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Edited on Sat May-15-10 02:18 PM by Peace Patriot
on earth--a country where the military itself is responsible for half the murders of union leaders and where the money and the guns provided by U.S. taxpayers filter down to the government-tied paramilitary death squads, who have committed the other half of the murders of union leaders, in addition to massive killings by both the military and its death squads of community organizers of every kind, human rights workers, teachers, journalists, peasant farmers and others who dare to oppose the bloody-handed fascist government that the U.S. government props up with $7 BILLION taken from us!
THIS is what the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" CONTINUES to support!
And, believe me, it has NOTHING TO DO with interdicting drugs and EVERYTHING TO DO with, a) war profiteering, and b) war. The U.S. now has SEVEN U.S. military bases in Colombia, in a deal that gives U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors' total diplomatic immunity for whatever they do in Colombia; newly refurbished U.S. military bases in Panama, Honduras and on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast and in the Caribbean with the reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II) in summer 2008. What is all this U.S. militarism FOR? According to a USAF document uncovered by Eva Golinger, the purpose is "full spectrum" military operations in South America, to counter drugs (har-har), terrorism (uh-huh) and "anti-U.S. countries." Guess who that means?
The U.S. "war on drugs" is cover for the next oil war.
I think that the U.S. "war on drugs" is worse than a war on the poor, here and in Latin America. It is worse than a massive military and police boondoggle. And it is worse than corrupt. All of these war assets that the Pentagon has put in place surround Venezuela's oil coast and oil-rich northern provinces, I believe are aimed at the biggest oil reserves on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's) in Venezuela. I don't know--and nobody except Pentagon war planners know--if or when this war will be instigated. All I am saying is the means and motive for such a war are in place, and somebody is very likely working on the opportunity--a Colombia/Venezuela border incident involving U.S. troops or war planes, for instance (such as was rehearsed during the Bush Junta--March 2008--in Ecuador, an ally of Venezuela, also oil rich and adjacent to Colombia to the south), or the ripening of a fascist plot within Venezuela for the oil provinces to secede from the national government (as was rehearsed in Bolivia--another Venezuelan ally--in September 2008).
The U.S. desperately wants to "circle the wagons" in the Caribbean/Central America region against the rising leftist democracy tide in Latin America. Indeed, one of the coup generals in Honduras stated that their coup was intended "to prevent communism in Venezuela from reaching the United States" (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). President Zelaya had not only raised the minimum wage (affecting U.S. corporate sweatshops in Honduras) and taken other measures to benefit and empower the poor majority, he proposed converting the U.S. military base in Honduras to a commercial airport. And that is probably why the U.S. commanders at that base sat on their hands, when the Honduran military plane carrying the kidnapped president out of the country at gunpoint, stopped at the U.S. military base for refueling. Honduras is the traditional U.S. stepping-stone for U.S. aggression in Latin America. That is where Reagan's and John Negroponte's death squads mustered for their war against the leftist majorities in Nicaragua and El Salvador. (Note: Hillary Clinton had John Negroponte as one of her advisers on the Honduran coup.)
Maybe this greatly increased U.S. military presence all around Venezuela--using the cover of the U.S. "war on drugs"--is merely to bully and intimidate a government that dares to use the country's oil revenues to bootstrap the poor--anathema to our capitalists--and that holds transparent and internationally certified elections--anathema to our politicians and corporate rulers. But I don't think so. I think its purpose is more than bullying and intimidation, and more than slaughtering poor people and their advocates in Colombia (and now in Honduras), and more than jailing African-American men here, and more than nazifying our own society, and more than a boondoggle. I think there is a war plan to grab Venezuela's oil, as the linchpin of the "circle the wagons" strategy, in the Caribbean/Central America, to impose "free trade for the rich" on that region, backed by the U.S. military, fueled by Venezuela's oil (and possibly netting in Ecuador's oil as well).
I think this plan was designed by the Bushwhacks--as a failsafe against their failure to grab Iran's oil--but I have seen no sign thus far that the Obama administration doesn't also support it and many signs that they do. Obama may be powerless to prevent a second oil war. (That's what Chavez thinks. He said that Obama "is the prisoner of the Pentagon.") I really don't know. But he supports the U.S. military occupation of Colombia, and all of this militarism in the region, as well as the on-going psyops and disinformation campaign against Chavez and his strongest allies (the presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador, in particular, but with the most vitriol aimed at Chavez), and Obama permitted Hillary Clinton to engineer (and use our tax dollars to pay for) a "martial law" election in Honduras, even while more than a hundred anti-coup activists were being murdered with impunity.
And there are almost no signs in the direction of peace and democracy, except the probable dumping of the blood-soaked Uribe regime in Colombia by the CIA, and the rise of a more "centrist' candidate for president (than Uribe's blood-soaked successor, former Defense minister Manuel Santos) who seems to have the blessing of our corpo-fascist press. This could be Obama/Clinton/Panetta maneuvering to get the "free trade for the rich" Colombia/U.S. trade agreement through Congress--not really a turn for the better in U.S. Latin American policy. Uribe and his death squads and big drug lords get immunity, like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld--and the rich get richer, with a facade of democratic consent. That, so far, is the ONLY sign that Obama and our political establishment may prefer means short of war in Latin America to serve our corporate masters and war profiteers. Everything else points to war--which probably wouldn't be an outright invasion, a la Iraq, but more like Vietnam, using a bought and paid for proxy military and corrupt local fascists as cover.
Latin America, as a whole, is going through a struggle for independence from the U.S. and its corporate rulers. This struggle has many leaders, but Chavez in Venezuela and Lula da Silva in Brazil are probably its strongest leaders, and they are strongly allied with each other on this and other issues. Lulu has resisted every effort by the U.S. to split up this alliance. It is clearly the will of the majority in Latin America for Latin American countries to form their own economic block, to serve their own interests including social justice and to wield their rightful power in the world, based on their rich natural resources, their numbers and their long hard work on democracy and human rights. We must not underestimate our corporate rulers' desperation to stop this vast political/economic/social movement in Latin America, by any means necessary--even a war they cannot win, but which might serve purposes of destabilization, chaos, division, fear and partial gains for them. If nothing else, the Iraq War taught us the unreasonableness of these desperate and greed-based forces, and their identification of us--we, the people of the United States--as one of the "enemies" they must defeat, one way or another (through 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines?), to achieve their aim of controlling other peoples' resources and dominating the world. We should be aware that they very likely have another scheme in train to further these goals. And all that oil flowing into the waters off Louisiana and Florida--into the fisheries and onto the beaches--may well motivate them further as to the vast reserve of oil not that far away, in what they call "their backyard."
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(Edits of typos.)
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