|
while the New York Slimes fawns over a former leftist guerrilla soon to be president of Brazil. (Same thing happened in Uruguay, also--former leftist guerrilla elected president.) Oh, and while U.S. client state, Colombia, just...um...cancelled peace activist Piedad Cordoba's Congressional seat and has barred her from running for office for 18 years (because of her alleged help to leftist guerrillas).
Where the U.S. has power to drop 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" and to control events, people die or are stripped of whatever little protection they have from rightwing death squads. Where the U.S. doesn't have power, it SEEKS power--the power to kill, the power to ravage, the power to install fascist governments that torture and kill leftists, the power of its corporate masters to steal resources and exploit slave labor, the power to put U.S. boots on the ground for its corrupt, failed, murderous "war on drugs," the power to totally dominate and control Latin America and its people.
Don't be fooled by this fawning article. The regime that tortured Dilma Rousseff was a U.S. installed regime and the SAME FORCES that ran U.S. foreign policy then are back in the saddle in the U.S. NOW. They engineered a bloody rightwing coup in Honduras, that the Obama/Clinton administration endorsed. They are running a torture and murder regime in Colombia that the Obama/Clinton administration is PRAISING and FUNDING. And although this hidden Bushwhack regime FAILED in most of Latin America, under the Bush Junta, there is much evidence that it has shifted tactics--possibly via a Leon Panetta-engineered ceasefire in the war between the Pentagon and the CIA that Rumsfeld and Cheney started--and is operating much more smoothly today, to re-conquer Latin America. (Note: Leon Panetta was a member of Daddy Bush's "Iraq Study Group.")
The New York Slimes, herein, highlights one of these new tactics: "divide and conquer." The Bush Junta tried it with Lula da Silva, and failed spectacularly. Will it succeed with Dilma Rousseff? Will she, for instance, "distance" herself from Hugo Chavez, which Lula was told to do and refused to do? It remains to be seen what pressures this smoother CIA can bring to bear, and how effective its billions of U.S. tax dollars will be, at sabotaging Rousseff's administration.
The most immediate threat to U.S. war profiteers and multinational corporate rulers is a South American common market, where they would have to play on a "level playing field" with the collective strength of many South American countries with leftist governments arrayed against their bullying and domination. But the longer term picture has to do with oil (of course!). The U.S. war machine is thirsty for oil. The U.S. corporate globalisation machine is thirsty for oil. Where are they going to get?
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's, according to a recent USGS study). This partly accounts for the rather mind-boggling U.S. hostility to the Chavez government in Venezuela, which re-negotiated Venezuela's oil contracts to get a much better deal for Venezuela and its social programs, and is using oil profits to benefit the poor (with education, health care, etc.) Exxon Mobil was so upset at not getting all the profits that it walked out of the talks and never came back. (Many other corporations, from many countries, stepped in, though.) Lula da Silva--who met monthly with Chavez, in a close alliance and friendship--then put similar conditions on the use of Brazil's new oil find (Brazil keeps majority control; high percentage of oil profits to benefit the poor). This is the kind of coordinated action and mutual support, among Latin American countries, that the U.S. wants very much to smash to pieces. They now have a new administration in Brazil, with which to try this maneuver, which will likely occur in less obvious ways than in the Bush Junta/Lula da Silva contretemps.
And, beyond these kind of tactics, operating more smoothly, lurks a Pentagon war plan, so far evidenced in the placement and securing of U.S. war assets in an arc around Venezuela's northern oil provinces and Caribbean oil coast, including at least seven U.S. military bases in Colombia (one overlooking the Gulf of Venezuela, only 20 miles from Venezuela's border), U.S. military bases on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast, securing of U.S. military bases in Honduras through a rightwing coup d'etat, new (and rather shocking) large scale U.S. military activity in Costa Rica, new or beefed up U.S. military bases in Panama, and the newly reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean (which Lula da Silva said is "a threat to Brazil's oil"). Combined with all this, of course, is the relentless psyops/disinformation campaign against the Chavez government throughout the corpo-fascist press, with the New York Slimes out front in this campaign--a campaign with a haunting resemblance to their "WMDs in Iraq" campaign.
The New York Slimes and their brethren in the corpo-fascist press are NEVER objective about Chavez and his government. NEVER EVER! So, when they come out with this kind of--I would say, fake--objectivity about a leftist leader in Latin America--such as this one, about Rousseff--leaving their switchblades at home--it is a suck-up, and also a warning. They can slice her up, if they decide to. They can sick their attack dog on her (Simon Romero). And there are several reasons why they might do so (and I rather imagine that she knows them all, as I think Lula did as well): U.S. multinational corporate contracts in Brazil. (Lula has been relatively friendly to them.) The South American common market (a relatively new development, yet to be fully formalized--Lula very supportive). Wall Street/World Bank/IMF gangsterism. (Lula opposed.) Venezuela (Lula very supportive of Chavez). The oil. The oil war.
What we need to teach ourselves--having had hard lesson, after hard lesson, after hard lesson, on this subject--is that the U.S. 'military-industrial complex' and its propaganda horns (and the once respected New York Times is nothing more than that) have VERY BAD intentions in Latin America, and would think nothing of assassinating leaders who get in their way, if they could get away with it, like they are doing to trade unionists and other leftist opposition in Colombia and Honduras, right now, and activities short of assassination--sabotaging good governments, trying to destabilize them, with "dirty tricks" and psyops/disinformaiton, pouring billions of our tax dollars into these sort of purposes, are standard operating procedure. They PROTECT terrible leaders like Uribe--and install puppet leaders wherever they can--and oppose and seek to topple good ones. And these activities have nothing whatever to do with the interests of most Americans. They not only drain our government coffers--our tax dollars--and violate every ideal that most of our people believe in, they also materially harm us, for instance, creating slave labor states in Latin America, to undermine and destroy labor protections and labor organizing here. And it is our tragedy that we seem unable to do anything about it.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
