bromselick
8/22/2006 3:22:00 PM
Published: Monday, August 21, 2006 --
Bylined to: Chris Herz --
VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: Poor, unfortunate J.
Patrick Maher. He, after 32 years of faithful service in the Central
Intelligence Agency is the latest sacrificial lamb to lay his career
upon the crumbling altar of US Hegemonism in Latin America.
His boss, Mr. Negroponte, the former commander-in-chief of all the
death squads of Central America, has just announced that Mr. Maher will
be the temporary head of a special office designed to destabilize
Venezuela and Cuba, preparatory to bringing these revolted colonies
back into the imperial orbit.
But if past experience is to be any guide, the Empire will experience
more difficulty than anticipated in accomplishing this goal, and Mr.
Maher will vanish into honorable (?) retirement. No more than he
deserves, of course, for his help to subdue that terrible menace,
Granada ... but still, an hell of a note it is to close such a long
career with such an abject failure.
I wonder what Mr. Maher did to cause his colleagues to stick him with
such a fruitless and un-enviable assignment?
Did he hop upon the wife of a colleague?
Was he caught with his fingers in the cash-register?
I fear we shall never know.
But no matter what the outcome of his efforts, we may expect that Mr.
Maher will be allowed to retire with his full pension and benefits --
more than most of his countrymen can now expect.
The Cuban revolution drove out the Batista/Meyer Lansky regime New
Years Day of 1959. By the next spring, as the fallen dictator's
deserted death-squad henchmen were meeting before revolutionary
firing-squads their much-merited deserts, the USA decided in all its
arrogance that enough was enough.
If the Cosa Nostra were to be deprived of its gambling and prostitution
haven in Habana de Cuba what might come next?
The property of EXXON, DOMINO SUGAR, or GENERAL MOTORS?
May the corporate, evangelical God forbid.
Ever since those days the CIA and its corporate-mafia masters have been
intently focused upon the destruction of the independence of the island
of the solitary star ... but as yet without success.
For some odd reason, the corporate imperium, with a population of near
300 million has never been able to suppress a country of only 13
million. One only 90 miles from Florida. Small wonder that the leader
of this newest effort is now to be an official near to retirement. Our
wack-nut leaders may have had considerable difficulty persuading
someone younger to take upon himself this task; someone still saddled
with responsibilities to wife and children.
But, that said, dear readers, strongly do I suspect that these people
in official Washington expect a much softer problem in Venezuela.
I think they really do not even dimly suspect the profound changes that
have gone down in Venezuela since the Army, in the person of Lieutenant
Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias, decided that its true mission was to be the
support of its own people ... not the obedient and obsequious and
unquestioning support of Washington and its local agents.
These, your enemies, are not really very intelligent people. They do
not seem to understand that the age of imperialism is over. When they
have some troops available, when they feel that Mr. Maher has found a
base of collaborators in Venezuela, expect that our CIA and our Army
will make their move.
These, our misleaders do not listen within their own country to the
real pulse of their own people. They are content to hear from the
owners of the corporate media that all is well for their designs. They
are willing to terminate the careers of the bearers of bad news.
But sycophants telling them what they wish to believe are always
welcome.
Cisneros and the other owners of the Venezuelan media will always speak
louder in Washington than yourselves: They are telling the wierdos in
charge here what they want, with all their hearts to believe: That
somehow the Venezuelan people still believe their highest destiny is to
provide cheap oil for the profit of TEXAS, Inc.
It is up to Venezuelans to decide whether this is treason; whether such
people deserve to lose all for aiding a foreign enemy. But I, a North
American; but one who believes my country, like Germany or Japan, needs
to learn to live upon the fruits of its own ingenuity and industry
rather than plunder, say to all the world that these enemies of us all
are a deadly threat to you, to me, to our children and to the planet
itself.
Chris Herz
chris@vheadline.com