Sed, invasion, gota a gota

Yet, in South America, one of biggest water repositories of the planet lies within the borders of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The Guarani aquifer is capable of supplying water for the entire population of Planet Earth for 200 years. Those who have recklessly consumed this essential resource and those governments who want to make more profit from owning it now have their eyes on the Guarani aquifer.

This documentary aims to prove the depth of the interference of the USA, the World Bank, IMF,etc, in the economy and business of other countries. Filmed in locations around The Guarani The movie exposes how rumors of terrorism in the South, especially in space of this triple border are used fraudulently as an excuse for these powerful entities to intervene military in order to control these natural resources. This film interviews interviews scientists, politicians and journalists, including Nobel Prize Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

OIL IMPERIALISM

Control of oil

While economists and historians agree that access to important resources has throughout history been a factor in warfare and in diplomacy, oil imperialism theories generally tend to assert that control of petroleum reserves has played an overriding role in international politics since World War I. Further, the use of the word imperialism renders such analyses particularly contentious.

A Possible Solution

A solution to oil imperialism and exorbitant oil prices could be to treat petroleum as an international public utility.

Oil Imperialism and Personal Monopoly

The citizens of most oil exporting nations receive little or no benefit from the sale of their nation's oil. Most of the profit is received by a minority that has political control, and these persons usually are not even involved in the production of oil.

Nigeria is a leading example.

Leverage

Oil producing nations can use oil as a weapon, driving the demand for fossil fuels and hurting those nations that are dependent economically. The ability to produce energy without foreign dependence can provide a measure of energy independence.

See also

• Dollar hegemony Dollar hegemony is a term coined by Henry C.K. Liu to describe the US dollar in the global economy.

• Hydraulic despotism

• Oil crisis

• Petrodollar warfare The term was coined by William R. Clark, who has written a book with the same title. The phrase oil currency wars is sometimes used with the same meaning

• Resource curse The term 'resource curse thesis' was first used by Richard Auty in 1993 to describe how countries rich in natural resources were not able to use that wealth to boost their economies and how, counter-intuitively, these countries had lower economic growth than countries without an abundance of natural resources.

• Renewable energy

• Iranian oil bourse

• Chart of exports and production of oil by nation

• List of oil-producing states

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Pipelineistan
From SourceWatch

Pipelinestan "encompasses Macedonia, Iraq, possibly Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and maybe a few more 'stans'." [1]

AND THIS IS WHO'S MANAGING THE DRUG TRADE?

Uribe, who changed the constitution to permit his own re-election last year, has devised a "peace" plan that has opened the door to a future incorporation of amnestied narco-paramilitary groups into Colombian politics, who have close ties with Uribe's own political machine.

The paramilitary forces were formed in the 1980s to fight the leftist guerrillas. They soon became as notorious for massacres and narcotics; they robbed Colombia's peasants of millions of acres of land, creating 3 million internally displaced victims. Since their rise in Antioquia, the province where Uribe was governor, the paramilitary have been suspected of collaboration with state security forces.

Some 31,000 paramilitary fighters have accepted Uribe's demobilisation programme, gaining virtual immunity for past crimes.

But now, stimulated by the determination of Colombia's supreme court to investigate the country's dark underbelly, evidence of collaboration between paramilitary death squads and the administrative security department (DAS), the president's intelligence service, has seen key members of Uribe's political apparatus resign, disgraced or placed under arrest. An emboldened Colombian press is now demanding to know what the president knew.



Uribe's troubles began last year when a computer was seized from a paramilitary leader known as "Jorge 40". On it were the names of politicians who apparently collaborated with Jorge 40 to intimidate voters, seize land and kidnap or kill trade unionists and political rivals.

Jorge 40 is the nom de guerre of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, leader of the Northern Bloc of the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary umbrella group set up in 1997 and categorised by the US as a terrorist organisation. Tovar controlled drug trafficking on the eastern half of Colombia's Caribbean coast. Since then, eight pro-Uribe congressmen have been arrested and the foreign minister has been forced to resign.


But the most dangerous scandal for Uribe comes from the arrest of Jorge Noguera, his former campaign manager and, from 2002 to 2005, head of the DAS. Former DAS colleagues have told investigators of Noguera's close collaboration with Jorge 40 - which included lending him Uribe's personal armoured vehicle - and with other paramilitary leaders. The accusations include an assassination plot against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, the murder of political opponents, electoral fraud, doctoring police and judicial records to erase paramilitary cases. Noguera worked directly to Uribe and when the investigations began, the president appointed him consul in Milan. The supreme court has forced his return


Colombian senator Gustavo Petro's visit to Washington this week will no doubt have further stiffened the resolve of US lawmakers. Petro has accused the president's brother, Santiago, of helping to form paramilitary groups and of personal involvement in murders and forced disappearances. He is calling for a Congressional investigation into charges that, as governor, the president ordered a halt to an investigation into his brother's case. The president's response so far has been characteristic: he accused Petro, a former member of a legitimately disbanded guerrilla movement, of being a "terrorist in a business suit". Petro has since received death threats.

