When are we who are forced to fund this insane "war" going to get a clue?
----------------------
You also gotta laugh (sometimes that's all you can do) at the upshot of U.S. "free trade for the rich": rule by the Even Bigger Mob, whom the lesser Mobs admire, imitate and gain protection (not to mention weapons) from, at a price. The Transglobal Mob.
The lesser Mobs launder their money through the Transglobal Mob and may eventually stop murdering shopkeepers and leftists in selected zones, as all the Mobs converge upward into one big monopoly of wealth and power that likes to create a few fenced off playgrounds for itself and its servants.
I think that's where Medellin and Santa Marta (and a few other "zones" in Colombia) are headed, after the prelims are over (fertilization of the soil with the bodies of labor leaders and other advocates of the poor, and with the uncooperative, whether small local business owners and community activists or the smaller, more local drug traffickers whose profits tend to remain in, and benefit, the local community). Once local interests are entirely broken, this particular regional Mob will merge with the Transglobal Mob--and a sort of 'Pax Romana' may result but one that is a lot more rickety, and a lot shorter, than the original.
The U.S. Empire ain't the Roman Empire, as to longevity, or even the British Empire, as to its security guarantees. And Colombia, I think, is going to be one of the "poster children" of its early demise.
Rome had its Caligula's, Nero's and other inbred monsters. England had its George III's. Both suffered internal contradictions and failures of leadership. But neither ever suffered any regime quite so destructive as the Bush Junta, which systematically looted the state, handed the country's credit over to ludicrously irresponsible and greedy banksters for centuries to come, destroyed national manufacturing, built nothing, trashed existing infrastructure, deliberately, maliciously destroyed public agencies, deliberately, maliciously super-corrupted the entire federal government and Pentagon establishment, ripped up the remaining shreds of the Constitution, INEPTLY engaged in wars of dominion, on a scale of ineptitude reminiscent of--I don't know, Kaiser Wilhelm?--INVITED, FOSTERED, CREATED insecurity on a global scale, failed at virtually all diplomacy seemingly on purpose, alienated allies everywhere it went, and seemed out to deliberately despoil their country's reputation and cache in the world, in every respect, from prosperity and human rights at home to arbiter of world peace.
Now think of this wrecking crew at work in Colombia, cocaine capital of the world. The $7 BILLION, U.S. taxpayer funded "war on drugs" FLIPPED OVER into a war to CONTROL drug profits. That's the upshot of Bush Junta "policy" in Colombia, in my opinion.
And it is THAT kind of "policy" that dooms the U.S. empire to early decline--the rich merging with the crime bosses. Collapse of the rule of law. No safety even for the obedient and the go-alongs. A farcical politics of the .5% vs the .5%, with the 99% spit upon by everybody. A joke of a country and the joke's on us, and it is the dirtiest, bloodiest joke of all that this government has anything to do with democracy, here or anywhere else.
I cannot exonerate our Democratic Party leaders of colluding with the Bush Junta Destruction Machine. We all know or suspect what their failures have been. But, back up a decade, to just before the Supreme Court crowned as our Idiot King the man who LOST the 2000 election, and think forward from there to how things would have gone, for this country, if that had not occurred.
You may loathe many aspects of the U.S. Empire, as I do, but still wish that it had maintained a steady course with decent (or at least lawful) leadership. Collapsing empires are not pretty things and the falling debris always hurts the innocent! As with bloody revolutions, it is a sin to wish either thing on anybody (collapsing empire; violent insurrection). And I do NOT do so. I wish we could go back to that moment in time and start over. THEN we would have had a chance to right the many wrongs of the Clinton presidency and even if we could not have done so, it was a better world than this one (and, believe me, I do not look back blindly, especially with regard to Clinton policy in Latin America and other regions of vast and induced poverty).
You might say we have "decent" leadership now. Without disparaging any individual leader like Obama, who may at least have some "decent" impulses, I don't think it matters because I don't think he's in charge. His power is so limited by the Bushwhack fascists who destroyed the U.S.A. that OUR chance--the chance of "we the people" to right the ship of state--is over. It died with the corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, spread all over the country, circa 2002 to 2004, by traitorous act of our own party leaders in the Anthrax Congress (who, in the same month, passed the "Iraq War Resolution"!).
We can still undo THAT treason--their giving a far rightwing-connected, PRIVATE corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold) control over our election results--but it will be very difficult, may take years of dogged public education and will likely be too late. Political opportunity and power are now directly controlled by far rightwing forces, in cahoots with Transglobal Corporations and War Profiteers, and they can do with that power whatever they wish, including this "interim" presidency for consolidation of their immense fascist gains while they wipe peoples' memories of what they did between 2000 and 2008.
Colombia is the apotheosis of what they did--merging of the rich with the crime bosses. Luckily, the rest of Latin America is going the other way--away from U.S. corporate/war profiteer rape, away from the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs," toward independence and social justice. Venezuela, right next door to Colombia, now has THE most equal wealth distribution in Latin America (according to the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean). Colombia has one of the worst. Other countries with leftist governments (many) are also faring well. It may take Colombia centuries to get past what the Bush Junta did to it but at least it has a chance, given the awesome leftist democracy movement that has swept South America. We are not so fortunate. We are the "huddled masses" trapped inside this swiftly declining Empire, whose every path back toward democracy has been blocked.
Barack Obama may well have been elected. I believe that he was. The problem is that he was also PERMITTED TO BE elected. And the other problem is that neither he, nor any elected official in this country, can prove it. The proof has been removed. It is a 'TRADE SECRET.' (And don't talk to me about paper backups that are counted. These so-called "audits" are a farce--and even that farce--a 1% "audit"--is not possible in half the states in the country!) Transparent vote counting is the bottom line of democracy. The bottom line is GONE.
Thus, the rich and the crime bosses rule, here and in U.S. client states like Colombia.
= new reply since forum marked as read
