Former Guatemalan Dictator Ríos Montt Found Guilty of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity… Pal of Slobberin’ Ronnie and Raving Pentecostalist

The Spanish on the left-hand side reads, “St Efraín… They have human rights”, on the right-hand side, it reads, “We have them, too”.

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On Friday, a Guatemalan court found former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest phase of the 36-year-long Guatemalan Civil War. The court sentenced him to 50 years in prison on the genocide charge and to 30 years for crimes against humanity. It was the first time that a domestic court found a former head of state guilty of genocide.

Ríos Montt, 86, took power after a coup d’état in 1982, and faced charges of implementing a scorched-earth policy, in which troops massacred thousands of indigenous villagers. He entered the court on Friday to boos and cries of “Justicia!” (justice). Prosecutors said that Ríos Montt turned a blind eye as soldiers used rape, torture, and arson in an attempt to stamp out leftist rebels in Guatemala during his 1982-83 junta, the most violent period of the 1960-96 Guatemalan Civil War, during which as many as 250,000 people died.

 The court tried him for killing at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil indigenous group, just a fraction of the number who died during his rule. He denied the allegations. “[Ríos Montt] had full knowledge of everything that happened and didn’t stop it”, Judge Jazmín Barrios, who presided over the trial, told a packed courtroom where Mayan women wearing colourful traditional head-dresses and headphones closely followed proceedings. The decision came just weeks after the trial was hanging in the balance, when a dispute broke out between judges over who should hear the case.

11 May 2013

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_05_11/Guatemalas-former-military-leader-Rios-Montt-found-guilty-of-genocide-crimes-against-humanity-081/

Editor’s Note:

Ríos Montt was a bosom pal of Slobberin’ Ronnie and the darling of the Christianity Today crowd. That speaks volumes of the Republican Party and of Evangelicalism, doesn’t it? Ríos Montt was a loud and strutting Pentecostalist… he “spoke in tongues” and he was “baptised in the Spirit”. If by their fruits ye shall know them is true, what does that tell you about Pentecostalism? The USA and Israel supported the military dictatorship… México, Cuba, and Nicaragua supported the indigenous insurgents. As always, the USA (and the Republican Party) supported the Criollo moneybags and opposed the indigenous peasantry. In this case, justice was delayed… but justice was done. The good guys won…

BMD

A View from Moscow by Valentin Zorin… The End of the American Empire

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The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías knocked Washington off-balance and stripped it of confidence. Breaking the traditional rules of diplomatic courtesy, US President Obama refrained from extending condolences to the people and government of Venezuela, unlike the heads of state of most other countries. Those in the American corridors of power must have lost their nerve.

In this case, Chávez’s extraordinary personality didn’t cause this state of affairs; rather, the tectonic policy shift that embodied Chávez’s philosophy devastated the USA. For two centuries, South America provided solid and reliable support for a country whose very name… the United States of America… incorporated claims to speaking on behalf of both parts of the American continent. In 1823, the fifth US President, James Monroe, proclaimed in a message to the US Congress that all territories south of the American border were the USA’s “exclusive sphere of influence”. It’s worth remembering that the text of the so-called Monroe Doctrine stated that the USA would consider any attempt on the part of any other country to interfere militarily or politically in the affairs of any state in the Americas as hostile, a threat to its peace and security. Without any diplomatic frou-frou, Senator Lodge explained the essence of Monroe Doctrine by saying, “The American flag must fly over the territory from the Rio Grande to the Arctic”.

The Monroe Doctrine was a guide for several generations of politicians as they replaced one another at the helm of the American state. After World War I, US President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Monroe Doctrine be part of the Covenant of the League of Nations. By using brute force, Washington kept South America under its thumb. After American troops invaded Mexico in 1846, the USA de facto carved that country up {part of it became the south-western USA after the American victory: editor}. Besides that, the USA propped up bloody puppet juntas in Central America like those of General Anastasio Somoza García in Nicaragua. US President Franklin D Roosevelt threw out a famous cynical bon mot concerning him, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”.

After the Second World War, Washington didn’t loosen its iron grip on Latin America; it still held it under its tight control. Subservient Latin American delegations at the UN comprised an infamous “voting machine”; it was one of Washington’s major policy tools in the early years of the Cold War. The Cuban Revolution was the first peal of thunder. The multiple, but unsuccessful, attempts to suppress it marked the beginning of the end for the empire south of the American border. A bloc of states chose to reject Washington’s diktat… Brazil’s economic and political weight grew exponentially, Nicaragua broke free, Panama snatched the Panama Canal from America’s grip, and Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela went on to head an anti-American front in Latin America. All this became a nightmare for the proponents of the outmoded Monroe Doctrine. The 200-year-old American Empire is no more, never to return. Judging from their nervousness, the power élite in Washington is unaware or is unwilling to recognise that. So much the worse… for them!

19 March 2013

Valentin Zorin

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2013_03_19/203903965/

As John Robles Sees It… Québec and “Independence” In the Americas: History and Today

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With the secessionists winning the elections in Québec, the world is full of speculation that they’ll secede from Canada. In this piece, I take a brief look at independence in the Americas and give my take on the Québécois and others in North America who claim to want to be free, but refuse to pay the price for that freedom. Classically, the French and the English have never really shared much love for each other. This goes back to the years of the great empire building and the wars for the Americas between the Spanish, French, and English, with the Portuguese and other nations playing a smaller role.

