Is there any country in the Americas other than Haiti that has a more horrendous history of US oppression and manipulation (42 years), including the genocide of the Mayan people, than Guatemala? Not even Nicaragua which could be 2nd? Of maybe Chile?
Posted by: Lavieja | Aug 17 2026 8:08 utc | 57

 
This is just me regurgitating from perching outside History department trees, but I offer:
a) Colombia/Panama (USA been interfering there since before the split, and induced the split), endless civil wars and rebels and outside funded counter-revolutionary raiders for well over a century or two,
b) possibly Puerto Rico (which could be discounted as it went from Spanish to USA territory, which is like more salt on the wound of over a century), and
c) pretty much any tribal nation which does have special tripartate citizenship (reservations) and recognition by UN, so all those from Hawai’i, Alaska, and the contiguous 48 states, and for most well over two centuries and also ongoing.
 
🙂 But yeah, Guatemala, like Honduras, Mexico, most of Central America, etc. got it pretty bad due to proximity.
 
😀 Which brings up the sheer miraculous nature of Iran to even entertain dialogue, let alone diplomatic negotiations, with the USA given all they should know about the USA involvement in their own history and a cursory listen of USA’s own history. 🙂 Iran is remarkably civil in the face of such known and consistent behavior.

Posted by: titmouse | Aug 17 2026 19:13 utc | 103

I just want to point out AGAIN to the Iran, must bomb. nuke, bomb, nuke brigade that if they look at a map (I know I know they are mostly yankees and a map is a foreign concept), that Iran has two major enemies : The USA and Israel. Yes an Iranian nuke could reach Israel, but that would leave the USA still standing and Iran could NOT reach mainland USA.
 
There are only three nations that have then technology and missile capability to reach Mainland USA. Russia, China and NK.  (possibly India). It is a distance thingy. You know how far a missile needs to travel.   So let us all stop this rubbish. Yes if Israel were to nuke Iran then Iran could retaliate if it has any nukes, but ONLY, ONLY, ONLY if they were sure that the USA would not retaliate with some of their 5000  nukes and intercontinental missiles.  Get it. Get it, Get it. So Iran has very little use for nukes. First it need intercontinental missiles.
 
Now perhaps Iran is developing long range missiles (probably are if they can) but this is pretty difficult and they have no realistic way of testing them.  So I say to the Nuke fan club “show me the intercontinental missiles and then I will show you nukes.”  Until then please cut your caterwauling

Posted by: watcher | Aug 17 2026 21:36 utc | 105

Kushner Says US Will Not ‘Restrict Israel’s Right To Defend Itself’ (& vid)
 
https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2089462677588320760
 
“And threatens US support for Israel to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza…”
 
DW: Paul Craig Roberts
 
https://www.youtube.com/@dialogueworks01/streams
 
I share PCR’s view Iran should have finished  USrael off the first time. The ‘ceasefire’ was a mistake.

Posted by: John Gilberts | Aug 17 2026 22:32 utc | 107

106 titmouse.   
 Your input on this issue of US history in its own hemisphere that surely has not escaped the Iranians particularly is appreciated. Re. Costa Rica, having lived there for some years beginning in 2006, I learned that it was one country that had escaped thus far from the worst horrors of US imperialism, some said because of its geography. The northern Guanacaste province is where cattle are able to be raised, and CR had a reputation for the best beef in world for meat eaters, but the rest did not lend itself to mass cultivation people said. (There was a small pineapple plantation in the town where I lived and the use of pesticides enabled an infestation of worms that bored into each one of the 1000’s of mangoes I had growing on my property leaving  massive (backhoe worthy) piles of worm-holed rotting fruit on the ground (you would have loved it). 
To try to shorten this story, after the notorious US American ‘filibuster’ William Walker had claimed Nicaragua as his slave-owning fiefdom, and he had been defeated in 1857 by a combined military invention of Central American countries led by Costa Rica, Costa Rica and Nicaragua fought a war which ended in  established boundaries for each country, Costa Rica famously dispensed with its army in 1948. When I moved there in 2006, it was known as a special peaceful haven with unspoiled and protected nature. Notably, unlike other countries of CA, Costa Rica had rejected CAFTA, the Central American version of NAFTA, until after much contention it was passed by a national referendum of 51.6% in 2007.

