Exceptional hypocrisy

I don't know, maybe it's the border talking. (I'm not far from it, yet it seems to put me at sufficient ironic distance.) But to me, the doctrine of American Exceptionalism seems about as funny a thing as there is in the world today. Which says something about the world, and the funny things therein. That's funny ha ha, and funny strange.

So I don't know whether to laugh, or cry, or pull the covers over my head and read a comic book by flashlight, when I see a headline such as "U.S. Presses Venezuela on Terrorism."

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department expressed concern Monday about reports that Venezuela is harboring leftist rebels from Colombia, and it urged the Caracas government to take action against any who are linked to U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

Spokesman Adam Ereli took note of reports that the Colombian government has given to Venezuelan authorities the names of 10 "major Colombian terrorists" allegedly operating in Venezuela.

"We expect the Venezuelan government to examine this information," Ereli said.

There are many things hilariously wrong with this picture. Here are two of them.

One, the Republic of the Philippines has, likewise, expressed its concern to the United States government with respect to that International Man of Mystery, American national Michael Meiring. (About whom we've written here, here and here.) December 21st, the chief of the Philippines' Department of Justice said regarding Meiring's bombing of the Evergreen Hotel in Davao City, "which clearly appears to be an act of terrorism, I am certain the US government will not tolerate this terrorist act," [ironic emphasis added.] And yesterday Aquilino Pimentel, the Senate Minority Leader, reacting to reports of at least 70 American spies operating on the island of Mindanao, "warned the United States against taking advantage of its military presence and intelligence operations in the Philippines to engage in activities that may subvert the country’s sovereignty." Pimentel pointedly raised the Meiring case, saying the Philippine government should finally demand his extradition. "Arrogant FBI agents," yesterday's MindaNews reminds us, "spirited" Meiring out of the Davao Doctor's Hospital three days after the blast, in which he was critically injured.

Meiring passed himself off as a treasure hunter but a check with the Mines Bureau showed he was not accredited. Warrants of arrest had been issued as well as hold departure orders but Meiring managed to slip out of the country and fly back to the United States.

Could it be: the United States government, "harboring" a terrorist? Meiring would not be the first. Hell, Orlando Bosch wasn't even the first.

The second funny thing about the US "pressing" Venezuela on "harboring" members of FARC is that in late June 1999 Richard Grasso, then-Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, flew to Colombia to meet with its representatives, "to bring a message of cooperation from US financial services."

Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of HUD under GHW Bush, explains that weird scene in her "Narco Dollars for Beginners":

Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso's mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market's strength from $500 billion - $1 trillion in annual money laundering - FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.

...

It was only a few days after Grasso's trip that BBC News reported a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress as saying: "Colombia's cocaine and heroin production is set to rise by as much as 50 percent as the U.S. backed drug war flounders, due largely to the growing strength of Marxist rebels."

I deduced from this incident that the liquidity of the NY Stock Exchange was sufficiently dependent on high margin cocaine profits that the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange was willing for Associated Press to acknowledge he is making "cold calls" in rebel controlled peace zones in Colombian villages. "Cold calls" is what we used to call new business visits we would pay to people we had not yet done business with when I was on Wall Street.

Bush's faith-based imperium has elevated the statecraft of hypocrisy to a height so dizzying the media dare not look down. That, at least, is exceptional.