Sancties van de VS zijn illegaal en zijn oorlogsmisdaden die moeten worden gestopt

De
sancties die de VS eenzijdig en dus illegaal oplegt aan landen die
haar niet welgevallig zijn, zijn niets anders dan grove
oorlogsmisdaden waardoor zelfs mensen om het leven komen….. Even ter herinnering: in de 90er jaren van de
vorige eeuw legde de VS eenzijdig sancties op aan Irak, daardoor
kwamen 500.000 Irakese kinderen om het leven, ofwel die werden in feite
vermoord door de VS…. De minister van buitenlandse zaken destijds (onder
opperschoft Clinton) was de Democraat en oorlogsmisdadiger Madeleine Albright,
toen deze psychopaat in 1996 werd geconfronteerd met dit feit en haar werd gevraagd
of ze er geen spijt van had, antwoordde deze enorme hufter
dat ze daar geen seconde spijt van heeft gehad en dat het e.e.a.
het waard was geweest…..

Ook nu zijn kinderen en andere zwakke mensen de klos, zo zorgen de sancties tegen Iran ervoor dat belangrijke middelen tegen (kinder-) kanker niet meer te krijgen zijn, of zo duur zijn dat praktisch niemand ze kan betalen…….. Wat mij betreft een misdaad tegen de menselijkheid!!  

De VS legt landen sancties op, die zoals gezegd vooral de zwakste burgers treffen (‘treffen’: letterlijk en figuurlijk)…….. Door deze illegale sancties ontstaan er voorts tekorten op allerlei gebieden, waardoor de economie in het slop raakt, daarop geeft de VS het land de schuld, bijvoorbeeld door te wijzen op een ‘lamlendig economisch beleid’, of door in geval van een links geregeerd land het socialisme de schuld te geven……… (tegelijk organiseert de CIA dan demonstraties, waarbij men het liefst ook op de demonstranten laat schieten door ingehuurde scherpschutter moordenaars, om daarmee de regering van zo’n land nog meer zwart te maken….) De VS hoopt daarmee  een opstand te ontketenen in zo’n land*,  terwijl de wat beter geïnformeerden weten dat de VS de schuld is van de ellende juist door die sancties, zie Venezuela en Oekraïne, waar deze smerige vorm van terreur bij de eerste (nog) geen succes heeft, waar het bij de laatste, zoals bekend, wel is gelukt……

Gelukkig ontstaat er wereldwijd steeds meer weerstand tegen deze smerige VS terreur, (beter is dit smerige spel niet aan te duiden, sancties die intussen tegen 39 landen (!!) worden toegepast en uiteraard voelen andere landen daar ook de gevolgen van, immers bedrijven kunnen geen handel meer drijven, daar de wereld afhankelijk is van de dollar als betalingsmiddel en de VS juist de bedrijven straft die toch leveren ondanks de sancties…… Rusland is intussen klaar voor de introductie van een nieuw internationaal betalingssysteem zodat het systeem van de VS, te weten: SWIFT, uitgerangeerd kan worden.

Het volgende artikel werd eerder gepubliceerd op Nation of Change (ICH meldt onterecht dat dit PopularResistance is) en door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House. In het artikel een petitie om actie te ondernemen tegen de terreursancties van de VS, lees en teken deze ajb en geeft het door:

The
world must end the US’ illegal economic war

The
indiscriminate, illegal and immoral use of sanctions is an act of
war.

By
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

January 16, 2020
Information
Clearing House

The
United States is relying more heavily on illegal unilateral coercive
measures (also known as economic sanctions) in place of war or as
part of its build-up to war. In fact, economic sanctions are an act
of war that kills tens of thousands of people each year through
financial strangulation. An economic blockade places a country under
siege.

A recent example is
the increase in economic measures being imposed against Iran, which
many viewed as more acceptable than a military attack. In response to
Iran retaliating for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani
and seven other people, Iran used ballistic missiles to strike two
bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops. President Trump responded by
saying he would impose more sanctions on Iran. Then he ended his
comments by urging peace negotiations with Iran. The United States
needs to understand there will be no negotiations with Iran until the
U.S. lifts sanctions that seek to destroy the Iranian economy and
turn the people against their government.

