The US Imperil State Successful in Stopping the Betterment of the World's People

Information Clearing House
Dr. Michael Parenti

In destroying country after country, the US Empire is doing well.

One devastated country after the other has made it clear that any country which pursues independent sovereign policies and attempts to better its own position and the state of its people becomes a target for the US Empire. According to Dr. Michael Parenti, in an interview with the Voice of Russia; "… any leader who uses the resources, and labor, and substance of his country for the well-being and self-development in that country is seen as someone who is evil, has a hidden agenda, hostile toward America and is hostile toward the West."

A term which he says really means the western plutocracy. Ukraine is a perfect example after having chosen a path of economic betterment which does not include US/EU/NATO, US backed "color-revolution" assets which have been left in place are being activated to cause another color revolution and more upheaval in that country. According to Dr. Parenti these people are: "… still so rabidly anti-communist, that even the residue of a shadow of a former Communist country is a little too much." 

Robles: Hello Dr Parenti. How are you this evening? And it is a great pleasure to be speaking with you. 

Parenti: Thank you John. 

Robles: Regarding Imperialism; now, one of your recent books was called "The Face of Imperialism", kind of a big question, I would like to ask you about the United States. Is it a dying empire in your opinion? 

Parenti: No, I don't think so. I think the empire is doing very well. The empire is racking up victory after victory. 

The US Empire is now, despite its defeat in Indo China and Vietnam, it now has Vietnam in the market system pretty much. In these recent years it has knocked out Iraq, because Saddam Hussein was committing economic nationalism, and that's not allowed by an empire. And they've dismantled Libya and got rid of Gaddafi. They are destroying Syria, and it goes on and on, and they're targeting Iran. 

Robles: I'm sorry sir, would you call that success? I mean Afghanistan was an over 12 year quagmire. What was the success there? 

Parenti: Yes, that one… They are going to lose Afghanistan, but they do succeed, they succeeded in stopping the betterment of the masses of people. 

They are committed to stopping a world in which the land, the labor, the natural resources, the markets are directed toward the betterment of the ordinary people in that world. 

When the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan, and it went in only after the third or fourth request by the Afghani military government. 

Robles: Thank you very much for saying that. 

Parenti: Yes. 

Robles: They were requested several times and just like when Russia went into Georgia. There were 3 days … there was requests and pleadings by Russian nationals being killed there for Russia to intervene. 

Parenti: Right! Exactly. 

Robles: Go ahead. I am sorry for the interruption. 

Parenti: Well, and the policy that the Soviets pursued in cooperation with the existing Afghani government was to break the feudal class. To do a much needed land reform, to allow schools for women and for children, and all that, and these Mujahidin and these other people were just absolutely furious at this, this was totally intolerable. 

Plus they convinced themselves that the Soviets were the Devil's atheist, "Godless Communists" were coming, and the US played on that a lot. 

That was a success basically. The Mujahidin, backed by the CIA and such, destroyed the Afghani revolution, destroyed all the reforms that were being made, killed a lot of people, and today we have this horrible retrograde Taliban as the only alternative to the puppet government under Karzai and headed by the US. 

Robles: And that is called success? It's a shame; it's a disgrace I think. You mentioned destruction of country after country after country. Now sir, how is that a success then? 

Parenti: Ok, it's a success because the goal or the function of the state in the empire is to advance the interests of the empire, and those interests are to make sure that the - as I said - the land, the labor, the natural resources, the human resources, the social organization of culture. The markets of every country should be a part of, and in the orbit of this giant US imperial state. 

You see the US Empire sees only two kinds of countries in the world: satellites or enemies (or "potential" enemies). The satellites are the countries that vote the way the US wants in the UN, that had their country opened to investments and resource extraction, all the things we were just saying. Their markets are open, the EU, all of that. Of course they can take independent courses in limited ways on particular issues. But the overall pattern is to make this world safe for the Fortune 500, for the plutocracy in the US, and the plutocrats in other countries too. They are very internationally minded, in the sense of sharing in the wealth and investment, and even as they compete with each other. So that's the satellites. 

And if a country doesn't fit as a satellite, such as Russia, or China, or maybe to some extent India, then those countries are seen as potential enemies, or actual enemies. I heard Obama say in one of his speeches – a State of The Union I think it was to the Congress – he said "China, our competitors, are out producing us". 

And I'm saying "our competitors", I'm saying "I have no competition with China, I'm not in any fight with China, what is this stuff, what is this?" 

And with Russia also, it does seem like the Cold War is going on, as you mentioned when we were talking earlier, before we went on the air. It's absolutely right, has this Cold War ended or what is the US now doing? The US was one of the countries that started this Cold War many decades ago, and they're still doing it. 

Well we find out now that you don't have to be a Communist, or a Bolshevik, or anything. If you are charting an independent course, if you are trying to use the land, the labor, the markets, the wealth of your nation, in a way that is for the self-development of your nation for the interests of your own people, then you become marked and the US media goes into high gear and they talk about "Milosevic", and they talk about "Noriega". They talk about just about every… 

Robles: A perfect example just right now. A glaring unbelievable example…(Ukraine) and I would like to comment on what you said about the Cold War. I think the Cold War was over for Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. 

Parenti: Since the end of the Cold War, so-called, what back in 91, 2, around there was it? 

Robles: Yes, yes. 

Parenti: Since then the US military budget, the enormous US military budget has more than doubled in its size. It's now about, counting the money that goes into the Department of Energy and such, almost all of it is targeted for military purposes. It's about a trillion dollars a year. That's just enormous; that's tremendous. 

