Obama signs law against Iran's influence in Latin America
Saturday December 29, 2012
Obama signs law against Iran's influence in Latin America
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama enacted a law Friday to counter Iran's alleged influence in Latin America, through a new diplomatic and political strategy to be designed by the State Department.
The Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act, passed by lawmakers earlier this year, calls for the State Department to develop a strategy within 180 days to "address Iran's growing hostile presence and activity" in the region. Although the strategy is confidential and only accessible to lawmakers, it must contain a public summary.
The text also calls on the Department of Homeland Security to bolster surveillance at US borders with Canada and Mexico to "prevent operatives from Iran, the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps), its Quds Force, Hezbollah or any other terrorist organization from entering the Untied States." And within Latin American countries, the text provides for a multiagency action plan to provide security in those countries, along with a "counterterrorism and counter-radicalization plan" to isolate Iran and its allies.
Washington has repeatedly stated it is closely monitoring Tehran's activities in Latin America, though senior State Department and intelligence officials have indicated there is no apparent indication of illicit activities by Iran.
More:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/12/29/reutersworld/1212291049-obama-signs-law-against-irans-influence&sec=reutersworld
= new reply since forum marked as read
And that makes a very big region of South America which is making ITS OWN foreign policy and DOESN'T CARE what the U.S. thinks about it. It is a point of sovereignty, as well as being an anti-war and world peace policy. And WHO has violated world peace with unjust, horrible war? NOT Iran. Not Brazil. Not Venezuela. Not Bolivia. Not Ecuador.
Us. It was us. Or, rather, our masters slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people in the first weeks of "shock and awe" bombing alone, in OUR NAME, right next door to Iran, which watched this horror unfold on their border and decided that they had better develop a nuclear defense or they were next!
Most of Latin America thinks that, when it comes to cultural and political conflicts, trade and friendly cultural exchanges are the way to go--and that war really, really, REALLY sucks.
They are right--but our masters don't care about working out cultural and political differences. In fact, they readily install real shit-heads to do their bidding. As for trade, they do NOT believe in "free trade" at all. They believe in corporate MONOPOLIES, and they don't care how those corporate monopolies are imposed. Truth is, they PREFER dictators or dictatorial oligarchies to any other form of government, to GUARANTEE their monopolies and to smash local rivals and dissenters. They seek control of all resources and they seek cheap, unprotected labor, the more like slaves the better.
Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador--and other allies of theirs, including Argentina--seek FAIR trade--a "level playing field"--worker empowerment (so evident in their governments' policies and leaders) and PEACE, in all of its manifestations, including a peaceful attitude toward other cultures, peaceful change, and painstaking diplomacy rather than bullying, threats, covert dirty tricks and war.
The great irony is that, if Iran needs changing, positive change is much more likely to be produced by Brazil's, Venezuela's, Bolivia's, Ecuador's and Argentina's approach, than by U.S. bullying, threats, covert dirty tricks and war. Oh, yes, the U.S. might change Iran--as it did in 1954, by destroying Iran's first democracy (because its first president nationalized the oil) and installing the horrible "Shah of Iran" who inflicted the Iranian people with 25 years of torture and oppression, in service to U.S. and U.K. oil interests. But POSITIVE change--welcoming Iranians (who are Persians, not Arabs) into the modern world--encouraging their republic, encouraging more democracy, encouraging human rights (truly encouraging human rights, not faking it, as the U.S. does)--requires RESPECT, requires an understanding of their legitimate fears, requires finding mutual interests, mutual points of culture and healthy trade and contact.
The masters of the U.S. can--and probably will--throw the U.S. war machine at Iran, as it did to Iraq, and might get Exxon Mobil and BP signed oil contracts in a hell hole with millions of radiation-burned or starving, displaced people wandering around, and with highly paid mercenaries having fun "turkey shoots" when they wander into the wrong places--the absolutely perfect setting for U.S. oil operations--hell--then, in addition to paying for this war, we'll get another couple of dollars tacked onto the price of gasoline, and half of us will have to give up our jobs because we can't afford to drive there (already happening in the U.S.A.), and eventually the Iranians will REALLY become radicalized, like they AREN'T now, and join the jihadists in blowing up anything with a U.S. flag on it. We will have turned this potentially great and brilliant people INTO Al Qaeda--and that serves the other evildoers among us, the U.S. military and all of its private contractors, who live off "enemies." It's their gravy train!
This is what Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and others are trying to prevent. They are asserting the foreign policy that the U.S. once stood for, as the expression of the form of government--democracy--that the U.S. once was. Oh, the irony!
These !@#$-ers in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the U.S. "military-industrial complex" and the U.S. police state want to ERADICATE this South American foreign policy and the governments that advocate it. That is very clear. And they are going to do it with subversion, spying and dirty rotten CIA tricks, as this latest bullshit from the Diebold Congress makes clear--and, if that fails, they will turn the U.S. war machine on South America--where most of the oil is, in the western hemisphere, in these very same countries.