PROFESSOR GUSTAVO MONCAYO

In an unprecedented public debate in Bogotá’s central Plaza de Bolívar, Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe was challenged by a schoolteacher who had walked more than 1,200 kilometers across the country to draw attention to the fate of his soldier son, kidnapped by guerrillas for almost ten years.

President Uribe, ... rejected any exchange during a frank and often short-tempered debate on the steps of Colombia’s Congress.

Over the jeers and whistles of thousands of Colombians ... President Uribe refused to ‘give even one millimeter’ in the form of negotiations or concessions to what he called ‘criminals.’

The President demanded that the Farc free, without preconditions, all of the estimated 2,000 hostages it is thought to be holding, and then, and only then, he said, would the government listen to the Farc’s demands for social justice.

‘The families of the kidnapped victims are in the middle of a political game between the Farc and the government,’ Moncayo said

‘Don’t compare the government of a democracy to these terrorists,’ President Uribe retorted.

Meanwhile, President Uribe, ... angrily responded to shouts from the crowd to deny that he was connected to far right paramilitaries and narco-traffickers, saying, ‘I am not a front man for anyone… I don’t have one dollar in a foreign bank.’

The paramilitaries, who had claimed to be patriots fighting the guerillas, are now known to have killed as many as 14,000 Colombians over the last 20 years, including trade union organizers, indigenous activists and campesinos - often in order to steal valuable land to grow cash crops for export and coca for the drug trade.

FROM: PEACE PATRIOT

Gustavo Petro (Polo Democratico Alternativa) is a good example--facing down the Uribe-connected, fascist death squads who have been backed politically and financially (billions of our taxpayer dollars) by the Bush Junta.

US militarization and criminalization of the drug problem

US-instigated global corporate predator "free trade."

representing that vast majority is a dangerous business in South America, as it is in any region rich in oil and otherresources coveted by US-based corporate predators

Rigoberta Menchu who is running for president in Guatemala (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in exposing the Reagan-backed Guatemalan death squads who slaughtered 200,000 Mayan villagers in the '80s);

Lopez Obrador in Mexico and the leaders of the Oaxaca resistance, who have maintained the peace in Mexico, despite extreme provocation (stolen elections, violent repression);

Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, known as the "bishop of the poor," who has resigned from the Church to run for president (and has both the Church and entrenched fascist interests opposing him), and

Ollanta Humala in Peru (who came out of nowhere last year--with no experience and no money--and almost won the presidency of Peru, on behalf of the poor majority).

US and Colombia and Guatemala with rightwing murderers, torturers and thieves still in control, and massive and cunning measures in place to prevent democracy (will of the majority) here--including Bushite-controlled electronic voting machines run on 'trade secret' code, and our war profiteering corporate news monopolies.

Peace Patriot Journal

DARFUR -- A HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

Lenin's Tomb

Kirsty Wark conducted a raised-eyebrow piece on the topic for the BBC's supposedly analytical Newsnight programme on Friday (while wearing a seriously offensive blouse...

The trouble is that no viewer would have understood the slightest thing that was happening.

• One would gather that there was some sort of war on,

• that there had been a peace deal last year, but it failed,

• that there are several groups fighting rather than two,

• that dreadful things have happened including 200,000 deaths and 2 million refugees.

They didn't name a single rebel group,

• interview anyone from them,

• explain their grievances,

• or the basis of the combat.

It was mentioned that this UN force basically has no mandate except to observe,

• which means they can't disarm militias.

Okay, which militias?

• The Justice and Equality Movement?

• The fractious Sudan Liberation Army/Movement?

• The 'Arab' nomads now engaged in fratricidal violence over land?

No explanations here.

The Sudanese ambassador was not asked why his government is happy to have tens of thousands of AU and UN troops stationed about an insurgency hot-spot watching a civil war go on around them like a bunch of lemons.

HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION?

What is to be done in a crisis like the genocide in Rwanda, when the international community seeks to stop the killing? Can nations, acting through the UN Security Council, fulfill a �responsibility to protect� innocent civilians? Or is such a doctrine just a Trojan horse for great power abuse and more mendacity?

