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US Builds Up its Bases in Oil-Rich South America
US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for 'full-spectrum operations' is escalating rapidly
The United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development - and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it - is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with much of the continent.
US air force officers and Congressmen tour the Palanquero base in Puerto Salgar, Colombia, in August. The base is expected to host US air force counter-narcotics missions under the new bilateral deal. (Photo: The Independent) The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington's political and economic tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of Manta by the end of next month.
So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces regularly kill the country's indigenous people and other civilians, and last year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least 17 deaths.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia.
In August, President Evo Morales of Bolivia called for the outlawing of foreign military bases in the region. President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, overthrown in a military coup d'état in June and initially exiled, has complained that US forces stationed at the Honduran base of Palmerola collaborated with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the plotters and the man who claims to be president.
And, this being US foreign policy, a tell-tale trail of oil is evident. Brazil had already expressed its unhappiness at the presence of US naval vessels in its massive new offshore oilfields off Rio de Janeiro, destined soon to make Brazil a giant oil producer eligible for membership in Opec.
The fact that the US gets half its oil from Latin America was one of the reasons the US Fourth Fleet was re-established in the region's waters in 2008. The fleet's vessels can include Polaris nuclear-armed submarines - a deployment seen by some experts as a violation of the 1967 Tlatelolco Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons from the continent.
Indications of US willingness to envisage the stationing of nuclear weapons in Colombia are seen as an additional threat to the spirit of nuclear disarmament. After the establishment of the Tlatelolco Treaty in 1967, four more nuclear-weapon-free zones were set up in Africa, the South Pacific, South-east Asia and Central Asia. Between them, the five treaties cover nearly two-thirds of the countries of the world and almost all the southern hemisphere.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the world's leading think-tank about disarmament issues, has now expressed its worries about the US-Colombian arrangements.
With or without nuclear weapons, the bilateral agreement on the seven Colombian bases, signed on 30 October in Bogota, risks a costly new arms race in a region. SIPRI, which is funded by the Swedish government, said it was concerned about rising arms expenditure in Latin America draining resources from social programmes that the poor of the region need.
Much of the new US strategy was clearly set out in May in an enthusiastic US Air Force (USAF) proposal for its military construction programme for the fiscal year 2010. One Colombian air base, Palanquero, was, the proposal said, unique "in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from... anti-US governments".
The proposal sets out a scheme to develop Palanquero which, the USAF says, offers an opportunity for conducting "full-spectrum operations throughout South America.... It also supports mobility missions by providing access to the entire continent, except the Cape Horn region, if fuel is available, and over half the continent if un-refuelled". ("Full-spectrum operations" is the Pentagon's jargon for its long-established goal of securing crushing military superiority with atomic and conventional weapons across the globe and in space.)
Palanquero could also be useful in ferrying arms and personnel to Africa via the British mid-Atlantic island of Ascension, French Guiana and Aruba, the Dutch island off Venezuela. The US has access to them all.
The USAF proposal contradicted the assurances constantly issued by US diplomats that the bases would not be used against third countries. These were repeated by the Colombian military to the Colombian congress on 29 July. That USAF proposal was hastily reissued this month after the signature of the agreement - but without the reference to "anti-US governments". This has led to suggestions of either US government incompetence, or of a battle between a gung-ho USAF and a State Department conscious of the damage done to US relations with Latin America by its leaders' strong objections to the proposal.
The Colombian forces, for many years notorious for atrocities inflicted on civilians, have cheekily suggested that with US help they could get into the lucrative business of "instructing" other armies about human rights. Civil strife in Colombia meant some 380,000 Colombians were forced from their homes last year, bringing the number of displaced since 1985 to 4.6 million, one in ten of the population. This little-known statistic indicates a much worse situation than the much-publicised one in Islamist-ruled Sudan where 2.7 million have fled from their homes.
Amnesty International said: "The Colombian government must urgently bring human rights violators to justice, to break the links between the armed forces and illegal paramilitary groups, and dismantle paramilitary organisations in line with repeated UN recommendations."
Palanquero, which adjoins the town of Puerto Salgar on the broad Magdalena river north-west of the capital, Bogota, is one of the seven bases that the government of President Alvaro Uribe gave to Washington last month despite howls from many Colombians. Its hangars can take 100 aircraft and there is accommodation for 2,000 personnel. Its main runway was constructed in the 1980s after Colombia bought a force of Israeli Kfir warplanes. At 3,500 metres, it is 500 metres longer than the longest in Britain, the former US base outside Campbeltown, Scotland. The USAF is awaiting Barack Obama's signature on a bill, already passed by the US Congress, to devote $46m to works at the base.
Many Colombians are upset at the agreement between the US and Colombia that governs - or, perhaps more accurately, fails to govern - US use of Palanquero and the other six bases. The Colombian Council of State, a non-partisan constitutional body with the duty to comment on legislation, has said that the agreements are unfair to Colombia since they put the US and not the host country in the driving seat, and that they should be redrafted in accordance with the Colombian constitution.
The immunities being granted to US soldiers are, the council adds, against the 1961 Vienna Convention; the agreement can be changed by future regulations which can totally transform it; and the permission given to the US to install satellite receivers for radio and television without the usual licences and fees is "without any valid reason".
