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Some Levity at the State Department Over Venezuela

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A couple of weeks ago, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki brought a bit of levity to a press briefing on the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, specifically regarding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s accusation that the U.S. government was involved in an attempted military coup attempt in that country. Here’s the pertinent exchange during the briefing: Question: President Maduro last night went on the air and said that they had arrested multiple people who were allegedly behind a coup that was backed by the United States. What is your response? Ms. Psaki: These latest accusations, like all previous accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support transitions by non-constitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful, and legal….. Question: The U.S. – Question: Sorry, Jen— Question: Sorry, the U.S. has — whoa, whoa, whoa. The U.S. has a longstanding practice of not promoting — what did you say? How longstanding is that? I would – in particular ...

The Cuban Embargo and the Perversion of American Values

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It would be difficult to find a better example of how the adoption of America’s post–World War II national-security state perverted the morals, principles, and values of the American people than the 54-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. Now that the issue of lifting the embargo has fully erupted into the political sphere, Americans have an opportunity to question not only the legitimacy of the embargo but, more fundamentally, the entire national-security establishment that was grafted onto America’s political structure as part of the Cold War. The main reason for lifting the embargo is that it is a direct infringement of the rights and freedoms of the American people. A genuinely free society is one in which people are free to travel wherever they want, associate with whomever they want, spend their money any way they want, and enter into mutually beneficial trans-actions with anyone in the world. We refer to these fundamental rights by such labels as freedom of travel, freedom ...

The National-Security State’s ISIS Racket

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The official enemy de jour that has everyone all riled up and scared is ISIS. If U.S. forces don’t bomb ISIS, the argument goes, ISIS will take over Iraq, and Syria, and Lebanon, and Europe, and Asia, and Latin America, and then the United States. If the bombs don’t fall on ISIS, before long Americans will be speaking Arabic and their children will be studying the Koran in America’s government schools. It’s all just one great big racket — a racket based on “national security,” a term that isn’t even found in the Constitution and that doesn’t even have an objective meaning. The only way that the U.S. national-security state apparatus — i.e., the vast military establishment and military empire, the CIA, and the NSA -- can justify its continued existence is by ginning up crisis after crisis with the aim of keeping the citizenry filled with fear, anxiety, and depression. The apparatus then becomes people’s sedative, assuring them that ...

States, United States: America’s James Bond Complex

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Today, American politicians of both major parties — conservatives, “moderates,” and so-called liberals alike — insist that the United States is an “exceptional,” even “indispensable” nation. In practice, this means that for the United States alone the rules are different. Particularly in international affairs, it — the government and its personnel — can do whatever deemed necessary to carry ...