Once upon a time, there were few vocations prouder than that of “investigative Journalist”. Now people tell me that journalists don’t do their job properly because they are ignorant and lazy.

I fear that is not the problem. The problem is that journalists, like most people I know, including myself, need to make a living to pay the rent. They need electricity, internet, insurance… They cannot – they simply cannot afford to be fired. As anybody familiar with 19th century literature knows: prostitution is an act of desperation, not of love.

Carleton Beals (1893 –1979) was a US journalist about whom I know absolutely nothing. Nothing, I repeat, except that Wikipedia maintains he wrote “more than 45 books” and that Time Magazine called him, “the best informed and the most awkward living writer on Latin America”.

Today, there are few “awkward writers” in mainstream (i.e. State or corporate) media. True investigative journalists have had to find new homes in alternative outlets, such as Consortium News, founded by Robert Parry (1949-2018).

In 1988, Robert Parry informed the US public (in issue no. 72 of the influential magazine Foreign Policy) about the Iran-Contras scandal. By doing so, I believe he contributed to the end of the decade-long war in “America’s back yard”. Reagan was dismayed: Robert Parry and his ilk had to be stopped from meddling in matters of “national interest”, i.e. the economic interests of an infinitesimal portion of the US population. How the press was progressively gagged is a long story, but it is best told by a journalist. Who better than Robert Parry himself: The victory of perception management.

When Europeans are shocked by the current US president’s recent actions against Venezuela, ongoing actions against Greenland and Gaza and future actions against Iran, they seem to have forgotten that he is not the first nor the second King Kong. They ask: “Why on earth did Americans vote for such a clown? Why do they believe all those crazy conspiracy theories?”

Well, for one thing, not all crazy conspiracy theories are false. We now know, for instance, that there is more to the Epstein story than meets the eye, though we still don’t know just what. Moreover:

  • The USA is a country where the authorities still refuse to admit what many historians suspect: that the murder of President JFK was an inside job related to his “Commencement Address” to the American University three months earlier. Confer the moving statement of the 79-year-old Oliver Stone to congress on 1 April 2025.
  • The USA is a country that still denies that the furin cleavage site of the virus that caused Covid 19 was very unlikely to have developed naturally and that the virus was most probably leaked from a lab conducting gain of function experiments partly financed by the US government (NIH).
  • The USA’s healthcare record is so abominable that it lead to the tragic oxycontin drama which in turn has culminated in a grim epidemic of drug overdoses.
  • The USA is therefore a country whose population thinks that “you really cannot trust a word they say” – “they” being the Presidents and their mouthpieces, including the once formidable NY Times and Washington Post; including also, by the way, all state and corporate media in vassal countries in Europe.

So, with respect to Latin America, the USA has had not only one but lots of fingers in the pie almost since the very beginning. The year 1812 saw the “Patriot War”, i.e. the unsuccessful attempt to steal Florida. As a result of subsequent attempts, the USA took possession of bit by bit of what was to become the state of Florida. I suspect that US schoolchildren are taught that the inhabitants of Florida had everything to gain by becoming US citizens. That is undoubtedly Marco Rubio’s point of view, but he is not – you will admit – the average US citizen, at least not as far as wealth and health is concerned.

Nor was Ronald Reagan the first president who tried to annihilate independent Nicaragua. In 1909, US warships were sent to the area. The military intervention forced a progressive president to resign. It was a story we have seen played out umpteen times since: The Yankees didn’t like his policies, quoting Wikipedia:

… improved public education, railroads, and established steam ship lines. He also enacted constitutional rights that provided for equal rights, property guarantees, habeas corpus, compulsory vote, compulsory education, the protection of arts and industry, minority representation, and the separation of state powers.

The 1909 intervention was followed by full-scale occupation in 1912. However, the occupation was not entirely successful. A man named Augusto Cesar Sandino made life difficult for the occupants. He was assassinated by General Somoza in 1934. His example was later followed by the Sandinistas who ousted the dictator Somoza in 1979. Of course the Yankees were not pleased and provided massive assistance to the Contras.

In 1990, presumably to celebrate the Sandinistas’ defeat over the Contras and to commemorate the hero who inspired them, the film El Sandino directed by the exciting Chilean director Miguel Littin, conveyed to those of us who cared, some of the spectacular difficulties facing Latin American countries trying to shake off the grubby fingers of King Kong. As far as I have been able to ascertain, Carleton Beale was the only US journalist to interview El Sandino. Was the brave fictional US Journalist in the film modelled on him? Did Beale’s work inspire the late Robert Parry?

At any rate it was Robert Parry who informed the public about a 90-page manual written in 1983 for the Contras. Quoting Wikipedia, the Contras were taught to:

[lead] demonstrators into clashes with the authorities, to provoke riots or shootings, which lead to the killing of one or more persons, who will be seen as the martyrs; this situation should be taken advantage of immediately against the Government to create even bigger conflicts.

[and to engage in] selective use of armed force for PSYOP effect. … Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA [unconventional warfare operations area]

Do these two paragraphs remind you of more recent events, by any chance?

Like Iran and Venezuela, Nicaragua has been demonised by the Western press and plagued by economic sanctions. According to the Human Development Index it nevertheless ranks above Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador (that are not subject to sanctions).

Far be it from my intention to defend our present King Kong, but I put to you that a boss who honestly states his ghastly aims is preferable to one who cloaks them in “freedom and democracy”.

As a result of the present King Kong’s frankness, what PM Carney has just referred to as “the fiction” (of the rules-based order) has hopefully lost its “free and Democratic” veneer. Likewise, our leaders, of whom PM Carney revealed that “we” have known it was fiction “for decades“, have been exposed. Is there a glimmer of hope here?

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I add, by way of conclusion, a link to the trailer of a Netflix documentary about another great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. He most recently made a splash when he claimed that the USA, with the assistance of Norway, carried out the sabotage of the Nord-Stream Pipeline.