President Uribe, whose studies at St Antony's College, Oxford, were subsidised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has chosen to disregard the Council of State.
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49 Comments so far
Show Allthe republican led government led by gates and his boy obama will be doing what the oil men want, so watch this one unfold. you already know the outcome to this....
That propaganda of deceit all over again. People like you are obsessed with lying, always pretending the Dem. Party's innocent when it's no less evil than the Repub. Party is. None of your ilk's constant lying about this can cleanse the slate or record of the Dem. Party, but you certainly do help to make the party worse than it would be if it only had honest, truthful supporters.
Some times I don't know whether to cry or take up arms.
Today many americans will sit around and watch football.
If they hear of this(odds against)they will think the good guys are winning again. After a few beers and the game, the channels will change to show movies like Terminator or Die Hard, where the good guys always win, even if they have to wait for the sequel.
Go team.
If you're going to take up arms, then I think it'd be better to go to where the U.S. takes war to and fight with the resistance forces there. Might be a little difficult to get there once the U.S. starts a war or instigates one though, so people who can afford to do so and wish to be ready to join resistance forces when the war begins might want to head there sooner.
This is the "Downing Street Memo" for the future U.S./Colombia war with Venezuela.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23924.htm
"President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia."
Just what we need...yet ANOTHER war.
it's already started:...........
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2045697420091120
That's only about Ven. blowing up, taking out a couple of cross-border pedestrian bridges that Ven. says were used by smugglers, so it's not really an act of war.
The American aggression in South America runs deeper than oil. It is a continuation of genocidal policies practiced by the United States based upon American exceptionalism, the myth perpetuated by Protestant religions. The majority of Peoples in South America are Indigenous and these Peoples are reasserting their rights after five hundred years of Euro/American domination. Their historic tribal and community based beliefs reveal themselves as socialism in the minds of Western thinkers. Consequently the American genocidal elites feel threatened, the free market capitalists feel threatened, the Protestant Churches feels threatened all of which collide in a fury of militarism in Columbia. The true genocidal, imperialist, and empire nature of America is clearly revealed in the military buildup in Columbia. Full Spectrum Dominance?
Hubris! IT'S GENOCIDE, brought by BARACK OBAMA ! It's PSYCOPATHIC WARFARE.
All U.S. warring is psychopathic, and OIL and "free market" have a lot to do with the motives of the real rulers of the USA. They aim for global domination and economics is the main basis. It's for OIL and other natural resources, and geopolitical power is essential to their project. Muslim countries have around 75% of the world's oil reserves. The west has around 4%, around half of which is in the U.S. Now Brazil has a new oil field, apparently a large one, and there's Ven.
The indigenous wants their rights and dignity [respected]. No, they don't just want, they demand this and it's their right to do so and to receive this demanded respect. That runs counter to the "interests" of the real rulers of the government of the USA, as well as the rulers of other "developed", industrialised, wealthy western countries' governments. Their brand of capitalism and fairness run counter to each other.
Año 518, El Conquista continua...
Our dancing puppet Emperor Obama a shill of a figure head for the oligarchy.
THIS IS NAZI GERMANY ALL OVER AGAIN.
But now it's FASCIST UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
The big exception from then to now are the kinds of weapons available to blow us all to smithereens in a few hours.
Obama's cohones are in the death grip of a lot of people and/or he is Hitler-lite and thinks these power plays are all just dandy.
Anything is possible, but all I know for sure is that there is RIGHT and there is WRONG, and the United States and its partner, Zionist Israel, with all of its go-along minions in the United States Congress and Administration, and all the members of the controlling Shadow Government of financiers and the ELITE are murderous bastards, totally indifferent to human suffering, to RIGHT and WRONG, to HUMAN DECENCY, to FAIRNESS and JUSTICE, and they have no conscience and no rational sense. They are Psychopaths and followers of Psychopaths.
The Love of Money corrupts. The Love of Power Corrupts.
This is absolute INSANITY, and how do we put the INSANE into a locked, high-security asylum before we and everything else are blown to bits and it's all over?
I don't know.
The UN has no teeth as long as the United States has veto power on any resolutions against other nations' actions or behavior that come before the Security Council. Therefore, the UN should dissolve itself, and every nation resign, and a new organization formed. But that takes time and what all of this essay is alerting us to is that we are just about out of time, especially if everybody sits back and watches all these new war games and dramas unfold as if this were some unpleasant distraction.
This is what happened in Germany, and when Hitler and his cohorts and the military were ready, they went right ahead with their plans and began their journey of world conquest.
Yes, Ike, the military-industrial-congressional complex has done us in. And it's just a matter of time now, and I don't Cee any Miracles coming over the horizon.
If anyone does, I sure would love to hear it. [No proselytizing about The Rapture please and please, do not walk around saying Support The Troops and Happy Christmas, unto us a Child was born.]
/cm
But now the fascist state is the USA, you say. Well, nothing new about that. It was fascist during WW II and leading up to it, too. It wasn't constantly fascist, but neither was Germany or East Germany.
Mike, don't know if you'll get back here to answer my question, which is just, please explain why you think the U.S. was always fascist?
