laundry. Yes, really. They stank to high heaven when first issued.
Surely the pages of that Time article were flame retardant? Maybe glue those to the sides of things.
Couldn’t be worse.
Did you ever ride in an up-armored humvee in SWA?
Someone who did would like to know.
No, they weren't around when I served 2000-2004. I was in when convoy's in Kabul started to switch to flight suits for the extra flame repellent.
The greater point I'm trying to make is that Rumsfeld downplayed the cost in blood/treasure of the Iraq War specifically, in order to preserve his own reputation and advance his own career. This is a classic Lions led by Donkeys situation, see also, Vietnam, the Great War, etc.
He was assisted in this by the Apathy of the American public, and by the complete disassociation of modern life from the modern military. And now he has a Strange New Respect.
I had a friend from my unit who did two deployments active, when we got out he did three deployments in the Reserves. After his fifth deployment ended he went into his garage with a Remington and blew his brains out. My friend doesn't get a Strange New Respect. Fuck Rumsfeld.
My first encounter with an up-armored humvee was in rollover training in Kuwait. Now, the provision of rollover training is indicative of the expectation that we _would_ be rolling over in this thing. Some salient points: the up-armored humvee weighed a lot more than its slimmer cousin. You could see how low it was to the ground on its suspension. It was also less maneuverable, as you'd expect. They were slow to accelerate. The doors - no idea how much they weighed but they felt like a really big safe door, like the ones they use for comsec or banks. About as easy to open too. They also had long bent rods in each door as a release. The rods required you to push forward a few inches to open them, and wasn't particularly easy. More on that though.
Rollover training had a humvee body on a longitudinal pole (connections in the grille and rear) being spun by a motor. They'd flip us a few times before we had to perform the escape, and if you didn't escape you failed. All 5 positions were filled, right and left front and back, with someone riding in the MG harness in the center of the back.
There were some elements of unreality to this. For instance, we were all wearing our harnesses...seat belts. Without that, everyone's neck would have gotten broken when we flipped or you'd at least get a nasty shot to the head, helmet or no.
So the finish is that we are upside down after a few revolutions and meanwhile the rear seat people (I was right rear) have to stick an arm into the MG guy's harness to keep him from flopping to one side or another while we flip - and have the presence of mind to do this as soon as we start tipping. Presumably he wasn't brained or cut in half while we did this rollover. We have to hang onto him upside down in our harness. I'm tall (6'7") so my helmet is hitting the roof. This is probably a benefit I have that no one else did. He gets free first. Then we can attend to ourselves. The first task is to hit that door release, not easy upside down, and slooowly open the door, because doing it fast really isn't feasible with it weighing so much. Then, unbuckle from the harness, drop to the ground and crawl out. We made it. I think the metric was 10 or 15 seconds or somesuch.
After doing that, I realized something. If that humvee had landed at any angle except straight up or straight down, you probably weren't getting one side's doors open without outside assistance, they just weighed too much. I have a hard time imagining someone didn't die or suffer injury for that reason.
They showed us a bunch of TSIRT videos which depicted people escaping IED explosions. What this mainly entailed was some young soldier driver with the kind of skills you usually associate with videogames being alert, on point and making the right move, swinging the wheel to skirt the edge of the crater. I rolled with some EOD types, some had been with TF Troy and they said similar things about how to not die - mostly don't go into the crater. And it was rare that they'd set off the explosion and capture a vehicle in the explosion, it was usually someone driving in.
Now it stands to reason that an up-armored humvee was actually worse at that than a standard humvee because it was less maneuverable and underpowered.
The actual thing that stopped most IED attacks was first, well in Iraq, the Anbar awakening. Then after that it was patrolling. Then after that it was Warlock systems. The up-armored humvees were kind of pieces of shit, as were the MRAPs.
So Rummy was kind of an asshole in how he presented these things. But before and after I went, I worked in acquisition - still do. There are a lot of assholes in acquisition. Everyone is championing some cause. Some are doing it for soldiers, some for money, some for ego. The contractors who get the big bucks for doing these materiel upgrades are pretty good at using Congress and the media to get people fired up about their cause du jour. Rummy got a lot of shit for saying no to boondoggles is my view. And being an asshole. But I wouldn't plant my flag on the hill of up-armored humvees.
A close friend of mine did a tour in Afghanistan. It’s enraging how often he reports someone else from his unit killed themselves.