The sanctions on Iran
have been in place since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which made that
country independent of the United States. Iran is not the only
country being sanctioned by the United States. Samuel Moncada,
the Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, speaking to the
summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of 120 nations on October 26,
2019, denounced the imposition of sanctions by the U.S., as “economic
terrorism which affects
a third of humanity with more than 8,000 measures in 39 countries
.”

It is time to end U.S.
economic warfare and repeal these unilateral coercive measures, which
violate
international law
.

Sanctions
are war. From havaar.org.

Sanctions
are a weapon of war

The United States uses
sanctions against countries that resist the U.S.’ agenda. U.S.
sanctions
are designed to kill
 by destroying an economy through denial
of access to finance, causing hyperinflation and shortages and
blocking basic necessities such as food and medicine. For
example, sanctions are expected to cause the
death of tens of thousands of Iranians
by creating a severe
shortage of critical medicines
 and medical
equipment everywhere
in Iran
.

Muhammad Sahimi writes
that in a “letter published by 
The
Lancet
,
the prestigious medical journal, three doctors working in Tehran’s
MAHAK Pediatric Cancer Treatment and Research Center warned
that
, ‘Re-establishment of sanctions, scarcity of drugs due to
the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to deal with Iran, and a
tremendous increase in oncology drug prices [due to the plummeting
value of the Iranian rial by 50–70%], will inevitably lead to a
decrease in survival of children with cancer.’”

Diabetes, multiple
sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and asthma
affect over ten million Iranians who will find essential medicines
impossible to get or available only at high prices. The U.S. claims
that food and medicines are excluded from sanctions but in practice,
they are not because pharmaceutical companies fear sanctions being
applied to them over some technical violation and Iran cannot pay for
essentials when banks can’t do business with it. European
nations failed
to persuade
 the Trump administration to ensure that
essential medicine and food were available to Iranians.

In Venezuela, due
to the sanctions
, 180,000 medical operations have been
canceled and 823,000 chronically ill patients are awaiting medicines.
The Center for Economic and Policy 

Research found sanctions
have deprived Venezuela
of “billions of dollars of foreign
exchange needed to pay for essential and life-saving imports,”
contributing to 40,000 total deaths in 2017 and 2018. More than
300,000 Venezuelans are at risk due to a lack of access to medicine
or treatment. Economists warn U.S. sanctions
could cause famine
in Venezuela. Sanctions also
cause
shortages of parts and equipment needed for
electricity generation, water systems, and transportation as well as
preventing participation in the global financial market. Sanctions,
which are illegal
under the UN, OAS and US law
, have caused mass
protests in Venezuela
against the U.S. 

Sanctions against Iran
and Venezuela could be a prelude to military attack, i.e. the US
weakening a nation economically before attacking it. This is what
happened in Iraq
. Under pressure from the United States, on Aug.
2, 1990
, the UN Security Council passed sanctions that
required countries to stop trading or carrying out financial
transactions with
Iraq
. President George H.W. Bush said the UN sanctions would not
be lifted
 “as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.” The
U.S. continued to pressure the
increasingly skeptical Security Council members into compliance even
though hundreds of thousands of children were dying. In 1996,
then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright was asked about the
death of as many as 500,000 children due to lack of medicine and
malnutrition exacerbated by
the sanctions, and she brutally replied, “[The] price
is worth it
.” Sanctions were also used against Libya and Syria
before the U.S. attacked them.

