Just how evil is the USA?

But the Japs started it by bombing Pearl Harbor didn't they?
And Hitler declared war on America and started building bombers to bomb New York, so America had to stop him too didn't they?
Then the commies invaded Sth Korea so America went to help kick them out.
Same in Nam when the commies invaded there.
And Saddam invaded Kuwait so America went to help kick him out.
My point is that it's not America who starts the trouble..

Usually.

You have such a simplistic idea of history, Romeo. There really is no saving someone so abysmally ignorant.

Modern History Sourcebook:
President Lyndon Johnson and Ho Chi Minh:
Letter Exchange, 1967

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1967-vietnam-letters1.html

“The SPEAKER pro tempore.

Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, how did the 20-year war get started?

It had been long assumed that the United States Government, shortly before Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, gave Saddam Hussein a green light to attack. A State Department cable recently published by WikiLeaks confirmed that U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie did indeed have a conversation with Saddam Hussein one week prior to Iraq’s August 1, 1990, invasion of Kuwait.

Amazingly, the released cable was entitled,

“Saddam’s Message of Friendship to President Bush.” (published below)

In it, Ambassador Glaspie affirmed to Saddam that “the President had instructed her to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq.” As Saddam Hussein outlined Iraq’s ongoing border dispute with Kuwait, Ambassador Glaspie was quite clear that, “we took no position on these Arab affairs.”

There would have been no reason for Saddam Hussein not to take this assurance at face value. The U.S. was quite supportive of his invasion and war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s. With this approval from the U.S. Government, it wasn’t surprising that the invasion occurred. The shock and surprise was how quickly the tables were turned and our friend, Saddam Hussein, all of a sudden became Hitler personified.

The document was classified, supposedly to protect national security, yet this information in no way jeopardized our security. Instead, it served to keep the truth from the American people about an event leading up to our initial military involvement in Iraq and the region that continues to today.

{time} 1440

The secrecy of the memo was designed to hide the truth from the American people and keep our government from being embarrassed. This was the initial event that had led to so much death and destruction–not to mention the financial costs–these past 20 years.

Our response and persistent militarism toward Iraq was directly related to 9/11, as our presence on the Arabian Peninsula–and in particular Saudi Arabia–was listed by al Qaeda as a major grievance that outraged the radicals (sic) who carried out the heinous attacks against New York and Washington on that fateful day.

Today, the conflict has spread through the Middle East and Central Asia with no end in sight.

The reason this information is so important is that if Congress and the American people had known about this green light incident 20 years ago, they would have been a lot more reluctant to give a green light to our government to pursue the current war–a war that is ongoing and expanding to this very day.


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/01/31/cong-ron-paul-classified-cable-proves-us-okd-saddams-kuwait-invasion/

No, the USA invaded Korea, after chastising the Japanese for creating their own colony there. The USA wanted to make Korea into its own colony just as it had done with the Philippines. The USA did the same in China, it actually collaborated with the Japanese and European powers to carve up China so the USA could get its share.

--------------
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-korean-war-the-unknown-war-the-coverup-of-us-war-crimes/23742


The Korean War: The “Unknown War”. The Coverup of US War Crimes





The Korean War, a.k.a. the “Unknown War,” was, in fact, headline news at the time it was being fought(1950-53). Given the Cold War hatreds of the combatants, though, a great deal of the reportage was propaganda, and much of what should have been told was never told. News of the worst atrocities perpetrated against civilians was routinely suppressed and the full story of the horrific suffering of the Korean people—who lost 3-million souls of a total population of 23-million— has yet to be told in full. Filling in many of the blank spaces is Bruce Cumings, chair of the Department of History at the University of Chicago, whose book “The Korean War”(Modern Library Chronicles) takes an objective look at the conflict. In one review, Publishers Weekly says, “In this devastating work he shows how little the U.S. knew about who it was fighting, why it was fighting, and even how it was fighting.

