Saturday 17 January 2015

USA Still Owes Nicaragua $17 Billion

Back in the 1980s the show Spitting Image depicted Ronald Reagan as the President with his brain missing because he was a President who acted as if his brain had been removed and replaced with a blancmange or something equally soft.
Among some of his successes was arming and funding the groups in Afghanistan who would kill 3000 in the World Trade Centre a couple of decades later, backing the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa and sneaking around to sell arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.
The Contras were a terrorist army attempting to overthrow the Nicaraguan government and their methods included kidnapping and torturing civilians, raping women, executing civilians—including children—seizing and burning civilian houses, and assassinating health care workers, a grand total of over 50,000 deaths in the Central American country.
In the aftermath, Reagan and the United States government were tried in the International Court of Justice for their part in the death and devastation with the Reagan Administration convicted of violating Nicaragua’s sovereignty and convicted of encouraging the widespread crimes against humanity by training them to commit the atrocities with a manual they supplied to the Contras which recommended provoking riots, shootings and mass murder so that it can be used as a propaganda tool.
Reagan claimed the Contra terrorists were 'the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers', but the ICJ disagreed and fined The United States $17 billion for the crimes against humanity.
That was in 1986 as as yet the penalty hasn't been paid and as the 131st in the World Bank league of wealthiest countries, $17 billion would go a long way as the GDP is only $20 billion.
As America is over $17 trillion in the hole, i'm sure paying up their fines for human rights abuses wouldn't hurt the economy much, especially if the money was directed towards the families of the victims but it is unlikely it will dig into it's pockets because if it pays up, there will be a long line of other countries queueing up asking for damages under the regimes of American Presidents who had their brains, or in the case of one in particular, his pants missing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's laughable that the US Department of State does each year its State Sponsors of Terrorism list. It includes Cuba, for example, because "some media reports indicate former members of ETA reside in Cuba". But each year forgets to include US, which all the planet knows is the largest builder and financier of terrorist organizations.

Lucy said...

It does have a history of arming and training some of the planets nastiest over the years and then acting surprised when they turn on them.
The lesson is never learned as they have now found out with ISIS who they were going to go to war alongside in Syria 2 years ago.
They should cough up the $17 bn to Nicaragua, they are quick enough to go running to these International Committees when their interests are in danger.