This is my take.
I would agree with what you say above because of the already vicious U.S. history of exerminating, enslaving, attacking peoples and individuals from the get-go. But despite that there was evolvement in many areas when, because of their great struggles and efforts and eventually a very strong labor movement, working men and women came into their own and were treated more fairly, their wages became much more and a strong middle-class developed [lower-mid, middle, and high-end mid]. Always there have been the very wealthy, but the extremes of classism in terms of economic security leveled out much more in the 20th century. As of today, of course, we were recently assessed/listed as the #1 nation in the world of the divide ... the chasm between the wealthy and the rest of us. The small percentage of the rich are richer and getting more rich, the poor are poorer and the middle-class is going backwards and heading toward the Poor House.
Also until mega-corporate and pac-group money entered politics big-time and inane TV debates and all kinds of expensive ads became the rule of thumb for presidents, senators and significant congressional representatives, the old-time conventions broadcast on the radio were often guessing games as to whom would be chosen and nominated for president. It was not a given the way it is now. The public was much more aware of the issues and who they wanted and who they were voting for, in great part because of the vigor of the watch-dog Fifth Estate, the true journalists of The Press, who wrote for newspapers and magazines that were available coast to coast, and I do believe The People were better served by their senators, representatives and even certain presidents. I, of course, am talking from the perspective of a 73-year old who is familiar with the 1940's and 1950's and on, and I have a good background in history in general.
I think there were some bright, shining moments during and after WWII, and briefly we felt good about ourselves; there were many things that were done right and even heroically, and there were significant attempts to create peace in the world. Peace for all the world were buzz words that citizenry and leadership used all the time. Now there is no talk of that at all, even as a possibility. Everything is about enemies, terrorists, attacking, invasions, killing off, gaining control, etcetera. And this can be laid at the doorstep of unfettered laissez faire Capitalism devolving to its very worst. As Milton Friedman insisted ... profits count above all else. The environment and people are of far lesser importance to no importance. That's crazy! Only a not-quite human, unfeeling slug could think that way. But the fruits of Milton Friedman's beliefs and his Chicago-Boy thugs dressed in expensive business suits to wear at the home office or in other offices in other countries have resulted in devastation and impoverishment for many nations and for their peoples, third world especially, but even major nations, and now, of course, US ... the U.S. of A.
Starting with the reasons for the assassination of JFK and the other assassinations in this country and elsewhere, and the Vietnam War and then the Nixon mess and on and on, the irrelevance of the people in selecting candidates for president, and the loss of a reasonably honest electoral system and reasonably honest elections was the beginning of our finish as the nation we might have been.
Dieboldt Corporation who owned the voting machines ... computerized touch screens and scanners ... which played such a part in the corruption of the 2000 Selection has just sold off its dubious wares to a Republican Right-wing Corporation, and chances are, from what I have read, we will never again have anything remotely considered an honest election and a demonstration of The People's Will. It's all over now in this most important area and in so many other areas where The People's Voice has been muffled and sacrificed to Big Money with its High Rollers.
The world we entered in 2000 has gotten considerably more corrupt and, I think, just reading and listening, that the country now is out of our hands, and we are, indeed, ruled by people who are using The Constitution as toilet paper, and if we don't like it, riot-geared police with their tasers and regular guns, merciless mercenaries and the almost now-in-charge military of The Pentagon will keep us and everyone else in line with their technological savagery, the already-built Haliburton/KBR detention camps, and then there's always Torture, which has been given a green light with no accountability or sense of responsibility.
The articles of the Bill of Rights are being rendered meaningless.
The main-stream media is controlled and speaks nonsense, and the internet may be the last place for The People's Voice here and around the world, but that can be changed with electronic tweaking and technological mischief, and the Boards can go blank. And anyone with a dissenting voice who becomes dangerous to the Powers That Be can be taken out with those all-too-convenient "accidents and suicides" or murdered without a trace to the killer(s) in easy-to-arrange coverups.
................MORE...............
[continued]
So when it is The Justice System [the tragic and nonsensical trials coming up in New York City of the alleged terrorists, all severely tortured and incarcerated without charges who don't have a chance in hell ... and this is now standard procedure]; the enormous populations in our prisons, and the current Right-Wing Corporate-pleasing Supreme Court because of its predictable voting pattern and record; and when it is the Legislative Bodies which house robots in the tills of the Corporations that only respond to clinking money and not The Voice of the People, and when it is the Executive and Executive's administration that break all the rules and are not accountable anymore except for their embrace and acceptance of and give-aways to the Mega-Corporations and Financial Institutions and Wealthy Old-Money no matter what continent, and appear to be sheep when it comes to the powerful shepherds of The Pentagon and its terrible weapons of mass destruction which are used because ... without blinking an eye all over the world, ... that quaint concept of CHECKS and BALANCES has been smothered to asphixiation.
To me this is FASCISM Realized, a grim visage and staring us in the face, and with worse to come. Right now I personally cannot see a way out of this and what has transpired and what is already planned for all of us. But ZEIG HEIL!!! ... NO!
And as it has always been, people find a way and "fate" can change everything, with small things to major events.
The work now, I think, is to try to get the majority of our citizenship to see and hear and understand what is happening despite all the propaganda and untruths being dished out to us.