Though the North Koreans had a reputation for viciousness, according to Cumings, U.S. soldiers actually engaged in more civilian massacres. This included dropping over half a million tons of bombs and thousands of tons of napalm, more than was loosed on the entire Pacific theater in World War II, almost indiscriminately. The review goes on to say, “Cumings deftly reveals how Korea was a clear precursor to Vietnam: a divided country, fighting a long anti-colonial war with a committed and underestimated enemy; enter the U.S., efforts go poorly, disillusionment spreads among soldiers, and lies are told at top levels in an attempt to ignore or obfuscate a relentless stream of bad news. For those who like their truth unvarnished, Cumings’s history will be a fresh, welcome take on events that seemed to have long been settled.”

You forgot about Central and South America.

---------

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

Smedley Butler


I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Bananas, Bulldozers and Bullets -

Chiquita Banana

by Mike Gallagher & Cameron McWhirter

Earth Island Journal, Fall, 1998





(From the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper, June 28, 1998. The article was later renounced by the Enquirer under pressure from Chiquita Brands International)

Honduras - Nothing remains of Tacamiche but a few concrete foundations. No one lives here any more but lizards and crows. The churches are gone. The homes of the banana workers are gone.

After six decades as a community among Chiquita's banana fields in northeastern Honduras, the village was plowed under in February 1996 by about 500 Honduran soldiers. Former residents have not forgotten their village, nor have they forgiven Chiquita and its subsidiary for the fact that soldiers with bayonets and bulldozers forcibly evicted more than 600 people before wiping Tacamiche off the map.

Chiquita tried to enforce its court eviction of the village several times, but villagers refused to leave. The military came into the village in February 1996 with tear gas, bulldozers and rifles. In a statement issued through its attorneys, Chiquita stated that the February eviction "took place peacefully and no one was hurt." Tacamiche villagers dispute that claim. Photographs of the event show soldiers with assault rifles forcibly removing women and children as bulldozers destroy the village.

Chiquita television advertisements in the US show smiling, tanned workers strolling through verdant, flowering jungles drenched in sunshine. No one ever has made a commercial about Barrio Brooklyn, a squatter's camp down the road from the seven large plantations of Chiquita subsidiary Compania Bananera Atlantica Ltda. (COBAL) at San Alberto in east-central Costa Rica.

In squalid camps and towns among the sweltering flatlands of banana territory, workers interviewed by the Enquirer said that in recent years working to produce Chiquita bananas has meant less pay, fewer benefits, less union representation, unenforced employment protections and little job security.

In the late 1980s and early l990s, officials at the company's Cincinnati headquarters formulated policies that diminished union influence on farms controlled by Chiquita and created plans to limit workers' wages and benefits. These business practices include:

* Using computerized hiring logs in Honduras that alert Chiquita-controlled farms when to rotate some workers at supposedly independent companies before they can receive state-mandated salary and health benefits. The companies are all, in fact, controlled by Chiquita. The rotations also make union organization difficult.

* Financing the Solidarismo Movement in Costa Rica. The movement, partially funded by Chiquita and other multinational companies, supplants unions, takes management on its board, will not provide legal representation to protect dismissed workers and does not authorize workers to strike.

Chiquita and Pesticides

In the early l990s, almost 100 square miles of Costa Rican grazing land and forests in the northeastern section of the country were bought by banana companies like Chiquita and fumed into banana fields. According to Costa Rican government statistics, 70,740 acres were in banana production nationwide in 1990. By 1995, that number had jumped to 131,118 acres, an increase of more than 85 percent. The huge increase meant the loss of thousands of acres of cattle farms and more than 13 square miles of primary rain forest.

The increase in banana plantations led to a dramatic rise in pesticide use in an area permeated by rivers and creeks that flow into the Caribbean. The new plantations are located near many sensitive forest preserves and conservation areas. Environmentalists are concerned about pollution from pesticides causing fish kills and other environmental problems.