This is consistent
with the U.S. ‘way of war’ described by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in
An
Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
,” which
describes frontier counterinsurgency premised on annihilation
including the destruction of food, housing, and resources as well as
ruthless militarism. The U.S. has waged a long-term economic war
against Cuba (sanctions in place since 1960), North Korea (first
sanctions in the 1950s, tightened in the 1980s), Zimbabwe (2003) and
Iran (1979) 

Sanctions hurt
civilians, especially the most vulnerable—babies, children, the
elderly and chronically ill—not governments. Their intent is to
shrink the economy and cause chronic shortages and hyperinflation
while ensuring a lack of access to finance to pay for essentials. The
U.S. then blames the targeted government claiming that corruption or
socialism is the problem in an effort to turn the people against
their government. This often backfires as people instead rally around
the government, quiet their calls for democracy and work to develop
a resistance economy
.

Stop Sanctions
destroying lives from BrightonAndHoveNews.org.

The
movement to end sanctions

In recent years, a
movement has been building to end the use of illegal economic
coercive measures. The movement includes governments coming together
in forums like the Non-Aligned
Movement
, made up of countries that represent 55 percent of the
global population, as well as UN member-states calling for
international law and the UN Charter to be upheld and social
movements
organizing to educate about the impact of sanctions and
demand an end to their use. This June, the Non-Aligned
Movement called
for the end of sanctions against Venezuela.

Popular Resistance is
working with groups around the world on the
Global Appeal for Peace
, an initiative to create a worldwide
network of people and organizations that will work together to oppose
the lawless actions of the United States, and any country that acts
similarly. A high priority is opposing the imposition of unilateral
coercive economic measures that violate the charter of the United
Nations. The UN and its International Court of Justice have been
ineffective in holding the U.S. accountable for its actions. No one
country or one movement has the power alone to hold the United States
accountable, but together we can make a difference. Join
this campaign here
.

With 39 countries
targeted with sanctions, and other countries impacted because they
cannot trade with those countries, nations are challenging the U.S.’
dollar domination. Countries are seeking to conduct trade without the
dollar and are no longer treating the U.S. dollar as the world’s
reserve currency while also avoiding Wall Street. The
de-dollarization
of the global economy
is a boomerang effect that is hastening due
to the abuse of sanctions and will seriously weaken the U.S. economy.

Foreign Minister
Zarif,
who describes sanctions as “economic terrorism
,” warned that
“the excessive use of economic power by the United States, and the
excessive use of the dollar as a weapon in U.S. economic terrorism
against other countries, will backfire.”  As the blowback
continues to grow, the negative impact on the U.S. economy may
force the U.S. to stop using sanctions. The end of dollar domination
will add to the demise of the failing U.S. empire.


End
the Deadly Sanctions banner on the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington,
D.C. From the Embassy Defense Collective.

Time
to end the use of illegal economic sanctions

The combination of
countries acting against U.S. sanctions, and people’s movements
pressuring the U.S. government has the potential to end the abuse of
sanctions. The EU
has moved to blunt the impact
of the sanctions against Iran by
creating an alternative
to the U.S.-controlled SWIFT
system for trade. This is spurring
the end of the dollar
as the reserve currency. Some officials in
the EU have called for retaliatory
sanctions
against the U.S.

Trump left a small
opening for potential diplomacy with Iran that could lead to the end
of sanctions against that country. Trump bragged about the U.S. being
the number one oil and gas producer, taking credit for an Obama
climate crime, and therefore no longer needing to spend hundreds of
millions a year to have troops in the Middle East. He concluded with
a message to the “people and leaders of Iran” that the U.S. was
“ready to have peace with all those who seek it.” He said the
U.S. wanted Iran to have a “great and prosperous future with other
countries of the world.”

That future is only
possible if the U.S. moves to end the sanctions against Iran.
Iranians have learned the U.S. cannot be trusted. Iran lived up to
the requirements of the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action, but Trump did not when he
withdrew from it
 and re-instated
draconian sanctions
lifted by Obama. Trump added even move
sanctions. This also angered
European allies
 who had negotiated the agreement and were
put in the position
of being subservient to the U.S. or going
against it. To regain Iran’s trust, the U.S. needs to make a
good-faith gesture of ending punitive economic measures.

