Chris Herz: The same bumf we have heard so often about "the awful authoritarian dictator Hugo Chavez Frias"

VHeadline's Washington D.C. based commentaris Chris Herz writes: Democratic presidential contender Barak Obama spoke this last week in Miami before the Cuba-American National Foundation. His remarks were the same old stock baloney about Cuba and the same bumf we have heard so often about "the awful authoritarian dictator Hugo Chavez Frias."

The only thing remotely new is a statement about being ready to open high level discussions with both the island and with Venezuela.

But of course such discussions have been on-going for years through the embassies of the USA and of Venezuela and the Cuban interest sections of the Swiss Embassy in the respective capitals of Caracas Habana and Washington.

What really has to change must change in Washington first: A new commitment to the Good Neighbor Policy first enunciated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A commitment to abandon forever armed or subversive intervention in the affairs of the other nations of this hemisphere.

But this policy was that of the Great Republic of Roosevelt. That nation is dead these many years, replaced by the present evil empire in a process begun by Nixon and now completed by Bush II. What is now the US side simply are unable to even imagine treating the other nations of the Americas as full and equal sovereign partners.

As yet, no one anywhere within the US policy establishment is prepared to sacrifice influence and possibly even career by the suggestion that not only have the USA never had the slightest legal right to force others into the empire, but this empire may now lack the military, subversive and financial power to compel the obedience to which it has become accustomed.

I do not think the USA possesses now the ability to mount even the sort of proxy wars that Reagan and Bush I were able to wage in Central America in the 1980's. Still less a massive Iraq-style invasion against either the island or the Venezuelan nations. We might be still able to conquer another Granada or Haiti ... but perhaps not even another Panama.

Iraq and Afghanistan are well understood by all concerned to be a deadly drain on imperial resources. But hardly less lethal are the burdens imposed by a lack of social responsiblily within the USA on the part of the ruling elites. This results in the massive invasion of the USA by international drug cartels operating as do other mercantile cartels, in cahoots with banks, shipping and other financial and industrial elements.

We are having now to spend major portions of state and local budgets on cops and jails ... and then the new Department of Homeland Security with its new emphasis upon the criminalization of illegal migration are adding to this burden.

Plus DHS are so massively involved in other activities -- right down to snooping on emails and phone calls -- that an enormous new and unproductive world-wide bureaucracy and its corporate profiteers has sprung up. At vast expense.

This homeland policing is from the standpoint of our elites absolutely vital. I have myself heard many working people who only eight years ago obeyed without question the TV pundits and the corrupt preachers of the Protestant Church and cast their ballots for George W. Bush say now the only thing to save our nation is revolution!

Another disaster, one of even greater magnitude, is the out-sourcing of industrial production to the overseas branches of US corporations. Even were the entire remaining industrial production of the USA to be exported this could correct only 17 or 18% of the trade imbalance!

Many people in the media and blogosphere comment on the absence of a mass movement against the Bush wars. To them it seems astonishing that millions could demonstrate against war before March, 2003 when the issue was in doubt. But now when clearly the USA have experienced at least tactical defeat, all the former peace marchers stay at home.

Our people are no stupider than any other -- as Lincoln said you can fool them all some of the time, and you can fool some all of the time, but you cannot fool them all forever. And about 80% of our people now state that our nation is on the wrong path; of these most understand (although the polling companies dare not state the obvious question) the present state system is only able to offer more war, more jails. Marches and voting will not change it.

As Emma Goldman famously said: "If elections could change anything, they would be illegal." Here is Obama's real problem, not whether or no he will invite Hugo Chavez Frias to Washington.

I have no magic crystal ball. I can see the future no better than anyone else. I can predict however that the USA would love to invade and conquer Venezuela -- but that by reason of financial and social disarray will be unable to do so.

I do not think they even have enough financial power to ensure separatism in Santa Cruz Province in Bolivia or in Zulia Province in Venezuela: So long as South America remains determined not to allow it.

From the imperial capital

Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com