As I said then, the publication of The Ugly American in 1958 created a sensation in the United States. A scathing critique of arrogant and inept American diplomatic provincialism, the novel was written as a warning by two Americans - Eugene Burdick and William Lederer - to their fellow Americans. It is a damning indictment of the stupidity and ignorance, arrogance and ineptitude of those who were charged with representing the country.
In 1961, after reading the book, President John F Kennedy decided to start the Peace Corps, a voluntary organisation that sends Americans to different parts of the world to "assist with development" and try to counter negative perceptions of the US as an imperial power. The difference and the distance between the reality of The Ugly American and the idea of a "Peace Corps" is the battlefield between two opposing forces laying competing claims on the soul of this nation.
Soon after its phenomenal success, the novel was turned into a movie starring Marlon Brando, Sandra Church, and Eiji Okada. The original novel and the film adaptation have made The Ugly American something of an iconic landmark of what ails American politics at home and abroad.
Today, as the American war machine is still irresponsibly preparing for yet another assault on a far-away place to reassert its imperial power, it is quite useful to reread the novel and reflect on its persistent relevance.
Those who have not read my early article might ask, Who are the 'Ugly Americans'?
The Ugly American was sold as a work of fiction; however, it was based on facts. Sarkhan, the fictional country where the novel is set, is the allegorical name of anyone's homeland at the receiving end of the arrogance and ignorance of "Ugly Americans". Sarkhan was Vietnam. Sarkhan was Nicaragua. Sarkhan was Brasil & Argentina é Chile & Uruguay. Sarkhan remains Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. Sarkhan was and remains Palestine and Iran.
The Ugly American has many faces but all of them incarnate the same imperial purpose to dominate at all costs in order to make profit and assert the American power over any national interest, aim or claim.
The Ugly Americans attached to Palestine are mainly its ambassador David Friedman and Donald Trump's son in law Jared Kushner - among others - who praises war criminal Binyamin Netanyahu and dares to express uncertainty over "the Palestinians ability to govern themselves". Ignoring that the Palestians are among the highest educated population in the World (contrary to the USA's) despite the occupation constraints.
The Guardian reported that a real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump. Investment has suspicously flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven for crooks that guarantees corporate secrecy. Does Cadre get the money from Israel for the support of its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians? No one can tell for sure, but it will be certainly said that it comes from Russia. Ivanka Trump husband's holding is valued at up to $50m, according to his financial disclosure documents.
The Guardian reported that a real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump. Investment has suspicously flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven for crooks that guarantees corporate secrecy. Does Cadre get the money from Israel for the support of its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians? No one can tell for sure, but it will be certainly said that it comes from Russia. Ivanka Trump husband's holding is valued at up to $50m, according to his financial disclosure documents.
Ugly American to the bone, Kushner, just like Jews and Evangelical Zionists who stained themselves with blood by supporting since the 1920's the extermination of the Palestinians to rob their land to the profit of the Yishuv (Zionists-Jewish settlers).
There are Ugly Americans all over the world cheating, stealing, spreading corruption, fear, and leaving behind a trail of blood and tears.
There is yet another Ugly American plotting against the course of history in Iran. The first the Iranians told me about was Kermit Roosevelt, who they used to see as the epitome of pernicious evil. Today, in Teheran, the degenerate character of John Bolton overshadows the memory of Kermit Roosevelt Jr(1916-2000). A grandson of US president Theodore Roosevelt, this man was a career intelligence officer who engineered the CIA-MI6 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, in August 1953, which altered the course of history in Iran. It undermined the democratic movement and allowed the Pahlavi regime to consolidate power. A decade later, Ayatollah Khomeini launched his first militant Shia putsch against the Pahlavis and recast the Iranian political culture in decidedly Islamist terms, the consequences of which the country still live swith.
For Iranians, that vicious, vulgar, rude, and loutish interference in their democratic aspirations remained the most traumatic event of the 20th century.
Sixty-six years later, we can witness how another "Ugly American" is walking in the footsteps of Roosevelt. His name is John Bolton, a chief advocate of the disastrous US invasion of Iraq, a nefarious Islamophobe, and former chairman of the far-right anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute. This infamous institution is known for spreading lies about Muslims - claiming there is a looming "jihadist takeover" that can lead to a "Great White Death" - to incite hatred against them and intimidate, silence, and alienate them.
