People from Central America, as well as those displaced by wars in the Middle East, should get the kind of U.S. welcome that the military helped provide to refugees from Indochina in 1975, writes Ann Wright.
Exodus of 750,000 People
The thousands of people now trying to flee violence in Central America are small in number compared to those who were desperately trying to escape from Vietnam and other Indochina countries decades ago.
In the spring of 1975—with the U.S. either on the brink of pulling out of Vietnam, or already gone—over 131,000 South Vietnamese fled the country, some on the last planes out of Vietnam and other in flotillas of small boats. It was the beginning of a much larger exodus. All told, about 750,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos came to the United States between 1975 through 1986. They came under two resettlement initiatives established by Congress: the Refugee Parole Program and the Orderly Departure Program.
U.S. sergeant with Vietnamese baby at Ft. Chaffee, Ark., 1975. (Ann Wright)
After the U.S. signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam, U.S. military ships that were still off South Vietnam began picking up hundreds of people each day who had left South Vietnam on small boats. The vast majority had been on the U.S.-backed Southern side of the war and feared reprisal by the new communist government from the North. At worst they could be killed and at the least forced into re-education camps.
Instead, President Donald Trump is turning a hostile face on Central American migrants and refugees—by separating children from parents, by insisting on building a wall, by having people rounded up. Longstanding concerns about the conditions inside the U.S. detention centers were renewed by the Washington Post report of a 7-year-old girl dying of dehydration.
The U.S. has also shown indifference to refugees from Iraq and Syria by barely opening its doors. Admission numbers were already paltry under the Obama administration, when the U.S. was only allowing tens of thousands of refugees a year. Now, under Trump, 2018 is on track to hit a 40-year low, finds Global Citizen in an analysis of U.S. State Department data. More than 5 million Syrians are registered refugees, with Turkey hosting the highest number, followed by Lebanon and Jordan, according to December data from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees. More than 6 million Syrians have had to seek refugee inside their own country.
Statue of Liberty in New York. (Ronile/CCO Creative Commons)
In a cruel backtracking of U.S. commitments, the Trump administration is once again signaling its intention to deport Vietnamese immigrants who 40 years ago fled retaliation and have lived in the United States for four decades, according to a Dec. 12 report by The Atlantic. Those targeted for deportation have committed crimes in the U.S. but were still protected by a 2008 bilateral agreement between Vietnam and the U.S. assuring that Vietnamese citizens would not be subject to return if they arrived before July 12, 1995, the year diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States were resumed after the war. John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran and former U.S. secretary of state, called the move despicable on his Twitter account.
Mobilizing for Newcomers
In 1975, the U.S. military mobilized to take care of newcomers while their paperwork was processed, after which the U.S. government sent them to communities all over the United States.
These measures were by no means a comprehensive attempt at redress. Many people seeking a way out of Vietnam were stranded. Some became part of the huge wave of “boat people” in 1979, who overwhelmed refugee settlements in Asian countries and caused an international crisis. But it is safe to say the U.S. demonstrated a far more humane response than it does today.
And in 1980, the U.S. once again welcomed people in distress when 125,000 Cubans arrived as a part of the Mariel boat lift during the Carter administration. Another 15,000 Haitians arrived on the shores of Florida by boat that same year.
In 1975 I was one of thousands of U.S. military personnel who received the Vietnamese, first on military ships, later at military bases in the Philippines and then in Guam. Ultimately, I wound up volunteering at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, one of the five refugee camps set up in the continental United States. The others were at Camp Pendleton, California; Camp McCoy, Wisconsin; Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania; and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Gerald Ford visited the base in 1975, with author at left.
At the time, I was attending law school at the University of Arkansas, 50 miles from the Fort Chaffee base and was in a U.S. Army Civil Affairs Reserve unit. The Army was notified on April 25, 1975, that the five military installations would be used and the Pentagon immediately sent out a call for reservists to help set up the military installations to receive and house up to 30,000 persons at a time.
The first refugees arrived at Fort Chaffee just seven days later, on May 2, on a plane carrying 70 people. Within 22 days, 25,812 refugees were at the base, making it the 11th-largest city in Arkansas. By June, 6,500 reservists had volunteered for active duty at Fort Chaffee.
At the peak of the airlift, as many as 17 flights a day landed at Fort Smith Municipal Airport with passengers bound for Fort Chaffee. All told, 415 refugee flights landed at the Fort Smith airport during the seven months that the base served as a refugee center. When the camp closed on Dec. 20, 1975, it had helped 50,809 people begin to regroup for life in the United States.
Fixing Up the Base
With the exception of annual two-week training cycles for the U.S. Army Reserve and Arkansas National Guard, Fort Chaffee had not been used since the mobilization for the Korean War. The majority of the sprawling barracks, built during World War II and the Korean War, had been shut for over 20 years. Units of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and medical units from Fort Sill, Oklahoma—the closest active-duty U.S. Army installation—arrived in late April 1975 to open up the facilities.
World War II barracks had to be renovated. (Ann Wright)
Animals were driven out of the buildings, toilet facilities re-opened. Some barracks were partially renovated for use by families. Giant “mess halls,” or military cafeterias were set up. A small hospital was cleaned and equipped, along with office spaces for refugee placement agencies.
