OAS refuses to exclude Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

OAS refuses to exclude Venezuela

www.chinaview.cn 2008-02-16 10:37:22

BOGOTA, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Organization of American States(OAS) refused Friday to exclude Venezuela from the OAS as proposed by the United States.

"I would never agree to exclude any country from my organization," said secretary general of the group, Jose Insulza.

"I hope these things do not happen. I believe it is a mistake to try to exclude them, it is a serious mistake to try to reject their participation," said Insulza.

Meanwhile, the OAS also refused to list Venezuela as a country supporting terrorism, which was proposed by U.S. congressmen.

More:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/16/content_7613797.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. The trend is just the opposite--toward excluding the U.S. That is Bush's legacy--

we are now despised by all the peaceful, democratic countries in the world, including most of South America, in addition to everyone else. At the last meeting of Latin America countries, Spain and Portugal--at which King Juan Carlos' insulting "shut up" to Hugo Chavez eclipsed all other news (in our corporate monopoly press anyway)--there was a four hour meeting to discuss a Nicaraguan proposal to create a new OAS without the U.S. as a member. U.S. policy has never promoted democracy in Latin America (except for a brief period during the Carter era) and has always served the interests of giant U.S. corporations and local fascist elites and their repressive thugs, never more so than by the Bush Junta.

This article is quite odd in its perspective. It's just a bad bit of reporting to begin with. It doesn't explain why it even mentions FARC, which is a leftist guerrilla group of more than forty years duration in Colombia. And it fails to mention that the OAS recently voted Venezuela a member of the OAS Human Rights Commission. Venezuela is not only a member in good standing of the OAS, and the one of the best democracies in the western hemisphere, it is greatly admired throughout South America, and its president Hugo Chavez has strong allies in the presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil and Nicaragua, and considerable kinship (leftist policy, social justice) with Uruguay and Chile. He is in fact one of the key leaders of a leftist (majorityist) movement that has swept the continent.

The article fails to even hint at this context. And this context is needed to understand how very peculiar the Bush's Junta's proposal was, to exclude Venezuela from the OAS. In fact, it's so peculiar, I've re-read the article several times, wondering if it's even true, but then, nothing that the Bush Junta does should surprise us, I guess. If they made this a formal proposal to the OAS, they did so for other reasons than any expectation that it would actually be passed. (It would be like Congress voting California off the island.) However, it does fit with their corporate media strategy of demonizing Chavez at every turn, no matter what the facts are. They say and do a lot of things just for anti-Chavez headlines, to create a general negative impression of Chavez in the U.S., so that North Americans will remain asleep (not care too much) when they move against Venezuela, to regain corporate/fascist control of Venezuela and other Andes oil fields.

Here are the recent visible outlines of that war plan (Oil War II: South America): a) Exxon Mobile's recent move to destabilize Venezuela's economy and cause unrest and civil disorder, by freezing $12 billion in Venezuelan assets, in a dispute over Venezuela's 60% cut of its own oil profits (--a deal that five other oil corps have agreed to, including Conoco and even Chevron), and b) Donald Rumsfeld's recommendation, in Dec 07, that the U.S. to take "swift action in support of "friends and allies" in South America (i.e., fascist thugs planning coups).

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"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


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Exxon Mobile's financial warfare is a direct assault on Venezuela's economy, and literally takes food out of the mouths of Venezuela's poor children, since the Chavez government uses Venezuela's oil profits to benefit the poor. The U.S./Bush Junta has been trying to foment a rightwing coup in Venezuela for half a decade--and have repeatedly failed due to the strength of Venezuela's democracy, one of the most mind-boggling ironies of Bush Junta policy, which is extremely anti-democratic (at home and abroad). The word "democracy" turns to ashes in their mouths.

So this isn't new. What's new is that it has now been combined with this overt act of war by Exxon Mobile, and that Donald Rumsfeld is the war strategist.

The article mentions FARC, but leaves out the context of Chavez'a recent success in negotiations with FARC--at the behest of the Colombian government, the families of FARC hostages, and many world leaders including the president of France. The U.S./Bush Junta has actively sought to sabotage those negotiations, including extreme U.S./Bush pressure on its client state, Colombia, to withdraw the request that Chavez undertake the negotiations. Chavez won release of two hostages, and is now negotiating for more releases. This is the first hopeful sign that the 40-year Colombian civil war might be ended with a peace settlement. Peace in Colombia is very much not in the interest of the Bush Junta, nor of the war profiteers who are benefiting from billions in U.S. military aid to Colombia.

