Ol’ Blind Joe

Once they were well fed and some mates arrived they set off westward and killed every damn Indian they could find, claiming the land for themselves.

They truly did hand out smallpox infected blankets to the Indians, which I find disgusting.

Organising themselves eventually, they set up an army and beat their English overlords, and then stole half of Mexico.

At the time of its independence from Spain in 1821, the territory of Mexico included what is now the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Texas.

The Americans then carried out large-scale warfare in the Philippines, Europe, Korea, and Vietnam, prolonged invasions and occupations in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic and counter-insurgencies in Colombia and southern Africa.

They also grabbed Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico and half the Caribbean, bringing to these mere savages ‘The Word of God’, or is that possibly a contradiction of terms?

Washington’s strategy of regime change in Venezuela today is almost identical to the approach it has always taken in Latin America; applying economic sanctions, extensive support for the opposition and destabilisation measures that create a sufficient degree of human suffering and chaos to justify a military coup or direct US military intervention.

The Nixon administration’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger foreshadowed the arrogance that CIA director Tenet would exhibit decades later when he made his thoughts on Chile’s 1970 election clear: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

And so the Nixon administration set about destabilising the country with policies that sought, as one cabinet member stated, to “make the Chilean economy scream”.

Same game happened in Iran in 1953, when democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, an author, administrator and lawyer, introduced a range of social and political measures such as social security, land reforms and higher taxes including taxation of the rent on land.

His government’s most significant policy, however, was the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, which had been built by the British on Persian lands since 1913.

He was removed when his government was overthrown in a coup d’état orchestrated by the American CIA and Britain’s MI6.

In August 2013, 60 years later, the US Government formally acknowledged its role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.

The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out “under CIA direction” and “as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.”

Here’s a little story about Crimea which is a little country hanging off the backside of Ukraine.

Crimea became part of the Russian Empire in 1783, when the Crimean Khanate was annexed, then became part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic until 1954.

It’s just over four years since the climax of the so-called Maidan revolution in Ukraine.

Months of street protests ended with a violent crackdown by the security forces, which led to the then president, pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, fleeing the country into exile.

The US gave a leg up to a bunch of Nazi types to take power in Ukraine, and Crimea screamed “help”.

In the aftermath Crimea voted in a referendum to return to the Russian fold.

Uncle Sam has 600 bases in over 60 countries, and yes sir, “Anybody seen any bullies around here lately, because this is our patch, the whole damn planet?”

Let’s lighten up and address that harmless little subject of truth.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, writer, and a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and wrote: “We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

Aulus Gellius (circa 125–180 AD) was a Latin author and grammarian who wrote that “Truth is the daughter of Time”.

I spent yonks on this one but I reckon he was saying that only through the passage of time would the veils hiding the truth fall away.

Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) was a Hindu sage who wrote: “There is only the truth within each moment.”

These words really got to me once I got inside and finally deciphered them.

This next guy scared the heebie jeebies out of me:

“ . . .science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it:
Consider what an explosion would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.” – US poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-19620), The Silent Shepherds.