• December 23, 2008: U.S. President George W. Bush issued an official presidential proclamation clearing the way for Costa Rica’s formal entry after compliance was met.(AI) 

By then the number of North Americans moving onto the Pacific Coast of CR was increasing exponentially. I never met hardly a one that wasn’t building a ‘luxury hacienda’s or a ‘development’ which often would fail leaving another space of environmental destruction. I wrote letters to the Tico Times and posted ‘la desarollo mata’ signs about. Also I owned had bought a CR tiny farm with an amazing cement eating colony of termites (we eventually got rid of them after finding and destroying their ‘casa’ in the attic). So I exempt myself as much as possible from the behavior of almost every North American I met there.
To conclude, by the time I left in 2011, drastic change was occurring at a surprising rate. The policia that had occupied a small shack near the beach of the resort town 15 miles west of my place, a police force that has only a couple of motor bikes and helped people — for a $10 cab fare would come to your home if you needed their assistance there- were replaced by armed SUV-driving uniformed patrols, most of the local, gift shops, even the beach bar gone, AND a red tide set into the bay in April (hottest month of 6-month dry summer season before rains supposed to begin in May). 
So Id say Costa Rica is a nation undone by US soft power, differently that most other nations in US dominated hemisphere. And by the way, the Costa Rican legislature after CAFTA spent years making laws to try to control the invasion of technology, mostly cellphones:

• we can explore why CAFTA-DR was so controversial in Costa Rica, or look at how it affected their telecommunications and insurance monopolies. Let me know how you want to. (AI)
•  
•  

Iranian diplomats and business sector beware if any policy of deals  with US should  make it’s way back onto a negotiating table.   

Posted by: Lavieja | Aug 17 2026 22:48 utc | 109

I should stop, because I keep opening more ‘pits:’ OT but need to wrap this up right. Forgot to mention gold:

• . The Open-Pit Mining Ban & Legal FrameworkThe 2010 Prohibition:

Costa Rica reformed its Mining Code in 2010 to completely ban open-pit metal mining due to severe environmental and ecological risks.Small-Scale Exception: The law permits underground, small-scale artisanal mining, primarily centered around communities like Abangares in Guanacaste, where around 2,000 miners work traditionally.The Mercury Elimination Goal: Costa Rica is actively executing a National Action Plan to eliminate the use of mercury in artisanal mining by 2030, swapping it out for mercury-free processing technologies.
2. The Crucitas Crisis and Cross-Border Smuggling –The epicenter of Costa Rican gold mining is Crucitas, a gold-rich area in northern Costa Rica near the San Juan River border with Nicaragua.The Illegal Outbreak: After a large-scale Canadian corporate mining concession was canceled by Costa Rican courts in 2010, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 illegal miners (coligalleros) took over the region.
 
This is an incomplete less than bird’s eye history.

Posted by: Lavieja | Aug 17 2026 23:33 utc | 111

115 John Gilberts — 
That says it exactly.

Posted by: Lavieja | Aug 18 2026 1:00 utc | 113

118
 
If I was Trump, I would be ordering B52s to bomb Iran’s underground missile launchers, and my Military advisors would be telling me to hit them with cruise missile from submarines instead like last time.
 
It doesn’t matter if  the US defeats Iran, because Russia and China will never allow the Talmudic perverts to conquer Central Asia.
 
Israel delenda est. Another country will do it if Iran fails, inshallah. 
 

Posted by: Giyane | Aug 18 2026 3:45 utc | 115

🙂 Thank you for sharing all of that, Lavieja! 
 
I’d like to imagine I could enjoy all those grubs in mangos, but I doubt I’m tough enough to survive the jungle there.
 
I heard from Telegraph Hill parrots talking ancestral knowledge from the tropics of the world, many ‘civilized’ (read: Western) humans are pretty pressed to make money and are not very nice to plants, animals, the land, or any of the people in the way to make more coin. Many parrots died along the way just to be pets, often smuggled in strange places. Apparently for fun time chemicals similar smuggling would happen, sometimes even using cavities in people (I don’t understand how that works. I know you are bigger creatures, but besides your clothes where else will you put it?). And the mining by the really big jungle is quite lawless, tearing away the jungle and leaving everything the wrong color and toxic.
 
🙁 I worry if I see it for myself, it would make me sad. It would be hard for me to fly home thereafter with such a heavy heart. 🙂 When it is seen flat on a picture or screen, while it still makes me sad, it does not feel as real. And I don’t have to fly all the way back home. 🙂 I don’t have your human strength to carry such heavy thoughts and feelings for long.
 
You are brave to see so much so far away and kind to try to make life beautiful there in Costa Rica. Life changes, people make big changes, and rich and powerful people often make the biggest changes. Even though mean rich and powerful people make the biggest bad changes, you tried to make big good changes as you could, 🙂 and for that thank you! May more people work together in the future and heal the damages done.

Posted by: titmouse | Aug 18 2026 9:00 utc | 117

MN: Ana Kasparian: ‘Israel Bombs Turkish Assets’
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmBiBr0eDB0
 
“Israel bombs Turkish military assets in Syria.”

