Drug Surveillance Drones Frequent Flyers in Latin America

[Judi Lynn]

Drug Surveillance Drones Frequent Flyers in Latin America

New America Media, News Report , Marcelo Ballvé, Posted: Jan 27, 2010

Drone aircraft are increasingly engaged in counterdrug missions over South American jungles and Mexican cities.

The drones represent the latest high-tech escalation of Latin America’s anti-drug efforts.

Unlike the U.S. military’s Predator drones used to shoot missiles at suspected terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the models known to be in use in Latin America limit their roles to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Latin America’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs— as drones are known in aviation circles— are not known to have flown armed missions.

Israel Aerospace Industries, a company that is Israel’s largest industrial exporter, struck recent multimillion-dollar deals in Ecuador and Brazil for its large, 54-foot wingspan Heron drone model.

Israel Aerospace has offices in Colombia, Chile and Ecuador and launched a new joint venture company in Brazil in 2008. The manufacturer sees promise in the Latin American UAV market.

More:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2031079799bdf02797956e53311874fa

[Peace Patriot]

1. "Israel AI...multimillion-dollar deals...for its large, 54-foot wingspan Heron drone model."

"Israel Aerospace Industries, a company that is Israel’s largest industrial exporter, struck recent multimillion-dollar deals in Ecuador and Brazil for its large, 54-foot wingspan Heron drone model."

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What strikes me, reading this article--which focuses on Israeli arms sales to Latin America, but which could as well be about U.S. or other arms pushers--is the motivation in such a massively lucrative industry to buy presidents and congress critters and news media, and to do whatever it takes, to keep taxpayer dollars and other government revenues flowing in your direction. Further, it would be greatly to your advantage to stir up fear, paranoia, terror and other feelings of insecurity, to create problems where there are none, and to promote militaristic solutions to problems that are best solved by social justice, education, jobs--by economically and politically healthy communities. And full scale war, of course, is the ultimate wrong solution, almost without exception. Full scale war, "forever war," war that never ends, and war as the first solution to every problem, is the best sales campaign ever, if your product's sole purpose is to spy on, threaten, terrorize, subdue and kill human beings.

I often speak of global corporate predators and war profiteers as being the real rulers of the USA. This article makes it very clear how that works: The U.S. creates a policy such as the corrupt, failed, murderous "war on drugs," a policy requiring many weapons; the U.S. sells/enforces this policy throughout its domain--including its most corrupt and compliant client states in Latin America--and then U.S., Israeli and other corporate players start building whole industries to supply weapons to military and police forces; those forces, in turn, dramatically expand, requiring yet more arms and other military accoutrements, and then they themselves also become lobbyists for more taxpayer and government booty. The war is not winnable and is not intended to end. And it has many uses, including creating militaries, police forces and infrastructures with which to oppress populations, deny social justice and destroy democracies. The rich arms dealers collude with rich elites and other global corporate predators to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else.

As with the "war on drugs," so with the war on Iraq, and now the war on Afghanistan and whatever other wars the Pentagon is designing (for instance, more oil wars--Iran, Venezuela). War first; thought second, or thought never. The "war on drugs" and these other wars are NOT perpetrated on the basis of thought (good analysis, good policy, in a good democracy). They are perpetrated on the basis of profit. Profit--drained from the peoples' coffers, for products which, in turn, are used against the people--to massively jail them on drug charges, to enforce "prohibition," to create Darth Vader forces against civil protest, to use their children as cannon fodder in corporate resource wars, to bankrupt them and to inflict blowback on them from unjust wars, to propagandize and brainwash them, and many other devilish purposes--becomes the sole driver of everything, and cannot be made to yield to reason. It doesn't matter if the "war on drugs" doesn't work. It doesn't matter if Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. It doesn't matter that many of the people being killed (ahem, by drones) in Afghanistan had nothing whatever to do with 9/11. It's all driven by the illegitimate war "profit" drained out of budgets that should be devoted to education, health care, social security, bootstrapping the poor, energizing creative small businesses, roads, bridges, hospitals, libraries, environmental restoration, pollution control, good government regulation of banksters and other big thieves, busting monopolies, legal aid services, good policing, prisoner rehabilitation--all the needs of a good society.

All being lost to these billion dollar arms deals--at ours and other peoples' expense.

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I was rather surprised to see Ecuador dealing with Israel to buy drones...

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"Israel Aerospace Industries, a company that is Israel’s largest industrial exporter, struck recent multimillion-dollar deals in Ecuador and Brazil for its large, 54-foot wingspan Heron drone model.

"Israel Aerospace has offices in Colombia, Chile and Ecuador and launched a new joint venture company in Brazil in 2008. The manufacturer sees promise in the Latin American UAV market."

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But then, Ecuador is the Pentagon's secondary target in the war that it is designing against Venezuela. Both countries have huge oil reserves, are members of OPEC, have leftist governments and are adjacent to Colombia, which the Pentagon is "South Vietnamizing" with at least seven new U.S. military bases, thousands of "military advisors," and other prep. I think the Pentagon's focus is mainly a "circle the wagons" area--Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America (Colombia, and the Gulf of Venezuela, where Venezuela's main oil reserves, facilities and shipping are located, on Venezuela's Caribbean coast). But if they can net in Ecuador (adjacent to Colombia to the south) in a move against Venezuela, all the better, from their point of view (filling the Pentagon's big gas tank).