I do my best to support him, which included cursing Rumsfeld’s name when he died.
Lol - Not surprised Rummy convinced Time to run a better propaganda piece.
So we are leaving Afghanistan and the heroin trade. Are we going to lose control of the cocaine business as well? Is this a result of America going soft on drugs and legalizing marijuana? Come on people, we have a recreational economy going to Hell and no one is minding the store!
Thank you for any insight and coverage of foreign affairs. The history of South America seems heart breaking. So much potential so much poor/dysfunctional leadership sometimes abetted by the USA. I am of the mind that we should, in general, mind our own business and seek amity with all peoples and sometimes their leadership.
And Americans will respond with outrage to the fact that those people hate us for supporting an authoritarian regime they suffer under, just like they did when the Shah of Iran was overthrown many years ago. "How dare those ingrates not love us! Dammit, we're the good guys!"
Re: Laughlin, Michael P
You declare, in pertinent part:
"And Americans will respond with outrage to the fact that those people hate us for supporting an authoritarian regime they suffer under,.."
Will you provide a factual evidentiary reference to the "the fact that those people (the Colombian people?) hate us (the U.S. American people ?) for anything?
If this is just simply some sort of hyperbolic imaginary (alternative fact), why claim it is true?
Neither "those people" or 'our people' are that stupid or uninformed, they are all, to varying and different degrees, aware that it is their governments that are the sources of their economic and socio-political concerns. Did you listen to the two Colombian girls who spoke in the video about the demonstrations? Did either one of them talk of hating U.S. citizens?
As Usual,
EA
The article just made me think of what happened way back when the Shah was overthrown, and I was just being a little silly.
Some of us understood your "light snark" :)
Michael, it wasn't about us. The Shah was a typically flawed leader, and SAVAK's excesses were real. But 99% of Iranians would go back to those days in a heartbeat. Women had real opportunity and careers, veils were optional, university graduates volunteered in remote rural areas, the middle class was growing rapidly. The Shah's mistake (really his father's) was to remove political decision making from the Bazaar and set up an elected legislature, and to take land from the (Islamic) church and redistribute it to peasants. That pissed both of those groups off. Guess where the revolution started, and who was behind it? Now you have a theocracy that imprisons and tortures anyone who challenges it. Care to go visit? I thought so...
You sort of skip over the point that the Shah never would have been in power, thus creating the conditions for his overthrow by the mullahs, had we not overthrown a democratically elected government of Mossadegh back in 1953.
I suppose we could look a bit east, over to Afghanistan, and see how our decision to give the USSR its own Vietnam back in the 80's eventually blew back in our faces with 9-11, the botched invasion of that country and then, being unable/unwilling to realize our limits and admit the all powerful US military is not the answer to all foreign policy issues. Now, we are trying to find a way to save face, as we face yet another military defeat, one we could have avoided had we any conception of what a military can and cannot do. God knows, this country has had enough military disasters to learn from but the pencil necked combat virgins who run it, seem afraid to admit they were wrong, as it would reflect poorly on their own suspect masculinity.
Would submit for consideration as well the first major op the CIA ever ran - engineering a coup against Al-Quwati in 1949 against the first democratically elected president in post-independence Syria. So we could build the Trans Arabian Pipeline. Makes you wonder what the ME would have looked like if these post war democracies, most of them built on the US constitution had been allowed to flourish.
Let's recall Queen Bee Hillary Clinton's remark regarding Hamas winning the election in the Gaza Strip when she said we shouldn't allow elections unless we know who's going to win.
We've been totally opposed to any sort of democracy in the ME, as we know it would invariably interfere with the only thing we care about over there; the oil under all that sand. When someone like Neil Hokanson posts comments like he did, it boggles the mind how anyone can be so cynically disingenuous, pretending that we've ever cared about anyone in the ME, other than Israelis, and they mostly because they serve as an outpost from which we can have an excuse as to why we must involve ourselves in what goes on over there.
In a few decades, when we've mastered renewable energy, as we will have to as fossil fuels are finite, the ME will become a backwater we couldn't care less about. It will then be interesting to see whether the Israel lobby has any ability to keep us involved over there. My guess is not.
So human history is replete with aggression? Thanks for the info. The difference with the US and those other states/tribes, is they didn't pretend to be the great moralizing force we try to represent ourselves as being.