What do you think?
/cm
I will read you article carefully, but please recall that the US is only nation where it's two significant "rebellions" (Texas, then the whole US South) - well supported by the poor and working class - was for the defense of a retrograde, profoundly racist, and brutal slavery system. This was in the face of such institutions having been long abolished in all the rest of the developed world - including all our neighbors to the south.
Maybe not "fascist" - the word was not even invented until the 1930's, but the US has, going back to at least the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, been largely a force of reaction, not progress, in the world. Domestically, it has also been a laggard, to this day, in the recognition of a whole array of human rights, and in democratic governance.
I think I have to side with Cee, here.
It seems to me that there's a strong 4-way split, politically:
the ruling class, which is feudal (fascism is a species of feudalism) and therefore entirely self-absorbed;
the really rather small group composed of (for want of a better umbrella term) 'willing serfs';
a much larger group we might call the 'duped serfs'--the people whom the 24/7/365 propaganda machine is aimed at;
and the rest of us, who see what's going on despite the propaganda, don't like it, but are unable to get our act together, or get sidetracked into attacking a symptom instead of the disease.
People aren't educated to be free thinkers. Those of us who luck out and get high IQs *and* the kind of personality that isn't easily duped, we can sometimes gradually educate ourselves. But most people aren't that lucky, and get screwed. If we want to build resistance to the psychopaths, a better quality edu for all has to be the foundation.
"But despite that there was evolvement in many areas when, because of their great struggles and efforts and eventually a very strong labor movement, working men and women came into their own and were treated more fairly, their wages became much more and a strong middle-class developed [lower-mid, middle, and high-end mid]. Always there have been the very wealthy, but the extremes of classism in terms of economic security leveled out much more in the 20th century."
I think you're speaking of particularly around the WW II period and for some decades afterwards; the aka U.S. war economy. It's the U.S. militarism that really boosted the U.S. and the whole so-called post-war period since President Truman has been of a warring USA on the rest of the world, with theatre wars, and covert wars, and wars through proxies, etcetera. It's the warring that brought the U.S. out of the economic gutter of the Great Depression, and its corporate fascist U.S. government that was guilty for the Great Depression, according to the documentary film entitled, "The Money Masters", which is highly enough recommended by well-known Ellen Brown, anyway. Even President Roosevelt liked Hitler and Mussolini, who are both known as historical fascists.
The U.S. drew Japan into attacking the U.S., out of retaliation, but without informing the public of the USA that it was retaliation. This was done with the U.S. enforcing act-of-war sanctions against Japan to prevent it from being able to important oil, which Japan [needed] and which literally was an act of war against that country that the U.S. then committed. The public of the USA was not informed about this and Japan apparently had not even been involved in WW II for it was "busy" warring in or on southeast Asian, and maybe central Asian, countries, as well as being "preoccupied", aggressively, with China. The U.S. fraudulently used this Japanese [retaliation] to get the public of the U.S. to support the U.S. getting into WW II (which Japan had otherwise nothing or very little to do with, I've read).
Truman defined, literally, the path that the U.S. has been militaristically on ever since.
This is all fascism, as well as corporatism, for corporatocracy was always involved.
Americans generally profited without realising that their economy was one of war, based on war, and it wasn't justifiable war. Awfully little that the U.S. has ever done in terms of war has been justifiable; it was virtually [all] criminal aggression and the plan behind this type of warring always is very much about domination and empire. That's fascism, even if the public in the war economy country profits through increases in the number of jobs and higher wages, incomes, so increasing standard of living; but it's a dark standard of living when the increase is because of the society being a war economy.
This suited the corporatocracy for some decades, but consider the film, "The Money Masters". Eventually, the rulers of the corporatocracy have plans that change, for strategic reasons, for their profit, and they cause economies to rise and bust. They caused the Great Depression. They profited most of all from the war economy. Their corporations sold to the U.S. market, where there were many more and better paying jobs, so consumerism sky-rocketed, profiting the corporations and therefore the corporatocracy's rulers.
Etcetera. As has long been said, not all is as it appears to be, or, as someone else put it, apparences are often deceiving or deceptive. The great rise of the U.S. economy for the general [white] citizen came at extreme and bloody costs for MANY other people of other countries. A very dark "great" period this was, eh (?).
It's far better to be poor, humble, generous, kind, ..., than it is to live highly and mightily with a hell of a lot of other peoples' blood on our accounts or hands. The naive and fascists, and corporatists, would prefer that we see the reality in the opposite, that is, their way; of course. And they use an awful lot of bs propaganda of deceit marketing to try to get us all to be more blind than bats are.
"Also until mega-corporate and pac-group money entered politics big-time and inane TV debates and all kinds of expensive ads became the rule of thumb for presidents, senators and significant congressional representatives, the old-time conventions broadcast on the radio were often guessing games as to whom would be chosen and nominated for president. It was not a given the way it is now."
