Sign in HERE to oppose ANY U.S. intervention in the Colombia/Venezuela dispute.

[Ken Burch]

This is important, because we can assume this country, if it DID intervene, would back Uribe against Chavez. And there'd be no good reason for anyone who isn't a right-wing nutjob or a druglord to want Uribe to be the winner in that fight.

It's bad enough that we've been arming Uribe and his stormtroopers for decades.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

1. It definitely wont surprise me if and when we do back Uribe

[LoZoccolo]

2. I think we should oppose Chavez for all the mean hurtful things he's said.

And that he ruled by decree and spends hours on TV every Sunday giving people official state propaganda, and keeps telling people we're going to attack Venezuela in much the same manner that Bush* did about Iraq, and for token gestures giving free oil or whatever to a few token neighborhoods, and for going after some dude who criticized him because he was a foreigner after he came here and criticized our government, and a host of other things that we would rightfully be throwing a fit about if someone tried them here.

[Ken Burch]

3. Well, at least that's a coherent right-wing post from you.

Not surprising that you'd want a Chile-under-Pinochet future for Venezuela.

[LoZoccolo]

4. Did I say that?

My post was about Chavez. Maybe I'm third party about this whole thing.

[Ken Burch]

8. That's what overthrowing Chavez would lead to.

What Chavez is actually guilty of is empowering the poor through the elected community councils, moving the country finally towards racial equality by removing the Spanish-descent right-wing elite from power, and building a strong social welfare system while almost every other country in the world was slashing theirs to nothing(as this country did under the last Democratic president).

Chavez has made life better for his country's poor and multiracial majority. All Uribe has done is further solidify the dominance of the rich, the light-skinned and the lucratively criminal, while frightening most of his country's population into dignity-free acquiescent silence.

If Chavez prevails in this dispute, the poor in Latin America have hope. If Uribe prevails, the hard-line market uber alles model gets reimposed and the IMF gets to punish South America all over again.

[ima_sinnic]

5. -1x10^9 considering who posted it, the tripe & ignorant misinformation is expected (nt)

[LoZoccolo]

6. What part did I say that was false? n/t

[Ken Burch]

9. Well, the "mean, hurtful things" line was not only false, but silly

All Chavez has said to our country's leaders is that they don't have the right to call the tune in the hemisphere. You would agree, I hope, that we need to give up all the "Monroe Doctrine" bullshit by now, wouldn't you?

The truth is, no one, EVEN THE UNITED STATES, has the right to dominate the Western Hemisphere. Only the people of the hemisphere themselves have THAT right.

[ima_sinnic]

10. the fact that you asked that question indicates everything about you

too lazy to check your facts? or afraid you might find out something that challenges your defense of everything reactionary and right wing?

I'll soon put you on Ignore, I've noticed you never post much that's worthwhile.

[ima_sinnic]

7. all too sadly, I can predict the all too predictable outcome of this

why does the United States ALWAYS back the dictator? (that was a rhetorical question--we all know how important US-controlled dictators are to the glorious imperial dream).

"no money" for domestic concerns, but unlimited dollars to tromp around beating our chests in other people's countries.

I don't even want to watch this atrocity unfold, it is just too sickening. I guess our new "war president" wants to break the record for number of simultaneous interventions and illegal wars conducted after getting that Nobel "Peace" Prize.

[Ken Burch]

11. Several more unrec's. The "Fascism Rocks!" crowd is making its appearance.

n/t.

[IndianaGreen]

20. DLCers whose stocks will soar once neo-liberalism is restored in Latin America

They are the same crowd that will personally profit from passage of Senate version of HCR.

[Vidar]

12. K&R.

[a la izquierda]

13. the latin america posts...

always bring out the ignorami.
Hopefully, it'll never get far enough that we have to do anything. Of course the US would back Colombia and that sniveling sycophant Uribe.

[Peace Patriot]

14. The US intervention has already occurred. $6 BILLION in US military aid to Colombia--

a country with one of the worst human rights record on earth, where the military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads have murdered thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, teachers, community organizers, political leftists, peasant farmers, journalists and others--a country, therefore, favored by the US, and with whom the US just signed the following agreement: US military use of SEVEN military bases in Colombia, NO LIMIT on the number of US troops and 'contractors' who can be deployed there, UNLIMITED diplomatic immunity for whatever US soldiers and 'contractors' do there, and US military use of all civilian airports and other facilities, for--as stated in a USAF document (uncovered by Eva Golinger)--"full spectrum military operations" in the region to deal with threats from drugs, terrorists and "anti-US countries."

There are already at least a thousand US soldiers in Colombia, and an unknown numbers of 'contractors.' These are described as 'advisers.' (Yes, this IS Vietnam deja vu all over again). The mechanism for instant, massive escalation is now in place, waiting for its "Gulf of Tonkin"--and, in addition to all of the above, the US has reconstituted the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, has just added two new military bases in Panama, has just secured the US military base and port facilities in Honduras with a rightwing military coup, and has been spying on Venezuela and doing illegal flyovers from the US bases on the Dutch islands off Venezuela's oil coast.

When all of the above war assets are completed (and we can bet that what has been announced as "plans" are well under way), the Pentagon will have Venezuela's northern oil region and coastal oil reserves and facilities surrounded.

