Obama says ‘days of meddling’ in Latin America are past

[Judi Lynn]

Source: BBC News

Obama says ‘days of meddling’ in Latin America are past
18 minutes ago



US President Barack Obama has told Latin American leaders that the days when his country could freely interfere in regional affairs are past.

He was speaking just before the seventh Summit of the Americas was due to kick off in Panama City.

Mr Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro will meet face-to-face for the first time since a December detente. But their much-anticipated meeting could be overshadowed by tensions between the US and Venezuela.

Mr Obama told a forum of civil society leaders in Panama City that "the days in which our agenda in this hemisphere presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past".

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32261550

[leveymg]

1. Unless it's Venezuela. n/t

[Larry Engels]

27. +1.

[L0oniX]

32. +2

[FLPanhandle]

35. No need to meddle in Venezuela

They are doing a better job of screwing up their own country than the best 1950's CIA agents could dream of.

[DeSwiss]

41. Well yeah!

- That's because the CIA never left.

[TBF]

46. ^ this. nt

[burrowowl]

47. Venezuela or

Honduras or etc.

BS Obama!

[Judi Lynn]

49. Absolutely. Just pretend Venezuela's not even really there during press briefings.

It's pretty doubtful all Latin America, which has witnessed US intervention in all their internal affairs, are going to be looking the other way with this, no matter how much money the U.S. pours into opposition groups in order to destabilize the leftist governments.

At some point, U.S. Americans are going to learn enough about what has been happening to start demanding their tax dollars stop going to these countries to fund destabilization efforts, sometimes violence against the citizens who want democratic leaders, and all people having hope outside the narrow, tiny, racist white oligarchies who want the US to overthrow their democratic leaders, so they can resume stealing their countries blind again.

[project_bluebook]

3. Unless a republican president gets elected

then all bets are off.

[Judi Lynn]

18. No kidding! That's their idea of heaven, making life a never ending nightmare for poor people. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

50. Yep, they'll be hauling out their torture equipment again in the Americas, to get back to business.

No one helps the wealthy, murderously greedy, criminally insane racist bigots who've swindled their fellow humans blind, and wormed their way to power, in Latin America more than a good old racist ghoul in the White House sending them boatloads of money, and instructors to refresh their memories in torture of political prisoners, like one of the first torture teachers who became famous in his lifetime: Daniel Mitrione, who taught torture in Brazil and Uruguay.

The more anyone learns about him who hasn't already known, the more astonished he/she is in discovering the US was busy sending torture specialists to the Americas as far back as Dwight D. Eisenhower's Presidency in the 1950's.

[rpannier]

4. He actually said 'with impunity'

That doesn't mean the US won't meddle
And what is Washington's definition of 'meddling with impunity' anyway?

[Larry Engels]

28. It's different from plain meddling.

That can go on just the same.

[Cal33]

29. Would deliberately inventing some excuse and provoking a small nation so that we

could go in militarily and make a grab for their oil or some other natural resource
come under "plain meddling?"

[Larry Engels]

31. Yes, yes.

We would own up to our meddling and take responsibility, based on our excuse. It's that simple!

[MisterP]

45. this time we're meddling without going through the cartels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_%C3%81ngel_F%C3%A9lix_Gallardo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Caro_Quintero
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Matta-Ballesteros

[RufusTFirefly]

5. Hah! Reminds me a little of "We tortured some folks."

Oops! Sor-ry! No biggie! Our bad.

[BeanMusical]

7. +1

[Judi Lynn]

19. That's for sure. They've been teaching LaTam military people how to torture at the S.O.A.

at Ft. Benning, Georgia, moved there after some time in Panama.

Lots of the School of the Americas graduates have become war criminals in their own Latin American countries after graduation. What an accomplishment.

[RufusTFirefly]

23. Yes, but wasn't S.O.A. tastefully "rebranded"?

You know, kind of like Academi used to be Xe Services, which used to be Blackwater?
(And before that, it was probably Sturmabteilung)

[L0oniX]

33. +2

[BeanMusical]

6. He really said that?

[Judi Lynn]

20. What a cut-up! n/t

[americannightmare]

8. When I see that the situation...

in Venezuela is stabilized, then I'll know that 'promise' has been fulfilled. Otherwise, it's just meddling without impunity, whatever the hell that would look like - probably very much like the current meddling...

[Marksman_91]

26. The unstable situation in Venezuela was brought by their own governments incomptence and corruption

They've been using the same US sabotage excuse for years now without producing any kind of significant proof to back it. Obviously they're just trying to find a scapegoat for their problems. Just look at any other LatAm country, none of them are using the chavista model of governance.