The ecosytem of a banana plantation is extremely wet and hot. The soil is very loose, helping the banana plants grow but also making it easy for pesticides to spread throughout the system. It often rains in these areas, flushing pesticides into the ground and water table. The banana industry's answer to this dissipation has been to apply pesticides frequently.

Chiquita's use of pesticides degrades and destroys rainforests and poisons workers, sometimes fatally. Chiquita executives have found that it is far cheaper to pay willing "environmental" organizations to apply their stamp of approval than to pay for cleaning up the problem. Chiquita's environmental cover comes chiefly from its participation in the "Better Banana" program.

Chiquita's primary partner in green-washing is the Rainforest Alliance, but the company also paid Conservation International for its services on behalf of the company image. In a telephone interview with Campaign for Labor Rights, Tim Hermach, founder and director of the Native Forest Council, described Conservation International as a major player in the green-washing-for-hire business and described the Rainforest Alliance as a bit player.

The Rainforest Alliance stated that, while the alliance receives no donations from Chiquita, it does charge a "fee" for certification, paid to its Costa Rican partner, Fundacion Ambio, the group that performs inspections on Chiquita farms. This fiscal year, about 25 percent of Fundacion Ambio's $312,000 budget comes from Chiquita fee payments. No certified plantation ever has had its certification revoked for violations. Violations are not made public.

Chiquita's environmental partner, the Rainforest Alliance, claims that Chiquita's "Better Banana" certified farms apply only "products that are registered for use in the US, Canada and Europe." But the Enquirer found that Chiquita systematically uses chemical products that are not registered for use in the US, Canada or one or more countries of the European Union.

Sprayed in the Fields

The Enquirer found that, in clear violation of industry safety standards, Chiquita subsidiaries spray toxic cocktails of pesticides on their plantations without removing workers first. These aerial sprayings can take place more than 40 times a year.

For aerial spraying, the company uses the fungicides propiconazole, benomyl, mancozeb, zoxystrobin, thiophanate-methyl, tridemorph and bitertanol. Propiconazole and benomyl have both been found by the EPA to be possibly cancer-causing for humans. Mancozeb, azoxystrobin, thiophanatemethyl and tridemorph are considered hazards to fish. Bitertanol is not allowed for use on farms in the US, while azoxystrobin and tridemorph are banned in Canada.

For workers, the unannounced aerial spraying is a constant fear. "They never tell us about the aerial spraying. We just see it coming and boom, it's here," Luis Perez Jimenez, 31, a leaf cutter on a Chiquita plantation in Costa Rica, said through a translator. Small crop dusters will fly low over the banana trees and emit clouds of pesticides that settle over the tall, leafy plants. They also settle on workers, nearby villagers, animals, and open water. As two Enquirer reporters witnessed, on recently sprayed farms the air is heavy with a stifling chemical stench. Breathing is difficult and the pesticide residue covers everything.

Death on the Farms

On Nov. 13, 1997, an 18-year-old worker on a Chiquita banana plantation in Costa Rica had been working since 5 a.m. At about 7:30 a.m., he was found writhing on the ground, choking and vomiting a white substance. He was dead by 9:17 a.m.

One of the co-workers who brought his body to the medical clinic stated: "He was working in an area... that had been sprayed with the agrochemical Counter (the brand name for the pesticide terbufos, an organophosphate) three days ago... and he wasn't using any protective gear like gloves and mask."

The autopsy.. . determined that the man died from intoxication from organophosphates, which caused internal bleeding and brain damage.

On a nearby plantation, Enquirer reporters saw a work team applying terbufos, classified as extremely hazardous to humans by the World Health Organization. According to EPA guidelines, once the pesticide is put on the ground, no one should be allowed in the area for at least 24 hours unless wearing protective clothing and a respirator.

But with the air thick with the heavy smell of pesticides, the Enquirer team observed children from the nearby village playing in the area amid open bags of terbufos and plants just treated with the pesticide. No warning signs were posted and no workers tried to stop the children from playing in the area or passing through.


http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/BananasBullets_Chiquita.html

I'm sure America helps friendly groups and governments around the world to fight communism and terrorism, nothing wrong with helping your mates is there?