Last year, Ecuador's leftist government threw the U.S. military out of Ecuador, both for reasons of asserting Ecuador's sovereignty (no foreign troops stationed on their soil) and because the U.S. military base at Manta, Ecuador, was being used to spy on and attack Ecuador. In March 2008, the U.S./Colombia conducted a bombing and border raid into Ecuador--both a rehearsal for future missions and conveniently murdering FARC guerrilla Raul Reyes and 24 other sleeping people at a temporary FARC camp just inside Ecuador's border. Reyes was trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement of Colombia's 40+ year civil war and was arranging to release FARC hostages for that purpose. Recent reports indicate that the U.S. base at Manta was the likely source of the surveillance, the plane and the 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" used to blow Reyes to smithereens. It caused a major flap in Latin America, and almost caused a war, then and there. The U.S./Colombia are still working on a "Gulf of Tonkin" type incident with which to start the next oil war, and the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian military/death squad activities on Venezuela's and Ecuador's borders are prime circumstances for manufacturing such an incident.

So, my guess is that Ecuador wants drones primarily to keep track of the U.S. military in Colombia, and also of the Colombian military. Ecuador has rejected and evicted the US "war on drugs." I don't think they've gone as far as Bolivia (legalizing the coca leaf--although not cocaine), but I don't imagine they like any illegal trafficking and big crime networks in their country. As long as the U.S. supports the big drug networks via the exceedingly corrupt Colombian government and military ($6 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer support), cocaine, weapons and other illicit traffic will keep flowing out of Colombia into neighboring countries (Venezuela, Ecuador), so Ecuador has reason to monitor and interdict this activity--but, by far, their biggest national security problem is the U.S. use of Colombia to plot the overthrow of Ecuadoran and Venezuelan democracy and re-installation of fascist dictators for U.S. corporate/Pentagon control of the oil.

In addition to everything else, Ecuador's indigenous tribes have a big lawsuit against Chevron-Texaco for its horrific oil spill in the Amazon forest. The leftist government supports this lawsuit and the suit is not going well for Chevron-Texaco. Although Exxon Mobil is the biggest driver behind the oil wars, I'm sure that Chevron-Texaco wouldn't in the least mind seeing this lawsuit go away, due to the overthrow of Ecuador's democracy.

Colombia buying drones from Israel didn't surprise me in the least. I think Israel is quite involved in the U.S./Colombia plotting against the left in South America. Chile didn't surprise me much; Brazil surprised me a bit. Chile--and, to a greater extent, Brazil--may have similar motives to Ecuador's--control of crime networks out of Colombia, and defense.

But I have to say that I completely and totally oppose the manufacture, sale and spread of drone military aircraft, no matter who buys them. This is a bad, bad trend--further dehumanizing police and military activities. I sympathize with those who want to defend themselves in a just cause and find such defense spiraling into militarism and dubious weapons like these. But this arms race would be unnecessary except for the U.S. military buildup in the region. The only threat to Latin America is the U.S., and the fascist elites, militarists and rightwing thugs that the U.S. is funding and organizing in the region. Without this threat from the U.S., Latin American countries wouldn't need to spend billions of dollars on these and other weapons systems. That is the tragic and infuriating truth of the matter.

[Bacchus39]

2. I doubt the drones bought by Ecuador will be monitoring inside Colombia

they would be shot down and vice versa. more likely, for Ecuador's internal use.

[Peace Patriot]

3. You may be right, but the U.S. used them to spy on Venezuela and didn't get shot down,

though Chavez threatened to shoot down the next ones that are spotted. Those were ground spottings, or at least one of them was, if the report is correct. So the drones evaded Venezuelan radar at least once. Who is to say if Colombia's airspace is so completely covered that a drone could not penetrate it undetected? No risk of losing a pilot, for one thing. And there may be ways of directing drones that minimize the possiblity of detection.

In certain circumstances--say, if Ecuador suspected imminent border incursion or invasion--it might be worth the risk to get a visual on what's coming. They might also be useful in a confused and fluid circumstance, say, with fighting having broken out, communications down and battle lines unclear, or out over the ocean to spot U.S. warships. They could be used as well internally to spot incursions--overt or covert.

I would guess that Ecuador would not be purchasing drones if they did not feel considerable threat from the U.S./Colombia, so I presume they have some defense purpose in mind. Yes, they are useful for drug and other contraband surveillance--a security threat especially if the illegal activity is originating in Colombia--but the expense is a big one and I doubt that they would undertake it without more cause than drug trafficking or other ordinary crime. They have also said that they don't want the Colombian civil war spilling over their border--whether it's the FARC guerillas, or the Colombian military and its death squads, or the U.S. 'war on drugs' toxic pesticide spraying, or, for that matter, the tens of thousands of refugees that have fled into Ecuador (and Venezuela)--a massive security and public welfare problem for Ecuador (and Venezuela). Colombia is full of bombast about Ecuador being "soft on terror," but that civil war is not of Ecuador's making; it is not Ecuador's fault; all they want is for it to stop--for there to be peace in the region. That is one likely use for the drones--better patrolling of their borders, so Colombia and the U.S. have no excuses for border incursions or war.