From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for ‘full-spectrum operations’ is escalating rapidly

by Hugh O’Shaughnessy
Published: Nov. 22, 2009 – The Independent

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.

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.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-builds-up-its-bases-in-oilrich-south-america-1825398.html

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The Annexation of Colombia to the US

by Prof James J. Brittain
Published: Oct. 28, 2009 – Global Research

It is not difficult to obtain information related to the many social movements and progressive political mechanisms working to implement social reforms throughout contemporary Latin America. Venezuela continues to experience support for the presidency of Hugo Chávez [1999-] and the changes therein via the Bolivarian Revolution; Bolivia has witnessed the successful promotion of nationalization projects through Evo Morales’ Movement for Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) [2006-]; and president Rafael Correa [2007-] has garnished significant applause for his administrations consistent denunciation of US intervention in the region, as shown through Ecuador’s disallowance of Washington to resume activities at the port and airport in Manta. Alongside the aforementioned electoral shifts, the on-going civil war within Colombia has, contrary to state and popular media reports, seen the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas-Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP) remain a consistent threat to dominant political-economic interests in both Colombia and the United States (Brittain, 2010). For years the FARC-EP have been “the most powerful and successful guerrilla army in the world” leading it to be seen as “the most important military and political force in South America opposing imperialism” (Escribano, 2003: 299; Petras and Brescia, 2000: 134; see also Petras and Veltmeyer, 2003). A testament of their consequential Marxism, administration after administration in Colombia (and the United States) have diligently fought to halt the FARC-EP’s struggle of emancipation fearing that the country’s elite could lose their entrenched class dominance. If such events were to occur a further destabilization of domestic and foreign interests would subsequently arise within a region increasingly moving away from a well-entrenched conventional political-economic system dominated by the United States. While 2008 witnessed the insurgency implement a tactical withdrawal, the FARC-EP remains to be the largest and longest-established insurgency movement in Latin American history (Brittain, 2010; Petras, 2008).

To prolong influence over Colombia, every US administrations from Nixon [1969-1974] to Obama [2009-] embraced a ‘war on drugs,’ [1] or more recently a ‘war on terror,’ as a means to deploy counterinsurgency campaigns to silence antagonistic sectors of said population. It is increasingly clear, when concerning the recent actions of Bogotá and Washington to facilitate seven fortified bases controlled by the United States on Colombian territory, that both states have coordinated a strategic alliance to militarize the region, not simply one country. German Rodas Chavez (2007: 97) suggests that such activities are an attempt to enable the US to stabilize at least a portion of Latin America’s territory. Securing some form of control over Colombia – and subsequently using the country as a centralized outpost – would assist the US to deploy ’sub-regional military operations’ throughout the domestic and regional geography (Campos, 2007: 31). From this one can view Colombia as a strategic ‘national security’ case for Washington on three fronts:

First, the country’s influential economic and geopolitical placement as the regions gateway to South America: bordering on the Panama Basin and Caribbean Sea, access to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and neighbouring five nation-states (Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil).

Second, Colombia is one of the United States’ most important Latin American and Caribbean energy suppliers in both present and future forms via extensive untapped oil/coal reserves and already established pipelines and open-pit mines.

Lastly, both states share a dual goal of eliminating the ideological significance and potential political-military threat of the FARC-EP from creating a successful revolutionary shift ‘from below’.

Supporting such a scenario, John Perkins describes Colombia as the last bastion of US imperial power in Latin America. As a result of the country’s tactical location Washington has attempted to financially and militarily sustain the basis of power in Colombia to ensure that a geopolitical opening remains in the grasp of the US – hence, the importance of the seven bases. [2] If the Colombian state can hold power than Washington still has a hope of regaining regional political-economic authority.

Colombia is the glaring exception to the hemispheric anti-corporatocracy movements. It has maintained its position as Washington’s surrogate. Shored up massive U.S. taxpayer assistance and armies of corporate-sponsored mercenaries, as well as formal U.S. military support, it has become the keystone in Washington’s attempt’s to regain regional domination (Perkins, 2008: 149).