One more thing: I have just stumbled over evidence that the US plans to establish a military base on tip of the Guajira peninsula, overlooking the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela, where Venezuela's main oil supplies, shipping and other facilities are located. (If you look at a map, you will see why the words "naval blockade" come to mind.) Colombia just announced that it is going to establish a major new military base on the Guajira peninsula, and took pains to elaborate that this base will be built with "Colombian tax money." A year and a half ago, when Ecuador said that it was going to kick the US military out of the Manta, Ecuador, base, and the US ambassador to Colombia said that this US military facility would probably be re-located in Colombia, the New York Times ferreted out the probable location: the Guajira peninsula.

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x28323

Chavez is right that this is an extreme provocation. But what is far worse is that the Pentagon is probably using Colombia as a front to establish a US military base that commands Venezuela's oil harbors. In addition to the other war assets that the Pentagon has been assembling, this particular base would be constitute an act of war, in and of itself.

Venezuela is a democracy--and one that is, in fact, a far better democracy than our own. (And I can prove it with FACTS, if you want me to). So is Ecuador, whose main oil region is adjacent to Colombia to the south. These are the two main US oil targets, concerning which the US has been carrying out a campaign of psyops/disinformation for several years.

Venezuela has been suffering an influx of some 50,000 peasant farmer refugees fleeing from the Colombian military and its death squads and from US "war on drugs" toxic pesticide spraying--an enormous headache for Venezuela, which--unlike Colombia--has social justice policies that require feeding, housing and caring for these refugees. There is a similar influx into Ecuador. Colombia's 40+ year civil war with the FARC guerrillas, its military/death squad "cleansing" activities, and its protected gangsters in illicit drugs, weapons and other traffic, have been spilling over these border areas into Venezuela and Ecuador for some years now. This is a deliberate policy aimed at creating chaos in the border areas, to use as the justification for military incursions into Venezuela and Ecuador. The US/Colombia tested out manufacturing cross-border incidents in March 2008 by dropping ten 500 lb US "smart bombs" on a temporary FARC hostage release camp just inside Ecuador's border, slaughtering 25 sleeping people including the FARC's chief hostage and peace negotiator, Raul Reyes. This incident nearly started a war between the US/Colombia and Venezuela/Ecuador, then and there.

The US also tested out a secession strategy, in Bolivia in September 2008. Funded and organized out of the US embassy, white separatists in the gas/oil rich provinces of eastern Bolivia tried to secede from Bolivia, to form a fascist mini-state in control of Bolivia's main resources. This insurrection failed, and the US military did not enter the fray in support of the white separatists, but it tested out political responses in the region and it does provide the probable prototype for US military entry into Venezuela and Ecuador, at the "invitation" of local fascist groups parading as "patriots," declaring their "independence." Rightwing politicians in both Venezuela's and Ecuador's northern oil regions openly talk of secession, and the US is more than likely funding and helping to organize those groups.

Be advised: The Colombian government and military are the proxies for this US war, just as the South Vietnamese government and military were the proxies for the US in 1963-4, created by the US, using our tax dollars. The corrupt and vile Colombian government would have collapsed long ago, but for US support. It cannot even support its own military, which requires $6 BILLION in US "aid." If the US were to withdraw its support tomorrow, what would happen is that the OTHER governments of Latin America would come to Colombia's aid, would help broker a peace agreement with the FARC guerillas and would help establish a just and democratic government in Colombia. The US is grossly interfering in the region, via Colombia, to create mayhem, re-impose US tyranny in the region and regain control of the resources that the many new leftist governments of South America are using to benefit the vast poor majority.

One of the US-supported coup generals in Honduras said that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States" (--quoted in a report by the Zelaya government-in-exile). This is another purpose of US militarism in the region--to STOP the amazing leftist democracy movement that has swept South America and half of Central America. They don't want us to know that government that operates in the interest of its citizens is possible, and is happening, on a vast scale, in the western hemisphere. Our corporate rulers and war profiteers fear us, as well as hating democracy, self-determination, independence and social justice in Latin America.

I notice that the comments above in this thread are tending to view this Colombia/Venezuela dispute as a sort of football game, to which we are spectators--with the luxury of rooting for one side or the other. Please know that the US is instigating this conflict, and US troops will very likely soon be dying in it.

One difference with Vietnam, is that the Colombian military is probably more competent as a killing machine than the South Vietnamese military ever was, and thus the US can carry out this war with less "cannon fodder" than Vietnam required. That does not mean that it is not a US war. But for billions of our tax dollars and the US military 'advisers' already "in country," it could not now be the biggest threat to peace in our hemisphere and the biggest mistake the US has ever made, bar none.

[ima_sinnic]

15. +1x10^25

too bad the ignorant Uribe apologists and Chavez bashers will not take the time to inform themselves, or, more likely, feel compelled to work overtime to keep posts like this, which go right to the rot at the core, obscure and distorted. Certain scum with no humanity have too much invested in violence, hegemony, and atrocities to let the truth be known. The mindless "Chavez is a dictator" posts are evidence of that--either directly carrying water for the war profiteers and mass murderers, or unquestioningly falling for it like the good little knee-jerk reactionary sycophants they are.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

16. One good thing about the Bush presidency--

Latin American was all but forgotten about and flourished with our lack of attention.

O and dear Hillary seem to be changing that. :(

[Ken Burch]

18. She has to keep the Miami Cuban in-laws happy, y'know.

HRC still has this delusional view that globalization HELPS the poor and the workers.

[me b zola]

17. K&R

[IndianaGreen]

19. The US is as involved in mischief in Latin America as it was during the bad old days

of military juntas and dirty wars against progressives.

The US was involved in the Honduras coup, and it is now expanding a network of military basis in the hemisphere.