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torture techniques, and murder, as well as how to foment riots and destabilization, and topple democracies. The utter horrors that were inflicted on Guatemalan Mayan villagers (200,000 thousand slaughtered with Reagan's direct complicity), on Nicaraguans, on El Salvadorans, on Argentinians--torture, mass slaughter, horrible deaths--and many others, are all connected to U.S./corporate policy and training at the SOA, of Latin American fascists in systemic oppression, coordinated among the fascist/military elites in different countries (--coordinated by us in Plan Condor).
This is not just a "peace group" issue. This is a matter of fundamental illegality-- violation of numerous national and international laws--and indecency--egregious violations of human rights--for the purpose of corporate profit and war and police state profiteering--and it is still going on. The U.S./Bushwhacks have larded $6 BILLION of our tax dollars on the Colombian government, in military aid. The Colombian military and closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads have murdered thousands and thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, human rights workers, political leftists, journalists and others--recently, this year, last year, and ever since Plan Colombia was instituted by Bill Clinton.
Which brings me to Obama, and the great worries and reservations that many of us who follow events in Latin America have expressed about Obama's Latin America foreign policy.
There was/is one little ray of hope in Obama's L/A policy. In speaking to the Miami anti-Castro mafia in May '08, Obama broached the idea of "talking to" Castro. That was a brave thing to do to that crowd. The speech was otherwise full of Bushite-sounding, Monroe Doctrine-sounding anti-leftist cant, about Latin Americans "needing U.S. leadership," which is blustery bullshit these days.
Latin Americans--bolstered by the peaceful, democratic election of leftist governments all over South America--in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay (of all places!) and Chile (center-left), and moving into Central America--with the election of leftist governments in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and the pending election of a leftist government in El Salvador--have formed their own 'common market,' UNASUR, without the U.S., in order to have an economic/political organization that is not dominated by the U.S., and to further their own social justice and independence/sovereignty goals.
This organization--UNASUR, formalized this year--met its first crisis this September, when the Bushwhacks tried to instigate a civil war in Bolivia, by funding and organizing white separatists, who want to split off the gas and oil rich eastern provinces into a fascist mini-state in control of Bolivia's main resources, and who wanted to destroy the national government of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. These fascists, with the support of the U.S. ambassador and the DEA, rioted for days, sacked and destroyed government and NGO buildings, beat up the indigenous, blew up a gas pipeline and machine-gunned some 30 unarmed peasants. Morales threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia, for supporting this insurrection, and UNASUR held a meeting, organized by Michele Batchelet, president of Chile, and with important support from Brazil and Argentina, unanimously backed the Morales government, and instituted a peace process with the saner elements of the fascist (minority) opposition in Bolivia, and also set up a commission to investigate the mass murder.
This peace process is coming to fruition this Sunday, when Bolivians vote on their new Constitution, which will enshrine the civil and human rights of the indigenous as the law of the land. (Bolivia is a largely indigenous country with a bad history of white enslavement of the indigenous; also massive land theft, and ugly bigotry to this day).
Evo Morales is the "Martin Luther King" of South America. The Bushwhacks tried to overthrow him. All of South America came to his defense. These people "need U.S. leadership"--according to Obama? Give me a break.
So, Obama is out of touch, very poorly advised, and headed for disaster if he listens to people like Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and others (all with miserable records of supporting fascists and opposing democracy in South America--there is not one good Latin American advisor on Obama's team, that I can see--not one). The U.S. policies of "free trade" (killing union organizers and further impoverishing the majority) and the militarization of the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," have been largely rejected by most South Americans, who want the U.S. the fuck out of their countries, if it is going to continue as a malevolent force. And that is the question: Is it?
I don't know the answer. Obama says he wants to flood the place with Peace Corps volunteers (whom the Bushwhacks were using as spies, in Bolivia) and new consulates "in remote places." He says he wants peaceful dialogue--but is he being set up for a "Bay of Pigs" trap, like the CIA tried to do to JFK*--that is, a war he doesn't want (in this case, an oil war against Venezuela)? There is considerable evidence that that is the case, which I won't go into here**. (It is a very great concern of mine.) One clue that Obama is either misinformed, or can't risk speaking the truth, was his description of Hugo Chavez as "authoritarian" (--a Bushwhack, corp-fascist 'news,' DLC, 100% goddamned lie) to the Miami mafia and in other venues. And he apparently repeated it, very recently, adding other insults to Chavez, in a Univision interview (corpo/fascist 'news' monopoly)--although I have not been able to verify that this interview even took place. Chavez reacted to it, when the articles were quoted to him, and said that it had the "stench" or "smell"--depending on the translation--of Bush, which it certainly did, if what Obama is alleged to have said is true--that Chavez supports "terrorism"--another TOTAL BUSHWHACK FABRICATION.
Was this a Bushwhack "dirty trick" (the alleged interview of Obama), to sour relations, and hope of dialogue, right off the bat? Why would Obama, after saying he wants dialogue, go out of his way to insult Chavez, days before his inauguration? If he did, then his policy is two-faced. If he didn't, well, we need to know that, don't we? Who is undermining his policy, and why? Is his desire for peace and constructive discussion being sabotaged?
His new Sec of State, Hillary Clinton, had a paid agent of the narco-fascist government of Colombia, as her chief campaign adviser. Eric Holder, his new A.G., was the attorney for Chiquita Brands, whose execs paid $1.7 million dollars, over a seven-year period, to rightwing death squads in Colombia, to murder some 4,000 union leaders on Chiquita farms (and got these corporate execs off with a handslap). Obama's other appointments are similar in outlook and history. These are NOT good signs of a peaceful, pro-democracy Obama policy in Latin America. That is why we are worried--that, and the precedent of the "Bay of Pigs" (the CIA-instigated war on Cuba that the CIA tried to blackmail JFK into supporting*).
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*(Recommended reading: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters," by James Douglass - recently published by the Maryknoll fathers).
**(I've been following the evidence for this Bushwhack war plan in South America for two years now. Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, has said that it is a three-country civil war plan--Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia. We saw the Bolivia plot unfold in September, and fail--at least thus far. Venezuela and Ecuador are bigger oil prizes--both members of OPEC--and these war plans are still brewing, with Venezuela perhaps the most vulnerable of all, because of its borders with Colombia and the Caribbean, where the Bushwhacks recently reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet. Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, said that the 4th Fleet threatens Brazil's oil reserves on the Atlantic coast, as well, and he proposed creation of a 'common defense' along with their 'common market,' UNASUR, which has been approved and is being implemented. Perhaps the most serious concern is Colombia, and the rightwing death squads, private armies (Blackwater), U.S. troops and out-of-control, murderous Colombian military, all operating right over the border from Venezuela's oil rich state of Zulia (on the Caribbean), a fascist stronghold. If Obama is being cornered into his own "Bay of Pigs," that is likely where it would occur. So, if you start hearing claims of "freedom fighters" in Zulia, who just want their "independence" from that "dictator" Chavez, you will know what this is all about: Oil War II.)
**(Not to be missed: Donald Rumsfeld's op-ed in the Washington Post, of Dec '07, entitled, "The Smart Way to Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez," in which he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of Bushwhack "friends and allies" in South America.")
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