Photo Source Tavox13 | CC BY 2.0
A rather puzzling news item caught the eye of this writer today: “The US has imposed sanctions on Nicaragua’s Vice-President Rosario Murillo, the wife of President Daniel Ortega, accusing her of corruption and serious human rights abuses.”
As he read further, this bewilderment only increased: “On Tuesday, the US Treasury said it was using a new executive order issued by US President Donald Trump to punish Ms. Murillo, accusing her of undermining Nicaragua’s democracy.”
One of the crimes Murillo is purported to be guilty of is as follows: “She is believed to have held influence over a youth organization that the US says engaged in extra-judicial killings, torture and kidnapping.”
Let us all take a look at these brief statements, and see how many examples of hypocrisy can be found in them.
+ Murillo, the first lady of Nicaragua who rules the nation along with her husband, Daniel Ortega, is accused by the U.S. of ‘corruption’. President Trump, his son and daughter-in-law are believed to be benefiting financially by their positions in government, which, or course, is ‘corruption’ in the U.S. That this has not be seriously investigated is a mistake (to put it tactfully) that will no doubt be rectified in January, when the Democrats take control of the House, and will be looking for anything to discredit Trump. From all available evidence, such issues will not be difficult to find.
+ Murillo is also accused of ’serious human rights abuses’. Where do we start? In the U.S., white police officers shoot and kill unarmed teens and adults of African descent with nearly complete impunity. Tax laws in the U.S. hurt the poor, such that at least 40 million citizens, a third of them children, live in poverty. The U.S. supports the brutal regimes of Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which are guilty of the most heinous human-rights abuses, yet the U.S. says nary a word of objection.
+ The Nicaraguan first lady is accused of behaviors that are “undermining Nicaragua’s democracy”. Trump was installed as president, despite losing the popular vote by 3,000,000 votes; that doesn’t seem to be very supportive of democracy. The U.S. Congress is beholden not to its constituents, but to the wealthy lobby groups representing business and foreign governments, that finance its members’ campaigns. U.S. law allows unlimited financial donations to these campaigns from any business or industry.
Prior to Trump’s election, the Republican-controlled Congress blocked the Supreme Court nominee of President Barack Obama until after the election, with the hope (eventually fulfilled) of putting a more conservative justice on the Supreme Court. This left a vacancy on the court for nearly a full year. To this writer, that sounds more like political maneuvering than democracy.
+ An organization in Nicaragua over which the first lady has ‘influence’ has been involved, it is said, in “extra-judicial killings, torture and kidnapping”. At this point, this writer had to re-read the article, to assure that it was about Nicaragua, and not the United States. The U.S. is notorious for kidnapping suspected ‘terrorists’, transporting them to ‘rendition’ sites, where they are tortured, sometimes for years. At the Cuban-based U.S. torture chamber in Guantanamo, countless people have been held without charge, denied access to family or legal services, and tortured for years. The U.S. government doesn’t merely have ‘influence’ over these activities: it is completely responsible for them. The current director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is Gina Haspel, known in some circles as ‘Bloody Gina’, due to not only her instruction to other agents on how to torture, but her experience torturing prisoners herself. These violations of international law, human rights and common decency are part and parcel of U.S. governance.
The United States is currently sending massive amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, while that nation continues to decimate Yemen; millions of people, mostly children, are starving to death because of this ongoing assault. The fact that Saudi Arabia recently bombed a school bus full of children, and murdered a prominent journalist, mean nothing to Trump and many of his GOP cohorts.
Additionally, the U.S. provides apartheid Israel with $4 billion annually, while its own infrastructure is crumbling, its schools are failing, and the citizens of Flint, Michigan do not have clean drinking water.
The U.S. has supported terrorist organizations in Syria that seek to overthrow the legitimate government, and bombed Syria when the Syrian government was accused of using chemical weapons. Yet the U.S. government says nothing when Israel uses chemical weapons against the Palestinians. And after the bombing of Syria to ‘punish’ the Syrian government for using such weapons, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said there was no evidence to confirm that a chemical attack ever occurred.
The U.S. violated international law by withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that regulated Iran’s nuclear program, despite the fact that Iran was and always has been in complete compliance with the agreement. The U.S. has sanctioned Iran (again), and has threatened to sanction any nation that does business with Iran, including some of the U.S.’s oldest and closest allies. Only two nations supported the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA: Saudi Arabia and Israel.
One might ask why the U.S. government feels it is in any position to criticize Nicaragua, or any other nation, for any of its policies. The U.S. is and always has been very selective in how it supports human rights and international law. Why it has now chosen to focus on Nicaragua is anyone’s guess.
Slowly, around the world, other nations are gaining in economic and military strength, thus weakening the hegemony that the U.S. has long had on the planet. The Chinese economy will soon rival and overtake that of the U.S.; India is becoming a powerhouse as well. In the Middle East, despite U.S. efforts, Iranian influence is growing.
Once other nations equal or exceed the power of the United States on the world stage, the planet will become a more peaceful and just environment. One must be cautioned, however: a world power in decline is always dangerous, and the U.S. has been dangerous even when its power has been unrivaled. It is possible, even likely, that prior to more reasonable nations becoming world leaders, the U.S. will do significant damage around the globe. In the White House, there are no ‘adults’ in the room; there is little to prevent Trump’s worst urges from damaging or destroying the world.