Once the refugees had arrived, an array of hosting demands arose. U.S. Army doctors and nurses tended to people with medical needs. The Army’s kitchen staff began cooking huge caldrons of rice and vegetables and boiling water for tea. Mess halls fed 6,000 people three meals a day and were open around the clock.
Base cafeteria. (Ann Wright)
Rice Incident
There was an incident over rice. The Vietnamese did not like the rice being served to them, which had been grown in the camp’s host state. It was a diplomatic challenge to inform former President Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, that we would have to get a different type of rice produced in another state because the Vietnamese refugees were not eating Arkansas rice. (That did not go over well in a state where most residents, including myself, didn’t know there were different kinds of rice.)
Lots of babies arrived with mothers who were so severely stressed that they had trouble producing milk. Any infant formula would have to be lactose-free because in Vietnam cow milk was not used in formulas. One of my jobs was to make this arrangement. Companies cooperated very quickly, turning trucks around from their original destinations and sending them to the military bases and ramping up production for a new lactose-intolerant demographic in the country.
Minneapolis march for refugees, 2017. (Fibonacci Blue on Flickr)
Resettlement was swift. Within two weeks, hundreds were leaving the camps as refugee organizations expertly found communities and groups all over the United States who poured out support, eager to sponsor families and individuals. Churches and civic groups found housing, equipped the houses and found jobs for the people who were arriving.
As the summer of 1975 drew to a close, any refugees who had not been resettled were consolidated in one camp at chilly Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. The U.S. Army general in charge of Fort Chaffee called me into his office and assigned me to procure winter clothing. We wound up finding clothing in the warehouses of the Armed Forces Post Exchange System, which were delivered in September.
All of these stories are to say that the U.S. government today could do far more to alleviate the refugee crisis than it is doing. There is still plenty of room in U.S. society and its land mass for people fleeing violence. All that’s missing today is political will.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat and was in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the lies the Bush administration was stating as the rationale for the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
Please consider making a donation to Consortium News during our Winter Fund Drive.
Absurd. It is not the role of America to solve the problems of every unhappy person in the world. Each of them can stay home and clean up their own messes. Do you understand the meaning of “enough”?
Why should the hard-working law-abiding tax-paying American citizen have to deal with a massive immigrant influx when they weren’t the ones who ordered the bombs dropped on those nations that produce immigrants? The Congress didn’t even declare war in these cases of foreign nations being “intervened” upon! We should clean up the mess that the military/industrialists created? I don’t think so! If it was up to me, I would have every corporation that profits by these lie-based wars pay for the damages from their own pockets! The American people didn’t create the immigrant mess so they shouldn’t have to pay for it. The warmongers who molested mankind on a grand scale should be FULLY accountable for their damages and bloodthirstiness!
No thanks to illegal migrants and mass immigration that suppresses wages and lets employers worsen conditions for working people in the target/receiving countries.
What US Free Trade Policy has done to Central America and The Humans who struggle there.
https://www.thenation.com/article/what-free-trade-has-done-central-america/
ON US DEATH SQUADS IN CENTRAL AMERICA — AND AT THE US BORDER
https://www.thenation.com/article/guatemala-refugee-crisis-jakelin-caal-maquin/
I think the assumption contained in the title of the article, that the US can “do it again” is wrong for two reasons.
#1. The Viet Nam refugees were a propaganda asset. They feared and hated the victorious Viet Cong for the kind of ideological reasons that would would be welcome to the US elite. This would not be the case with the immigrants from Central America.
#2. Also, I suspect the US economy was in a pretty good position for absorbing immigrants in the 70s and 80s. They would also have the for-the-elite-welcome-effect of keeping wages down. Currently, additional workers from Central America would intensify already dangerous xenophobic feeling.
The moral obligation for allowing the current group in is likely as great as the moral obligation existing with respect to the Vietnamese. But I doubt the moral obligation was an important factor in the first case and will be surprised if it shapes US behaviour in the current case.
Admirable sentiments but dubious assumptions
Roger Milbrant — (Regarding Moral Obligation) — From ”The Lessons of History” by Will and Ariel Durant:
“Morals are the rules by which society exhorts (as laws are the rules by which it seeks to compel) it’s members, and associations to behavior consistent with it’s order, security, and growth.
2 Timothy 3
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
9 But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their’s also was.
Your first argument has merit, but not the second.
From May 1974 to May 1975, the U.S. unemployment rate nearly doubled, from 4.0 to 7.8%. It receded for the next couple years but the economy could hardly be seen as robust. Corporations, particularly in manufacturing, were moving jobs out of the U.S. at an increasing rate and unemployment was back up to 10% by the end of 1982.
As for moral arguments being a factor– politicians acquire or shed morality with the political winds, based on what the public demands.
Long overdue xenophobic feeling.
Although having open borders is bad idea, at the same time we have to acknowledge that the inflow that has occurred so far has benefitted America. Early on,immigrants built America and now we are receiving talented people particularly from the East who are stocking our scientific and professional communities. To those countries which export talented people, often people where their countries of origin have invested in making more them more valuable, we’ve benefitted and they have lost. As the standard of living has risen in these countries and opportunities open there, more are likely to stay home. That’s a good thing.
Roger Milbrant — (Regarding Moral Obligation) — From ”The Lessons of History” by Will and Ariel Durant:
“Morals are the rules by which society exhorts (as laws are the rules by which it seeks to compel) it’s members, and associations to behavior consistent with it’s order, security, and growth.