What is being witnessed in Colombia reflects what Marx (and Engels) alluded to when concerning the activities of ruling powers under ingrained capitalist conditions. While not apparently in their immediate interests, elites from various countries will periodically align when problematic conditions arise for the purpose of eliminating impediments to expansion. Hence, their historical statement, “in political practice … they join all coercive measures against the working class” (Marx and Engels, 1976: 481, 508). In 1847, before a collective of workers in London, Marx highlighted how capitalists, without fail, would, across borders, support one another as a consequence of their class position.

A certain kind of brotherhood does of course exist among the bourgeois classes of all nations. It is a brotherhood of the oppressors against the oppressed, of the exploiters against the exploited. Just as, despite the competition and conflicts existing between the members of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois class of one country is united by brotherly ties against the proletariat of that country, so the bourgeois of all countries, despite their mutual conflicts and competition on the world market, are united by brotherly ties against the proletariat of all countries (Marx, 1976: 388).

Recognizing the importance of regaining some form of hegemony, the Colombian state is willing to provide the United States carte blanch in tactics, methods, and campaigns over its sovereign territory and those living therein. Such immunity was recently witnessed when US Sgt. Michael Coen and a private military-based contractor César Ruiz were free to leave Colombia without trial after warrants for their arrest were issued related to the rape of a 12 year-old girl at the Tolemaida military base in Tolima (Martínez, 2009). Furthermore, upon returning to the United States, neither Coen or Ruiz were prosecuted for said crime even though Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s office concluded the youth had been sexually assaulted, had compiled evidence related to the sort, and had eye-witness testimony that decried the two as the violators (Alsema, 2009). Recognizing this as a violation of justice, one is burdened with the question as to how many more atrocities have gone unpunished over the last decade (and Plan Colombia, 1998/2000-2006)?

According to US ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield, “only six US soldiers committed crimes in Colombian territory in the last ten years … in other words, more or less three cases for 10,000 people” (see Wecker, 2009a). Most disconcerting, however, were Brownfield’s adamant comments that even if crimes had, were, or are committed, “[US] people have a right to privacy” (as quoted in Wecker, 2009a). Astonishingly, Colombia’s foreign minister Jaime Bermúdez furthered this position when referring to US state forces operating from the proposed seven bases. On national media, Bermúdez commented that not only would foreign military personnel receive immunity while serving in Colombia but that this is a long continued practice (see Martínez, 2009; Wecker, 2009b).

Immunity for US forces in Colombia is not a recent phenomena but rather an ongoing foreign policy agreement between Bogotá and Washington. In 2002-2003, the Colombian state relieved any legal barriers to crimes committed against its citizens by US military personnel through Article 98 of the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (APSA) (see Isacson, 2007). [3] For the greater part of a decade, officials in both Colombia and the United States have made sure that Colombian institutions cannot inhibit nor intervene in US operations (during or after the fact) under the guise of stabilizing the country (and region). Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld put it best when he said the United States’ has “an obligation to protect our men and women in uniform from this court [ICC] and to preserve America’s ability to remain engaged in the world” (as quoted in Stoner, 2004). John Negroponte, former US ambassador to the United Nations (UN), even threatened the UN when he stated, “should the ICC eventually seek to detain any American, the United States would regard this as illegitimate – and it would have serious consequences” (Negroponte, 2002: 1). In short, through these Immunity Agreements (IAs), US state forces have enjoyed relative invulnerability from the mayhem they have committed.

The basis for the IAs – and the most recent announcement of full-scale future immunity for US state forces on the seven bases – has partially been to insulate United States officials from again being embroiled in scandals related to structural human rights abuses. In 1986, the US was scolded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) when it determined Washington was involved in terrorist activities of war, working with paramilitary networks, and approving the mining of Nicaragua’s Managua waterways as a means to destabilize the Sandinistas while in power (ICJ, 1986). What is interesting about today, however, is that the call from the Obama administration for immunity is welcomed by the Colombia state under Álvaro Uribe Vélez [2002-]. The reasoning: a dire need to prolong domestic sociopolitical stability and regain hemispheric economic control over a region that has experienced more than incremental amounts of economic, political, and social change, which could wet an appetite for more. As Lenin (1966: 241-242) recognized:

There has been a certain rapprochement between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very often-perhaps even in most cases-the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries … is in full accord with the imperialist bourgeoisie, i.e., join forces with it against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes.