The USA helps vicious right wing dictators into power to secure its business interests. Such has always been the case.

The USA is the terrorist group.

"Who is going to punish the United States government for doing this to my country?"

Anna Chavez, a Guatemalan whose husband, relatives, and friends were killed by a death squads trained and supported by the U.S.

But she and her family and friends might have been anti-US terrorists!

Evil evil evil evil.

--------------


A "killing field" in the Americas:
US policy in Guatemala



The reality of Guatemala

Guatemala, with 10 million people, is the most populous country in Central America. It is run by an oligarchy of wealthy landowners and big business interests that reap the country's agricultural and commercial rewards at the expense of the rest of the population. The country has been headed by military dictators and figurehead-presidents. Ultimate control belongs to the Army.

Guatemala is a country without social or economic justice, especially for the 6 million indigenous Mayan Indians who make up the majority of the population. There is a marked disparity in income distribution, and poverty is pervasive. On coffee plantations, peasants, descendants of the ancient Maya, live in concentration camp-like conditions, as de facto slaves. 40% of the indigenous people have no access to health care, and 60% have no access to safe drinking water. Education in rural areas is non-existent, with the result that 50% of the people are illiterate. Half of the country's children suffer from malnutrition. Every day in Guatemala, a country in which everything grows, people go hungry.

The real power in Guatemala is in the hands of the Army, and that power has been used to violently control the people, resulting in the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. During more than 30 years of civil war, over 150,000 Guatemalans have been killed or disappeared, tens-of-thousands have been forced to flee to Mexico, 1 million have been displaced inside the country, and more than 440 Indian villages have been destroyed. 75,000 widows and 250,000 orphans have been produced out of the carnage. And, for more than four decades, the United States government has consistently supported the Guatemalan Army and the ruling class in their policies of repression.


The early history

The harsh realities of present day Guatemala sprouted from the bitter seeds that were planted in its early history. Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarada (1485-1541) began the conquest and subjugation of the Mayan city-states in the 1500s. Land ownership, mineral production, and agriculture were organized to benefit the Spanish. Although independence came in 1821, foreign control of huge banana and coffee plantations continued the patterns that developed in the colonial period, and Indian lands continued to be confiscated.

In the 1920s, after a century of involvement in agriculture in Guatemala and the export of its food crops, the US established military missions in all Latin American countries. Guatemala's military was tied to the US military through training, aid, and a commitment to protect US economic interests, and the Army became a major force.

United Fruit Company

Under dictator Jorqe Ubico (1931-1944), American-owned United Fruit Company (UFC) gained control of forty-two percent of Guatemala's land, and was exempted from taxes and import duties. The three main enterprises in Guatemala -- United Fruit Company, International Railways of Central America, and Empress Electrica -- were American-owned (and controlled by United Fruit Company). Seventy-seven percent of all exports went to the US and sixty-five percent of imports came from the US.

"10 Years of Springtime"

Repressive governments have plagued Guatemala throughout its history, with alternating waves of dictators being the rule. But, between 1945 and 1954, there was a period of enlightenment -- an experiment with democracy called the "10 Years of Springtime" -- that started with the election of Juan Jose Arevalo to the presidency.

While in power from 1945 to 1951, Arevalo established the nation's social security and health systems and a government bureau to look after Mayan concerns. Arévalo's liberal regime experienced many coup attempts by conservative military forces, but the attempts were not successful.

Arévalo was followed by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán who became president in democratic elections in 1951. At the time, 2% of landowners owned 70% of the arable land and farm laborers were kept in debt slavery by these landowners. Arbenz continued to implement the liberal policies of Arevalo, and instituted an agrarian reform law to break up the large estates and foster individually owned small farms. The land reform program involved redistribution of 160,000 acres of uncultivated land owned by United Fruit Company. United Fruit was compensated for its land.

