CARTOON: See Trump White House In All Its Glory!
"FROM TODAY ON, COLOMBIA OPENS TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMANITY."
Cartoons and photos by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
The South American View Of Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s Response To Trump’s Trade Threat
There is a shift building across the world. A much-needed shift causing small cracks, pops and splinters in the varnished hypocritical dry rot particleboard facade of American exceptionalism and dominance.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (1/30/25)
The reporting in the western empire corporate media on Colombia Pres. Gustavo Petro’s response to Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs when a military aircraft with over a hundred Colombian immigrants was denied permission to land was — to say the least — incomplete.
We were told Petro immediately backed down — collapsed — though the full text of his response was not provided, nor the reaction in other Latin American countries. When considering the economic and military inequality between Colombia and their bumbling bully nation to the north, Petro showed something Donald Trump has heard rumors of, but knows nothing about: Moral Courage (just ask Miriam Adelson and Bibi Netanyahu).
Weary and wary
There is a shift building across the world. A much-needed shift causing small cracks, pops and splinters in the varnished hypocritical dry rot particleboard facade of American exceptionalism and dominance. The world is as weary as they are wary of American military and ‘diplomatic’ bluster, bloviating and never-ending bombing of babies in refugee camps and neighborhoods around the world.
As always, in our arrogance we’re beyond oblivious. We are obtuse to the reality that we long ago wore out our welcome in the world. The world is turning away and forming new mutual alliances; the steadily growing BRICS being the most obvious.
As Matt Kennard delves into in his excellent book “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire”, even when we are posturing about doing good with various international “aid” programs, everything — absolutely everything — we do is for the sole benefit of criminals like the three portrayed in the image at the bottom of this
post.* Everything we do benefits our banks and billionaires and virtually none of it benefits the people of the world…including millions of beleaguered Americans sliding into poverty and despair.
And when empty gestures of foreign aid or cynically deceptive diplomacy fail, we turn to the assassinations, kidnappings, coups and sabotage of our psychopathic CIA and NSA.
All the makeup has melted off the moral face of this nation in the heat of the infernos from the widespread use of our ’Willy Pete’ white phosphorus munitions in our Gaza bombing campaigns over the past 15 — almost 16 — months of our genocide. Use of outlawed white phosphorus is a war crime because “contact with burning phosphorus on skin can continue burning through tissue down to the bone, inflicting agonizing and life-altering injuries.”
Every … single … bomb dropped has been from a US-supplied jet aircraft.
We are the genociders.
We are the war criminals.
Any member of our White House, State or War Department or enlisted military who has participated or aided or will to any extent in these war crimes is — by definition — a war criminal.
And the world sees us for who — and what — we are. What, it turns out, we have always been. And the rest of the world is rightfully moving on. May the BRICS and other multipolar efforts grow and spread. May Colombia, Mexico and the other nations of Latin America and the southern hemisphere come together and create their own economies and cooperative trade and (real) development agreements free of our diabolical greed and viciousness.
Trump OWNED By Colombian President Gustavo Petro
Katie Halper Show (1/30/25)
Journalist José Luis Granados Ceja and journalist Andalusia Soloff talk about Colombian President Gustavo Petro's resistance to Trump.
00:00 Colombian President Gustavo Petro fights back against Trump deportation’s cruelty
01:29 Colombian arrive in on a regular plane without handcuffs
00:02:41 We need presidents in Latin America who will push back, not like the president of El Salvador
04:16 On Gustavo Petro’s funny letter to Trump
07:00 Katie reads from the Petro letter
08:30 Jose Luis on why this act of resistance is not the failure the media is making it out to be.
11-minute video
Translation Of Gustavo Petro’s Letter To Trump
Editor’s Note: The original letter from President Gustavo Petro to Donald Trump can be read on X/Twitter here: Original text in Spanish.
The translation below was done with Google translate and is a pretty rough version, but gives a fuller sense of the response than to be found in the corporate empire media. Note, I do not know Spanish and thus did not make any changes to vocabulary or content, though I did clear up some punctuation in a few places.
Unfortunately, no doubt nobody on Trump’s staff will be able to translate for him who Noam Chomsky is, much less Walt Whitman.
— Mark Taylor
Trump,
I don't really like traveling to the US, it's a bit boring, but I confess that there are some meritorious things. I like going to the black neighborhoods of Washington. There I saw an entire fight in the US Capitol between Blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should unite.
I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller [?]
I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti*, who have my blood, in the history of the US, are memorable and I follow them. They were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the US as well as within my country. [* Petro apparently has Italian ancestry. — MT]
I don't like your oil, Trump, you are going to end the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a drink of whiskey that I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I am not, nor is any Colombian.