The catalyst for the seven bases and IAs is due to the rise and increasing stability of progressive social movements – both within and outside Colombia – that demonstrate the vulnerability of the United States’ imperial project. To lose ground in Colombia would be to not only lose the capacity to fiscally gain from the nation’s natural resources, cheap labour, and exportable commodities but it would further signal the ability of those ‘from below’ to continue building collective power through a united Latin America – a Bolivarian-like region that could withstand dominant monetary and militaristic imperial pressures. Instead of accepting the organic democratic principals of foreign countries and the majorities therein to create an alternative political model of representation and economic methods of development, the United States has and will continue to consciously work against self-determination.

James J. Brittain is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. Brittain is the author of Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP (Pluto Press, 2010) and peer-refereed articles appearing in Controversia, Cuadernos de Sociología, Development, Dollars & Sense, Global Dialogue, Journal for Peasant Studies, Labour, Capital and Society, Monthly Review, New Politics, Peace Review, and Socialist Studies.

[1] Former US Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey expressed how the war against drugs in Colombia has, in fact, been a campaign to demonize Marxist-Leninist guerrillas rather than induce an attack against coca production (see Goff, 2004: 32). It has been argued that the United States has no intentions of curbing the global drug-trade due to the economic spin-offs created from it (Campos, 2007: 38-9; Scott, 2003: 89; Petras, 2001; Petras and Morley, 1995: 86).

[2] During Plan Colombia [1998/2000-2006], the US and Colombian state invested just under $9 million (USD) a day in counterinsurgency efforts (Murillo, 2005; Latin American Press, 2004). By the mid-2000s, the United States had provided over $7 billion (USD) in ‘aid’ (Campos, 2007: 38; Chavez, 2007: 96; Mondragón, 2007: 42).

[3] Under Article 98 and the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Colombia Regarding the Surrender of persons of the United State of America to the International Criminal Court, criminal immunity was given to any US “official, employee (including any contractor), or member of the military, or any United States person” (United States Department of State, 2003: 2). This was, in part, possible through the ASPA where any US president has the capacity to suspend military aid to any country that does not exempt state forces from alleged or proven crimes committed on foreign soil (see Isacson, 2007; Stoner, 2004). For example, “nearly $112 million of Colombia’s expected 2004 aid was contingent on the Bogotá government’s signing of an Article 98 agreement. Faced with the possibility of losing this assistance, the government of President Alvaro Uribe signed in September 2003″ (Stoner, 2004). Richard Boucher (2003), spokesperson for the State Department, justified this position by arguing:

It’s an important principle for the United States that those who want to adhere to the Rome Treaty, who want to participate in the International Criminal Court, can do so. That’s their sovereign decision to do so. But they cannot implicate others and pretend to carry out prosecutions against others who may not be participating, especially since we have our own legal system that deals with the same kind of crimes, and that we do deal with the same kind of crimes. We hold our military to the highest standards, and we don’t think that we need to rely on prosecutors under this court to decide when that needs to be done … So this has been a matter of principle to the United States and has been an important element of national policy. We have a law that was passed by our Congress that says that we won’t provide military assistance to countries who put American officials and military personnel and others in jeopardy of this kind of prosecutorial discretion under this court.

References

Alsema, Adriaan (2009) “US military suspects not charged in Colombia rape case,” September 3 On-Line http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/5716-us-rape-suspects-still-not-charged.html Accessed September 4, 2009.

Boucher, Richard (2003) “Daily Press Briefing,” July 3 On-Line http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2003/July/20030703165811relhcie0.1621057.html Accessed August 1, 2003.

Brittain, James J. (2010) Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The origin and direction of the FARC-EP. London, UK: Pluto Press.