2 Timothy 3
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
9 But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their’s also was.
As a Bible student and adherent of its teachings, I don’t see where it condones being stupid. Mild-ly Facetious, it’s possible to contort deeply meaningful Bible passages to suit one’s own will, or to unintentionally support the agenda of those who have a very definite plan for our world, and not a pretty one.
Strange, not a single mention of ALBA. A few days ago, Cuba hosted an annual meeting of this South American, West Indies alliance. ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América), is a “socialist” group of nations that have and or promote command economies. This movement stands, as a political response and alternative to so called, “free trade”, globalist agenda’s (banker plundering of commodities while plunging their domestic labor forces into indentured servitude (AKA union busting). ALBA is one of the many reasons Cuba symbolizes and represents what has evolved into, a direct threat the Western Occident banking cartels , oddly Canada an exception to this. ALBA seeks it’s own path, independent of fundamentalist economic ideals such as those endless rants we’ve heard from Friedrich Hayek’s ilk, Milton Friedman, the spawn from the London School of Economics. Touted for decades, and now translated into one simple concept; forget all about the human need(s) for social, cultural, political, aspirations of sovereign nations, that’s just a lot of hogwash and primitive thinking! Cuba is more than formidable, as a response to Libertarian ideals and Hayek’s school(s) of nonsense. Cuba has a wide cultural diversity (maritime history) and can articulate the representative hopes and dreams of the ALBA nations, in response to globalization, the western Occident’s brand of, “economic harmonization”.
CONSORTIUMNEWS retirees unite! let us “move-on”, (ho, ho, ho, ) en mass, to form an ex-pat community in Cuba! Do I have any takers?
I dunno. Some of the readers here might prefer to stay in whichever countries they’re living in and try to fight the good fight. Others who wish to leave their countries, myself included, may not find Cuba to be too inviting.
When Ronald McDonald (.. Ronald McDeath..) arrived in Central America, did he have to wait, 20 years for his Green Card? .. Gee, I wonder why?
~” Fixing Up the Base “~
About 10 minutes from my house is an old Air Force Base. But, it was ’round about 15 years ago, that it was privatized and Federally designated an ‘Export Processing Zone’. Which of course means that those corporations who reside within it’s borders have access to all kinds of privileges that you and I, would never receive. Financing, loans, tax breaks, duty free tariffs, etc.. .. Pulp Fiction – you step right up, and please do, show us how “smart” you are.
For example: Exterminate all of that skilled labor (.. welders, etc.) from the fabrication shop. Reduce it to a salesman and an engineer. Move it on up to utopia. Simply, email those orders (.. blueprints) to Shanghai. .. And upon those arrivals, simply back the 18 wheeler down to the tarmac. You can then drive then that duty free cargo out on that plush new Federal Highway that the People paid for, right up to your door. .. And whats that, you are now saying? .. You now want someone to pay for all of those railroad cars to have access in order to that tarmac; as well?
.. Meanwhile, just how much of Main St. is vacant or unoccupied? .. Gee, I wonder why?
And:
On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love gave (.. sold..) to me:
Six Geese a Snooping (.. my phone..)
Five Golden Lies (.. owner media..)
Four Calling Hawks (.. wars..)
Three Russian Hates (.. prejudice..)
Two Turtle Jobs (.. poverty..)
and a Parasite in a Pear Tree (.. monopoly..)
Hard to say place controls on immigration without appearing to be the bad guy. The world is full of inequities. The Viet Nam example is one where we killed millions and then salved our conscious by letting those that suffered into the United States.
What seems to be taking hold is the idea if you’re better off here than you are there then come here. In effect, it throws the idea of sovereignty out the window, which for all its pitfalls, is the most rational way of managing the world’s affairs.
America, as a sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to determine who shall come and who shall not. As a nation, we can control our borders while at the same time do more to make it possible for people to live where they now live. I understand the new Mexican President has proposed doing just that with a version of the Marshall Plan, while still securing his and our nation’s borders.
That makes sense. As to Viet Nam, Syria, Iraq, Libya it also makes sense to refrain from creating situations where people flee from the land most would prefer to live.
What is sad about the current situation is that rational behavior by our political parties has flown and what is left to political posturing which is the height of cynicism. Trump needs to listen to the new Mexican president and the Democrats need to move past their practice of opposing anything Trump proposes because it is Trump’s idea and do something positive about the situation.
Donald Trump Is a Good President
One foreigner’s perspective
By Michel Houellebecq, John Cullen (Translator)
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/01/donald-trump-is-a-good-president/
The world based on competition and domination is a world that murders Love. All our problems living together on Earth are a result of this fundamental wrong basis. Selfishness and competition destroy the basis of trust between people, and lead to escalating paranoia. When the unwritten positive regard between people is replaced with laws, increasing falsehood and crime become rampant.
Beautifully stated, mike k.
Your third line is a caricature of American Nationalistic fervor for world-wide Dominion, that has led to the Presidential ascendancy of the Totally Immoral Donald Trump. In that regard, I quote Ezra Pound – from his Pisan Cantros, (76. 336-7) “woe to them that conquer with armies / and whose only right is their power.” —
— In that regard, Trumps’ (complete) oeuvre of Tweets will expose the barrenness of human character that affects and directs his (complete) lack of morality / moral beliefs and behavior.
— The culmination / totality of Trump Tweets will be The Full Confession of his Banality, Incoherence, Impulsiveness, and total Disrespect for established “The Rule of Law” which attempts to establish a *theoretical Basis of Human Morality.