[Doctor_J]

9. he's gotten to be a first class bullshitter

All ready for his speaking career

[jwirr]

10. Was he talking to all of them?

[BeanMusical]

11. I'm sure that none of them believed him.

[jalan48]

12. I thought the CIA decided that-they are over the President, right?

[Judi Lynn]

21. That's the impression we can get, for sure! n/t

[OnyxCollie]

13. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[vlakitti]

14. My sentiments exactly

Over 100,000 Guatemalan people dead in the 1980s due to Reagan. Worse than Henry Kissinger's coup in Chile by far, worse than El Salvador. All of them awful, and carefully planned.

[Jesus Malverde]

37. Even more recently (2009) honduras.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_coup_d'état

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

[Judi Lynn]

38. That was sadly a big hit with the right wingers, and it happened in 2009. Dirty, evil, bloody.

Honduras went straight to the pit of hell in a handbag immediately after they did it, and US Congress people swarmed down there to throw their floppy arms around the coup President Micheletti, led by Cuban "exile' Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Continual political heavy violence since then, when it started with curfews to force people to stay in their houses all night so they couldn't protest without getting shot, and protesters getting kidnapped by black suv's with blacked-out windows, ending up tortured, and sometimes tortured and murdered, thrown out into fields, and the streets.

Nothing like a right-wing coup to hurl the poor people into a living nightmare. Meanwhile, this administration continues to send foreign aid to this hell-hole. At least the tiny few super-wealthy oligarchs who supported the coup are doing great, as they expected.

[Zorra]

15. We am not a crook. nt

[Judi Lynn]

40. You betcha! Not a chance, we're squeaky clean. n/t

[ronnie624]

16. No more "full spectrum dominance" of South America?

I'm very skeptical.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Almost impossible to believe, isn't it? It would destroy the Republicans.

Hating the Latin American people is dear to their racist, fascist hearts.

[ronnie624]

17. Funny how the media establishment

characterizes the rhetoric from Latin American leaders about US imperialism as a matter of opinion, as if there isn't a voluminous historical record, detailing US conduct, and as if dominion over the entire Western Hemisphere isn't enshrined in policy doctrines, like the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary.

I sure wish we valued education more highly

[JonLP24]

24. Blind faith, loyalty(to US foreign policy). & willfull ignorance are part of the problem as well

including the media

Much thanks to GrumpyComrade
22WEISBROT Mark, “Venezuela’s Struggle, Widely Misrepresented, Remains a Classic Conflict Between Right and Left” in The Guardian, March 4, 2014. Consulted on http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/venezuelas-struggle-widely-misrepresented-remains-a-classic-conflict-between-right-and-left on March 3, 2015. ; BHATT Keane, “U.S. Destabilization and Media Distortion in Venezuela (Interview)” on NACLA, on February 25, 2014. Consulted on https://nacla.org/news/2014/2/25/us-destabilization-and-media-distortion-venezuela-interview on March 3, 2015; PARTYKA Nicholas, “On the Recent Crisis in Venezuela: Confronting the US Media Narrative about the Crisis” The Hampton Institute, on July 2nd, 2014. Consulted on http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/us-media-and-venezuela.html#.VPXfIywnzF8 on March 3, 2015.

The Media Effect: How the News Influences Politics and Government
https://books.google.com/books?id=f4JiYcdq-NsC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=us+media+saudi+arabia&source=bl&ots=BR_Hx1Wu4V&sig=Qu5hJYPMrDAfzQjzj7aZLF7sWkM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nwgpVd7QMNDhoATf1oCQDg&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=us%20media%20saudi%20arabia&f=false

[ronnie624]

25. Thanks. Those are very informative. n/t

[Cal Carpenter]

34. Not just the 'media establishment'

Plenty of folks on DU react to insinuations of US meddling in the region with charges of 'oh you're a conspiracy theorist' when the historical record is quite clear.

Some folks may just not know the truth, but it's hard to believe if they spend so much time on DU and other political news oriented sites that they don't know even recent history.

[WestSeattle2]

30. Well, they're over until the next Republican administration, or the CIA decides to use their own

playbook. That goes without saying of course, all of the world has experienced both first hand.

[Judi Lynn]

39. It's not provable that they aren't doing it now! They seem to believe they are omnipotent. n/t

[roamer65]

36. Bullshit.

This country has never given up on, nor will give up on the Monroe Doctrine.

After Cuba went communist, it morphed into an idea of containment.

[DeSwiss]

42. They all look so tense, don't they?

- They need to loosen up!

K&R

[Judi Lynn]

44. Thanks for posting this video. Great. n/t

[DeSwiss]

48. Clearly Jose' stash got lost with his luggage at the airport.

- Or, if he drove then he probably left it in the car....



Mandatory Marijuana


By the looks of those sour faces though, they could really could have used a few joints at that meeting. We really might have made some progress......

[quadrature]

43. the peoples of the Middle East are not so lucky. 21 more months of meddling...nt