CHRISTIAN ASSASSINATIONS
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[Col. Writ. 8/24/05] Copyright '05 Mumia Abu-Jamal
The recent comments of American religious leader, Rev. Pat Robertson, which suggested the assassination of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, has ignited a firestorm around the globe, as people express shock that a modern-day religious leader would so openly call for the killing of another nation's leader.
Robertson tried to justify the call by appealing to good ole' Yankee greed. "It's cheaper than a war," he argued.
And there it is: economics.
The real reasons behind Robertson's, and the American political elite's, antipathy towards Chavez is purely economic.
Furthermore, what Rev. Robertson said openly, has most assuredly been discussed clandestinely in the highest levels of US intelligence. That's because Venezuela is flush with oil, and it wants to use this resource, and the wealth that flows from it, for the benefit of Venezuelans and others in the region.
That, to an empire that looks at the whole world as its oyster, is intolerable.
What the Rev. Pat Robertson is voicing isn't the spiritual message of a church, nor the humanistic message of Jesus Christ. His is the political and economic message of a class, of an empire, and of a white nationalism that has always looked at nations to the Latin South, as lesser people. They are Brown people, and Black people, who are there to serve the whims and wants of their betters, the norteamericanos. Nor should we look at this as the doddering rambles of an old man. Robertson is a powerful political, cultural and religious figure, who has the ear of millions, including those in the military, the Congress, and the White House.
Perhaps his message was more for them, than for others.
Latin American history is nothing if not the red record of CIA assassinations of presidents, trade unionists, students, and others.
When the US got tired of its 'ally' in the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, it assassinated him in May, 1961.
By September 11, 1973, US money paid for the coup which led to the death of Chile's populist president, Salvador Allende, and the rise and rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who plunged the nation into decades of darkness, and death.
The CIA founded and funded a terrorist army, the so-called 'contras', which sent Nicaragua into a spiral of blood and loss. Although likened to 'the founding fathers' by Ronald Reagan, to the people of Nicaragua they were foreign-paid rapists, torturers, and mass murderers. They were also led by, and composed of, leading members of the notorious National Guard under the ousted dictator, Anastasio Somoza. In Clara Nieto's book, *Masters of War: Latin America and U.S. Aggression* (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), she writes, "... [T]hat the [contras] had its own courts, its own prisons, its own torture chambers and clandestine cemeteries where it buried those it executed. Other corpses were thrown in the river or buried inside Nicaragua so as to leave no traces. Women prisoners were raped daily. Such a display of brutality terrorized even the contras" [p. 350].
Well has it been said, by former US president, Lyndon Johnson, "We've been running a damned branch of Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean" [p. 103].
Despite Robertson's claims that he opposed president Hugo Chaves because he is a "dictator", who is bringing "instability" to the region, the US has rather comfortably supported dictators on, at least, three continents for generations. Those dictators, like Mobutu in Zaire, like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, like the Duvaliers in Haiti, like Marcos in the Phillipines, like Noriega in Panama, like the Shah in Iran, and like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, were all US friends and favored allies, until a few of them got too big for their britches, and tried to act with independence. That, in American eyes, is Chavez's offense.
And for that, the Priests of Empire preach death.
Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Check out Mumia's latest: *WE WANT FREEDOM:
A Life in the Black Panther Party*, from South
End Press (
http://www.southendpress.org); Ph.
#1-800-533-8478.]
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