Stone: my part in hostage baby saga

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian


Stone: my part in hostage baby saga

Oliver Stone, the maverick American film director, speaks exclusively about his bizarre role in the abortive attempt by Hugo Chavez to release hostages held by the Colombian rebel group Farc

David Smith in London and Sybilla Brodzinsky in Bogota
Sunday January 6, 2008
The Observer

~snip~
He blamed the collapsed deal not on Farc but on President Uribe and his American backer. 'It's Colombia's fault, Colombia did not want it to happen, and I think there were other outside forces, like Bush. Uribe went to great lengths to justify his behaviour that day. For the President to fly down to this place and give a long press conference and have his general give a long talk feels like a lot of over-justification to me. I think there was a lot at stake in getting Chavez out of the hostage situation. I heard that day from two rival sources that Uribe had made a phone call to Bush the day before or that day. The Bush phone call is significant.'

Stone continued: 'I said at the time, shame on Colombia, shame on Uribe, and I meant to say shame on Bush, too. I think Bush has a spiteful attitude towards Chavez, as does the American establishment. They want to see Chavez fail. The New York Times had an article the next day saying: "Chavez's promised hostage release fizzles, his second major setback in weeks." If that's the headline, that's certainly a surprise to all those people who were down there, including the families of the hostages. It was a genuine effort to free them.'

Uribe's war on drugs has been waged with the support of Bush's programme to eliminate one of the most plentiful sources of cocaine in the world. Stone regards it as another chapter in America's long history of interference and exploitation in Latin America, supporting dictators when in its own self-interest. 'America seems to treat it as its backyard. I guess people do all kinds of things in their backyards. They throw trash, piss, do whatever hell they want, let the weeds grow. I think we've always had that idea, that it's ours.

'Colombia is the last one we have left. It's a big investment, I gather we're talking almost a billion a year now. It is the equivalent of a secret war. In my time it would have been shocking, the equivalent of the Laotian war or the Cambodian war. The country is crawling with military equipment and American equipment and supervisory technologies - satellite technology, information technology. It exists for the Farc, I think they know that. They're very paranoid; they're right to be. Every Colombian that I spoke to was scared of the military in some way or another; they're the most dangerous people, not the Farc.'


Read more: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2236055,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. A son's mission to free his father

A son's mission to free his father
BY KIM HACKETT

SARASOTA -- While his friends were running through basketball drills this fall, Cardinal Mooney High School student Kyle Stansell took a private plane to Venezuela to meet President Hugo Chavez.

"There was a gold ceiling and marble floors," said Kyle, 15, who was accompanied by his grandparents. "He gave me a hug and through a translator told me that my dad would be proud."

For Kyle it was just another effort to free his father, Keith Stansell, from Colombian rebels who have held him and two other Americans since 2003.

Stansell, 44, was flying anti-drug operations for an American company when his plane crashed and he was taken hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC.

More:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080106/NEWS/801060396
Last modified: January 06. 2008 12:00AM

[Peace Patriot]

2. "...flying anti-drug operations for an American company..."? Ace reporting,

as usual, from our war profiteering corporate news monopolies.

a) What company?

b) Why was a private company "flying anti-drug operations"?

c) What "anti-drug operations"?

d) What were these private operatives really doing, and what relationship did it have with the U.S. military, with the Colombian military and/or with the rightwing paramilitaries that are closely tied to the Colombian military, and who are notorious for drugs/weapons trafficking, and for murdering union leaders, small peasant farmers and political leftists?

At the very least, this article should NAME the company. The article is about Stansell's son, so it needn't go deeply into the matter (what his dad may have been doing in Colombia), but leaving the company's name out is a big omission. I suspect that the editors or writers are deliberately sanitizing information about the very corrupt, failed U.S. "war on drugs" in Colombia.

This BBC article names the company, but doesn't question or investigate what it was doing in Colombia:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7161276.stm

"Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes were employed by Northrop Grumman and were involved in anti-drugs surveillance missions."

What the hell is a U.S. Department of Defense contractor doing in Colombia "flying anti-drug operations" in the first place?

I believe that the U.S./Bush Junta in Colombia is a cauldron of murder, massive theft of U.S. taxpayers, illicit drugs/weapons traffic and other crimes that rivals the U.S./Bush Junta in Iraq. Further, the Bushites' intention is to use Colombia as a launching pad for economic and military warfare against the Andes democracies (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and close allies such as Argentina), in order to regain control of the Andes oil fields for Exxon Mobile & co., re-install rightwing dictatorships, and destroy these countries' efforts at independence, self-determination and social justice. Donald Rumsfeld laid out their scheme on 12/1/07, in a WaPo op-ed that I think is closely related to Bushite efforts to sabotage this hostage negotiation and prevent any diplomatic credit going to Hugo Chavez.

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html


Among other things, Rumsfeld wants to rid the U.S. government of any remaining "checks and balances" (f.i., Congress) so the U.S. can "act swiftly" in support of "friends and allies" in South America (--that is, U.S. military intervention in support of fascist thugs planning coup attempts against democratic governments).

