{"id":36903,"date":"2018-08-22T06:11:10","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T11:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36903"},"modified":"2018-08-22T06:11:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T11:11:10","slug":"a-regime-is-a-government-at-odds-with-the-us-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36903","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018Regime\u2019 Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A \u2018Regime\u2019 Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\"A<\/a><\/div>\n
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\"WaPo:<\/p>\n

(Washington Post<\/strong>, 5\/19\/18<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an article in the Miami Herald<\/b> (8\/5\/18<\/a>) reported that \u201ca clandestine group formed by Venezuelan military members opposed to the regime of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro claimed responsibility.\u201d A New York Times<\/b> op-ed (8\/10\/18<\/a>) mused, \u201cNo one knows whether the Maduro regime will last decades or days.\u201d AFP<\/b>(8\/12\/18<\/a>) reported that \u201cTrump has harshly criticized Maduro\u2019s leftist regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The word \u201cregime\u201d implies that the government to which the label is applied is undemocratic, even tyrannical, so it\u2019s peculiar that the term is used in Venezuela\u2019s case, since the country\u2019s leftist government has repeatedly won free and fair elections (London Review of Books<\/b>, 6\/29\/17<\/a>). One could argue that, strictly speaking, \u201cregime\u201d can simply mean a system, and in some specific, infrequent contexts, that may be how it\u2019s used. But broadly the word \u201cregime\u201d suggests a government that is unrepresentative, repressive, \u00a0corrupt, aggressive\u2014without the need to offer any evidence of these traits.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the US itself meets many of the criteria for being a \u201cregime\u201d: It can be seen as an oligarchy rather than a democracy<\/a>, imprisons people at a higher rate than any other country<\/a>, has grotesque levels of inequality and bombs another country every 12 minutes<\/a>. Yet there\u2019s no widespread tendency for the corporate media to describe the US state as a \u201cregime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The function of \u201cregime\u201d is to construct the ideological scaffolding for the United States and its partners to attack whatever country has a government described in this manner. According to the mainstream media, the democratically elected government of Nicaragua is a \u201cregime\u201d (Washington Post<\/b>, 7\/11\/18<\/a>). Cuba also has a \u201cregime\u201d (Washington Post<\/b>, 7\/25\/18<\/a>). Iraq and Libya used to have \u201cregimes\u201d\u2014before the United States implemented \u201cregime change.\u201d North Korea most definitely has one (New York Times<\/b>, 7\/26\/18<\/a>), as do China (Washington Post<\/b>, 8\/3\/18<\/a>) and Russia (Wall Street Journal<\/b>, 7\/15\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A \u2018Regime\u2019 Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire (Washington Post, 5\/19\/18) In the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an article in the Miami Herald (8\/5\/18) reported that \u201ca clandestine group formed by Venezuelan military members opposed to the regime of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro claimed responsibility.\u201d A New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[21345,20526,20525,21346,827,3142],"class_list":["post-36903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-fair","tag-fairness-and-accuracy-in-reporting","tag-gregory-shupak","tag-regime","tag-united-states","tag-us-empire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36904,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36903\/revisions\/36904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}