Viewed purely in terms of true national self interest, our fixation on endless militarism, in trying to militarily control the world, especially given our military's woeful post WWII record, as meanwhile the PRC concentrates laser like on economic development, in financing foreign resource projects while maintaining a military that is regional in nature, is destined to see the US empire collapse all the sooner.
Ironic that a totalitarian one party state should be far less militaristic and more concerned with long term economic realities than our supposed democratic republic.
Excellent take, especially when it ignores reality, and what should truly matter in our foreign policy, and not just in the ME, where you seem to think nothing has changed in 5,000 years, an opinion that in no way reflects history, unless you're referring to human nature, which is unchanged throughout the world.
Time will tell all, but the Chinese don't waste their money and technology on pointless wars, something the US does, especially when we have an all volunteer military who do all the heavy lifting, while we go shopping, as that patriotic Vietnam draft dodger advised us to do nearly 20 years ago. That turned out as well as did Shock and Awe.
Yes, you're right. To be honest, I was being a little silly. It's just that for whatever reason, this situation reminded me of that situation.
It is a mixed bag--- we are in Medellin.
Am a Canadian who has lived and worked in Bogota, and agree that at the root of this is class conflict. You will hear very different perspectives on the protests if you speak with a Medellin business owner or a factory worker. The truth is businesses in Colombia exert a disproportionate amount of power over the labor force, one that Amazon can only wish it had. Two hundred union and human rights activists were killed in the country in 2020, which goes to show the US should have demanded more be done during negotiations of the bilateral trade agreement - calls for same fell on deaf ears at the time. We need some inequality to drive innovation, but we are seeing what happens when a country heads north of 50 on the Gini index. This should concern us as the USA has slid by 10 to 40 in the last few decades, when most of the wealthy stable western democracies are in the 20 to 30 band. We don't need a complex regression analysis to see where we are headed unless we make some structural changes sooner rather than later. It is also far past time for Uribe to retire from the field. I was as pro Uribe as most of were when he wore down the FARC to the point where the later negotiated deal could be negotiated - but the dynastic control he has fought behind the scenes to retain undermines this legacy. I challenge anyone to argue that Duque's presidency is more than a copy-paste of Medvedev - and now his son is running? Colombia is a fantastic place, with really great people. They are in dire need of real leadership and is disheartening that there does not even seem to be the base conditions for such a unicorn to flourish even if they did exist.
There is an entire spectrum of functional governance models that exist between the current status quo and Cuba, and the numbers are very revelatory. There is a reason that freedom of association/ collective bargaining rights are built into The Bill of Rights of most modern democracies - a lone worker cannot negotiate in any meaningful way with an Amazon. The US middle class was built on Bretton Woods & the New Deal with a 30% union workforce. We had labor violence in Canada in 1919 which led to collective bargaining rights and improved working conditions for the middle class without becoming Soviet Russia. The countries today that have the most equality, have retained higher union participation - Sweden 67%, Canada 27%, UK 25% etc. It has fallen to 10% in the US and is 4% in Colombia. Unions are by no means a panacea, but by constantly citing "Cuba" as a slippery slope argument, we may be forging the instruments of our future demise. As JFK stated, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." We should not forget where Fidel began his revolutionary career - being arrested for handing out pamphlets as a student, hearing of Gaitan's assassination upon release and the Bogotazo. All in Colombia. There is a way forward if we have the will and wherewithal to learn from our mistakes.
Re: e.pierce
It's really refreshing to read your opinions after a brief hiatus, I'm glad you're still cookin.
As Usual,
EA
While I share your concern of the rise of SJW and Foucault, the stats I share above run would seem to counter to your argument - western democracies with higher union participation rates have more stability and equality, and healthier middle class. They would seem to be doing a better job of representing their members than the 90% non-union workers in US are able to fending for themselves.
Have added the Kotkin piece to my reading list, not familiar with thanks for the recommendation.
Have already stated my agreement that postmoderism is a concern, and agree they will continue to try to exert influence along the lines you describe. That doesn't mean we should let them. I am having difficulty parsing whether you agree that unions are beneficial to the working class, but the neolibs won't let them gain influence, or that they are undesirable in their own right. I provided corollary examples earlier that would appear to show they have value - they are organizations peopled with humans however and again are not perfect. Believe the data supports increased social instability when we remove them and do not replace them with something else.
