THE ARROGANCE OF THE US
March 20, 2015
If I were teaching my course on
violence and peacemaking today, I would be giving priority to showing and
discussing today’s “Democracy Now!” interview with Ecuadoran Foreign Minister
Ricardo Patiño (http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/20/ecuadorean_foreign_minister_the_united_states?autostart=true). Interviewed by Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman,
Patiño gave a succinct, plainly spoken lesson on US overthrow of democratic
regimes in Latin America and in the IS war zone, to support economic
exploitation. He explains the
multinational Latin American call for the US to rescind economic and travel sanctions
newly added to US attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of
Venezuela. He recounts our overthrow of
the Iraqi government in 1991, based on a lie that Iraq had “weapons of mass
destruction”; when asked he diplomatically acknowledges that control of oil in
the region might be an underlying motive for our military history there.
When asked about the recent
International Court of Justice civil arbitration award to Ecuadoran citizens
harmed by Chevron’s history of oil dumping, he pointed out that the ruling
superseded the agreement made by an undemocratic government that his government
represents. It also departs from an earlier ruling by a US court in favor of Chevron.
When asked about the Ecuadoran
government’s grant of diplomatic asylum to Wikileaker Julian Assange, and the
Swedish government’s decision to send prosecutors to the London embassy to
interview Assange before the statute of limitations on sexual assault charges
runs out, Patiño welcomes them, noting that he wishes Swedish prosecutors had
accepted Ecuador’s invitation to do the interview when the evidence was fresh,
rather than waiting 1.000 days to ask for an embassy visit. He also defended Ecuador’s decision to grant
Assange asylum as a protection of free speech, a freedom respected by his
government.
I wish all schoolchildren, let alone older students who discuss current
events could have a class period to play and discuss this 30-minute segment. And in my class, I would open discussion with
the question: Why should anyone trust
the US to do anything but set up governments that will let us exploit them for
US corporate gain? Love and peace, hal
No comments:
Post a Comment