Campos, Carlos Oliva (2007) “The United States-Latin America and the Caribbean: From Neopan-Americanism to the American system for the twenty-first century,” in The Bush Doctrine and Latin America. Gary Prevsot and Carlos Oliva Campos (Eds.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.11-47.

Chavez, German Rodas (2007) “Plan Colombia-A key ingredient in the Bush doctrine,” in The Bush Doctrine and Latin America. Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos (Eds.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 91-104.

Escribano, Marcela (2003) “Militarism and Globalization: Conference synopsis,” in Another World in Possible: Popular alternatives to globalization at the World Social Forum. William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah (Eds.). London, UK: Zed Books. pp. 296-308.

Goff, Stan (2004) Full Spectrum Disorder: The military in the new American century. New York, NY: Soft Skull Press.

International Court of Justice, ICJ (1986) Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America) – Judgment of the Court. Hague: ICJ.

Isacson, Adam (2007) Taking “No” for an Answer: The “American Servicemembers’ Protection Act” and the Bush administration’s security relations with Latin America. Washington: Center for International Policy.

Latin American Press (2004) “How Much the War Costs,” November 25 On-Line http://www.lapress.org/ArticlePrint.asp?IssCode=0&lanCode=1&artCode=4033 Accessed November 26, 2004.

Lenin, V.I. (1966) “Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions July 26,” in Collected Works Volume 31: April-December 1920. Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers. pp. 240-245.

Martínez, Helda (2009) “Colombia: Talking About Peace in the Middle of War,” October 5 On-Line http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48729 Accessed October 6, 2009.

Marx, Karl (1976) “Marx’s Speech: Speeches at the International Meeting held in London on November 29, 1847 to mark the 17th anniversary of the Polish Uprising of 1830,” in Collected Works Volume 6: 1845-1848. New York, NY: International Publishers. pp. 388-389.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels (1976) “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Collected Works Volume 6: 1845-48. New York, NY: International Publishers. pp. 476-519.

Mondragón, Héctor (2007) “Democracy and Plan Colombia,” NALCA Report on the Americas, 40(1): 42-45.

Murillo, Mario A. (2005) “Presidential Re-Election in Colombia Good News for Paramilitaries,” October 24 On-Line www.colombiajournal.org/colombia220.htm Accessed October 24, 2005.

Negroponte, John (2002) “John D. Negroponte, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations: Remarks at stakeout following UN Security Council vote on Resolution 1422, including text of explanation of vote,” July 12 On-Line http://www.amicc.org/docs/Negroponte_1422.pdf Accessed October 9, 2009.

Perkins, John (2008) The Secret History of the American Empire. London, UK: Plume.

Petras, James (2008) Homage to Manuel Marulanda. Personal correspondence.

Petras, James (2001) “Dirty Money” Foundation of US Growth and Empire: Size and scope of money laundering by US banks. Montreal, QE: Centre for Research on Globalization;
Petras, James and Michael M. Brescia (2000) “The FARC Faces the Empire,” Latin American Perspectives, 27(5): 134-142.

Petras, James and Morris Morley (1995) Empire and Power: American global power and domestic decay. London, UK: Routledge.

Petras, James and Henry Veltmeyer (2003) System in Crisis: The dynamics of free market capitalism. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing.

Scott, Peter Dale (2003) Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. New York, NY: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Stoner, Eric (2004) “The International Criminal Court and U.S. Militray Aid to Latin America,” March 31 On-Line Accessed April 1, 2004.

United States Department of State (2003) Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Colombia Regarding the Surrender of persons of the United State of America to the International Criminal Court. Washington, DC: Department of State.

Wecker, Katharina (2009a) “Only six US soldiers committed crimes in Colombia,” September 3 On-Line http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/5726-only-six-us-military-committed-crimes-in-colombia.html Accessed September 3, 2009.

