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for a behemoth like the U.S. to dramatically build up military forces in a client state of the U.S.--Colombia--a country with one of the worst human rights records on earth--in a region of peaceful democracies with minimal military forces, and right next door to two of those peaceful democracies that own the biggest oil reserves in the hemisphere--Venezuela and Ecuador--both of whom the State Department (and its corpo/fascist 'news' echo chamber) have been wrongfully demonizing in an escalating psyops/disinformation campaign. This is the sort of thing Hitler did. And making up lying excuses to invade weak countries and steal their resources is the next thing he did.
Insulting, demeaning, hypocritical:
"Mr. da Silva said that the proposal was unsettling and that leaders in the region should have been contacted beforehand. He also reiterated his concerns about the Fourth Fleet, which the United States reactivated last year in the Americas, and its ships' ability to range over waters where Brazil would be developing large deepwater oilfields." --from the article.
This is the most important item in the article. Latin American leaders were not consulted--and not even warned about this huge U.S. military buildup. President Obama went down there to a Latin American conference, talking about peace, respect and cooperation, while this was being planned, behind the backs of the leaders he was talking to. It is grossly insensitive toward their concerns, and furthermore it is a slap in the face to leaders like da Silva in Brazil and Michele Batchelet in Chile who have cooperated with the U.S. in many respects, and who have acted as the go-betweens and peacemakers, for instance, when the Bushwhacks and Colombia did the bombing/raid on Ecuador early last year, and when the Bushwhacks tried to overthrow Evo Morales in Bolivia (by funding and organizing fascist rioters and murderers who wanted to secede from Bolivia) in September of last year.
I am frankly astounded that Obama/Clinton did not at least warn da Silva and Batchelet. These are the "moderate" leftists, and virtually the only friendly leaders that the U.S. still has among the leftist leadership of the continent, after eight years of Bushwhackism (naked hostility, coup plotting, assassination plotting, bullying, "elbow breaking," massive funding of rightwing groups with U.S. taxpayer money, destabilization efforts, dirty tricks, psyops, outright aggression and a massive demonization campaign against the oil leaders). Da Silva and Batchelet have patiently tried to advocate for the peaceful democracies that were being targeted--Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia (also Argentina). Their own economic policies contain more elements of "free trade" and cooperation with multi-nationals. But they approve of the leftist democratic trend on the continent, and, above all, support democracy and each country's sovereignty--the right of its people to determine their own economic/political future. The Bushwhacks could not break their loyalty to democracy and their friendship with leaders like Chavez, Morales and Correa. And this looks like their punishment for that loyalty--Obama/Clinton freezing them out, undermining them, not consulting them, not even asking, 'what will the effect of this be?'
This is just about the worst omen that I have seen yet, as to the pre-war status of the U.S. in South America. They won't even talk to the "moderates" about a vital issue like this!
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More than threatening--an act of war.
Wars don't happen overnight. They start with a massive military build-up, with early forays--test-outs of war systems and responses, and strategies (at least two of such forays have already occurred--against Ecuador and Bolivia last year), and intensifying psyops and disinformation (which we are certainly seeing). That this U.S. military build-up is for the "war on drugs" is a laughable crock of shit. The narco-thugs running Colombia are the biggest drug lords in the country. The Bush Cartel and the CIA are probably also dealing in drugs and weapons. $6 BILLION in US tax dollars to the Colombian military, and the cocaine just keeps coming. It never stops. Most South Americans know that the U.S. "war on drugs" is a corrupt, failed, murderous enterprise, and an excuse for the U.S. to militarize, nazify and dominate their societies, and county after country has rejected it.
Is this massive U.S. military build-up justifiable as "counter-insurgency"--smashing one side of the 40+ year Colombian civil war--the leftist FARC guerrillas? When the FARC made their bid for peace last year, led by the FARC's chief hostage negotiator and peace advocate, Raul Reyes, the U.S./Colombia dropped ten 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on Reyes' temporary hostage negotiation camp, just inside Ecuador's border, slaughtering 25 people in their sleep, and then raiding over the border to shoot any survivors in the back as they fled in their pajamas trying to avoid death. From all reports--including those of Swiss, French and Spanish envoys who were in Ecuador at the time, Ingrid Betancourt's husband, and others including the president of Ecuador--Reyes was about to release Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages, and it is clear that the a peace deal was in the works, to end this long civil war.