United Fruit, Eisenhower and the end of reform

United Fruit was a state within the Guatemalan state. It not only owned all of Guatemala's banana production and monopolized banana exports, it also owned the country's telephone and telegraph system, and almost all of the railroad track. In addition to redistributing United Fruit land, the government also began competing with United Fruit in the production and export of bananas.

Important people in the ruling circles of the US, involved with United Fruit Company, used their influence to convince the US government to step in. (Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' law firm had prepared United Fruit's contracts with Guatemala; his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, belonged to United Fruit's law firm; John Moors Cabot, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, was the brother of a former United Fruit president; President Eisenhower's personal secretary was married to the head of United Fruit's Public Relations Department.)

In 1954, Eisenhower and Dulles decided that Arbenz finally had to go, and the US State Department labeled Guatemala "communist". On this pretext, US aid and equipment were provided to the Guatemalan Army. The US also sent a CIA army and CIA planes. They bombed a military base and a government radio station, and overthrew Arbenz Guzmán, who fled to Cuba.

The coup restored the stranglehold on the Guatemalan economy of both the landed elite and US economic interests. President Eisenhower was willing to make the poor, illiterate Guatemalan peasants pay in hunger and torture for supporting land reform, and for trying to attain a better future for themselves and their families. In order to ensure ever-increasing profits for an American corporation, the US State Department, the CIA, and United Fruit Company had succeeded in taking freedom and land from Guatemala's peasants, unions from its workers, and hope for a democratic Guatemala from all of its people.

Aided by the US, Colonel Castillo Armas became the new president. The US Ambassador furnished Armas with lists of radical opponents to be eliminated, and the bloodletting promptly began. Under Armas, thousands were arrested and many were tortured and killed. United Fruit got all its land back. As an extra present, the Banana Worker's Union was banned. Armas disenfranchised one-third of the voters by barring illiterates from voting. He outlawed all political parties, labor confederations, and peasant organizations. He closed down opposition newspapers and burned "subversive" books. The "Springtime" had ended.

Dictators and repression

The coup in Guatemala inaugurated an era of military rule in Central America. Generals and Colonels acted with impunity to wipe out dissent and garner wealth for themselves and their friends.
And, the killing of defenseless people became state policy in Guatemala. Between 1954 and 1981, more than 60,000 people were murdered. Guatemala continues to suffer the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America.

The Armas regime was followed by a succession of repressive military dictatorships. As both protest and repression became more violent, civil war emerged, especially in the highlands. Industrialization in the 1960s and '70s helped the rich get richer, while the cities became increasingly squalid as the rural dispossessed fled the countryside to find urban employment. The military continued its violent suppression of anti-government elements, especially in the countryside, among the indigenous Mayan population, resistance grew, and a guerrilla army began to form.

The Green Berets, the CIA, and death squads

During the 1960s and 70s, American military aid and training made Guatemala's army the strongest and most sophisticated in Central America. Between 1966 - 68, during the Johnson presidency, the Green Berets were sent to Guatemala to transform its Army into a modern counter-insurgency force and to conduct a Vietnam -style war there. This is the origin of the killing machine that operates in Guatemala today.

Death squads, never before seen in Latin America, were started during this period. Army leaders, government officials, and the businessmen who supported and often bankrolled the death squads, had close ties with many US administrations. The squads had lists of people that were suspected communists, or who opposed the existing system of elite-corporate-Army control. Those on the lists were hunted down and killed.

The US mission and its advisors prodded the military to take measures to establish a US base for counterinsurgency (counter-revolutionary) actions, in order to maintain cheap labor for the landowners and US corporations, and to preserve the System. Terror was the weapon, and the American CIA was the agent. Targeting guerrillas, peasants, students, labor leaders, and professionals, the Guatemalan military jailed thousands. And thousands more, struggling to overcome poverty and injustice, were murdered or disappeared by the police, the army, and the death squads, all armed and trained by the CIA.