North Korea, which has
been sanctioned by the U.S. longer than any other country, had a
similar experience after they reached an agreement with the United
States in 1994 under the Clinton administration.  The George W.
Bush administration wanted to put in place a national missile
defense system but the agreement with North Korea blocked that. John
Bolton and Dick Cheney falsely accused
 North Korea of
violating the agreement, increased sanctions against it and claimed
it was part of the Axis of Evil, along with Iran, and Iraq. 

North
Korea, like Iran, learned they cannot trust the United States.
Sanctions
are causing thousands of deaths
in North Korea. Now, China
and Russia are allied
 with North Korea and are urging relief
from the U.S. sanctions. Russia and China
have also ignored U.S. sanctions
against Venezuela and continue
to do business with it.

On December 17,
the Senate passed a Sanctions Bill that put in place sanctions
against corporations working with Russia to develop gas pipelines to
Europe. The action is naked
U.S. imperialism seeking to prevent 
Russia from being the
main natural gas exporter (NS2) to the EU market and to replace it with
more expensive U.S.-produced gas, a move to save the
financially-underwater U.S. fracking industry. Russia, Germany,
and others have defiantly told Washington
its weaponizing of economic sanctions will not halt the gas pipeline
construction. 

The indiscriminate,
illegal
and immoral use of sanctions
is an act of war. Unless they are
authorized by the United Nations, unilateral coercive measures are
illegal. A critical objective of the peace and justice movement in
the United States, working with allies around the world, must be to
end this terrorist economic warfare. The U.S. economy currently
depends on financial hegemony and war. The slow, steady collapse of
the dollarized economy means the 2020s will be the decade U.S.
domination comes to an end. The U.S. must learn to be a cooperative
member of the global community or risk this isolation and
retaliation.

Kevin
Zeese is an American political activist who has been a leader in the
drug policy reform and peace movements and in efforts to ensure a
voter verified paper audit trail. Margaret Flowers, M.D., is a
Maryland pediatrician seeking the Green Party nomination for the US
Senate. She is co-director of PopularResistance.org and a board
adviser to Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the
Leadership Council of the Maryland Health Care Is a Human Right
campaign.

This
article was originally published by “PopularResistance

==================================

* Tegelijk stoken zoals gezegd CIA agenten het vuurtje op en bewapenen in veel gevallen een
aantal scherpschutter moordenaars, zodat deze slachtoffers maken onder de demonstranten, vervolgens wordt
de schuld daarvoor in de schoenen van de onwelgevallige
regering geschoven….. Iets dergelijks wordt een ‘false flag operatie’ genoemd, de VS gebruikte dit o.a. in Oekraïne en Syrië, waar deze terreuroperatie in het laatste land mislukte.

Zie ook:

Moordenaar van Soleimani komt om bij neerhalen van VS spionage vliegtuig in Afghanistan‘ 

KLM vliegt weer over oorlogsgebied Iran – Irak, terwijl andere maatschappijen waaronder Air France het gebied mijden‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht anders, dan de hier getoonde)

Soleimani moord: VS pleegde een daad van oorlog‘ 

Rampvlucht TWA 800 vs. PS752

Trudeau (premier Canada): de VS is verantwoordelijk voor de vliegramp in Iran

Voor meer berichten over sancties of andere zaken uit dit bericht, klik op de betreffende links, die je direct onder dit bericht terug kan vinden. 

Schietpartijen VS gevolg van witte overheersing die is ‘gefundeerd’ in de grondwet

John
McEvoy van The Canary schreef het verslag van een interview met
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, een historicus die is gespecialiseerd in het
tweede amendement van de grondwet in de VS. Het interview o.a. naar
aanleiding van de laatste meervoudige moord door een neonazi in El Paso (deze neonazi werd gepord door het 666 beest Trump, die latino’s uitmaakte voor moordenaars, verkrachters, drugsdealers en dieven).