Posted by: John Gilberts | Aug 18 2026 18:45 utc | 119

120 titmouse–   Thank you for your encouraging words.
 
In truth, I didn’t go back from Costa Rica to los estados to stay, but rather went with my Nicaraguan husband to Ometepe Island in Lake Colcibolca, (known as Lake Nicaragua which is connected to the San Juan River system) Nicaragua, which turned out to be around the time of the incursion of Wang Jing who for one thing built a private plane landing strip on Ometepe:

• Chinese businessman Wang Jing (frequently misspelled as Wang Ling) led the aborted $50 billion Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal project. While historical and 19th-century canal blueprints planned to use the natural pathway of the San Juan River, Wang’s modern HKND Group route deliberately bypassed the river itself—choosing instead to cut through the country’s mainland and bisect Lake Nicaragua—though massive dredging of the lake and altered basin hydrology threatened the San Juan River system
•  
• .The Wang Jing Canal Proposal & Waterways –The Route: The design by Wang’s HKND Group planned a 172-mile (278 km) path starting from the Pacific port of Brito, crossing through Lake Nicaragua, and heading toward the Caribbean.
•  
• San Juan River Distinction: Unlike old colonial or Vanderbilt-era transit schemes that relied directly on widening and navigating the San Juan River (which forms the border with Costa Rica), HKND routed north of the river.
• Dredging and Ecological Risks: The project required intensive dredging of shallow Lake Nicaragua to accommodate mega-ships, which scientists warned would trigger severe sedimentation, alter oxidation and water temperatures, and indirectly starve or disrupt the outflow into the sensitive San Juan River basin.
•  
• Project DemiseFinancial Collapse: Wang Jing’s personal net worth plummeted drastically during the 2015–2016 Chinese stock market turbulence, crippling his ability to finance the multi-billion-dollar undertaking.  Cancellation: After years of inactivity, widespread rural protests over land seizures, and mounting environmental red flags, Nicaragua’s congress officially revoked the 50-year concession granted to Wang Jing’s company.

And so it goes. Sorry for OT 
The end of this discourse.

Posted by: Lavieja | Aug 18 2026 21:50 utc | 121

As this topic has been somewhat neglected, I will continue the discussion on the global geopolitical situation—inspired by the case of Nicaragua—spanning the late 1960s and the following decade. I aim to set the facts straight, rather than relying on counterfactual narratives:

The complacency of the USSR’s ruling stratum did not stem from alleged underhanded maneuvers by US strategists.
It stemmed from the fact that the wave of decolonization following the Chinese Revolution had brought much of Africa and Asia—as well as Cuba—under Soviet influence.
Furthermore, since the end of World War II, Soviet society had advanced further and more rapidly than any nation before it, achieving—albeit only in appearance—a stability it had never previously enjoyed.

In the late 1970s, this complacency was reinforced by the apparent emergence of a third revolutionary wave, encompassing Nicaragua, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique, and the final struggle against South African apartheid.

These are facts, dear Peter—not the musings of someone who fails to grasp the material power of the masses in motion, preferring instead to attribute the entire course of history to the machinations of the propertied classes, whether British, Yankee, or Zionist.

Note: The translator does not render my texts with the proper elegance, though the meaning of what I write remains clear.
I apologize for this.

Posted by: Soviético | Aug 19 2026 7:00 utc | 123

Greek, UAE, Chinese shipping firms hit hardest by Strait of Hormuz block
 
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1300105/greek-uae-chinese-shipping-firms-hit-hardest-by-strait-of-hormuz-disruption/
 
Shipping companies from Greece, the United Arab Emirates and China are among those most affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, according to data from Bloomberg and international maritime monitoring organizations.
 
 
Over the past 48 hours, around 670 cargo ships have been tracked waiting on the western side of the strait. However, the actual number may be higher, as some ships are believed to have switched off their tracking systems.
 
 
Companies based in the United Arab Emirates account for the largest share, with approximately 120 vessels, about 18% of the total. Greek shipping firms rank second, managing at least 75 commercial ships that in the strait since the start of the conflict, representing roughly 12%. Of these, around 30 are oil or gas tankers, according to Bloomberg analysis.
 
 

Chinese companies follow closely, with 74 vessels in the area, including 25 oil and gas tankers, while the remainder are container ships or general cargo carriers.
 
 
The disruption has also affected other Asian operators. Japanese firms are linked to at least 23 oil and gas tankers and 16 dry cargo ships operating in the strait.
 
 

Posted by: MiniMO | Aug 19 2026 22:28 utc | 125