President Woodrow Wilson was responsible for the Federal Reserve being put into the hands of private industry or sector banksters. President Abe Lincoln wanted to implement socio-economic corrections in order to provide greater economic justice for the general population, and the film, "The Money Masters", is credible when it poses that what likely or most likely was the reason for his assassination was this economic plan that he had and which was known by the rick elites, who, like their historical predecessors, wouldn't want to cooperate with such economic corrections. The subsequent or one of the soon-after Presidents had an assassination attempt on his life for evidently the same reason, but the attempt failed due to the assassin's two guns misfiring. Later came the elites' feverish efforts to get President Wilson to make the Federal Reserve a private banksters' matter, to put it and U.S. monetary policy in their control, when the Constitution clearly states that only the U.S. Congress shall have authority over U.S. monetary policy.
Subsequent presidents and Congresses maintained this rogue Federal Reserve and U.S. government legislation.
They established the predecessor of the U.N., the League of Nations, which was another elites', corporatists', ... enterprise, and the U.S. government went along with this and later worked with other countries in establishing the replacement, the U.N., which the U.S. has dominated ever since; for U.S. corporatists, which they claim to be U.S. "national interests", "national security", etcetera.
Etcetera. Did the great U.S. corporate media you're referring to inform the general public, the electorate, of these dark matters about their government "leadership(s)"? I imagine the answer is 'NO'.
What about all of the covert black ops, such as what former CIA officers and agents have exposed about U.S. black, covert ops and which really are all acts of war committed by the U.S., globally? Did the U.S. media inform the U.S. public of these other dark matters; and there are more examples, such as the dark history that John Perkins tells us about? I imagine the media did NOT tell the public about these matters, either.
Maybe the U.S. media didn't know about these things, but the media also didn't inform the public about these very crucial-to-known matters, either. So the population was very, very much kept in the dark about the most important things to know about the USA, the government and its real rulers.
See the documentary film, "The Money Masters", for which there are full-length embedded Google videos at freedocumentaries.org (large pop-up window for the viewer and it's not viewable with my Firefox 3.5.5 browser on Win 2000, but might be viewable by other people) and at topdocumentaryfilms.com (normal sized embedded video). They're both single clips of full length, around 3.5 hours.
Another video I'll recommended, while there are more, but will only reference this additional one is for the presentation by Professor Michel Chossudovsky, editor of www.globalresearch.ca, during the opening session of the Perdana War Crimes Conference and Exhibition held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Feb. 5-7, 2007. There is a link for this video in the video page of the following website, and it's very easy and quick to see which video I'm speaking of.
www.perdana4peace.org
Actually, that's a .wmv video file, so people have to download it in order to view it, I guess. There's a copy at Google videos, if you prefer to view it online with a Web browser.
"America's "Long War" From the Truman Doctrine to the NeoConservatives" (36:32)
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=5337690562294546168
QUOTE: "The Long War. From the Truman Doctrine to the Neo-Conservatives. The Implications of the US Military Agenda Michel Chossudovsky's Address at the Opening Session, Perdana Global Peace Forum to Criminalize War, Kuala Lumpur, 5-7 February 2007 Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best America’s "War on Terrorism" Second Edition, Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization."
Some U.S. media used to air stories like UFO fiction, etcetera, and the Fifth Estate, what did it tell us about the most important aspects of U.S. government and corporatocracy policy-making? Precisely.
This is not to be sarcastic towards you; it's just being a "little" pointed or exacting, say.
This kind of news should not be surprising. It is merely the opening of a new theater of the global and DAFT war to defeat terrorism. Someday we'll have 194 separate wars to talk about, if we're still allowed to talk.
Counter-terrorism is the nose of the camel, using the old comment about camels and tents, if you consider South America to be the tent.
Counter-terrorism? Are there terrorists in South America?
Not many explosions these days, but the FEAR is that there could be, and as we all know, the US military was given the goal of preventing future terrorism anywhere, anytime.
Counter-terrorism = preventing future terrorism, which is enshrined into law.
We need to deal with the law in order to end the DAFT war in order to keep ourselves out of South America.
Otherwise, we will fill the continent with people who will be paid to find and kill future terrorists who could threaten our world.
To justify their jobs, I bet many people will find future terrorists.
None of our problems, be it S.A. or Gitmo or AfPak or Iraq, I repeat none, can be solved without confronting America's sick and twisted fear of future bad guys.
as John Perkins , Former Cia "economic hitman" -- who had specialized IN south america :
"I was part of our Empire Building Project"...
put it:
"we have gotten away with building this Empire of ours through manipulation, Torture, Assassinations, Fometing instability against uncooperative governments, Blackmail, covert and overt war, and Plain THIEVERY of other nations' resources".
THIEVERY is the Name of the Game of the USA EMPIRE.
it goes all the way from the very Beginning:
Theft of Land and Resources and life from the Native Indians, spreading to theft of land and resources from the Caribbean people, then the Mexicans, then other south americans, then spreading outwards to Asia, to Middle east to Eastern Europe. to central asia, they also tried it in mainland china...got kicked out , just like vietnam did,
did it in Iran, - got kicked out.
but KEEPS TRYING TO REPEAT IT.
"AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING"
so IT IS CONTINUING...
USA -- THEFT of Lands and Resources from other people.
that's all there is to it.