Dunbar-Ortiz
betoogt in het interview dat witte overheersing is ingebakken in de
grondwet van de VS. Veelal wordt het tweede amendement gezien als
bescherming van burgers tegen een autoritaire overheid, die schijt
heeft aan de rechten van de burgers. Ter verdediging tegen zo’n
overheid zou het volk recht hebben op wapenbezit (en in een aantal
staten mogen deze zelfs openlijk worden gedragen)……

Dunbar-Ortiz
betoogt dat het tweede amendement veel meer was bedoeld voor witte
milities die zich moesten kunnen verdedigen tegen de oorspronkelijke
volkeren van de VS >> lees: het verjagen van de oorspronkelijke
volkeren, gepaard gaande met het uitroeien van hele
stammen van die oorspronkelijke volkeren in de VS…… Anders gezegd: de witte immigranten voerden een genocide uit op de oorspronkelijke bevolking, samen met de genocide in Latijns-Amerika, de grootste genocide ooit…….. Deze genocide ging verder gepaard met martelingen, verkrachtingen en de gruwelijkste vormen van moord…….

Deze
milities werden later ook ingezet om weggelopen slaven op te pakken
of opstanden onder slaven uiterst gewelddadig te onderdrukken…..
Het zal je niet verbazen dat deze milities later opgingen in de Ku
Klux Klan (KKK)………

Dunbar-Ortiz zegt niet te geloven dat Hollywood films en tv series bijdragen aan geweld, het zal je niet verbazen dat ik het daar volkomen mee oneens ben. Dagelijks wordt men in de VS gehersenspoeld met leugens als zouden ‘Amerikanen’ (VS burgers) de goede partij zijn en alles wat van buiten de VS komt of een andere religie dan het christendom aanhangt, is fout….. Opvallend ook dat de VS bevolking veelal als slachtoffer van buitenlandse agressie wordt neergezet, terwijl de praktijk het volkomen tegenovergestelde laat zien……* Tevens wordt de geschiedenis van de VS vervalst middels die films en series……. (hetzelfde gebeurt overigens in de rest van wat men het westen noemt, voorbeelden te over, ook op de Nederlandse tv…..)

Lees het verder uitstekende artikel van Dunbar-Ortiz, waarin zij de zaak
veel uitvoeriger beschrijft (heb het artikel overgenomen van TheCanary):

Amid
mass shootings, leading historian says ‘white supremacy is baked
into the US constitution’

John
McEvoy
   
6th
August 2019

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor Amid mass shootings, leading historian says ‘white supremacy is baked into the US constitution’

The Second
Amendment
 of
the US Constitution becomes the focus of intense and
polarised 
debate in
the wake of each mass shooting. It is a debate 
pierced by
economic interest groups and fierce emotional impulses; yet history
rarely enters the conversation at the exact moment that it’s most
needed.

After
the recent 
white
supremacist
 mass
shooting in 
El
Paso
 (the eighth
worst
 in
recent US history), 
The
Canary
 spoke
with leading historian on the Second Amendment, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
She is the author of 
Loaded:
A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
,
which illustrates how the white supremacy of the country’s settler
colonialists lives on in the country – not least through gun
legislation.

After
each mass shooting in the US, we hear a range of arguments across the
media calling for greater gun control. What are the biggest
misunderstandings and lies told about the Second Amendment, and how
should we really understand it?

Any
conversation about dealing with gun violence in the United States has
to begin with the second amendment and its true function from its
establishment, throughout the 19th-century brutal conquest of the
continent, and its ideological function propping up white nationalism
today.

The
US constitution is unique among nations in mandating a general
individual right to bear arms… A problem with discussing the US
constitutional provision is the regard US people have for the
constitution itself, as a kind of god-given covenant, whereas other
nations’ constitutions are easily amended or replaced entirely and
do not carry a sacredness given to the US constitution, with the
authors, ‘founding fathers,’ near demigods.

Adding
the right to bear arms to the constitution as one of the initial ten
amendments was not the creation of a new right, rather a validation
of an already existing practice of Anglo settlers forming their own
militias to burn and loot Indigenous towns, burning their fields,
killing and raping, torturing, and seizing of the already
Indigenous-developed farms and fisheries of the Atlantic Coast,
colony by colony, to push Native peoples to the peripheries. Those
militias arrived with the first invaders, led by the mercenary John
Smith at Jamestown and mercenary John Mason in the Massachusetts
colony. When racial slavery—the slave codes–became established by
the late 1600s, these militias became slave patrols. The second
amendment contains colonial violence in a nutshell, and neither
liberals or conservatives want to acknowledge that reality.