That primary principal (ideal / concept) of Human Rights the right to life/liberty/ and the ‘pursuit-of-happiness’ was taken away from Donald Trump by his own father, who Taught him, from an early age, by a Tax Cheating Scheme which, in the long run of things, turned his son into a Corrupt Theft -O – Crat , Morally Bankrupt and Empty of Empathy and Human Compassion. –
Relative to the collective of Trump’s Tweets vis-a-vis his “ethical” character, I give you this first sentence from chapter 6, “Morals and History” – from the book,”The Lessons of History” by Will and Ariel Durant: “Morals are the rules by which society exhorts (as laws are the rules by which it seeks to compel) it’s members, and associations to behavior consistent with it’s order, security, and growth.
As Mr. Trump has exhibited NO compunction to adhere to the above ideals, but has been inexorably Tainted and Spoiled and Debauched by his Theft O’ Cratic father – who’s taught well, his son, the dogged path of deception / lie-cheat-steal \ and “Stand-by-The- Lie until you Win” –( as CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED in his Continued Refusal to EXHIBIT HIS TAX RETURNS, while 300Million Americans (or so) Are Yearly COMPELLED, BY Law, to do so, and willingly comply – BECAUSE IT’S A LAW WE MUST OBEY !!!
When will an American Samson emerge who’ll pull down the licentious and promiscuous Towers of Immorality before or after digesting the masochistic and nationally perverse VOLUME of Tweets from this irresponsible, corrupted and Lying POTUS/ “president”of the United States … ?
Beautifully stated, mike k.
Your third line is a caricature of American Nationalistic fervor for world-wide Dominion, that has led to the Presidential ascendancy of the Totally Immoral Donald Trump. In that regard, I quote Ezra Pound – from his Pisan Cantros, (76. 336-7) “woe to them that conquer with armies / and whose only right is their power.” —
— In that regard, Trumps’ (complete) oeuvre of Tweets will expose the barrenness of human character that affects and directs his (complete) lack of morality / moral beliefs and behavior.
— The culmination / totality of Trump Tweets will be The Full Confession of his Banality, Incoherence, Impulsiveness, and total Disrespect for established “The Rule of Law” which attempts to establish a *theoretical Basis of Human Morality.
That primary principal (ideal / concept) of Human Rights the right to life/liberty/ and the ‘pursuit-of-happiness’ was taken away from Donald Trump by his own father, who Taught him, from an early age, by a Tax Cheating Scheme which, in the long run of things, turned his son into a Corrupt Theft -O – Crat , Morally Bankrupt and Empty of Empathy and Human Compassion. –
Relative to the collective of Trump’s Tweets vis-a-vis his “ethical” character, I give you this first sentence from chapter 6, “Morals and History” – from the book,”The Lessons of History” by Will and Ariel Durant: “Morals are the rules by which society exhorts (as laws are the rules by which it seeks to compel) it’s members, and associations to behavior consistent with it’s order, security, and growth.
As Mr. Trump has exhibited NO compunction to adhere to the above ideals, but has been inexorably Tainted and Spoiled and Debauched by his Theft O’ Cratic father – who’s taught well, his son, the dogged path of deception / lie-cheat-steal \ and “Stand-by-The- Lie until you Win” –( as CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED in his Continued Refusal to EXHIBIT HIS TAX RETURNS, while 300Million Americans (or so) Are Yearly COMPELLED, BY Law, to do so, and willingly comply – BECAUSE IT’S A LAW WE MUST OBEY !!!
When will an American Samson emerge who’ll pull down the licentious and promiscuous Towers of Immorality before or after digesting the masochistic and nationally perverse VOLUME of Tweets from this irresponsible, corrupted and Lying POTUS/ “president”of the United States … ?
While this story of Vietnam refugees is and was indeed a good thing for the people (Vietnam Laos, Cambodia refugees) seeking asylum. But those days where much different and far in the past. People seeking asylum today are much different, coming at a much different time and at a more stressed/critical time for the Americans failing systems. Many things have changed. Gangs, Cartel, People with very serious criminal backgrounds and simply being a product of their environments. Imagrants coming at a time when our Social Security, medical systems and other public services are over whelmed and in trouble. While it’s really cool to be the great American melting pot, big brother, land of the free, bringing the poor and hungry in. But wait! You first must be big enough and strong enough to adsorb the influx. You first must make America great again. Shore up the failing systems. Take care of the citizens that already live and belong in the states. Get correctly done socialized medically systems, fix social security, fix the inferstructures, the homeless, jobless, drug addicted ,etc.. We must first take care of ourselfs before we can correctly take care of others.
We don’t need socialized medical systems any more than we need socialized cell phone companies, socialized garden tool companies, or socialized breakfast cereal companies. Cut down on litigation abuse, allow unrestricted insurance company competition, deport illegals who bankrupt local hospitals, crack down on disability fraud, allow drug importation from abroad, enforce antitrust laws, among other things. Government isn’t a solution for everything that inconveniences you.
I have no respect for people that champion foreigners while their own countrymen go hungry, go homeless, die of despair and drug addiction. Reverse racism is still racism.
Can’t we try to fix both problems?