"OUR FOREIGN POLICY HAS ALWAYS BEEN GEARED TOWARDS GATHERING AS MUCH OF THE WORLD'S RESOURCES UNTO OURSELVES...AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS...THE TRUE PURPOSE OF OUR ARMED FORCES IS TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR OUR BIG BOSS: OUR SUPERNATIONALISTIC CAPITALISM, AND OUR CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC ASSAULT...WE ARE A NATION OF RACKETEERS: MONEY AND WAR RACKETEERS WITH OUR CORPORATIONS, BIG BANKS AND FINANCE, AND ARMY ....YOU MIGHT SAY...WE ARE GANSGSTERS FOR CAPITALISM".....
GENERAL SMEDLEY BUTLER, US MARINES, 1933.
the real enemies of the USA are ANY countries that decide that the citizens of that country deserve a equitable share of the gains of the economy.
That flies in the face of the multi-national corporations that run this country.
AND why do we need nukes in South America? So the bombs can land in 3 minutes as compared to 7 minutes for nukes launched from here?
"the real enemies of the USA are ANY countries that decide that the citizens of that country deserve a equitable share of the gains of the economy."
You have it in a nutshell, mtdon. All the rest is talk. The ghosts of Allende, Mossadegh and Lumumba and millions of unknown all over the world rise to salute your concise statement.
Joe
We build dictatorships, set them up to become uncontrollable, then move in our military, and take the country , sound familiar.
We will be at war for the next 1000 years if we dont stop them now.
Poor economy, no jobs , easily met recruitment quotas, because what else can kids do that can not afford college or get a decent job.
republicans
You got to know that the white house has been in the hands of War machine militant christian crusading republicans for 30 of the last 40 years, Bill Clinton in the 90's who supported US involvement in the Bosnia conflicts .
All they needed was one huge event to put all their war plans in motion. 9/11.....
Wow , what a coincidence , Latin America was a quiet Bush/Cheney neocon move, every time
we turn a page the the neocon have us in a war some where.
Greedy power freaks and right wing lunatics control the Pentagon , the banks, wall street , Washington and our christian church's.
We fell asleep behind the wheel , and our country got hijacked by people who dont care about the constitution or rule of law.
BornFreeMen
Peace = Christians + Muslims + Jews working together world wide
The oiligarchy's trail leads to the Fed and to the central banks in London, Switzerland, Amsterdam, etc. A movement and bills to audit and abolish the Fed are gaining bipartisan support. A plague of banking shills are spreading disinformation everywhere. We have an opportunity to attack the corruption of private capital by joining the movement to audit the Fed.
I am a pretty good judge of character, and I don't believe for one minute that Barack Obama is a war-monger. I really think that the US military is defying his administration. Combined with the mega-corporations, they are so powerful that they can challenge the President of the United States. And the Republicans are their paid lackeys, doing all that they can, with the help of the corporate media, to destroy Obama. In a democracy, they would be tried for treason. Too bad this is no longer a democracy. Our only chance is for the American people to organize, and take this country back. Unfortunately, most of them are too busy chasing Sarah Palin around the country.
It is as largely as genierae says it is. But Obama and the the so called Democracy that elected him are part of the problem. This machinery of governance we can call by its name: the USA.
And the USA is at war with Americans, just as the USA is at war with the rest of the world. This is not new. Even a cursory look at the deployment of the US armed forces since 1948 shows that the 2nd World War never ceased. To cover this the USA has been proclaiming victory for more than 60 yrs: each proclamation merely allowing it to continue to deploy forces to engage the 'enemy'. The USA, that huge, poisonous mushroom so easily seen from outside America is threading its fungus into all of the parts of America and the world. It is much more of a threat than the A-bomb. The USA has many faces: the Pentagon; the financial and commercial faces; the industrial face; the educational and religious faces and more as each year goes by. The threads of its spread into the world include governmental stooges, the workers, the scholars, the students; Americans of all kinds, both those who vote for them and those who do not bother.
And fools they are. The idiocy of G.W. Bush was just more obviously apparent than that of his predecessors, but it was no different. Any popular leader such as Obama will do. Even the gormless tart Palin and her followers will do nicely if necessary because she and they, foolishly patriotic as they are, hotly admire the American Soldier without looking to see who commands him.
The USA, the governmental machinery claiming to be American, is not of the American people. The American people are its subjects; its soldiers; its voters. The Americans are its fools; a source of money; a cloud to hide behind as they die in far away places.
The USA must be destroyed. Americans must seek local authority that represents them, that they can communicate to; that listens to them; that seeks he American ideal of justice and truth, not just advantage or what has become known as profit. Americans must assert their independence from the USA.
Obama is a puppet, or, as Professor Michel Chossudovsky, editor of www.globalresearch.ca, put it, a proxie, like prior U.S. Presidents were proxies of the real rulers of the government of the USA. Those rulers make sure that who ever is elected President will do their bidding and it's why they made sure that Dennis Kucinich would be forbidden the right to join in the Dem. Party's presidential candidate debates last year.
