When a US President dies, the corporate press (and the corporate-dependent press) move as one to use the event to reinforce the Official Myth: We are a decent people, and our leaders are decent people. Look, there's one of them handing some candy to another. There may have been misunderstandings in the past, we are told, but the important thing is that we honor the dead leader, and refuse to speak ill of him.
This is nonsense. The only sad thing about the passing of Bush 41 is that he lived to a ripe old age without ever being effectively confronted for his massive crimes. He worsened the racist mass incarceration state, and mercilessly bombed Iraq on the basis of a phantom tank brigade. On December 20th, 1989, he launched a vicious anticivilian assault on poor neighborhoods in Panama City, using advanced war helicopters, bombers, experimental and sadistic weaponry, and thousands of troops. He killed civilians by the score in order to terrorize the population of Panama and by extension all poor and undefended people on the planet. Bush was a director of the CIA, and as a very active Vice President under Reagan, he was a friend and mentor of the death squad governments that destroyed Central American peace and prosperity to this very day--as the streams of desperate refugees attest. Democracy Now was the only major broadcast outlet to speak of the rape of Panama, and they used some excerpts from the excellent film The Panama Deception. Here is a little more. If that narrator sounds familiar, it's because it is the voice of Elizabeth Montgomery, who played the witch on those silly sitcom re-runs.
- KBOO