Wecker, Katharina (2009b) “US military enjoy immunity, not impunity: Colombia,” September 1 On-Line http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/5674-colombia-allows-immunity-but-no-impunity-for-us-military.html Accessed October 7, 2009.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15853

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Victor Bjorgan

Por varias razones:

a) no creo en la sinceridad de José Mujica. Se trata de una persona que en su fuero íntimo no cree en la democracia representativa y su vocación autoritaria aflorará apenas se le compliquen las cosas. En su trastienda política le rodean los viejos dirigentes tupamaros.que querrán cuotas importantes del poder politico, ya que han dedicado su vida a la consecución del poder por cualquier medio posible.

b) el estilo de gobierno de Mujica es casi anárquico, mientras que el de su vicepresidente Astori por su meticulosidad planificadora causaría envidia entre los antiguos hacedores de los planes quinquenales soviéticos.. Los dos estilos chocaron feo durante las elecciones internas de la coalición del Frente Amplio, y solo se unieron con vistas a ganar las elecciones naacionales. Astori tiene ambiciones hegemónicas y habrá de chocar con Mujica y su entorno tupamaro.

c) Mujica no sabe armar equipos, así lo demostró en su gestión al frente del Ministerio de Ganadería y Agricultura. .

d) la política exterior es irreconciliable con la oposición. El sostén politico de Mujica es partidario de juntarse más con Chávez y con Castro, que con los referentes del socialismo light latinoamericano. Por ejemplo, no creo que el gobierno de Kirchner haga algo por terminar con el bloqueo de los puentes fronterizos mientras no vean cual sera la política exterior de Mujica hacia el ALBA y el movimiento “bolivariano” impulsado por los hermanos Castro y por Chávez.

e) la crisis económica internacional no ha terminado La crisis de la deuda de Dubai demuestra que todavía puede haber muchas sorpresas.

f) habría existido un mini fraude técnico ejecutado por el Canal 10 SAETA de television -léase R.Inchausti- a quienes siguieron los otros dos canales. Desde las internas y en acuerdo con José Mujica, el directivo de Canal 10 R. Inchausti comandó un grupo que se dedicó a amplificar en los informativos los “errores” del Dr.Lacalle (“motosierra”, Feldman, publicidad, etc..) y minimizar los continuos escapes de Mujica. Esta no es la primera vez que los medios televisivos privados actuan contra los intereses políticos del Partido Nacional, en 1984 se encargaron de perseguir al entonces Candidato Dr. Zumarán. Esta vez, los canales han actuado en una connivencia estratégica con el gobierno de izquierdas, pero más temprano que tarde chocarán con los planes de Mujica, tal como ha sucedido en casi todos los gobiernos bolivarianos con sus medios de comunicación televisiva.

g) el Partido Nacional debe asegurar la gobernabilidad del Uruguay, y ello incluye fiscalizar la acción de las empresas públicas, pero su rol político es la de ser la oposición constructiva del gobierno de Mujica. Si el Partido Nacional fue la oposición del primer gobierno de izquierdas encabezado por el moderado socialista Tabaré Vázquez,, con más razón debe ser la oposición de una izquierda radicalizada liderada por la estructura tupamara y comunista que hoy gobierna la interna del Frente Amplio..

h) La oposición va a ganar la mayoría de las Intendencias en las próximas elecciones municipales del próximo año, pues si bien la izquierda es fuerte en la capital Montevideo, la oposición se hará hegemonica en el resto del país.

i) la corrupción sera un tema cada vez más invasivo dentro del gobierno del Frente Amplio.

j) la estrategia leninista de los comunistas dentro del Frente Amplio tenderá a crear un candidato presidencial para el 2014 que le gane las internas a Astori y al Dr. Tabaré Vázquez. Los comunistas no crearon el Frente Amplio en 1971, para quedarse ahora cumpliendo el rol de ser una simple pata de la mesa. Los comunistas quieren ser la mesa y que las cuatro patas que la sostienen sean el resto de los sectores frenteamplistas.

k) Mujica va a ser un Presidente impredecible. Sufre del mismo problema de incontinencia verbal que tiene Chávez, con una diferencia en favor de Chávez quién en su discurso no utiliza tantos insultos y groserías como Mujica. Este tiene un pasado guerrillero y violentista , habiendose iniciado en los Tupamaros cuando el gobierno democrático uruguayo en 1964.