When nations send their military forces into other nations� territory, it is rarely (if ever) for �humanitarian� purposes. They are typically pursuing their narrow national interest � grabbing territory, gaining geo-strategic advantage, or seizing control of precious natural resources. Leaders hope to win public support by describing such actions in terms of high moral purposes � bringing peace, justice, democracy and civilization to the affected area. In the era of colonialism, European governments all cynically insisted that they acted to promote such higher commitments � the �white man�s burden,� �la mission civilisatrice,� and the like.

The appeal to higher moral purposes continues to infect the political discourse of the great powers. Today�s �humanitarian intervention� is only the latest in this long tradition of political mendacity. It is perfectly clear in such cases as the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq (UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has called it a �humanitarian intervention.�) But should intervention (even multilateral intervention, approved by the Security Council) be excluded in all circumstances?

This section looks at the issues and the fierce debate that has arisen within the United Nations about these �new approaches� to sovereignty and collective action.

"HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION"

Good Ol' Bill, The Liberal Hero

By John Pilger

...The Clinton scam is symptomatic of the death of liberalism -

not its narcissistic, war-loving wing ("humanitarian intervention"), which is ascendant,

-but the liberalism that speaks against crimes committed in its name, while extending rungs of the economic ladder to those below

...he is contrasted with the despised Bush as the flawed good guy who did his best for the world and brought economic boom to the US

• In 1993, ... invasion of Somalia.

• He invaded Haiti in 1994.

• He bombed Bosnia in 1995 and

• Serbia in 1999.

• In 1998, he bombed Afghanistan; and, ...

• a major "terrorist target" in Sudan ... Africa's largest pharmaceutical plant, the only source of chloroquine, the treatment for malaria, ... As a result, ... "tens of thousands of people - ... - have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis and other treatable diseases".

• ... destroying and killing in Iraq. Under the lawless pretence of a "no-fly zone", he oversaw the longest allied aerial bombardment since the Second World War. ... At the same time, he imposed and tightened a Washington-led economic siege estimated to have killed a million civilians.

Clinton's economic "legacy" - - is the most unequal society Americans have known.

These days, ... campaigning for his wife, Hillary, among Americans who, terminally naive, still believe the Democratic Party is theirs ..., his wife has no plans

• to address the divisions of a society that allows 130,000 Americans to claim the wealth of millions of their fellow citizens. ...

• she wants to continue Iraq's torment for perhaps a decade. And she has

• "not ruled out" attacking Iran.

Bush Administration Condoned Supporting Terrorism in Colombia

LOS CRÍMENES DE LA CHIQUITA BRANDS EN COLOMBIA

El 6 de diciembre de 1928 en la plaza municipal de Cienaga Magdalena fueron asesinados cerca de 3000 hombres y mujeres, por exigirle a la transnacional estadounidense UNITED FRUIT COMPANY solución al pliego de peticiones presentado por el sindicato. Ese día el ejercito colombiano al mando del general Carlos Cortés Vargas disparo sus armas contra la multitud para aniquilar la protesta de los trabajadores.

Bush Administration Condoned Supporting Terrorism in Colombia
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Thursday, 09 August 2007

In April 2003 a former Chiquita executive told Secretary of Homeland Security (who at the time was assistant attorney general) Michael Chertoff that the company was paying off this paramilitary group. Chertoff recognized that the payments were illegal, but wasn't quite sure whether they were really that wrong. It was reported that he told the company to wait to do anything--like possibly stop financing a terrorist group--until he got back to them.

Chiquita's hundred year history in Colombia

Advocates for the families of 173 people murdered inthe banana-growing regions of Colombia filed suit today against Chiquita Brands International, in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. The families allege that Chiquita paid millions of dollars, and tried to ship thousands of machine guns to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC. The AUC is a violent, right-wing paramilitary organization supported by the Colombian army. In 2001, the Bush Administration classified the AUC as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization." Its units are often described as "death squads."

Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?
Written by April Howard

When the army fired on strikers during a demonstration in the city of Cienaga, killing a disputed number of workers (between 47 and 2,000), it created waves that contributed to the downfall of the Conservative Party and features in the masterworks of two famous Colombian authors.[13] The Santa Marta Massacre, as it came to be known, appears in Álvaro Cepeda Samudio’s novel "La Casa Grande" (1962), and Gabriel García Márquez’s epic novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1966). Nobel-awarded Chilean writer Pablo Neruda also recognized the influence of the United Fruit Company with a chapter of the same name in his epic work "Canto General" about the history of Latin America.

COLOMBIAN POET WILLIAM OSPINA: A POEM

This poem is about living with death squads in Colombia

Don't say that you have thirst, they will give you a
glass with your blood.
Don't say that you have hunger, because
they will serve you your chopped fingers
Don't say that you are sleepy, because they will sew
your eyelids with thread.
Don't say that you love someone, because
they will bring you their heart putrified
Don't say you are looking for God, because
they will place a hot coal in your mouth.
Don't say that it is beautiful the dew that
sweetly covers the fields, because
in each heavenly drop they will inject pestilence.