You compare apple with oranges My dear. And even if it is true it has to be a process, not hoards of individuals and children crossing the border like they go to Disneyland. I am refugee from communist Romania. And there were million of us. I escaped in 1969 and I stay in a refugee camp in Italy, for 6 months( I was lucky because I was alone at that time, other stay in the refuge camp 2 or 3 years) I was interviewed by the Interpol and at the American Embassy in Naples, I had a thorough medical check up, and I was admitted in America with a label on my forehead: “conditional entry” For two years I was not allowed to leave the country and I was under the observation by the FBI. This is a process that should be implemented, not the chaos that we have now in the immigration issue.
Prof. Gregory Ghica
American dominance of Central American life goes back at least to Smedley Darlington Butler who wrote extensively on being the thugs for American banks there in the early 1900s. More recently, Hillary has caused a lot more problems interfering in Central America than Trump is even capable of. Estimates of Vietnam War dead were between 1 and 4 million; even the Death Squads trained by the CIA in Central America killed an order of magnitude or two less. The Vietnamese “welcomed” to the US, along with the Hmong, were collaborators who would have been slaughtered by the winning side if not taken in.
The Seven Wars under our Peace Laureate has created a more comparable situation to Vietnam. We should move our collaborators here and get out of the MidEast and North Africa, as we finally did in Vietnam. While many of our collaborators are not decent people, they are still better than most of our politicians and may can become American politicians themselves.
The thing our rulers hate the most are ideas of a better world for all. They do everything they can to discredit such ideas, and accustom the masses to their needlessly impoverished life.
?
Testing.
off topic
The arrest of the Chinese exec by Canadian authorities (read: Washington empire) is unbelievably provocative and insanely dangerous. The Beijing Times is warning of serious consequences if she’s extradited to the United States to face trumped up charges.
This is seriously deadly business and as per usual the Western corporate-Zio-militarist media are not providing the proper perspective nor emphasizing the earnestness of this entire imbroglio.
Two power dynamics are at play:
1.) She was cuffed and stuffed b/c her company is direct challenge to the Western tech giants. Her conglomerate is well positioned to dominate future tech markets.
2.) She was cuffed and stuffed b/c her company has been fair minded enough to enter into business relationships with Tehran. This of course flies in the face of the dictates of the Zionist power configuration and its illegal unilateral sanctions on the Persian state.
Stay tuned to this entire affair. As another observer remarked recently: perhaps Beijing’s best retaliation would be to immediately shutter each and every one of Zionist gangster Shelton Adelson’s Chinese casinos.
It’s a critical issue that should not be off topic, Drew. CN seems to be ignoring a lot of such issues these days with its articles becoming ever more scarce along with its commentariat. Robert Parry would have addressed many of these issues himself, if necessary. The case of Maria Butina is another instance of a foreign national essentially being kidnapped, tortured and unfairly rendered under the American “justice” system in an ongoing series of bullyboy moves by Washington to intimidate its sole remaining political and economic global competitors. If CN will not squawk about these outrages, who will? Certainly not the MSM which serves as an enabler of the thugs in Washington. Maybe the relative silence means the goons are winning their campaign to make this a dictatorial police state.
Excellent commentary Realist.
Open borders is globalism. One rule. One culture. Here’s an idea which I have learnt from a study of cats. Females have no defined territory or borders. Only males mark and defend their territory. – It works very well!
Times have changed and so have circumstances. They should fix their country rather than coming here. Charity begins at home. We are neglecting our own. Just wake up and look around.
I can say this because I lived and worked in a Latin America en famille for 15 years. Most of that time I was an employee of an indigenous company, so we lived according to local conditions and NOT in the American ghetto. If we could do it, they can do it.
American ignorance of what goes on in the rest of the world is our MAIN problem. And included in this group are our diplomats and businessmen, not to mention tourists, who live a cloistered existence that does not allow them to really know what is going on around them except in a very superficial way.
Selfishness cares only about oneself, and not about others. Societies based on selfishness create a hellish and unsustainable culture. But if a society is based on unconditional Love for all beings, then it’s members will come together to support and provide for the needs of everyone, and create a wonderful utopia.
This so obvious, that it requires some explanation for why people do not see it, and act accordingly. Only serious delusional illness could result in people being unable to understand this obvious truth. And this is the situation we are presently dealing with. Unless we find some effective psychological and spiritual methods to awaken to our dangerous situation, and correct it – we are probably doomed by this unnecessary mental illness.
This writer is obviously very naive, affected by what is called “pathological altruism”. It would be interesting to know what this person’s life was like and where they picked up such an impractical attitude. Charity, like anything, must be done in moderation as the Greek said.
Pathological altruism sounds like Ayn Rand – truly a purveyor of pathological Scroogeism. In addition to her addiction to speed, she overindulged in capitalistic cool aid.
You are living in la la land. We have plenty of our own people who need hdlp. When i was a kid i always wondered why our government was always ready to give sid to foreigners and never to our people who ae suffering. It is time to take cate of our American fsmily first. That is what is always advised, you must take care of your own family. Why is it that our citizens are last in their own country.
So the immigrants don’t care about THEMSELVES? They are coming here to help us? Put the crack pipe down.
As a small number of exceedingly wealthy individuals more and more control our world, compassion and mutual care become in short supply. More and more isolated individuals scramble for increasingly scarce money. Crushing debts keep most in effective slavery. We are living in a hell created by the super rich. 99% of us are only useful to our masters for waging war to fill their bloated coffers. Those who rule over us, plan to create a world for themselves in which of us excess humans have been eliminated. High tech means have been developed to carry this satanic plan out.