l) el Nuevo gobierno iniciará a mediados de su gobierno una estrategia para que el sistema electoral no incluya ni el balotage ni el voto universal obligatorio, comenzando así con un proceso de “chavización” de la política con referendums, reforma de la Constitución, radicalización, que dividirá a la sociedad uruguaya.

m) los países de la región cambiarán sus gobiernos. El año próximo ni Lula (Brasil) ni Bachelet (Chile) seguirán como Presidentes. Sus sitios posiblemente los ocupen José Serra en Brasil y Jorge Piñera en Chile. Ninguno de los dos es de izquierda. Tampoco será de izquierda el sucesor de los Kirchner en 2012, posiblemente el gobernador Jorge Macri.

De acuerdo a todo lo antedicho, la situación del Uruguay es complicada. La mitad más algunos eligieron a Mujica Presidente, pero el futuro para el país es muy obscuro.

.

Si la Secretaría de Turismo debe seguir como estaba o incluirse en la agenda de la Secretaría de Economía, me da igual. Lo que no me da igual, es ver el esfuerzo, por ejemplo de Colombia, por difundirse como destino turístico con un poco de imaginación y elegancia. “Descubre a Colombia a través de su corazón”, es una muestra itinerante que pretende disminuir la percepción negativa que tiene este país en el mundo, en gran parte, por la inseguridad y el narcotráfico. Instalaciones en forma de corazones de 2,65 metros con distintos motivos serán plantados en las calles y espacios públicos de 6 ciudades. Primero fue Washington, luego Nueva York, irá también a Shanghai, a Berlín y terminará en Madrid y Londres. Esta campaña, por cierto, ideada por BBDO, resulta fundamental para México debido a los acontecimientos que azotan no sólo a la sociedad sino también al prestigio del país en manos de la misma inseguridad, el narcotráfico y hasta la famosa gripita porcina. En mi estancia europea me cansé de ver anuncios en televisión y prensa sobre México con el mismo mensaje de siempre: sol, playa y familias subidas a la banana. ¡Ya chole, no! Aprendamos del Plan Colombia…pero del turismo.

by Fidel Castro
First Published: Nov. 06, 2009 – Cuba.cu

Anyone with some information can immediately see that the sweetened ‘Complementation Agreement for Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical Assistance between the Governments of Colombia and the United States’ signed on October 30, and made public in the evening of November 2, amounts to the annexation of Colombia to the United States.

The agreement puts theoreticians and politicians in a predicament. It wouldn’t be honest to keep silence now and speak later on sovereignty, democracy, human rights, freedom of opinion and other delights, when a country is being devoured by the empire as easy as lizards catch flies. This is the Colombian people; a self-sacrificing, industrious and combative people. I looked up in the hefty document for a digestible justification and I found none whatsoever.

 Of 48 pages with 21 lines each, five are used to philosophize on the background of the shameful absorption that turns Colombia into an overseas territory. They are all based on the agreements signed with the United States after the murder of the distinguished progressive leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, and the establishment, on April 30, 1948, of the Organization of American States debated by the foreign ministers of the hemisphere meeting in Bogota, with the US as the boss, during the dramatic days when the Colombian oligarchy cut short the life of that leader thus paving the way to the onset of the armed struggle in that country.

The Agreement on Military Assistance between the Republic of Colombia and the United States of April 1952; the one related to Army, Naval and Air Missions from the US Forces, signed on October 7, 1974; the 1988 UN Convention against the Illegal Trafficking of Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; the 2000 UN Convention against Organized Transnational Delinquency; the 2001 Security Council Resolution 1373 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter; the Democratic Security and Defense Policy resolution and others referred to in the abovementioned document, none of them can justify turning a 713,592.5 square miles country located in the heart of South America into a US military base. Colombia’s territory is 1.6 times that of Texas, the second largest state of the Union taken away from Mexico and later used as a base to conquer with great violence more than half of that country.