The US is going down the plughole and it is still starting wars everywhere. Kinda reminds me of the Nazis who actually stepped up the murder of Jews etc. when the war was lost. They even used railway trains urgently needed for war purposes to transport victims to the camps. The difference of course is there is profit in the deathshead corporates in spreading war far and wide. They get the booty from defeated countries and from sale of more weapons to military. Win Win.
this is the nwo acting on main street at 12 noon
the only difference between this move and iraq is that we don't have to listen to all the bullshit about freedom and democracy
no doubt a new tv program like the 9/11 tv program itself a variation on the jfk program will disclose some outrage or other that the military - on humanitarian grounds - cannot turn their eyes from
an invasion will be "demanded" by the sheer horror of whatever the excuse will be
then we will invade venezuela as part 2 of the show
if we get the oil to boot - hey who knew
colombia is run by nwo co-opted scum and everybody - the local oligarchs, the cia, the nsa and the military get to share all the proceeds from the cocaine trade they guard so jealously
we all know the crooks on wall street rely on the drug cash to keep their ponzy scheme on the go - the bail out is all good too
murderers, bullies, nwo scum
welcome to the fascist states of america
get some popcorn ma we're on the prowl once more
hey - we'll have three wars of theft and murder at the same time
its twue its twue
god loves us
Free healthcare in Venezuela --- How did Chávez do it?
Look at all he had going against him:
(1) To this day, just like in the USA, most all news media is owned by the rich.
(2) 70% of people living in poverty and most had never seen a doctor.
(3) 70% of people did not live within walking distance of a doctor.
(4) Doctors all rebelled against it and most went on strike.
(5) Just like the USA, 90% of wealth and land owned by those with excessive wealth.
Part of the way he did it was to invite in docs from Cuba, who happily came and made it clear to the striking Venezuelan docs that said V. docs had just stepped on their own dangly bits and then pee'd in their own soup.
I wonder if anyone in the U.S. Government would be upset in any way were China to establish seven or eight military bases in Mexico in order to enable full spectrum operational status in all of North America.
The US spends billions each year arming itself and mass-murdering, incinerating innocent civilians around the globe just so its top 1% can get even richer but it can't afford free health care for its people.
Brazil and Venezuela have both free universal health care, two peaceful nations spending their resources on their people, not on unprovoked wars. What a sick, perverse nation the US has become.
As far as I can see, the U.S. is committing an act of war by setting up military bases in Colombia, where the U.S. military has no business in being. There are absolutely no justifiable reasons for this, so it's an act of war, because it clearly is and would be seen, by neighbouring countries, as a threat to them.
I figure the U.S./Colombia invasion of Venezuela is about two years away. The U.S. needs time to expand and "build out" those seven military bases, build landing strips, etc. Then there will be a "gulf of tonkin incident" off the coast of Venezuela, or possibly a Venezuelan "terrorist attack" inside Colombia that absolutely requires a U.S. invasion of Venezuela to protect democracy and freedom. This will require an ancillary invasion of Brazil, because it will be said that "Brazilian guerillas" are supporting the "leftist" Venezuelan "guerilla insurgency". We've seen this movie many times in the past. Standard operating procedure. Huah!!
For now, it's certainly criminal intimidation by the world's military superpower, and let's hope it doesn't escalate to war by this beast. If it remains intimidating presence, only, then it's still act of war, imo, but not one that's necessary to retaliatte to; not until it becomes a really active act of war, in which case resistance will be essential and will hopefully be well coordinated between multiple Latin American countries and whatever they have for military (and guerilla) forces.
The U.S. can place nuclear weapons there, but I DOUBT, rather wholly, that the U.S. would ever use these weapons in this region of the world. The rulers of the U.S. certainly know that the whole world would immediately know without any inklings of doubt that it'd be a SUPREME CRIME that would merit response from every other country on Earth that has military capabilities to contribute against the U.S. in Latin or Central America. Defence likely wouldn't come of this kind, but it'd be unquestionably merited, and if it did happen, then what the U.S. elites would have then done is to wage war on the whole planet; certainly all countries that'd come to try to help defend Latin and/or Central America anyway.
If that happens, pay for my flight and send me down. Trained or not, I'll accept to join the resistance guerillas, or one of the armies, and give it my best shot.
I doubt war will break out there, and what's going on with all of this U.S. stage militarism might only be that, stage acting and for the purpose of distracting the public's eyes and minds from extreme crimes of the U.S. elsewhere. Hmmm, now where might that be? Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, possibly Iran, former USSR republics of Eastern Europe and that are now part of the EU and/or NATO and which have populations increasingly regretful for having accepted to welcome the so-called democracy and capitalism of the west, wishing they were now living under the dictatorships they had before, for then life was affordable and there was real "rule of law". The latter is about U.S., and NATO, encroachment upon Russia. And there's also AFRICOM and not wholly, but very much covert U.S. warring there; even if much is through proxies.
It's stage acting (the world is the large stage), I believe. It's clearly intimidating and angering, and wrongful, as well as criminal; clearly imperialistic crime. And the intimidation is clearly intended and working, to some extent, that is; but I doubt that escalating this to actual war is part of the real plan. Maybe it's more like the story of the big bad wolf huffing and puffing, trying to blow the house of the relatively defenceless down and to then gobble them up, but Latin American countries, governments have been creating their own counter-fortress relations and improving governments for their own populations, and this fortress should not easily disassemble just because of the big bad wolf's blasts of awful, stenchful breath and bad behaviour.