It's important to understand these hostage negotiation stories in this context, and to try to read between the lines and fill in the huge black holes of information that our corporate media leaves out in order to keep us stupid. I think it's quite likely that the first effort to entrap Chavez by enticing him into a hostage negotiation--thus to kill or embarrass/discredit him--failed. You can almost see the re-writing of Rumsfeld's first paragraph as they realized that Chavez was onto them (had broken protocol, and called the Colombia military about security), at which point (circa 12/1/07) Uribe abruptly called a halt to the negotiation. But then, the hostages' families and many others, including the president of France, urged Chavez to continue. At that point, it appears that FARC figured out how they were being used in the Bushite plot as well, and decided to foil the Bushites' intentions, by freeing some of the hostages anyway, into Chavez's care. That same weekend was the general plebiscite in Venezuela on the constitutional changes that the Bushites had poured millions of U.S. dollars into defeating. One purpose of Rumsfeld's op-ed may have been to pave the way for U.S. military intervention had the referendum succeeded (--it lost by a hair), and then been used as an excuse for another planned rightwing military coup attempt. (The constitutional changes would have enhanced Chavez's power, and would have put the rightwing Catholic prelates in firm support of a coup, because of provisions for women's and gay rights.)

In this context, a successful Chavez hostage negotiation (where everyone else has failed) might well have influenced the referendum vote (which lost by only a 50.7% vs. 49.3% margin). As it is, it's probably best that the referendum lost, thus sparing Venezuela more U.S./Bush Junta-instigated destabilization, violence and possible toppling of their elected government. But I think it's clear that this is Rumsfeld's "retirement" project--Oil War II--and his fingerprints are all over this hostage negotiation sabotage and another weird incident (the Miami operative and the "suitcase full of money" caper--an attempt to discredit Chavez and also his ally Cristina Fernandez, just elected president of Argentina).

Democracy and social justice are winning in South America--winning big time--despite every effort of the Bushites to defeat them. (The Chavistas didn't really lose anything in the referendum--Chavez remains hugely popular and has five more years to his term--they merely failed to advance at the pace they had desired.) Creation of institutions such as the Bank of the South (local-controlled finance/development) and ALBA and Mercosur (So. American trade groups), and other cooperative efforts, are momentous events in South America's long struggle for independence from the U.S. We in the north are kept deliberately ignorant of the leftist wave that has swept the continent. But we should be aware of how much trouble the Bush Junta can cause in South America in their final year, and it may be (one of my wilder guesses) that continued immunity from prosecution for war crimes, for top Bushites (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Gonzales and a few others), which is currently guaranteed by their corporate puppetmasters, may be contingent upon their re-gaining some ground for global corporate predation in South America.

The lives of people like Keith Stansell are of no importance to the Bush Junta whatsoever--no matter what Stansell may have been doing of their behalf. They have no interest in his release, and may even want him killed for what he may know about their horrible activities in Colombia. (Some other FARC hostages were killed a few months ago by an unidentified hit squad that stalked a FARC camp and then targeted the hostages, in what may have been a rehearsal for setting up a crossfire situation in THIS current hostage situation--to kill Chavez or embarrass him with a chaotic mess and deaths of hostages.) The corporate news monopolies play along with the Bushite game in South America, as they have with the Bushite game in the Middle East, and the Bushite game at home. Don't expect any enlightenment from them. Don't even expect bare facts that can be relied upon. Expect a constant stream of lies and disinformation straight from the desk of the Bush-purged CIA, or from the desk that Donald Rumsfeld still holds in the Department of "Defense."

[Judi Lynn]

3. Keith Stansell may easily be worth more to Bush dead, additionally, for political value,

since losing the American hostages might bolster sympathy for the fascist cause against the rebels, and finally secure the FTA in Congress the Democrats have withheld due to Colombia's atrocious human rights record against union members and human rights workers, etc.

I'm sure you're right in thinking _Bush just may not be lying awake wondering how to get a peaceful conclusion to this situation, and get the American contractors back in the homeland of contractors. (We learned last year that Israeli fascists who also are involved in drug running, gun running, have been in Colombia, as well, training paramilitaries. Learned this when one of them went on the run and disappeared into thin air altogether.)

As for that raid by paramilitaries on a FARC camp, in which some hostages were killed, and Uribe's administration claimed they were murdered by the FARC (who had been lugging them around with them for YEARS (hardly the behavior of people poised to bump them off), you will recall that FARC said they were killed in the crossfire, Uribe said they were murdered, and FARC delivered them to a spot where they could be autopsied by Uribe's authorities. What did we learn from the government's autopsies? Nada! Jack Squat! They didn't want to bother our "beautiful minds" with the messy details of what the hell happened to get those hostages shot up! They just dropped the subject altgother, and never brought it up again. Do we take this as proof the rebels did it? Probably NOT.

It well may be this kid in the article has seen his dad for the last time, if it gets left up to _Bush and his little puppet, Uribe. They both need to revitalize any possible residual sympathy which might be lying dormant anywhere for the fascist side, and that will take some real martyrs, or what can be made to resemble martyrs, just as they attempted with the hostages already lost in the crossfire when the paramilitaries sneaked up on the rebels before and opened fire indiscriminently, shooting up hostages the rebels had kept with them for years, awaiting exchange for rebel prisoners.

[Justitia]

4. You've nailed it, every word. -eom

[Justitia]

5. Stone sounds good here - he needs to spotlight this for a larger audience. -eom