In his diabolical plans to wage war on Iran, Bolton is taking a page from Roosevelt's playbook. Just as the CIA operative used venal Iranian politicians and fake news to incite against the democratically elected Iranian government, today his successor, the US national security adviser, is seeking to spread misinformation on a massive scale and set up a false flag operation with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a militant terrorist organisation. Meanwhile, he has also pressed forward with debilitating sanctions that are further worsening the economic crisis in the country and making the lives of ordinary Iranians unbearable.
It is true that the regime Bolton is targeting is not completely innocent. But who will cast the first stone? The US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey? Which one of these countries is exactly where it is supposed to be? Which one is not involved in monumental human calamities?
Exacerbating the already catastrophic scene in the Middle East, the Bolton war on Iran is doomed to result in nothing other than an endless night of death and destruction throughout the region - adding millions of Iranians to the Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian and Yemeni victims of war.
Bolton is the dreadful residue of the pure violence and wanton cruelty that drive Zionist Christian zealots in their crusades against Muslims and fellow Christians in Palestine. He is the embodiment of the basest and most racist roots of American imperialism and Zionist supremacy.
The regime he serves is the most naked and vulgar face of brutish power, lacking any semblance of legitimacy - a bullying coward flexing its military muscles. At its helm is an arrogant mercantile president, who - faced with the possibility of an impeachment - has no qualms about using the war machine at his disposal to regain political relevance and line his pockets.
Of course Americans are not all ugly, depite their naivety. They are not all rabid imperialists - Boltons and Roosevelts. What about those countless noble Americans - the sons and daughters of the original nations that graced the "land of the brave", of the African slaves who were brought to that land in chains, of the millions after millions of immigrants who came to those shores in desperation or hope from the four corners of the earth? Do they not have a claim on that land too - to redefine it and bring it back to the bosom of humanity?
When it comes to Iran, history has given us the accounts of two noble Americans to balance their ugly compatriots and keep things in perspective. One is Howard Conklin Baskerville (1885-1909), a teacher in an American missionary school in Tabriz, who fought for Iranian democracy. In 1909, just two years after he arrived in Iran, he joined the pro-democracy forces resisting the Qajar royalists during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911 and died defending the city of Tabriz against their assault.
The other is William Morgan Shuster (1877-1960), an American lawyer and civil servant who, during the same revolution, was brought in to help the country cope with the massive debt the Qajar royal family had accumulated. He not only tried to help the revolutionaries financially but also resisted the interference of two empires - the Russian and the British - who sought to have him expelled. Upon his return to the US, Shuster wrote a book called The Strangling of Persia - a scathing critique of Russian and British imperial violence, which would later become the American in Iran, in South America and elsewhere.
For their service and dedication to the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people, both Baskerville and Shuster have been given the highest honour in the pantheon of Persian poetry of the constitutional period.
Baskervilles and Shusters make one think that the worst thing about the United States is that there is always one good American to let us hope for it. Not only our personal friends, but people like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein. The problem is that the few good Americans never, ever, hold any real power to change anything at the top from the bottom.
PALESTINA
which are presented in arm fairs as ISDEFExpo
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and others accused of committing ethnic cleansing like the one that Israel has been carrying on in Palestine.
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Palestinian child prisoners face physical, emotional and psychological abuse.
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BRASIL
The Intercept Brasil
Brasil's justice minister and prosecutors collaborated to convict left-wing icon Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on corruption charges to prevent him from contesting the 2018 election, an investigative news outlet has reported. The Intercept said on Sunday an anonymous source provided material, including private chats, audio recordings, videos and photos, that show "serious wrongdoing, unethical behaviour, and systematic deceit".
"Secret documents reveal that Brazil's most powerful prosecutors ... plotted to prevent the Workers' Party [PT] from winning the 2018 presidential election by blocking or weakening a pre-election interview with former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva," said the news report.
Brasil's justice minister and prosecutors collaborated to convict left-wing icon Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on corruption charges to prevent him from contesting the 2018 election, an investigative news outlet has reported. The Intercept said on Sunday an anonymous source provided material, including private chats, audio recordings, videos and photos, that show "serious wrongdoing, unethical behaviour, and systematic deceit".
"Secret documents reveal that Brazil's most powerful prosecutors ... plotted to prevent the Workers' Party [PT] from winning the 2018 presidential election by blocking or weakening a pre-election interview with former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva," said the news report.
Among the explosive claims, The Intercept said prosecutors in a massive, years-long anti-corruption probe known as "Car Wash" had expressed "serious doubts whether there was sufficient evidence to establish Lula's guilt".
AOS FATOS:Todas as declarações de Bolsonaro, checadas
VENEZUELA
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