On the other hand, over 59 years have passed since Colombian soldiers were sent to distant Asia, in October 1950, to fight alongside the Yankee troops against Chinese and Korean combatants. Now, the empire intends to send them to fight against their brothers in Venezuela,Ecuador and other Bolivarian and ALBA countries, to crush the Venezuelan Revolution as they tried to do with the Cuban Revolution in April 1961.

For more than one and a half year before the invasion of Cuba, the Yankee administration fostered, armed and used counterrevolutionary bandits in the Escambray the same way it is now using the Colombian paramilitary forces against Venezuela.

At the time of the Giron [Bay of Pigs] attack, the Yankee B-26 aircrafts piloted by mercenaries operated from Nicaragua. Their fighter planes were brought to the theater of operations in an aircraft carrier and the invaders of Cuban descent who landed in our territory were escorted by US warships and by the American marines. This time their war equipment and troops will be in Colombia posing a threat not only toVenezuela but to every country in Central and South America.

It is really cynical to claim that the infamous agreement is necessary to fight drug-trafficking and international terrorism. Cuba has shown that there is no need of foreign troops to prevent the cultivation and trafficking of drugs and to preserve domestic order, even though the United States –the mightiest power on Earth—has promoted, financed and armed the terrorists who for decades have attacked the Cuban Revolution.

The preservation of domestic peace is a basic prerogative of every government and the presence of Yankee troops in any Latin American country to do it on their behalf constitutes a blatant foreign interference in their internal affairs that will inevitably elicit the peoples’ rejection.

A simple reading of the document shows that not only the Colombian airbases will be in the Yankees’ hands but also the civilian airports and ultimately any facility that may be useful to their armed forces. The radio space is also available to that country with a different culture and other interests that have nothing in common with those of the Colombian people.

The US Armed Forces will have exceptional prerogatives.

The occupants can commit any crime anywhere in Colombia against Colombian families, property and laws and still be unaccountable to the country’s authorities. Actually, they have taken diseases and scandalous behavior to many places like the Palmerola military base inHonduras. In Cuba, when they came to visit the neo-colony, they sat astride the neck of Jose Marti’s statue, in the capital’s Central Park. The limit set with regards to the total number of soldiers can be modified as requested by the United States, and with no restriction whatsoever. The aircraft carriers and warships visiting the naval bases given to them can take as large a crew as they choose, and this can be thousands in only one of their large aircraft carriers.

The Agreement, which will remain in force for successive 10-year periods, can’t be modified until the end of every period, with a one-year prior notice. What will the United States do if an administration as that of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush sr. or Bush jr., and others like them, is asked to leave Colombia? The Yankees have ousted scores of governments in our hemisphere. How long would a government last in Colombiaif it announced such intentions?

Now, the politicians in Latin America are faced with a sensitive issue: the fundamental duty of explaining their viewpoints on the annexation document. I am aware that what is happening in Honduras at this decisive moment draws the attention of the media and the foreign ministers of this hemisphere, but the Latin American governments cannot overlook the extremely serious and transcendental events taking place in Colombia.

I have no doubts about the reaction of the peoples; they will be sensitive to the dagger being shoved deep inside them, especially inColombia: They will oppose! They will never cave in to such ignominy!

Today, the world is facing serious and pressing problems. The entire humanity is threatened by climate change. European leaders are almost begging on their knees for some kind of agreement in Copenhagen that will prevent the catastrophe. They practically concede that theSummit will fail to meet the objective of reaching an agreement that can drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and promise to continue struggling to attain it before 2012; however, there is a true risk that an agreement cannot be reached until it is too late.

The Third World countries are rightly claiming from the richest and most developed nations hundreds of billion dollars a year to pay for the climate battle.

Does it make sense for the United States government to invest time and money in building military bases in Colombia to impose on our peoples their hateful tyranny? Along that path, if a disaster is already threatening the world, a greater and faster disaster is threatening the empire and it would all be the consequence of the same exploiting and plundering system of the planet.

Source: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15979

Related:

DOCUMENTARY -  Plan Colombia (2003)

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DOCUMENTARY – The War on Democracy by John Pilger (94 mins.)

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US Strategic Interests in Latin America: The Militarization of Colombia