SOUTHCOM Chief Aims to Increase Imperialist Plunder of Latin America's Resources

[Marcus IM]

SOUTHCOM Chief Aims to Increase Imperialist Plunder of Latin America’s Resources

U.S. Southern Command Chief Laura Richardson has expressed interest in lithium and other natural resources in South America. It shows the country’s commitment to corporate profits at the expense of workers, Indigenous people, and the environment.

Laura Richardson, the Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, spoke about the importance of Latin America’s resources for U.S. foreign policy in an interview with the U.S. think tank Atlantic Council.

“Why is this region important?” Richardson asked. “With all its rich resources and rare earth elements, there is the lithium triangle, which today is necessary for technology. Sixty percent of the world’s lithium is found in the lithium triangle: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile.”

She also pointed out that “the largest oil reserves, including light and sweet crude, [were] discovered off Guyana more than a year ago.” The general also mentioned Venezuela’s rich oil, copper, and gold resources. She highlighted the importance of the Amazon as “the lungs of the world,” and added that “we have 31 percent of the world’s fresh water in this region.”

More ...
https://www.leftvoice.org/southcom-chief-aims-to-increase-imperialist-plunder-of-latin-americas-resources/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Yeah, that's it! We gotta get in there and grab that damned lithium NOW!

Thinkin' like the big time predators. Congratulations, Dipstick!

Un-bleeping-believable.

What Ugly American?

It's only patriotic to rape and pillage as we've never done before, in a hurry, before China gets it all. Screw anyone who would stop us.

[Marcus IM]

2. Bigoted and racist policy. Monroe doctrine still alive and well.

America is sick, and poisonous.

[Judi Lynn]

3. The Leopard's Tale: U.S. Weapons Makers on a Marketing Spree

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

BY EVE OTTENBERG

When Southcom commander Laura Richardson starts talking about sending weapons to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, you know something’s up. That something is money and new markets for U.S. arms makers. In other words, western Europe depleted its armory by shipping everything to Ukraine to get blown up by the Russians. That creates a huge market opportunity for the U.S. weapons industry, which thus also eyes potential South American customers; hence its eagerness for some nations there to send their Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine, to be replaced, of course, by American hardware. But Europe remains the U.S. arms corporations’ prize. All they had to do, in connivance with political elites, was generate a stupendous media hullaballoo about Berlin sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine, so they can corner German weapons makers’ business once the Russians destroy all the Leopards, and voila! They’ll be raking in the cash for decades.

So what we have seen recently is a concerted media and political campaign, that is to say, humbug, to trap the world as a purchaser of U.S. armaments. In this regard, it is worth noting that in fiscal 2022, U.S. weapons sales increased 48.8 percent. War is good business, and blood-soaked war profiteers are making out like the bandits they are. They do not care about the risk of nuclear war from this proxy conflict that Washington provoked in line with the Rand Corporation’s specifications or about the price paid in blood by Ukraine. But anyone with a brain and a heart does, which is why it’s imperative to negotiate an end to a war that is already on its way to annihilating an entire generation of Ukrainian men.

Arguably, the gigantic western transfer of arms to Kiev utterly undermines any call for Russian withdrawal as a precondition for peace talks, as has been noted publicly, most recently by South African foreign minister Naledi Pandor. Indeed all those NATO weapons for Kiev that can strike deep inside Russia guarantee that Moscow will create a huge buffer that eats into Ukrainian territory. Fortress Ukraine can only shrink in size, as it fashions itself into a modern Sparta with western weapons. But that is not the only way NATO sabotages an end to the bloodletting; see for example, Johnson, Boris, former UK prime minister, and recall his April jaunt to Kiev to smother an armistice with Moscow, painstakingly midwifed by neutral countries.

But to return to the Leopard’s tale. At the height of the media frenzy, January 19-24, over Germany not serving empire by hustling its Leopard tanks off to Ukraine and permitting the 15 countries that have them to do so also, commander Richardson acknowledged that Washington had requested nine Latin American countries to donate their Soviet-era Russian weapons to Kiev, so Telesur reported, January 20. Four days later, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, declined, explaining that his country would send no weapons to Ukraine. Other Latin American countries followed suit. Among the countries Southcom suggested this swap to were, as aforementioned, Cuba – under U.S. blockade for 60 years – Venezuela, where not too long ago Washington was involved in assassination and coup attempts against its legitimately elected leader, Nicolas Maduro, and Nicaragua, currently under U.S. sanctions.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/10/the-leopards-tale-u-s-weapons-makers-on-a-marketing-spree/

[Marcus IM]

4. Putin's invasion is a real plus for US merchants of death ...

... and shareholders of the MIC are banking it.

Thanks for the post.