Believe SJW is just a tool wielded by corporate special interests to increase shareholder value, and mask the class aspect of our current travails. A Bretton Woods II if done right would address neolib capture issue you raise, as well as the cheap/expensive corporate decision as we would not leave it up to them.
btw - was surfing comments last night...am jealous of the amout of free time you have! You must have like a dozen of these threads going at the same time!
and forgot to add politics=corrupt politics.
«openly described the Colombian protests as a “class war,”»
Another one of my my favourite articles:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/
“Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason — the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit — and, most of the time, genteel — oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. [...] The government, in its race to stop the bleeding, will typically need to wipe out some of the national champions — now hemorrhaging cash — and usually restructure a banking system that’s gone badly out of balance. It will, in other words, need to squeeze at least some of its oligarchs. [...] Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk — at least until the riots grow too large.”
There is some speculation as to in how many years “until the riots grow too large” in the USA itself. So far they are easily contained and racialized.
When did the media abdicate their traditional role? When did they stop reporting what is going on in the world? When did they become extensions of government power?
Okay. Interesting. So the media have been curating the story my entire lifetime. Nothing has changed in my 57 years?
I’ve been reading substack stuff for less than a year. I have to conclude that everything I know has been fed to me like pablum,at least in so far as it came from the media.
The media are liars, overtly, through omission, through wilful mischaracterization, compromised by economic necessity, people, self appointed windbags, shrouded in self righteous glory who do what they are told by editorial staff who kowtow to power.
Hum!
At the time of the Alien and Sedition acts in the 1790s, newspaper editors were being tarred and feathered and run out of town if they didn't toe the government line.
In the 1860s they were getting thrown in jail if they didn't play ball.
A lot of our speech protections are really horseshit when the government really wants something badly enough.
Journalism, including especially the US 'paper of record' could be said to be yellow going back probably to it's inception, so 'traditional role' is probably a term that has different meanings depending on who you're asking.
To be fair, my friend Gary, who worked the NYT in the 60s and 70s and was working at the Asbury Park Press as the legal editor upon his death in the very early 2000's, believed fiercely in the whole objective journalism myth. He meant it, I know he did. But, i'm sad to say Gary was wrong. Everyone has a bias, and our newspapers only used to try to conceal it, and not very well.
It seems only fair to acknowledge that the industry of journalism, even when dealing with smaller subunits down to individuals, does enjoy some variability in the degree to which they behave as 'extensions of government' or any other power (or else I wouldn't be spending my money on TK). But there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to large-scale bad faith journalism..
Do you think that the theoretical framework of critical race theory is adequate to explain the available meta-narrative studies on Ivermectin? Or would posit, in general, that this is a sophist's gambit and that the anti-parasite treatment is more properly evaluated through a more pragmatic, less existential "tinted" lens, as it were?
We're both on a Kon-tiki-like raft, negotiating the warm currents of the Gulf of Mexico, destination Cuba, where we intend to remake the island into a capitalist paradise! No more of this egalitarian leftist shit for me! Banana plantations and seaside casinos are the ticket for me! Aloha!
By yellow you mean liking encourage or morals?
This is what probably most people think of by 'yellow': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Actually this is a good question since I'm probably misusing the term a bit. Traditionally 'yellow' refers to sensationalism over real information. Here I'm also/in addition referring to propaganda (sensationalized or not) over real information.
Thank you for covering this important topic. This has gotten marginal, equivocating press in the USA. We bear more responsibility because our tax dollars fund the government and end up supporting some human rights violations so we need to know what’s going on. I hope you cover some of the affected news outlets in depth.
You may want to check in on Colombia Reports, a small English language news outfit recently hit with a SLAPP-style suit and being defended by Primera Linea Juridica, which seems like a hastily constructed Colombian ACLU.
Ah, yes, "Columbia Reports' the outlet that "Colombia Reports' editor-in-chief Adriaan Alsema published a series of articles claiming that between 2003 and 2007, US military personnel and contractors had sexually abused many Colombian children. By June 2015, it was discovered that the source for these articles was faulty and Alsema was forced to retract those stories, expressing regret that he "felt responsible for having spread an urban myth". That one? That Marxist outlet? Run by a guy "https://arielsheen.com/index.php/2019/12/09/colombia-reports-fake-news-written-by-a-dutch-anarchist/" who is over the top in his leftist/Marxist/anarchist credentials? Hmmmm
“As protests erupt on the streets of a longtime U.S. ally, the Biden administration and the American media wait to see whose side they're on.”
A classic sub-headline. Slyly brutal. 😀