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He wasn't the first to propose this. It's been around as a proposal for a while, since the airport near the capitol is inadequate for commercial travel. But he was probably the most serious about a complete conversion and removal of the US military base. Combined with his turning against US-dominated "free trade" (slave labor at pittance wages), his raising the minimum wage, his joining ALBA (regional barter trade group intended to elbow out US-dominated "free trade"), he was giving the Reich here and in Honduras reasons to oppose him, but the extremes they went to are puzzling, as you say. It doesn't make much sense. I think his alliance with Chavez is a red herring by the Reich and their corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies. He's allied with Chavez and with a whole bunch of other leaders who have strongly come to his defense--Lula da Silva in Brazil, Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, Michelle Batchelet in Chile, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and all of his immediate neighbors--the leaders of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Chavez is the Reich's bogey-man, on whom they blame any good ideas that arise anywhere for the benefit of the poor majority. They've poured dogged energy and probably billions of dollars into demonizing him. It's just ludicrous. But their "blaming" Zelaya's policies on Chavez may be an indication of what is really going on--that is, this coup is part of a war plan. The obvious target of this war is Venezuela's oil, and probably also Ecuador's and Cuba's. But even Lula da Silva in Brazil is worried about US aggression in regard to Brazil's oil. He mentioned this when the Bushwhacks reconstituted the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, last summer. He said it was a threat to Brazil's oil. (Everybody knows it's a threat to Venezuela.)
A lot of assets are being put in place for this war--for instance, five US military bases in Colombia--a country run by narco-fascists, with one of the worst human rights records on earth, and with fascist rule enforced by the brutal Colombian military, and where the Sec of Defense is now running for president. (Think, Donald Rumsfeld--that's who Santos very much resembles). Colombia has a long border with Venezuela, and Venezuela has already had a lot of trouble from the Colombian military and its death squads in the border regions. Another asset: Honduras. Those planning Oil War II-South America want a friendly government in Honduras--the current coupsters, or some less ugly substitute (their fallback position)--in order to take advantage of Honduras' strategic location as a launching pad for aggression in Central America and the Caribbean (like some of these same operatives--John Negroponte, Otto Reich--did in the 1980s). Honduras doesn't have oil, but it sure has location--including a long coast on the Caribbean, access to the Pacific, and borders with three countries now with leftist governments. It has an existing US military base. Its military officers are trained at the School of the Americas and have a history of human rights abuse. Honduras is a client state of the US, controllable through military and other funding. Zelaya was trying to change that--to assert Honduran sovereignty and independence. They had to get rid of him.
What I'm saying is that this coup in Honduras is a move by which to further demonize Chavez, and then take Venezuela's oil--most of which is located on its northern Caribbean coast, in provinces where rightwing politicians talk openly of secession. They may also try to take Ecuador's northern oil state (bordering Colombia to the south), and other oil, maybe Cuba's, maybe even Brazil's. These oil fields are essentially undefended, right in the US "backyard." The Reich was denied Iran. Where else can they get the oil they need to rule the world?
These war planners have the immense obstacle, in this era of the internet and iPhones, of the success of the leftist democracy movement in most of South America and half of Central America. They've tried their corpo/fascist best to paint Chavez as a "dictator"--to smear the entire left with that brush--but the problem is that Chavez is not a dictator, and everybody south of the border knows this, and many people know it here as well, due in part to fast internet communications. All the other new or relatively new leftist leaders of Latin America--in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador--and in Honduras until the coup--support Chavez, as they are supporting Zelaya. They scorned the Bushwhacks' demonization of Chavez. They defied it. They made strong economic and political alliances with him. Lula da Silva defended Chavez specifically on the issue of democracy. (He said, "They can make up a lot of things to criticize Chavez, but not on democracy!") The Latin Americans are not putting up with US interference any more. And even centrist (Costa Rica) and rightwing (Mexico) leaders hugely resent it--or at least they have to say that they do (because the vast majority of their people do). It's a struggle for our corpo/fascists to find any allies in Latin America. They have to buy them, big time--with huge amounts of our money ($6 BILLION to the Colombian military alone).
They thought they had Honduras sewn up. Zelaya, once a member of the oligarchy, turned on them--because US-dominated "free trade" and military aid have done nothing for Honduras except to make it extremely poor and dependent. He wants Honduras to be part of the potential powerhouse Latin American trade block which is based on social justice policies, bootstrapping the poor, using local resources for local benefits, and true democracy, in which everyone has a say and everyone has a chance at a decent life. The South Americans formalized their "common market" last summer--UNASUR. UNASUR's very first act was to strongly and unanimously back Evo Morales, when he threw the US ambassador out of the country for funding and organized white separatist rioters and murderers, who wanted to secede from Morales' national government, and take Bolivia's gas and oil reserves with them. Brazil's and Argentina's economic power, organized through UNASUR, stopped that coup.
Latin American resources for Latin Americans. That is the critical issue in US relations with Latin America. The Bushwhacks failed colossally to impose the will of US corporations on Latin America, and lost much ground. So now the Reich here wants war. And the Democrats? They did not object to Oil War I. Many enthusiastically supported it. Will they do the same for Oil War II--whether setting it up for a future Bushwhack, or letting themselves get Gulf-of-Tonkinned into it? Or will they balk at assaults on democratic countries in our own hemisphere, and adhere to Obama's stated policy of peace, respect and cooperation? I don't know, But it may be irrelevant what they or the Reich does. Latin America may just determine their own fate, this time around.
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