The Spanish, one could say, won the wars for the Americas hands down, partly because they were able to assimilate better with the Indians and the indigenous peoples. Rather than attempting to annihilate the natives completely, they assimilated into a single ethnos. The Spanish won more territory, taking over part of North America and almost all Central and South America, except for a smaller area won by the Portuguese.

For the French, loyal to France and the Bourbon throne, it was a different story. For their part, the English were mostly drunken cut-throats, murderers, and misfits of all sorts, who hated England, who engaged in a campaign of genocide against the indigenous people. The English chased the natives far to the North, where the French also waged a war of annihilation on the Indians, albeit on a smaller scale. In turn, those who refused to pay allegiance to their rightful king chased the Tories, who were loyal to Britain and the British King, to the North, in what history knows as the American Revolutionary War {this was the first and most successful of the Three Great Godless Revolutions: editor}.

When the grandiose schemes of Napoleon led to the failure of the French Empire, Québec became a consolation prize for the French settlers in the Americas. It was a cold and unforgiving place; a land that the English weren’t all that interested in. In the end, in fact, the French ended being subjugated and controlled by their historic rivals from across la Manche, as English-speaking Canadians and the Tories paid allegiance to Britain and its Monarchy, they controlled what came to be known as Québec.

Personally, for me, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for any of these people as they committed the worst genocide in the history of all mankind against my people. Given that fact, they’re all living on stolen land, so, to me, any discussion of Québec becoming independent from Canada seems absurd and a denial of history. Nevertheless, for the most part, the Indians are gone and those who’re left are contained and voiceless, except for a very few. Ignoring those facts, as the world has been trained to do, allow me to continue. The Québécois are proud of their heritage, their language, and their culture. They’re also proud of what differentiates them from the English and, in particular, from Americans.

Amongst these differences is the level of violence in society. Many French Canadians view themselves as pacifists, and violence, especially gun violence, in the country is rare. Therefore, the American-style shooting outside of the victory speech by the new premier has many worried that this may be a sign that American-style mass shootings may be coming to Canada. That’s not very likely, as Canada has strict gun laws and a working social safety net for the population, including housing and healthcare; nevertheless, people are worried. Will Québec secede from Canada? That’s not very likely either, as the people are too comfortable with what they have and the way things are, they may complain, but few are willing to pay the price and go through all of the trouble that’d be involved. Freedom and independence are not as important as all of the nice things they think they’re provided with, and many just want to be left alone to live their lives, pay their mortgages, and raise their children.

Therefore, we have a continuation of the bickering over the division of lands stolen from the Indians. Since this is an opinion piece, I’ll give you my opinion… we should allow the Indian people to hold a referendum on whether they wish the invaders to stay on their lands. Based on the answer, then, we should proceed from there. That’s wishful thinking, since that’s never going to happen, and, in fact, the whole topic isn’t even worth discussing because it’s up to the people of Québec themselves to decide on whether or not they wish to stay a part of Canada, and they won’t be doing that anytime soon. In their eyes, they have too much to lose, and I’ve already said that it’d be too troublesome and adversely affect their comfortable lives. The same problem exists in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, the Maldives, and a host of other territories or possessions, where the people are too comfortable with the things that they think the colonisers have given them, and they fear the consequences of self-determination.

In this way, capitalism and the West manipulated and literally bought off much of the world. Were trade and import export levels balanced worldwide, this would no longer pose a problem, but unfortunately, there are only a small group of countries controlling the flow of goods and services worldwide. If we could break this grip, then, there might be a chance for equality and an improved standard of living for the entire planet. This idea doesn’t sit well with the USA or the world’s leading trade powerhouses, for if they lost the trade wars, they’d lose a significant instrument that they use to advance their imperialist ambitions.

In reality, it’s strange for me, a person of Arawak (Taíno)/Spanish descent, who’s assimilated and been accepted in Russia, to be writing about French and English squabbles, people who not long ago brutally committed genocide against my people and are still bickering over the lands they stole, with the Québécois making claims to wanting their own country on lands that aren’t theirs to begin with. If the Québécois want independence, I say, “More power to them, they should stand up and have the fortitude to fight for their independence and stop whining”. Many peoples would go to war for such a chance, but all the Québécois have to do is have a referendum and go through some difficulties. If freedom isn’t that important to them, so be it, but stop whining. I’d say the same thing to my fellow Puerto Ricans, but they’ve been so brainwashed that the very idea of freedom, self-determination, and independence is an abomination to them. They’re too afraid to even think about such a thing, and they’re content to be an American possession.

Before I go, I just want to say to those who might write to me about Chechnya and the Russian Caucasus, those lands are and have been a part of Russia, and were not annexed or taken possession of. The question shouldn’t be where would we be without our McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and Chevrolet cars, the question should be… “What would it be like to breathe freely?”

8 September 2012

John Robles

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_09_08/Quebec-and-independence-in-the-Americas-history-and-today/