As well as stopping the wars and invasions that cause the flow of refugees which the US participates in to a very tiny degree, the American population should be informed very clearly (by the free press we all pretend exists) of how many of the refugees are accepted by the countries close to the conflicts, far tinier and poorer than the USA and with far less, if any, responsibility for the carnage to put “our generous efforts” in perspective.
Stop these crazed military genocidal wars, and thus end the refugee crisis. I maintain these people would love nothing better, with some exceptions, than to live in peace in their homeland, amongst the culture, customs and language of their people that raised them.
The US created the exodus Vietnamese “boat people” through mass destruction, and the killing of over 3 million SE Asians, as we’ve done globally, including in our own hemisphere.
The West led by the United States create these problems with illegal wars, coups and interventions globally! Refugees are a result of these actions.
We reap what we sow and no administration is immune from this insane foreign policy!
The prople didn’t sow it the corrupt government did.
The people supported it. And still do, when you hear the hypocrisy of democrats wailing over the suffering of refugees while their last president started 4 wars that caused millions of deaths and more refugees. And yet they still praise him.
Until the people get to hear real news without having to diligently search the internet for it, there is no telling what they really support.
Unfortunately, the U.S. resettled some in poor, gang-infested areas. Any who failed to file the needed documents for citizenship and have since committed any crime, even something as minor as failing to show up for a court date, are now in the process of being deported. Some 1,800 of those refugees are now in detention, awaiting deportation, where they’ll join perhaps hundreds more who have already been deported, many to a country they left as infants.
Americans are being incarcerated for failing to pay debts and minor drug possessions. They do not get the country club incarceration illegal aliens end up in when caught. And their children are frequently taken away to relatives or foster homes. The murder rate had dropped by the time the Crime Act of 1994 went into effect (and is half what it was in the ’80s causing the ‘tough on crime’ mentality), yet incarceration, a money making system to punish the lower strata of society, has seen hardly any reform. Throw the illegal aliens into that system and maybe our politicians will suddenly realize our criminal system needs reform.
The United States has waged many wars, only some of which can be justified by the standards of morality and international law. Being a rich country, the US has the moral obligation to make good the damage it has done, especially in those cases when it was in the wrong. Welcoming as immigrants the victims of its wars is a reasonable proposal, provided the immigrants do not become a threat to the country’s security.
The victims of American wars who subsequently immigrated to the US have on the whole behaved irreproachably: although the US killed 4 million Vietnamese in the course of its wars in Vietnam, not a single Vietnamese terrorist has been detected so far. Although the US has invaded and exploited Latin America for about two centuries, I have been able to detect only one case of an American being killed by Latin American terrorists on US soil: when gunmen from the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico killed White House Policeman Leslie W. Coffelt in 1950 while attempting to assassinate President Truman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Harry_S._Truman
The same can be said of Serbians and of numerous other victims of US imperialist wars.
However in the case of inhabitants of the Middle East and of Muslim countries in general, the situation is utterly different: since 1980, Muslim terrorists, many of whom had been admitted legally to the US, have killed upward of 3,500 American citizens and residents on US soil.
Therefore it is nonsense to talk about admitting Muslims to the United States for whatever reason.
Any compensation due to them can be perfectly well discharged without any need for admitting them to the United States.
Ah, tales from back in the day when we did evil but also did good.
One more pile of biased liberal googld eyed pile of bullcrap, revisionist history of while if it wasn’t so, it should of been.
The first mass of immigrants were of the wealthiest and most degenerate based South Vietnames from the ruling class, and some good looking misteress with better off madams and drug dealers who took their hundreds of millions in USD $ with them which were in local US based Banks, leaving millions of poor to fend for selves.
The US and South Vietnam had already abandoned the over twenty, ( 20+) hill tribes peoples years beforeIt took donations primarily from ex and still Active Special Forces to fund what few who survived that abandoment to bring to states, not the bull con-
artist liberals.
Those that were picked up at sea had paid, primarily in gold, to board shps to enter no more than what amounted to huge concentration camps.
And they were not all S. Vietnamese, so.e such as a few of my friends walked out of Laos and Cambodia into Laos and only by combined wealth were capable of escaping the truley shit hole camps funded by US, UN and Thailand.
Many of the later Vietnamese immigrants to immigrate to US were given health lodging and food aid but not knowing US cultures and economy became no more than economic slaves of old S. Vietnam crudballs by US Government orders.
This in thr.n ade the same oppressor groups they suffered under during US Occupation even wealthier.
It also gave a bunch of pansy butted liberals great paying administrative jobs.
History is indeed written by tbe Victors but the lies the Victors first tell themselves later become the false memes who feather own nest by parroting those lies.
Convenient history is always biased away from truth of what
is the reality of truth
Times have changed since the mid-1970s. Attempting to compare what happened in the post-Vietnam era with what is happening today with immigration/emigration is like attempting a comparison of auto theft to home burglary the issues are not the same; the impacts are not the same; and the resultant impacts to society are not the same. We continually proclaim that: “We are a nation of laws”. And yet, we either fail to enforce the laws we have on the books, or else we tend to turn away from them as much as possible. Either, we are a nation of laws or we are not…. If we fail to execute the law, we fail not only morally but as a nation as well (at least the nation our founders envisioned). The poor and disenfranchised will always be with us and we as a nation cannot save everyone who simply wishes to have our quality of life at any cost. We must center our focus on what makes us as a nation better-for-efforts and not what makes us ‘better-for-our-compassion’. Immigration should be limited, it should be center on what will make this country stronger, and what will make all Americans the better for it. I see no possible positive results to be had by inheriting a group of uneducated, primarily welfare dependent people; who are not interested in becoming Americanized and unwilling to assimilate into our society…. that make us weaker and not stronger. Do not need it and do not want it.