South America as the U.S. "backyard." South America as the U.S. "doormat." South America with heinous, installed dictators all over the landscape, torturing and murdering their own people for U.S. corporate interests. That's what our transglobal corporate masters want, but, believe me, the South Americans are not going to take it anymore. They don't want U.S. advice on ANY matter, including Iran. They are sick to death of U.S. war and U.S. dictation. They are very strongly committed to democracy, fairness and world peace. And if the Obama administration doesn't get smart on this matter, an unbreachable gulf is going to develop, between the two halves of the western hemisphere. They have the resources, the people and the passionate democratic momentum to go it alone, and they will. U.S. policy on this matter is not only wrong, it is stupid--and it is all too typical of what we have become: a corrupt, bankrupt, dangerous and deluded, gigantic military power with NO democratic controls on that power and with absolute vultures unleashed upon our own people to suck our entrails dry. Between the banksters and the "military-industrial conplex," we are a mere carcass of what we once were.
BUT, Latin America was in as much trouble as we are, a decade ago, and for many decades before that, and they are dramatically turning things around--politically, economically, socially, in every way, in a very short time. It started in Venezuela, in 2002, when the Venezuelan people reversed the U.S.(Bushwhack)-supported coup d'etat, and quickly spread to Argentina and Brazil, and soon to Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and even Paraguay (though they have had a serious setback--with a coup government that has invited the U.S. back in), and now Peru, as well, has elected a new leftist government, and Chile will likely do so in the next election cycle. A few months after South America formed UNASUR (all SA governments, of whatever political stripe--June 2008), the U.S. (Bushwhacks) tried a coup in Bolivia but a united South America stopped them. LatAm was not so successful in Honduras, where a Bushwhack-designed rightwing coup d'tat shot up the leftist president's house, kidnapped him and flew him out of Honduras at gunpoint, with a re-fueling stop at the U.S. air base in Honduras. (Obama was president, but I'm not sure if he was in charge.) There have been set-backs--invariably the result of U.S. interference--but the trend is overwhelmingly democratic and leftist, and assertive of independence overall (including some rightwing leaders, or some actions of some rightwing leaders).
They are NOT going back to a state of servitude. Once people smell freedom, democracy and independence--and begin to reap the benefits of these things (as Latin Americans in countries with leftist governments certainly are doing)--there is no going back, and the new unity, cooperation, and "south-south" trade that is developing, with entities like UNASUR (all South America), CELAC (all Latin America), Mercosur and ALBA (trade groups) and the Bank of the South, is yet more evidence that they are not going back.
They will trade with whomever they damn please--just as the U.S. does. The U.S. trades with Saudi Arabia, China and other shitty governments, with barely a hypocritical thought about human rights or democracy. Why shouldn't LatAm countries trade with Iran? Really, why shouldn't they? Cuz our corporate masters don't like it? Ha!
None of it is going to work this time--not U.S. billions in aid to rightwing causes, not billions for the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," not CIA-FBI-DEA-AFT-Homeland Security spying and dirty tricks, nor the machinations of the Pentagon's "Southern Command," nor U.S. military training of torturers and assassins, not this Diebold Congress bill nor any other such crappy law, nor any of the devilish and paranoid shit that our government gets up to, is going to turn Latin America back into a U.S. pawn. And if they instigate another war in LatAm (besides the "war on drugs"
, it is going to be the death knell of the U.S.A. We will be evicted from the region altogether and will descend into chaos here at home.
As I said, if the Latin Americans can arise from 50 years of U.S.-instigated fascism, and create democracy and social justice, so can we. And it can happen very quickly, once we get a few things straightened out (starting with vote counting in the PUBLIC VENUE!). It won't happen without struggle and pain, but it CAN happen. Latin America, and especially South America, is proving it.
Why can't we leave other countries alone. United States you are a big bully.i guess this is the next future war being set up.
I did believe he would cause Latin American blood to flow before he left office. Too much idiotic, undeserved hostility aimed at the leftist Latin American leaders. Looks as if Obama has merely taken up where Bush left off. Bad idea for a Democrat.
Here's a photo I just discovered accidently:
[center]
Noam Chomsky meeting with Hugo Chavez in Caracas[/center]
From article,
Noam Chomsky Meets with Chavez in Venezuela
By James Suggett
Mérida, August 27th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) -- U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally televised forum on Monday.
Chomsky is well known in Venezuela for his critiques of U.S. imperialism and support for the progressive political changes underway in Venezuela and other Latin American countries in recent years. President Chavez regularly references Chomsky in speeches and makes widely publicized recommendations of Chomsky's 2003 book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.
"Hegemony or survival; we opt for survival," said Chavez in a press conference to welcome Chomsky. He compared Chomsky's thesis to that of German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in the early 1900s, "Socialism or Barbarism," and referred to Chomsky as "one of the greatest defenders of peace, one of the greatest pioneers of a better world."
Through an interpreter, Chomsky responded, "I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that's easy. What's harder is to create a better world... and what's so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."
More:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4748
