Reply #28: it was BRAZIL that proposed a "common defense" at UNASUR meetings last year.

[Peace Patriot]

To those above who allege that Chavez is threat to the region--apparently swallowing and regurgitating rightwing 'think tank' swill--many Latin American leaders are alarmed about the establishment of seven new U.S. bases in Colombia, the reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, the ill intentions of the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and pervasive U.S. hostility to democratic governments including many disturbing recent incidents (not to mention a long history of brutal interference): the use of ten 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" (and more than likely a U.S. plane and pilot, and possibly orchestration from the U.S. embassy "war room" in Bogota) in the Colombian bombing/raid on Ecuador last year, the U.S. embassy and the DEA funding and organizing of fascist rioters and murderers in an attempted putsch in Bolivia late last year, U.S. spying with illegal overflights of Venezuelan territory, U.S.-CIA-Miami mafia psyops (such as the absurd "suitcase full of money" caper last year, trying to smear the presidents of Argentina and Venezuela), the concoction of "evidence" by Colombia that the presidents of Ecuador and Venezuela (the two countries with boffo oil adjacent to Colombia) are "terrorist-lovers" (so similar to Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans" and the concoction of "evidence" against Iraq), on-going massive funding of rightwing groups all over Latin America, through USAID-NED, DEA, CIA and other budgets (our tax dollars at work), and, of course, U.S. support for the violent rightwing coup in Venezuela in 2002, U.S. funding of the anti-Chavez recall election in 2004 and continued meddling of every kind, in Venezuela and throughout the region.

Chavez would be a fool not to be taking measures to defend Venezuela in these circumstances. But he is hardly alone in being concerned about U.S. intentions in the region. Lula da Silva said that the U.S. 4th Fleet poses a threat to Brazil's oil. (Everybody knows it's a threat to Venezuela.) And, like I said, it was Brazil that proposed a "common defense" in the context of the new South American "common market"--UNASUR. Not Venezuela. The Chavez government's job is to protect the northern flank of the South American "common market" while that "common defense" is put in place. Although our corpo/fascist press and politicians work hard to make us forget what our "military-industrial complex" just did--slaughtering one hundred thousand innocent Iraqis, in one week of bombing alone, and torturing and killing many more, to steal their oil--the rest of the world, including Latin America, has not forgotten. They know what our Oiligarchs are capable of. And they know that they like to pick on "weak countries"--countries with few defenses, or deliberately crippled defenses.

Chavez may speak these realities--he is an outspoken individual--but they are all thinking it, believe me. And when they do speak, their views get little currency here, in our corpo-fascist press. We have to go to alternative media to find out that Ecuador's president publicly described a three-country, U.S. -backed, fascist plot to foment secession and civil war in the oil rich provinces of Venezuela and Ecuador (provinces that are adjacent to Colombia), and the oil/gas rich provinces of Bolivia, where white racists have long enslaved and oppressed the indigenous majority. The latter plot unfolded last September, and was foiled--after much fascist rioting and murder--with the help of UNASUR (who backed up Evo Morales after he threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia, for their collusion with the white separatists).

What we are seeing in Latin America is the profoundly positive success of real democracy at long last. These countries are an example to the world--and to us here n the U.S.--of what patient, courageous grass roots activism and attention to democratic institutions (such as transparent vote counting) can do. It is an example that our own corpo/fascists don't want us to know about or understand. It is an historical event of immense importance that they would like to smash to pieces, because it means that the people of Latin America--at long last--are taking control of their own natural resources, their own government policy--domestic and foreign--their own economic and labor policy, their own social goals, their own fates.

It is a totally peaceful, democratic movement--of which the Chavez government and the people of Venezuela have been key leaders. The Venezuelan people were the first to successfully resist U.S. interference--the failed coup of 2002. Chavez and his government have been the generators of some of the most important ideas of this peaceful revolution, including the Bank of the South (regionally controlled development funds, with social justice goals--as opposed to the U.S.-dominated World Bank/IMF loan sharks, who actively sought to loot and destroy social programs), cooperative infrastructure development, and collective strength in regional trade groups like ALBA and UNASUR. Chavez is close friends with the most social justice-minded leaders of the region--Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Cristina and Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Lulu da Silva in Brazil, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, and others, and is allied with most of the other leaders, such as Michele Batchelet in Chile and Alvaro Colom in Guatemala on most important issues.