For a while, the big bad wolves tried to pass themselves off as do-gooders, but these populations and their new political representatives have learned the real nature of these wolves in disguise. So now the big bad wolves are openly acting without disguise, any longer, realising that they rendered themselves naked "kings". But the big bad wolves huff, and they puff, yet the counter-fortress Latin American countries have been developing may stand up well enough against the blasts of (again) stenchful breath from the big bad wolves which clearly are using whatever means they have in order to try to instill immobilizing fear into the political leaderships and populations of Latin America to the point of causing them to buckle to the whims of the corporatocracy of empire USA, "Corporate America"; the latter hope.
Because of that, and due to believing that the counter-fortress of Latin American will be resistant, I think this is a side game that'll mostly "serve" for distracting the public. I certainly hope it won't be worse than this, anyway. If it breaks into actual war, then I'd be ready to be shipped down to join the resistance; if they're in need of extra hands.
Somebody bigger and tougher needs to slap these big bad wolves smack upside their damn heads.
I'll be there with you.
I guess Obama wants to ensure an uninterrupted supply of coke. He is probably doing a fat line off of Biden's ass right now.
The USA really is the evil empire.
and COLOMBIA is to the United States of America , facing South America and the Caribbean
what the DEATH STAR is to the SITH EMPIRE in Star Wars.
Colombia is like the DEATH STAR of the UNITED STATES SITH EMPIRE.
aimed towards "rebel nations". such as venezuela, brazil, argentina, honduras, nicaragua...etc.
Nanoo
I suppose 46 million doesn't sound like a lot of money to our Congress people, who by now are used to talking in terms of billions when it comes to military expenditures. That fucking vote was 100-0 in favor in the senate.
This is so disappointing. Here, I've been happy for those people in the south that finally achieved getting a government working for them. Shame on the the USAF, Congress too. I wonder if Obama will have a big smile on his face, Nobel peace winner, while he signs this bill.
Columbia is a gateway country. The Pacific Ocean on one side, the Gulf of Mexico on the other. Columbia borders with Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil,and Venezuela. Get the picture?
A very clear picture, but dipped in blood.
/cm
QUIZ
1- How many foreign military bases are there in the United States? ans. none.
2- How many military bases does the united states have in foreign countries? ans. over 100.
And we wonder why the rest of the world is pissed off at us?
sirios - Our military bases in foreign countries number closer to 800.
Doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling that you are protected?
; - )
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Thanks,i knew it was more but i just couldn't remember. Now I'm even more depressed.
An aside - Was gone for just a day, and golly-gee whiz [how tame we once were, "Harold Teen."] and am in the midst of varied sets of pressure-cooker things to get done in the next few days, so here come lengthy posts and answers and thoughtful comments and information from so many of you [and thanks, Mike C. for all the info and your explanations that I will be studying carefully in a few days. I do essentially agree, but I think you would agree that there are so many threads in studying anything historical, sociological, etcetera, that it's difficult to post it all. That's why books are written ... and read ... but then disappear too.], This is one topic that I think could go on for a very long, long time,
BUT ...
it has already disappeared into the archives and we will be on to the next essay and the next and the next with comments galore.
I'm half itching to start what could turn out to be 70 pages of comment, but I can't right now ... and that's a potential book too.
What saddens me, above all, however, is that not only have we not learned, not only do we keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome, which is almost a direct quote of Einstein's definition of INSANITY, but there seems to be less intelligence, less sound reasoning, more shriveling of the heart and the sensibilities, more rigid blind spots and aggressive two-year old thinking and acting [I want it/them all, and therefore I have a right to hurt you, push you over, step on your hands, to get all of the toys, and it doesn't bother me one bit when you cry because I got 'em.], an increasing coarseness and grossness of cultural renderings [songs with two chords and a repeat melody of five notes on the guitar, one banal sentence with two "dirty" words, and a brief nasal chant of "Oh, Oh."], a world of greater and greater population(s) increasingly splintered, ranging from the so-called primitive tribal peoples [who are actually more sophisticated than most of us] to the enclaves of erudite scientists designing primitive spaceships, and all the other range of disparities, along with an increasing reliance on truly lethal violence to solve problems, ... and I truly do wonder how can it all turn out for the common good, and I don't know if it ever can.
Maybe we are somewhere in the middle of Hinduism's 4th Yuga period [the Yugas = the repeating billions-of-years' cycles that finish with high spiritual evolvement and then a deep breath of a few billion years, then it/you all start(s) over again in some new stories.
The fact is none of us can ever know the whole bloomin' Mystery, even though some of us at times hit the Bliss Trip and say, "Ah-Ha!" But in the unfathomable vastness of space, time, eternity, none of us really knows a damn thing. Even the Bliss Trip of sweet silence, all-knowingingness of everything and nothing, peacefulness, and golden light gets boring. And so one slips back into thoughts and thinking. Then to actively create or live this whole, messy, particular tale to the end resumes as a need again.
And if you don't understand what I'm saying, I do. ; - ) And that's enough for me to say: What an interesting ride this one is. And how it turns out on this material plane, nobody knows, except for the certainties of death and taxes.
; - )))
Cee U Later.
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