The U.S. chose war, not peace. It chose to stop the peace process with murderous finality.
A few months earlier, Hugo Chavez had begun the process of negotiating the release of FARC hostages--at the request of Alvaro Uribe of Colombia! The Colombian military then directed rocket fire at the location of the first two hostages to be released to Chavez, as they were in route to their freedom, driving them back into the jungle on a 20-mile hike, under fire. These hostages' subsequent press conference (Chavez later got them out by a different route) was completely ignored by our corpo/fascist press. Who was behind this incident--firing on the hostages? That same weekend, Donald Rumsfeld published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he states, in the first paragraph, that Chavez's help with hostage negotiations "is not welcome in Colombia." It had been welcome days before. That's why Chavez was doing it--at Uribe's request. And just days before--while Rumsfeld was scribbling this missile, and while the hostages were in route to their freedom--Uribe suddenly withdrew his request to Chavez, in what seemed like the act of a lunatic. He gave a lame excuse (--that Chavez had called someone in the Colombian military--well, jeez, wouldn't you?). How did Rumsfeld know that Chavez's help with hostage releases, welcome in Colombia that week, would suddenly become "unwelcome" that weekend?
My theory is that Rumsfeld--a year after his retirement from the Pentagon, forced out for his insane plan to nuke Iran (and steal its oil, as well as Iraq's)--was the one pulling Uribe's strings. Or, in any case, he was in close contact with his moles in the Pentagon, deeply involved in planning Oil War II-South America, who need the excuse of the FARC guerrillas (whom Uribe keeps claiming they have defeated) to build up the U.S. military forces in the region, for their next oil war.
Another suspect is this badass Bushwhack ambassador in Colombia, Brownfield, whom Obama/Clinton have mysteriously kept in place in Bogota. Evidence is that both the bombing/raid on Ecuador, and the later orchestrated 'rescue' of Ingrid Betancourt (to which John McCain was invited, during his campaign for president) were run out of the "war room" in the U.S. embassy in Bogota (where they bragged about--and let leak--that they had live a video feed of the Betancourt 'rescue').
So I am not buying that this massive U.S. military build-up in Colombia has anything at all to do with the FARC guerrillas. The FARC is merely an excuse--a lie--comparable to the WMDs in Iraq. They blame the FARC for kidnappings, drug dealing and murder. Kidnappings they surely have been guilty of--and have been roundly condemned for it, by leftist leaders throughout the region, including Fidel Castro. Drug dealing? They deny it, but if they're doing it, they are no different than the people shooting at them--the Colombian military and its death squads. And who is overwhelmingly responsible for extrajudicial murders in Colombia? Not the FARC! Amnesty International, for instance, attributes 95% of the murders of union leaders in Colombia directly to the Colombian military (about half) and to its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). The mayhem in Colombia is mostly the doing of the Colombian military and its highly corrupt, death-squad connected, drug lord connected government!
This makes it easy for the U.S. to create a client state. U.S. client states need highly corrupt leaders, willing to sell out their countrymen, their country's resources and its sovereignty to a foreign power, in exchange for riches beyond belief--$6 BILLION in military aid, billions more in other stealable aid (which never gets to the poor), and billions more in payoffs and profits from global corporate predators like Monsanto, Chiquita International, Occidental Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Dyncorp, Blackwater and all the war profiteers, in addition to rakeoffs from World Bank/IMF loan sharks, indebting the poor majority for decades to come.
And into this cauldron of corruption, the U.S. introduces seven new military bases--for what?
Other possibilities, short of war: Oppression--to bolster the Colombian military in its murderous, torturing, bloody boot on the neck of the labor movement in Colombia, and in smashing all the legitimate aspirations of the poor--in the interest of the global corporate predators who want to operate in Colombia with slave labor conditions, and/or to steal Colombia's resources. This is what the U.S. is doing in Mexico. It is what the U.S. is doing in Peru and Haiti and Jamaica. This is what the U.S. does, for economic exploitation purposes. Where it can, it funds and uses the local leaders, police and military to prevent the poor from organizing against "free trade" domination and impoverishment. And where needed, it introduces the U.S. military--with various lies and excuses--the "war on drugs," Saddam is a bad man with WMDs--to support the local fascists, or to directly kill and torture people to steal their oil.
