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21 Nov, 4 tweets, 2 min read
When US "progressives" call for "decolonization," they often mean it in an individualist, neoliberal way, involving language, aesthetics, or consumption.

Bolivia's socialist gov't does it in a real, *material* way, with a Minister of Culture, Decolonization, & Depatriarchization
The Bolivian socialist government's new Minister of Culture, Decolonization, and Depatriarchization, Sabina Orellana Cruz, from the Quechua community, called for deepening the revolution to materially "build a decolonized and depatriarchized homeland"
plurinacional.info/2020/11/20/min…
Bolivia's new Minister of Cultures, Decolonization, & Depatriarchization said in her first speech, "May my grandmother Bartolina Sisa and my grandfather Tupac Katari guide me," referring to Indigenous leaders who led a huge armed uprising against Spanish colonialists in the 1700s
Again, Western "progressives" have emptied the term "decolonization" of radical meaning, making it a liberal buzzword.

This is beyond satire. You can't "decolonize" the World Bank & IMF. They're instruments of US neocolonial domination of the Global South
aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2…

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More from @BenjaminNorton

Ben Norton Profile picture
1 Dec
A US Catholic priest named James Carney realized that in order to actually help poor people he had to challenge capitalism, so he became a revolutionary.

The Honduran regime then likely killed him *with US gov't approval*

US gov't docs have been withheld
startribune.com/after-32-years…
At a time when CIA-backed death squads were massacring countless leftists, sources have said US priest "Padre Guadalupe" was captured, tortured, and thrown from a helicopter by US-backed Honduran troops.

The CIA refuses to fully release its report on it
startribune.com/after-32-years…
Revolutionary leftist priest James Carney wasn't the only US citizen likely killed by US-backed fascists in Central America.

US engineer Ben Linder, who came to Nicaragua to build hydroelectric dams in impoverished areas, was murdered by US-backed Contras
zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ben-…
Read 5 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
25 Nov
Tragic news. Legendary Argentine football/soccer player Diego Maradona has died at age 60.

Maradona was a revolutionary and committed anti-imperialist.

He was a friend of Castro and Hugo Chávez (with tattoos of Fidel and Che), and a champion of the poor and oppressed.
To protest US imperialism, Diego Maradona wore a shirt reading "Stop Bush" with the S as a Nazi Swastika, when he attended the Summit of the Americas in Argentina in 2005.

President George W. Bush was attending, trying to push through a "free trade zone" to exploit Latin America
Diego Maradona also joined revolutionary Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in protesting US imperialism, wearing a t-shirt of George W. Bush covered in blood and reading "war criminal"
Read 8 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
24 Nov
This clip of Joe Biden's secretary of state nominee, Antony Blinken, summarizes the neoconservative stance they're going to take:

The US empire is the "leader of the free world," and bogeymen Russia and China are the enemies of "freedom"

The new cold war moves on to a new phase
Biden's secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken called for strengthening the US-led imperial military cartel NATO, which destroyed Yugoslavia and Libya, insisting that "revaluing these alliances starting with NATO is going to be very, very important to a Biden administration"
Antony Blinken is a hardcore new cold warrior

In this interview Blinken quotes infamous cold warrior George Kennan, the architect of the US "containment" policy," condescendingly portraying Russia as backward, "neurotic," and expansionist (all projection)
Read 5 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
23 Nov
Biden's secretary of state nominee is now official: liberal war hawk Tony Blinken.

He:
-supported the 2011 war that destroyed Libya and unleashed slave markets
-defended Israel's massacres in Gaza
-started the catastrophic war on Yemen
-is a neoliberal at a private equity firm
Wall Street's Journal praised Biden's hawkish secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken, stating "Team Biden's optimism reflects a faith in the classic pillars of Cold War-era Democratic policy" backed "by the American military and a willingness to use it"
archive.is/GfGn3
This puff piece in Wall Street's Journal declares a Biden administration and Antony Blinken State Department will be "a return to Cold War liberal orthodoxies"

"Democrats haven't been this hawkish on Russia since the Kennedy administration," it boasts
archive.is/GfGn3
Read 4 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
22 Nov
US spy agencies and corporate media outlets are already setting the stage for the Biden administration to mainstream the conspiracy that any criticism of its hawkish neoconservative foreign policy, and of US imperialism in general, is all just "Russian/Chinese disinformation"
The CIA and its loyal PR flacks in the corporate media have already been pushing the absurd conspiracy that, if you don't like right-wing neoliberal Joe Biden and his team of neoconservative war hawks, then you are being played by Vladimir Putin
thedailybeast.com/putin-probably…
Neoconservative unironically named "disinformation fellows" in the Biden camp are calling for making a "counter-disinformation czar within the National Security Council and setting up a corresponding directorate"

This is the next phase of the new cold war
foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…
Read 4 tweets
Ben Norton Profile picture
18 Nov
Hilariously misleading wishful thinking. Joe Biden has been a right-wing war hawk for his entire career, and his transition team is full of hardline warmongers.

It was the Obama-Biden admin which started the Yemen war, and offered $115 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia
Biden has appointed an eye-popping array of corporate consultants, war profiteers, and national security hawks to agency review teams that will set the agenda for his administration

They're a rude awakening to anyone who believe Biden can be "pushed left"
thegrayzone.com/2020/11/14/bid…
Trump removed the fig leaf on longtime, steadfast US imperial support for the Saudi dictatorship (by sword dancing), but liberal historical revisionism has erased how the Obama-Biden admin offered the Saudi regime more than $115 billion in military sales
reuters.com/article/us-usa…
Read 4 tweets

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