BIG HEADS UP! Al Giordano - Primer for Obama speech today:

[Coexist]

http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=1256

There will be some of the standard “tough talk” in this speech about the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela, and about guerrillas in Colombia, but listen carefully to the economic and trade parts of the agenda: it marks a huge break with the US policies of the past 28 years.

, it concludes:

The new divide and policy debate over US policies in Latin America is like nothing seen in recent decades of US politics. And with the two presidential candidates on opposite sides, and neither backing down, finally, at long last, a US presidential election has turned into a referendum on US relations with the rest of “the country called América.”

[myrna minx]

1. I'm intrigued.

Thanks for posting.

[Coexist]

2. wow - this is amazing and comprehensive.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Here's my little primer on Obama's speech...

Comment no. 11
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6087037

I didn't get into the stark differences between Obama and Clinton. She hired Mark Penn as her chief campaign strategist--the paid agent of a foreign government, Colombia, with one of the worst human rights records on the planet. This was not only bad--and I mean really bad--judgement, it gives the lie to her opposition to the Colombian "free trade" deal. It means that she surely will see that it is passed, cosmetically changed to include the Colombian fascists' heartfelt promise to stop chainsawing union leaders and throwing their body parts into mass graves.

Colombia is very isolated and despised in South America, for being a client state of the Bush Cartel. The rest of the continent has gone overwhelmingly democratic and leftist (with goals of social justice and self-determination, also well on their way to a South American "Common Market".) Alvaro Uribe (former Medellin Cartel, in his early career; now Bush Cartel) can't get a hearing at the OAS for his wild allegations against the leftist governments of Venezuela and Ecuador (which control the biggest oil reserves in the western hemisphere and believe in using the oil profits to benefit the poor--a hanging offense in Bushville). He's got his "miracle laptop." They've got the votes.

I strongly suspect that this "miracle laptop" came out of Donald Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans," which has not been ended, but rather has been "privatized" and is being run out of wherever the "retired" Rumsfeld now has offices. His M.O. is all over recent events in South America--and he clearly has a recent and close interest in that region.*

Somewhat hidden in Rumsfeld's paeon to the Colombian fascists, in his 12/1/07 WaPo op-ed*, is the threat of "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. What I suspect he's talking about are the Bushite-instigated fascist cabals in the state of Zulia (lots of oil), Venezuela, and the eastern provinces of Bolivia (lots of gas and oil), who are planning to secede from these countries, taking the resources with them. In the case of Bolivia, the Bushites are supporting, funding, organizing--and probably arming--WHITE SEPARATISTS. In the case of Zulia, more garden variety (greed-driven) fascists. The plan may be for these cabals to declare their "independence" (one in Bolivia already has), and ask for U.S. military support for the cause of "independence." Expect this on the 4th of July. Just kidding--but sometime soon. The Bushites have "lost" South America. The best they can probably do, at this point, to try to regain global corporate predator control of the oil, is these split-off, fascist mini-states, that will be at constant war with their home countries and everyone else on the continent.

Shots have already been fired in the Bush-instigated war between Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela--in the U.S./Colombia bombing/incursion against Ecuador, to kill the FARC guerrilla, Raul Reyes, who was negotiating with the presidents of Venezuela (at Uribe's request!), Ecuador, France, and Argentina, on the release of FARC hostages. Chavez (take note when you read Rumsfeld: at Uribe's request) got a total of six hostages released, despite every effort by Uribe (including bombing the first two hostages' location as they were in route to their freedom) to sabotage these hostage releases, once it became clear that Chavez was going to be successful. I think the idea was to lure him in (with the hope of hostage releases, and peace talks in Colombia's 40+ year civil war), and then hand him a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages. When that didn't work, they invaded Ecuador to kill the FARC hostage negotiator (who was camped just inside Ecuador's border, and was in advanced negotiations with the president of Ecuador for the release of high profile hostage Ingrid Betancourt). You see why I'm smelling Rumsfeld's treacherous mind. He lies about all this in paragraph one.

The Bushites are trying to bring their Oil War to this hemisphere. That about sums it all up. And this is truly a minefield for Obama, with billions and billions and billions of dollars at issue (the oil and other resources, the slave labor force of poverty-stricken brown people, World Bank/IMF profiteering, and of course the "war on drugs" police state/military boondoggle).

------------------

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

[Peace Patriot]

4. Great, great article by Al Giordano! He is right about what has occurred--

the truly dreadful U.S. policies toward Latin America of the last two decades, the utter lack of discussion of it, nationally, all this time, and Obama taking it on, with the bold new, creative, open-minded thinking that he is becoming famous for, of TALKING TO other countries--countries that the Bushites demonize (with absolutely no justification, in the case of Venezuela, and very little justification, in the case of Cuba), and exercising DIPLOMACY to resolve our differences.

Imagine that. Diplomacy! With our neighbors! With--in the case of Venezuela--a DEMOCRATIC government! With--in the case of Cuba--a government that has not been aggressive in forty years, and has a far better human rights record than the Bushite regime--and has figured out how to staff hospitals and community medical centers, in Cuba and other countries, with doctors (free medical education), and furthermore has one of the best literacy programs in the world.

WHY are we not talking to Cuba? What sense does that make? None!

There were certainly some sore feelings between the Brits and the Revolutionary Colonists for many decades after 1776. Cuba is the first Latin American country to declare its independence from the United States. And they have taken quite a lot of abuse for that audacity. Now others are doing so in a difference way--via the ballot box--a leftist, social justice movement that has swept South American elections and is moving north (Nicaragua, Guatemala, and an almost win in Mexico, where lots of Bushite boodle was at issue, thus it was stolen, by a hairsbreadth margin of 0.05%; but the lefists will be back.)

What is our grudge against these leftist DEMOCRACIES? Social justice? Fairness? Use of oil profits to benefit the poor? These are crimes to Bushites, but not to the rest of us.

Time to mend fences--before the Bushites really blow it for us, in South America--with the war they're trying to start. Time to show who we, the people of the U.S., really are--lovers of justice, lovers of fairness, good and generous people, who want world peace and FAIR trade!

[Coexist]

5. I'm glad you liked it

yours primer was very good.