Which are they doing in Colombia? Seven new U.S. military argues for the latter. Not just economic exploitation. Not just subduing Colombia's poor--who couldn't be much more "under the nazi boot" than they are now. (It could actually get worse, if Santos becomes 'president.') Seven new U.S. military bases--and other indications (reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean; the coup in Honduras) point to war.
Is this to be just a continuation of the war of attrition that the Bushwhacks have waged against Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and other uppity leftist countries? I think not. I think the "war of attrition" is a preliminary to war, not a substitute. Our government's true rulers--the multi-national corporations who rule over us--want more than to destroy the economies of countries who have committed to social justice. They want more than to smear and demonize good leaders who were actually elected by their people (in election systems that are far, far more transparent than our own). They want more than to purchase Latin American leaders who will act in their interests. And they want more than the oil--the main driver of U.S. foreign policy over the last decade. They want to smash this leftist democracy movement, that has swept most of South America and half of Central America, to pieces. True democracy in Latin America is the biggest threat they have ever faced. (And they are absolutely terrified that it will happen here--which is why our voting system is now run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by far rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. They fear us. They really do.)
And, finally, is this "just" war profiteering? The Pentagon and its filthy contractors needing venues for the expenditure of multi-billions of U.S. tax dollars to line their own pockets in the immediate future and forevermore? I think this is part of it. But the seven new bases and the other indicators (including the intensifying propaganda campaign against Chavez and Correa) point strongly to something even worse--to the manufacture of war. Again.
The Bushwhacks tried to provoke Ecuador and Venezuela into a "hot" war last year. Correa and Chavez wisely did not take the bait. But that's what our government--its real rulers--want, and it doesn't seem to matter who is in the White House.
The leaders of South America are a polite bunch--even Chavez--considering the provocations they have endured. They tend to speak in subdued and reasonable tones. They want peace. They can't afford war. War is the one thing that will destroy their social justice programs. And they are used to more reasonable political discourse, because they have very strong grass roots movements who demand reality in political discourse--real issues, real problem-solving--not the bullshit we are subjected to here. (Their media is just as bad, but their politicians are not--because they have honest, transparent elections, and a politically active populace.) The chorus of alarms throughout South and Central America over these seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia is, to say the least, unusual. And I believe that what they are NOT saying is that this is an act of war. And I think that their next move may be to toss Colombia out of UNASUR--the new South American "common market"--and get serious about Brazil's proposal for a "common defense" (which Colombia has been obstructing). They have little choice. The gauntlet has been thrown--not by Bush. By Obama.
Obama may be dealing with an insurrection at the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and other power centers, led by Bushwhack moles (in collusion with DINOs like Clinton? I'm not sure). He may be--I stress may be--letting this plan play out, possibly because he doesn't have much power to stop it, and is hoping that the leaders of South America, and good people, groups and leaders within this country, can do so--can give him the ammunition he needs to stop it. I still tend to think that Obama is a good guy, who has placed himself in a very difficult situation--leader of the new Roman Empire--with the best of intentions, to do what good he is able to do, with his hands tied behind his back. I don't know this for sure. It is my gut feeling about Obama.
I just wanted to say this, because I am convinced that the Dark Lords are dragging us toward another oil war, and it's important to try to sort out who is really responsible for this, and where we stand, as a people, in our ability to prevent it. I think Obama does want peace, but doesn't have much power to achieve it. We need to bolster him--if we believe he is a peacemaker--and other peacemakers, in whatever ways we can. And we need to be very alert to Diebold & brethren's power to get rid of him, and bring in somebody who loves war. In fact, the best thing we could do for Obama, to insure his re-election, is to throw these goddamned "TRADE SECRET' voting machines into 'Boston Harbor.' Otherwise, McCain-who has been furiously funneling millions of US tax dollars to every fascist coup plotter in Latin America (through the "International Republican Institute"/USAID-NED budgets)--or someone like him--is going to be Diebolded into the White House in 2012, and the next thing will be another oil war.
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