Right on! Here is a right-thinking individual with his head screwed on tightly and in the right direction. The country needs more people like you.
I (see above), in addition, have seen the military side of the situation, having served as a US Naval Aviator in the late fifties (1956-9) patrolling up and down the far eastern Soviet coast frequently escorted by Mig-17s making life difficult for us as we “defended” our country. Actually, wasn’t this more like”offense”. I often thought that I should rather have been off the coast of California.
Of course the US could take these refugees in.
It’s an unlikely decision for several political reasons. The Vietnamese refugees included lots of US allies and business associates who had turned their backs on their countrymen to do business; there was considerable feeling that we should not leave them to the retributions of their own people.
The current concentrated wave of immigrants arrives largely to flee the American-driven coup d’etat in Honduras. That probably does not leave a lot of nice photo ops for politicians.
Where’s the propaganda value? After all, those Vietnamese refugees were fleeing from ‘totalitarian communism’, or so we were told. Now they’re ‘just peasants’ on the sponge.
What we are witnessing is the now revealed face of US capitalism with its back to the wall. They call it fascism.
Dear Ms. Ann Wright:
Thank you very much for your service and kindness to the people like us (immigrants). Please continue to fight to stop Trump’s administration from deporting Vietnamese people back to their country. May God bless you and your family.
Many thanks Ann Wright for pointing out some of the complexity of our immigration problems especially related to our military and economic policies. Certainly the one great advantage that America has had over time, has been the vitality that immigrants have brought to our Country and Economy.
This is uniquely true in California where home and small farming has transformed the landscape and consumer behavior into a much more eco friendly, and healthy environment. A state system that was deeply beholding to Corprate Farming and Land Management is now slowly transitioning into a more eco friendly and sustainable situation. So an environment which may have appeared to be negative was transformed into one of social and physical advantage. It’s just one example of how issues of immigration are often actually advantages. The lessons of Liberty may be more lasting and important than those of exclusion…
Bob-
I agree that there has been many positives resulting from America’s history as a melting pot. My problem is that in recent decades it has been our horrendous foreign policy that has forced them to come here.
Along with that I think we need to remain true to our founding principles. Some other cultures have different, and to me unacceptable, aspects of their culture. Take the Saudis. You can get in more trouble for killing your cat than you can for killing your wife in Saudi Arabia. If a Saudi comes to the USA to live, I want him to live by OUR values. Not that I’m in favor of cat killing.
Thank you Skip Scott. It has taken me years living here in California to understand the complexity of the Vietnamese immigration and I’m only now beginning to understand the many reasons and complexity of cultures involved. I have garnered a great respect for the culture and varieties of lives. Most of my personal experiences have been very positive.
Truth is Skip, we need a vibrant discussion on immigration to help solve the issues, problems and illegalities. Kinda like we are having here…
Hi Bob-
I spent my working life as a Merchant Seaman, and I’ve interacted and worked with a wide variety of folks from other cultures. Most of my experiences have been very positive as well. But there is a huge difference between voluntary immigration and being forced into being a refugee. It is incumbent upon us to stop the war machine. It is a moral imperative. Not only would it eliminate forced migration, it would lift the quality of life for all peoples everywhere.
By the mid seventies, the American people were carrying enough guilt about the disaster that was Vietnam to support this. It seems to me most are clueless of the role we play (and have long played) in the migrant crisis of our neighbors to the south. We have no guilt and only our own protection interests.
Back then America still had sort of a “free press” which reported objective facts and a large spectrum of opinion. This allowed the American public to first oppose the war in Vietnam and later to sit in judgement over the American state’s subsequent responses to the enormous fallout caused by that war, which included the refugee crisis.
I think we all know where the state of fair objective journalism lies in America today: it doesn’t exist. The media is now used exclusively as a political tool in the outrageous power plays perpetrated upon the world by the hegemon in Washington. Americans are simply not apprised of the roots of the migrant crisis across the globe: that so much of it has been the fault of our government’s policies and actions. Rather, the migrants, if given any attention at all, are portrayed as a malign force–probably created by Putin and Russia–to do harm to America’s interests. The human beings at issue are treated worse than mere “collateral damage,” but rather as a force opposing American actions (certainly by running away they are not working in harmony with the dictators, pretenders to power and bloodthirsty mercenaries that Washington has employed to ravage their countries, hence they are “malign” to American policy) and must be extirpated if possible and kept hidden when necessary. If their predicament should surface, they and Russia (along with Putin’s putative minions like Saddam, bin Laden, Sheikh Omar, Gadaffi, Assad and whoever is leading the resistance to Saudi aggression in Yemen) are the ones publicly blamed in the rigidly controlled mass media–which, by the way, has evolved into something far more extensive than merely the American mass media; like all else, it has become global.
Yes Realist. The MSM are gaslighting Americans. People don’t have a clue about what is really happening in the world, unless they access independent sources of information like CS. Forgive them, for they know not what they do – and don’t want to be disillusioned (awakened).