Now why? Who is attacking us, who is doing this? Hugo Chavez in Venezuela wasn't attacking the US, but the minute he started taking some of the oil earnings and using it for … or subsidizing it and putting it out at a subsidized rate for his own people, and making all sorts of other reforms for the poor and the not so poor. But the minute he was doing that he became, he was pegged as a firebrand, hostile to America… 

Robles: Well there were plans to assassinate him. For what? 

Parenti: Yes, and they overthrew him. They participated in a coup that overthrew him, which didn't work, he got back in. And there are questions about his death, which he himself took with him to the grave. He was saying "isn't it strange that 5 leftist progressive heads of state in Latin America all have cancer suddenly". But we don't know. All right we won't even get into that. The point is… 

Robles: Well that's a very good point. I studied that; I researched that and going way back if we could for a minute, if you will humor me for a second? Going back to Lee Harvey Oswald and Ruby, they were actually involved in trying to off Fidel Castro – now this is out there this information – under, I don't know if you read Dr Mary's Monkey, I believe that was the title of the book, it was regarding a CIA cancer assassination program, and that was "way back when", in the 50s right, late 50s early 60s? Can you imagine with the technology that the CIA has, I think they have already delivered mechanisms to install cancer, and I don't think it was a coincidence. 

Parenti: Yes, and Ruby himself, Ruby himself was whacked I think that way. And he himself said, he himself said: "They are killing me here, bring me to Washington where I can talk, they are killing me, I'll tell you everything blah-blah and I think someone else, I forget now, I haven't done … I haven't been in there … I did some original research in that area. I republished an old article, it's available on the Internet, anybody can get it about Oswald and all that. But Ruby, or somebody reported, that they were giving him injections of some kind in his cell, and he died of cancer in the cell. 

Let me get to the major point, which is any leader who uses the resources, and labor, and substance of his country for the well-being and self-development in that country is seen as someone who is evil, has a hidden agenda, hostile toward America, hostile toward the West – that curious term "The West" – which really means the western plutocracy, the ruling plutocracy.

They say "The West", but they do want to make a kind of a multi-national component that is running the globe, and this multi-national, mostly American, but now it's got British plutocrats and multi billionaires and French multi billionaires, and others too are on the ride, and Canadian ones, and so forth. 

So … and it's so consistent, it's so consistent. Anybody who starts to do that – Gaddafi, he was demonized – you take the leader and you demonize him, and you say he's got weapons of mass destruction, or he's crazy, he's an extremist, he's a terrorist, he wants to kill us. 

Robles: A dictator. A despot. 

Parenti: And the American public sometimes falls for the Messianic call that's sent out, which is "we are God's gift to humanity, we Americans really care about the world, America is always on the side of virtue; Americans reach out, when we fight wars they're humanitarian wars to save people from some harsh dictator or ruthless killer," be it Noriega or Chavez, or whomever. 

Robles: You are an informed, educated person. What is your opinion on President Bashar Al-Assad? The main thing he did was try to improve the social conditions for his people before all of this happened. 

Parenti: The Ba'athist Party that he ruled was a leftist, it was the leftist wing of the Ba'athist Party, and they had a lot of human services. 

The tens of thousands of refugees from Iraq that flooded into Syria, Assad gave them, he gave them full human services, the same services that the people in Syria were getting at the time when they were still had them before everything got torn up by this war. And refugees that he got from Libya, he also did the same, and he countenanced a country with multi-denominations of religions, and he didn't try to impose any one sect on anybody else. 

So he, it seems to me, he was doing pretty well, and he had an awful lot of support. And, well, but the country's ruined now, I don't know, and the FSA, which is I guess is the CIA/USA backed group is getting knocked out by the Islamic … the other group, these Sharia hardline boys. 

Robles: Moving away if we could, a little bit to something that's been very important, and it's very obvious, and when you're talking about Imperialism, and all these nefarious attempts to replace governments and install governments and demonize and everything. It's all right there, on page one, for everyone to see, going on right now in Ukraine. 

Parenti: Well I think they might do the old sweetheart revolution, color revolution, which one? Orange, green, blue – they are going to try that. 

Secondly, wouldn't it be kind of risky that close to the Soviet borders to start a full-fledged war, they don't have a good alibi cooked up just yet? 

Robles: OK, Russian borders, there's no more Soviet Union. 

Parenti: Right, I'm sorry, did I say Soviet? 

I think President Putin was correct when he said 'the elimination of the Soviet Union, the overthrow of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of modern history'. He was quite right on that one. 

Robles: He also recently said that, "the Soviet Union is gone, and it will never be revived". He said that in July, I believe it was. 

I think the way it was done, it could have been done a lot different to preserve some of the power that Russia had at the time, but they gave up too much territory. I think that's a point that always has bothered me. There was no need to give up all the Republics. 

What kinds of US imperialist intervention do you see going on in Ukraine right now?

  

Parenti: Well it just seems that these antigovernment demonstrators are people who were from the earlier demonstrations. 

They seem to have, they have resources of all kinds: communications, money, food, headquarters. They seem quite equipped that they've got the world, and that means the western world, and all the western media, they've got all that on their side, so that their efforts doesn't look like a sabotage or trying to advance a rightwing thing their efforts look like "Oh they're just lovers of democracy, and that's all it is", or they want to join the EU, which would really take them, well, would take them to the cleaners – that's the old American expression – it would cost them a lot. 

This is that element whose hearts are in the West, who are still so rabidly anti-communist, that even the residue of a shadow of a former Communist country is a little too much. 

And what they've go against the present Russian government is that it hasn't completely stripped the entire economy of subsidies and public services. 

That was the end of part 1 of an interview with Dr Michael Parenti, a Yale graduate, a noted scholar and the author of several books including "The Face of Imperialism".