Journalists, lawyers, teachers, members of opposition parties, and anyone who expressed sympathy for the anti-government cause were machine-gunned. Anyone attempting to organize a union or improve the lot of the peasants was subject to torture, mutilation, and death. Men were found decapitated or castrated. Some had their eyes gouged-out, their testicles cut off and put in their mouths, their hands or tongues cut off; women had their breasts cut off. Electric shock to the genitals was routinely used, with equipment and instructions supplied by the CIA. American planes and pilots, flying out of Panama, dropped napalm on suspected targets.

By the end of 1968, the guerrillas had been wiped out. For the Pentagon it had been a limited war; for the Guatemalans the war had been total.

The CIA, the Guatemalan G-2, and Israel

But, the war did not end with victory over the guerrillas. Since the 1960s, the CIA has had links with a Guatemalan Army unit -- the G-2 -- that maintains a network of torture centers and body dumps throughout Guatemala and has killed thousands of Guatemalan civilians. Operating out of the US Embassy, CIA undercover agents, secretly working with the G-2 -- a group of 2,000 elite Guatemalan Army Intelligence officers -- have trained, advised, armed, and equipped these officers to torture, assassinate and disappear thousands of Guatemalan dissidents. Some G-2 bases have their own crematoriums where the tortured and murdered are disposed of.

In the 1970s, international publicity revealed the pattern of torture and killing, and public reports exposed the Guatemalan Army as the most repressive in Latin America. This series of events resulted in a change in human rights sentiment in the US. In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter cut off overt military aid. However, money and arms still got to there -- through the CIA. When President Lucas Garcia began his fearsome regime in 1978, and set out to eliminate all the new popular leaders by either murdering or coopting them, and when death squads roamed the land and murdered at will, the CIA was there to help.

In addition to US and CIA support, Argentina, and Chile provided expertise and aid to Guatemala's military. And, Israel has played a very important role in Guatemala since 1977, supplying weapons, building munitions factories, and training soldiers.

READ ON IF YOU HAVE THE STOMACH AT,

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html

All this - Is not news, JTT.

The entire (watching) globe is already aware of the elitist's agenda.
We only view the US as the fist of the analogous body of control though.
Genuine citizens are not to blame, they are merely a consumer-engineered labour force. And ignorant to their prospects by design.

To suggest that societies need participate in global governance or influence it in any way borders the absurd.

The ultimate goal is to reduce the global population by 95%.
This will be achieved, likely by disease, as and when appropriate.

ONLY TWO QUESTIONS NEED BE ASKED?
1. Is there any way of avoiding this? NO.
2. Does it matter? NO.

I think such a massive paradigm shift may prolongue our greedy-natured species, but I don't care either.

When they came for the socialists .. .. ..
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
When they came for me......... I wasn't here.

Well that's what happens in wars! They'd have been alright if they hadn't started one..

Romeo: whether or not you agree with American 'Foreign Policy', that particular matter is certainly not something to make flippant remarks (of the nature you make) and smile at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War

It just makes you look ignorant and callous.

You Aussies took the heathen Abos country off them so congrats for that, but I hope you've not all gone soft nowadays!
The Abos asked for trouble and they got it..

Other peoples actions don't change whether or not you are displaying ignorance and callousness.

I'm quite aware of what 'you Aussies' did (if you see my previous post, I mentioned that Australia doesn't get off scott free)...and it's not a laughing matter. In Tasmania, it was genocide - by the time the 'war' was over, only 12 Aborigines remained there.

Abos by the way, is a very derogatory word.

By the last smile - I see you want to make a complete ass of yourself.

You can't get more derogatory or racist than to take somebody's country off them, like you Aussies did to the blacks..
Anyway good for you, they'd had the place for thousands of years and still hadn't built a single bowling alley or pizza parlour in all that time..

I think Romeo is trying to illustrate just how evil these USA, UK , Aussie, Canadian, NZ genocides have been.

Imagine the gall of that war criminal, Eisenhower, saying how much he hated Germans for what they did and he does the same things to Guatemalans and Vietnamese.