Many
people have observed that the El Paso shooter’s ‘manifesto’
echoes how Donald Trump 
speaks about
immigrants, and accused Trump of ‘
stochastic
terrorism
‘.
Is the white supremacist rhetoric coming out of the White House a
departure from normal US politics, or does Trump reflect the soul of
the US in ways that people would rather not confront?

The
United States was founded as a white republic and white supremacy is
baked into the constitution and institutions that exist today. For
instance, the slave patrols, citizens’ militias, that were tasked
with controlling slave populations in the slave states, continued to
function during the Civil War that ended in outlawing slavery. But
these slave patrollers simply put on hoods and robes and continued to
play the same role in terrorizing and controlling the freed Black
population. Although illegal during the US military occupation of the
South, they were so many and so widespread that they could not be
stopped. When the Army pulled out, they took off their hoods and
robes and became the local sheriffs controlling the Black population
under Jim Crow. With the Black diaspora escaping the South to
northern and later west-coast cities, southern whites also migrated,
forming all-white police forces in cities. In 1950, the US was a
locked-down white male republic, African-Americans living segregated,
Native peoples on tiny portions of their original territories,
Mexicans as indentured agribusiness workers, women with few rights,
especially if they were married…

With
the humiliating loss of the US war in Vietnam in the mid-1970s, and
with nearly 700,000 combat veterans back in civil society, armed
white nationalist groups multiplied. Ronald Reagan’s presidency was
openly, although coded, white nationalist, with the US covert
counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Central America employing many
of the disgruntled, out-of-work vets as mercenaries and domestic
terrorist groups appearing, particularly in eastern Washington and
Oregon, Montana, Colorado, and in the 1990s spreading to the entire
continent. War fever, with the invasions of Panama, the Gulf war, and
the post-9/11 wars produced more armed white nationalists.

The
election of a liberal Black Democrat to the presidency in 2008 was a
blow to increasingly normalized white nationalism, with Muslims as a
new Brown enemy. Immediately, the Tea Party movement began, and
Donald Trump – reality TV star and real-estate developer – began
his campaign to prove that Obama was not US-born, a great boon to
white nationalists who then carried him to the presidency.

Trump
abandoned the ‘dog whistle’ white supremacy that the Republican
Party embraced with its ‘Southern strategy’ under Richard Nixon,
and has gotten by with outspoken white supremacy with no damage to
his solid 40% base. Clearly, the El Paso mall shooter was empowered
to act based on Trump’s characterization of Central American
refugees as invaders.

How
is the relationship between white supremacy and gun culture
reinforced through popular culture – films, action figures and toy
guns, the stories Americans tell about their country – in the US?

I
don’t believe that popular culture, in terms of films, video
gaming, toys, etc. have that much of an effect in reinforcing white
supremacy and gun culture. I do think the reality, not so much the
representation, of US militarism and endless wars against
non-European peoples, which are a continuation of the centuries of
militarism and warfare in seizing the continent, with Native American
peoples and Mexicans being the enemy, form a permanent culture of
violence.

With
the second amendment permission for unlimited gun ownership, that
violence goes beyond words and fist fights. The NRA [National Rifle
Association] and Republican Party talking points about gun violence
attempt to construe popular culture as the cause, particularly
‘Hollywood’ and video gaming, but dozens of studies and simple
observation nullify the argument. The US origin and historical
narratives glorify what are actually acts of genocide in the
establishment of the original colonies and the expansion to the
Pacific.