So, if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period. You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don't want slavers next to Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can't accompany me, I'll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world and you didn't understand it, this is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the colonels Aureliano Buendía, of whom I am one, perhaps the last
You will kill me, but I will survive in my town, which is before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.
You don't like our freedom, okay. I don't shake hands with white slavers. I shake the hands of the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and of the black and white peasant boys of the USA, before whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached, after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid.
They are the USA and before them I kneel, [and] before no one else.
Overthrow me, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.
Colombia now stops looking north, looks at the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization at that time, of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood has the black resisters turned into slaves by you. In Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all America. There I take shelter in its African songs.
My land is made of goldsmiths from the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, and of the first artists of the world in Chiribiquete.
You will never dominate us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, and who is called Bolivar, opposes us.
Our people are somewhat fearful, somewhat timid, they are naive and kind, loving, but they will know how to win the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all of Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, now Panama, formerly Colombia, which you murdered.
I raise a flag and as Gaitán said, even if it remains alone, it will continue to be raised with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did, Mr. President, an immigrant in the USA.
Your blockade does not scare me; because Colombia, in addition to being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know that you love beauty as I do. Do not disrespect it and you will offer it your sweetness.
FROM TODAY ON, COLOMBIA OPENS TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMANITY.
I am informed that you put a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor to enter the US, I do the same.
Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the world
Gustavo Petro
President of Colombia
BLOWBACK: Trump Got What He Wanted With Colombia. But His Tactics Could Come Back To Bite Him
By Eli Stokols, Doug Palmer, Myah Ward & Phelim Kine
Politico (1/28/25)
For Donald Trump, the confrontations are the point.
In his first week back in the Oval Office, Trump has quickly torn up his predecessor’s alliance-driven foreign policy in favor of an even more rambunctious 2.0 version of “America First.” His provocations have raised tensions with key allies on multiple continents — and set up showdowns with other leaders that, at least politically, Trump will win regardless of how they respond. That was true of this weekend’s skirmish with Colombia, in which tensions over the return of migrants nearly sparked a trade war.
But it could backfire in the long run, further destabilizing an already tenuous global order and even pushing would-be partner countries closer to Beijing.
“People in Latin America are extremely worried,” said Jorge Heine, the former Chilean ambassador to China. For South America “the message is that it’s not a good idea to be very closely interlinked with the United States, because you might pay a heavy price,” continued Heine, who is now a professor at Boston University. “And as a result of that, China’s prospects for stronger ties have been enhanced.”
As tensions between Washington and Bogota simmered Sunday afternoon, China’s ambassador to Colombia posted an overture to China on X, reminding followers that Colombia’s foreign minister visited Beijing last year and described the bilateral relationship as the “best moment” in 45 years.
Colombia is hardly the only country reeling from Trump’s confrontational style. Of greater concern to allies, he’s continued to express his determination to wrest control of Greenland from the Danes, to “take back” the Panama Canal from Panama, to impose major tariffs on Mexico, Canada and Europe and to continue suggesting Canada’s simplest way to avoid tariffs is to become America’s 51st state.
THE REAL CAUSE OF D.C. AIR CRASH: Money & Congressional Convenience
“They were listening to their Airline donors uh they were listening to their desire for their own convenience not listening to the multiple safety warnings about this airport.”
[Editor’s Note: The true root cause of the recent D.C. air crash has gone unreported, except by The Lever’s David Sirota. Too bad there weren’t a few members of Congress onboard. At least one from both parties. — M. Taylor]
Democracy Now! (1/30/25)
The deadly crash comes amid upheaval and staffing changes in the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration due to President Donald Trump's ongoing purge across federal government agencies.
Journalist David Sirota of The Lever says the airport also recently had its air traffic increased by lawmakers despite objections.
"There is a very deep safety concern at this airport because there had been a series of near misses," says Sirota. "These warnings about expanding the flight traffic at this airport came just a few months ago." He also discusses the first 10 days of the Trump administration.
13-minute video
Before D.C. Airport Collision, Lawmakers Brushed Off Warnings And Boosted Flights — Despite midflight near-misses and dire pleas, airline-bankrolled lawmakers recently expanded flight traffic at Washington’s busy airport. … Link to story
Trump gets honest in the only way he ever does: By accident.
Listen in this snagged video who he wants to model himself on and — especially — how he expects you to behave as an American citizen. Just like Obama scammed his voters, so too Donny Boy.
Straight from the Little Devil’s mouth: 1-minute video
GUESS WHICH ONE! There’s Only One Person Here Honestly Earning Their Money…*
Hi Mark
As woodworkers, I laughed my head off at your comparison between the Amerikkkan regime and “particle board”. Indeed this regime is built on shabby substandard materials. We have never and would never use particle board for even a birdhouse!
In contrast, Russia and China are built of oak and hickory. Able to last 100’s of years without rotting.
Wray a great article, very informative. Love gustavs words