These leaders are aware of the rightwing demonization of Hugo Chavez as a "dictator" and what a lie it is. Lula da Silva said, of Chavez, "They can invent a lot of things to criticize Chavez, but not on democracy!" (He also called Chavez "the great peacemaker," after Chavez helped to de-fuse the U.S./Colombia provocation of Ecuador last year.) When Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, was asked about Chavez's remark to the UN that Bush Jr. was "the devil," Correa replied that it was "an insult to the devil!" All of these new leaders--in most of South America, and half of Central America--either openly back Chavez and defend him against our corpo/fascists' "Big Lie" campaign, or back him more quietly and subscribe to common goals. This bogeyman image of Chavez that our corpo/fascist press has created is only touted by the most rabid RWers--the fascists, the coup plotters, the bloody-minded--in Latin America. Chavez is hugely popular among the vast majority of Latin Americans. This is reflected in their elected leaders.

It is one of the main purposes of UNASUR to protect the sovereignty of its member states. And it did a very good job of it, in the case of Bolivia--its first crisis. (UNASUR was formalized only last summer.) UNASUR's other goals are regional economic integration and development, and political cooperation, as well as promoting democracy and social justice. And until UNASUR has established an integrated, common defense, it is up to each country to be watchful and wary, to share intelligence, and to be prepared for assault by the only enemy that South American democracy has known, in the last one hundred years--the U.S.A.

Compounding their worries about a U.S. war plan to grab their oil is the coup in Honduras--a country with three, recently elected, leftist governments on its borders (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala). Honduras is a U.S. client state, with a significant U.S. military base, and a "School of the Americas"-trained military--a country run by ten rich families as the enforcers of "free trade" slave labor for Chiquita International and other global corporate predators. Honduras has a long bloody history of a being a "lily pad" country for U.S. aggression in the region. Honduras does not have oil, but it has strategic location, especially vis a vis Venezuela's main oil reserves on Venezuela's Caribbean coast (provinces that are adjacent to Colombia, and where fascist politicians openly talk of secession). The U.S. ambassador's story (a Bushwhack appointment, as are many others in Latin America) that the U.S. knew about the coup ahead of time and "advised against it" is absurd. The Honduran military does not act without the Pentagon's okay. Period. It is wholly dependent upon and intertwined with the U.S. military. And neither would the Honduran oligarchy have dared to roust the elected president--who had become an advocate of the poor--out of bed at gunpoint, throw him out of the country, declare martial law, shut down the media, and start killing peaceful protesters and political activists, without a signal from the U.S. State Department that the U.S. would not seriously oppose it. We don't yet know exactly where those nods and signals came from, but we have an obligation to find out, since, whoever made them was most likely getting paid with our tax dollars.

Most Latin American leaders see the Honduran coup as both an insult and a warning. It is an insult to their sovereignty and to their long hard work on democratic institutions. It is a warning that this could happen to them. Their own fascist elites could do the same thing to them, with the same U.S. reaction--a yawn. (Or worse--and much more likely-- complicity.) So much for the peace, respect and cooperation that President Obama promised. Either he was not sincere, or he doesn't have control of U.S. foreign policy (or doesn't yet have control of it--another possibility, that he's trying). If the U.S. can't keep a client state like Honduras--which is almost entirely dependent on the U.S.--democratic, then it has no interest in democracy, anywhere.

What the idiot RW posters here at DU don't seem to understand, or perhaps deliberately never mention, is that Chavez is not alone. He enjoys consistent support from the Venezuelan people in the 60% range. He has twice been elected (and won a recall election) with increasing margins of support--in an election system that is far, far more transparent than our own. He is the best president--the most representative, the most honest, and the most far-seeing--that Venezuela has ever had. He is highly respected by virtually all of the leaders of South America, and is close friends with many. His goals, and the goals of most Venezuelans--and the goals of the vast poor majority of Latin America and their other elected leaders--are one and the same. And I would say that the overriding issue on which all of these new leftist leaders, and the great majority of Latin Americans, are agreed on is their DESIRE FOR PEACE, which, translated, means their desire for an end to U.S. interference. Would Chavez have this kind of support among his own people, and among the great majority of the leaders of Latin America, if he was a "dictator" and if he had aggressive intentions toward other countries?

That is an absurd belief. And I can only think that those who tout it are either, a) uninformed dupes of our corpo/fascist media, or b) in league with the corpo/fascist goals of this intensifying psyops/disinformation campaign against Chavez, which are to smash democracy wherever it asserts itself in Latin America, and a war to steal Latin America's oil (--a war plan for which there is more evidence every day).