Rather
than having a reckoning with that past at the end of the Vietnam War
and honoring the anti-war movement and the disobedient soldiers, the
ruling class turned the US into a victim, enabling and encouraging
the myth of US soldiers missing in action in Vietnam. During the
1980s, the continued US wars had to operate clandestinely, covertly,
because the majority of the population was anti-war. But by 1989, the
Marines could invade and occupy Panama and change the regime there
without notable protests; two years later, the US could amass a half
million troops to invade and occupy Iraq. The shadow wars of white
nationalist militias grew domestically, nourished by war fever and
violence. It only got worse after 9/11.

Yes,
John Wayne killing Mexicans and Indians and Rambo killing Asians have
been wildly popular, but they never come near the real thing in
instilling violence and gun fetishism.

Congressman
Steve Cohen 
tweeted after
the El Paso shooting: “You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to
Afghanistan or Iraq.Enlist!” (He later deleted the tweet.) How was
the US military apparatus forged through the white supremacist
genocide of Native Americans, and how does US foreign intervention
reify gun culture at home today?

The
US military was forged in the hundred years war to take the
continent. The first 70 years, from founding to the Civil War, the
goal was to ethnically cleanse all the territory east of the
Mississippi, generating dozens of wars of aggression and expulsion
against the southern Indigenous nations, marked by three declared
wars against the Seminole nation in Florida, where they gave refuge
to enslaved Africans who escaped. With the Indigenous survivors
forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the US invaded and
occupied Mexico, taking the northern half, thereby US territory
reached its Pacific Coast limit…

The
same officers who led those two decades of genocidal war headed the
troops that were sent to conquer Spanish-held territories in the
Pacific and Caribbean. Genocidal tendency is baked into the US armed
forces, particularly the Army and Marines.

US
foreign interventions into non-European countries throughout the 20th
century and continuing in the 21st are essentially ‘Indian wars,’
wars of erasure and chaos, dismantling local and national
institutions, creating dependency, particularly food.

Active
duty lifers and veterans of these foreign interventions are
prominently represented among white nationalists and gun hoarders.
There is is close correlation between multiple gun ownership and
military service.

An
overwhelming response to the latest shootings is to demand greater
‘protection’ from the US state (more funding for an increasingly
militarised 
security and surveillance state).
But if US gun legislation is inseparable from a legacy of violent
state-sanctioned terror, how can this be a satisfactory response, and
how can US society resolve its unhealthy relationship with guns?

Yes,
the solution is said to be ‘more good guys with guns,’ more
militarized police forces, further developing fortress America.
However, the mass shootings are used opportunistically for that
agenda. Tragic as mass shootings are, the deaths incurred make up
only 1% of US gun deaths each year, while 3/4 of gun deaths are
suicides. The easy availability of guns makes what might otherwise be
an attempted suicide a certain death. Likewise, deaths that result
from domestic violence and road rage are soaring with guns in cars
and homes.

One
place to begin resolving the problem is for leaders and professionals
of good will to acknowledge that mental illness is not the cause of
gun violence; rather ‘the need’ to possess firearms, many of
them, is itself a form of mental illness, paranoia. The late
historian Richard Hofstadter wrote of ‘the paranoid style in
American politics’ (1964).

He
had his finger on the pulse of the rising white paranoiac response to
the Black freedom movement. The majority of the white younger
generation embraced the anti-racist struggle, but a significant
minority of white men in particular panicked and reproduced their
paranoia in the following generations, fused with virulent
anti-communism and homophobia, often couched in Christian evangelism,
coming to dominate national politics.

In
fact, this white minority owns the US origin story and carries it
forward. As long as the measure of civic patriotism is based on the
founding narrative and militaristic fetishism, guns will play a
central role in US society, and no laws will be enacted to any
effect.

Cleansing
history

A key facet of ethnic
cleansing is to cleanse the historical record of the act itself. An
honest account of the white supremacy that runs throughout US
history, then, could offer a real solution to the country’s broken
relationship with guns.

For all those who find
‘thoughts’ and ‘prayers’ an insufficient solution to US mass
shootings, Dunbar-Ortiz’s work is essential reading.

Featured image
via 
WikiMedia
– Gregory Varnum

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involved

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