I agree that we should do all we can to alleviate the suffering of today’s refugees. However, an even better idea is to stop the war machine and learn to wage peace. Then there will be no refugees.
Nailed it
“However, an even better idea is to stop the war machine and learn to wage peace.”
Don’t you mean an _additional_ idea? Sure you don’t propose shutting down the MIC _instead_ of opening our borders?
Surely Skip’s scenario implies that if we didn’t start these wars, there would be no refugees taking flight from them.
But these wars are already a widespread extant reality. Skip’s suggestion should still remain the first step to mitigate the consequent human suffering: stop the damned wars.
The second should be to help those driven from their homes to resettle and re-build in their own countries. This is something the U.S. pointedly refuses to do, as it might be interpreted as assuming blame, which, in my mind, would be the correct assumption.
In a logical progression, the U.S. could also help refugees find temporary or permanent respite in other countries with similar religious, linguistic and cultural ties. It hasn’t yet lifted a finger to do even this, as if it relishes the turmoil and human suffering, as long as it doesn’t lose any votes in America’s phony elections.
Since culturally and morally America is conspicuously selfish and xenophobic, it might be expected, as a last resort, to assume some responsibility for the blowback from its own reprehensible foreign policies and extend, at least temporarily, some compassion and safe harbor for the human collateral damage it has extensively wreaked around the globe.
This would, in fact, be its legal liability if those people had rights under American Law. Funny the way the monsters in Washington assert that American Law extends to all sovereign countries around the globe, that their citizens can be kidnapped and dragged back to America for trial if, for example, they traded with Russia or Iran in violation of American economic sanctions (which should have no force elsewhere!), yet they will accept no liability for the murders and economic damage they have inflicted on MILLIONS of other human beings, minding their own business in their own countries. You know, perhaps Hitler was NOT the greatest war criminal in human history, perhaps it has been the succession of the last dozen or so American presidents.
Thanks Realist. I always appreciate your input. I’ve been “at it” with Andrew for days now. With this last post I think I can add “Skip Scott Derangement Syndrome” to his “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” And obviously I am in favor of compassion and safe harbor for existing refugees. And it should be incumbent on us to pay reparations and help rebuild the countries we have so wantonly destroyed with the goal of allowing them to return to their homeland and live in peace.
Yes, I realized after posting this that I had interpreted Skip’s statement much too narrowly. My apologies.
Let me jump in here and point out that we Americans as a society are always concentrating on the symptom and not the root cause. Why even Trump winning by an Electoral College “landslide” is a symptom of an electorate that needs some fixing. The refuges, any refuges, are nine and half times a result of our instigating powers we impose on other nations. This interference of American power shows up in no better place such as is Central and South America. Solutions too anything are usually always corporate driven, and not driven by any regard for human life. Then due to the lack of proper corporate reporting the average jobless American is threaten by the floods of immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S..
Here’s a solution, rather than spend 5 billion dollars on a wall why not use the 5 billion to create work programs. Work programs for established Americans citizens, and work programs to include new citizens would do wonders to improve our country’s infrastructure. It isn’t as though there aren’t things that need to be done. In fact providing real jobs to everyone including the immigrant would do wonders for our tax base, and social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. We could do this if only we quit dwelling on the symptom…. stop trying to find a scapegoat and instead identify the real problem, like the ones we avoid to see while concentrating on the symptom.
Oh and before we do all that quit instigating in other governments affairs. Maybe then you won’t think we need a wall stretching from coast too coast. A wall such a silly cure for a symptom of choice, and a cause left to fester.
Good comment Joe. There is a huge difference between isolationism and non-interventionism. Learning to wage peace in a multi-polar world is our only hope. Hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas.
Excellent addendum, Joe, and thoroughly good advice. However, what the federal government proposes to do is exactly diametrically opposite of what you call for. Instead of Uncle Sam minding his own beeswax in Central America, our brilliant leaders have voted to impose a ton of new sanctions on Nicaragua (in addition to Venezuela). Apparently, increasing the turmoil in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador with our wrong-headed, meddlesome policies haven’t stirred up enough unrest in Centro America to satisfy the Neocon lust for war. I fear that the Washington-sponsored death squads of the 1980’s are due to make a comeback soon. I’m sure Pompeo and Bolton have assigned their best men to the task, since its the kind of action they live for. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but the current administration has flipped to the dark side even faster than Obama.
New Deal/Marshall Plans for the Western Hemisphere, including USA (MAGA…and beautiful again; bring back the CCCs and plant trees with massive water works projects like there’s no tomorrow, because there WILL BE no tomorrow for us if we don’t plant trees, only a dead Martian landscape).
exactly. while my heart breaks for refugees, we would serve them better if we stopped our Imperial ways and creating them. that is the ONLY relevant conversation. I see the european deluge as the radical libertarians attempt to overwhelm the European social democracies. flooding a small nation with cultural and educational stone age equivalents, is the opposite of “put your oxygen mask on first, then help your child”
Thanks for a very informative article. Knowledge is power.
This was an America imperfect that could still blaze a path and lead the world to a better place. Now it seems that over the passing decades its most cowardly and self-serving psychopathic elements have gained control of its institutions and much of its media, and the violence and destruction that the US pursues abroad is coming home ever more to roost in its own society.
Exactly mgr. See my comment above.