Colombian security forces and closely associated rightwing paramilitaries--aided and abetted by U.S./Bush Junta (our taxpayer money) funding--are responsible for horrendous atrocities against innocent parties in Colombia--the tortures and deaths of thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers and journalists. These atrocities, and drugs/weapons trafficking, have been closely tied to the Uribe government (Bush's pals). The rightwing paramilitaries in Colombia also hatched a plot to assassinate Chavez and topple Venezuela's democratic government. Colombia Pres. Uribe was obliged to meet with Chavez last year, to apologize to him (possibly how the Uribe request to Chavez to negotiate hostage releases originated), and the rightwing opposition candidate in Venezuela in the presidential election in Dec 06 had to publicly disavow this plot. (It was a highly monitored and transparent election which Chavez won with 60% of the vote. Penn and Schoen--the Washington DC P.R. firm--concocted a false poll, saying Chavez didn't win, which was supposed to spark riots, destabilization and another violent, rightwing military coup attempt.)

The China news service mentions "congressmen" who proposed the absurd idea that Venezuela be deemed a "terrorist" country by the OAS. It doesn't say who they are. But, whoever they are, they are certainly only looking for headlines. And one of their motives may be to counter the work of other U.S. congress members--those working with labor unions who are appalled at the murders of union leaders in Colombia, and have scuttled the U.S./Bush Junta-Colombian "free trade" deal because nothing is being done about it. The Colombian government--one of the Bush Junta's only allies in South America (the other is Peru)--is singularly responsible for most of the terrorist violence in South America. It is all concentrated in Colombia, and is committed by people who are closely tied to officialdom. (FARC's portion of violence is minor by comparison--in the estimation of every human rights group who has studied the matter.)

The other motive of these "congressmen" (who want to slander Venezuela as a 'terrorist' country) may be to aid the psyops part of Rumsfeld/Exxon Mobile 's oil war.

[Peace Patriot]

2. The REAL trend in South America...

A bit more context (of all the context missing from the article): The Nicaraguan proposal to create a new OAS, with no U.S.A. (exclude U.S. membership) is paradigmatic of concrete developments in South America--for instance, creation of the Bank of the South, a regionally controlled financial institution (and brainchild of Venezuela), which is driving the U.S./World Bank loan sharks out of the region. (The World Bank's extraction of profits from South America's poor has dropped dramatically, from approx. 80% of its profits, five years ago, to, I think, 1% now.) The opposition of the Bolivarian allies to U.S.-dominated "free trade"--and also the simple facts of such "free trade," that it creates vast poverty--has also become the overwhelming trend, as has dislike and rejection of the highly corrupt, failed U.S. "war on drugs."

The rise of strictly Latin American trade organizations--Mercosur, and ALBA--also represents concrete evidence of the overwhelming trend toward curtailment of U.S. power and that of U.S. global corporate predator interests. In Venezuela and Bolivia, the governments have made very clear to U.S. and other corporations that they may operate within the borders of these countries if and only if they respect the sovereignty of the people who live there, who have the inherent right to control and benefit from their own resources. Both countries have proposed reasonable deals to these corporations. They have not excluded them entirely. Venezuela has basically proposed a Venezuela share of 60% in the oil profits, to 40% for foreign corporations, which has been agreed to, or is considered reasonable, by France's Total, British BP, Norway's Statoil, Conoco and even Chevron. Only Exxon Mobile--with its intimate ties to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld--refused the deal, refused to talk about it, and went running to the U.S./Bush-controlled World Bank for "arbitration," and immediately showed bad faith in that as well, by seeking to freeze Venezuela's assets, not to force more profit from them, in my opinion, but to topple the government.

South Americans are really and truly fed up with this brutal behavior by the U.S., and the overwhelming political trend is to pursue regional cooperation, regional development, regional financing, and strong social justice policy, to throw the U.S. and its predatory corporations off their backs.

As for this ridiculous U.S proposal to evict Venezuela from the OAS, when the Bush Junta last tried to strongarm South American leaders into "isolating" Chavez, Nestor Kirchner (then president of Venezuela) replied, "But he is my brother!"

That is the political trend that is winning, and that Exxon-Mobile/Rumsfeld are so desperate to reverse. They won't succeed, no how matter how much trouble, grief, turmoil and chaos they create, and the reason is the success of DEMOCRACY in South America, while they were preoccupied with mass murder and chaos-making in the Middle East.