Click on image

EMPIRES IN DECLINE

Reading the enemy's language

By Ricardo Alarcón

Taken from Cubadebate

(Address by the president of Cuba's National Assembly of the People's Power during the panel 'Democracy and 21st-Century Socialism,' at the Sixth Social Summit for Latin American and Caribbean Unity, Aug. 1, 2007, in Caracas, Venezuela.)

In an analysis published by the Agency, titled "Global Trends 2010" (which in 2000 the CIA updated to 2015, or "Global Trends 2015") the Agency projected four scenarios of the world's likely evolution,

These four scenarios, with different possibilities of development of a worldwide neoliberal capitalism, lead to the same conclusion: the influence of the United States of America will continue to decline.

In the opinion of the CIA analysts, who took into account the information from very diverse scientific sources worldwide, before the famous attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,

I am sure that the report was read by U.S. conservatives, the same who drew up the policies of an administration that sometimes is judged rather rudely of being irresponsible, adventurous, etc. No, they are accomplishing a mission: to try to halt that decline they know to be irreversible, and revert -- -- "the march of time.

Francis Fukuyama...studies he wrote after his celebrated "The End of History"? ... but it didn't take long before he made a serious self-criticism and criticized neoconservative thinking by pointing out that the world could not be governed.

... He then admitted that, despite the fact that it emerged victorious and as the only superpower, the United States cannot govern itself, as he himself believed in the early 1990s.

Mr. Joseph Schumpeter, ..."Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy," ..."One form of socialism will inevitably emerge from the also-inevitable decomposition of capitalism."

My only disagreement with Schumpeter's ... I tend to believe that not one but many forms of socialism will emerge.

We need a theory for the current phase of worldwide neoliberal capitalism, which is trying to halt its fall and regain its control of the world.

Why does the United States today spend more on military resources than all the countries on earth combined, more so than during the Cold War? Why the incessant production of new and newer instruments of death and war?

..it is a reflection of a sick economy in a sick society. ...irrational arms race would hasten the (it's) destruction ..., while bringing more profits to the monopolies and weapons industries in the United States and Britain.

...the reason for these violent offensives that copy from fascism ... is that the two countries are on the defensive, surrounded by the advancing peoples.

Undoubtedly, we need a theory for the phase of neoliberal capitalism that attempts to halt its fall. We live in a world that offers us many possibilities but that also poses major risks, as illustrated by infinite evidences in the case of the current U.S. regime.

WHERE IS LUIS POSADA CARRILES?

Latin America is witness of how these people are capable of resorting to anything in order to avoid a fall. Whenever journalists ask me the usual questions -- "how is Fidel?" "when will he return to power?" -- I ask in turn, "where is Luis Posada Carriles?"

What does that mean in practice? Simply to tell Cuba, to Venezuela and the other countries in the region that the man who tortured, murdered and ordered the slaughter of so many innocent people will continue to enjoy the favor of the United States.

What is the message for our people? A regime has been imposed in the United States that is capable of resorting to anything. They are not all-powerful but are strong enough to destroy the earth and all of us on it.

That is why, as revolutionary aspirations blossom in Latin America, at a moment of great possibilities and enormous challenges, we need to engage in much thinking, much reflection and -- above all -- much unity.

KILLER COKE

Isidro Segundo Gil, an employee at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Colombia, was killed at his workplace by paramilitary thugs. His children, now living in hiding with relatives, understand all too well why their homeland is known as "a country where union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back."

A chilling description of Gil's assassination, based on eyewitness accounts, is the centerpiece of a lawsuit filed in Miami in July 2001 against Coca-Cola, Panamerican Beverages (the largest soft drink bottler in Latin America) and Bebidas y Alimentos (a bottler owned by Richard Kirby of Key Biscayne, Fla., which operates the plant in which Gil was killed.

Campaign to Stop Killer Coke

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

We need your help to stop a gruesome cycle of murders, kidnappings and torture of SINALTRAINAL (National Union of Food Industry Workers) union leaders and organizers involved in daily life-and-death struggles at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia...

Coca-Cola bottlers “contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilize extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders,” the lawsuit states. It also notes that Colombian troops connected with the paramilitaries have trained at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Ga., where trainees were encouraged to torture and murder those who do “union organizing and recruiting;” pass out “propaganda in favor of workers;” and “sympathize with demonstrators or strikes.” This was made public when the Pentagon was forced to reveal the contents of training manuals used at the school. (For more information, see www.soaw.org, the website of SOA Watch.)

... of Coca-Cola and its key financial ally, SunTrust Banks. As long as SunTrust, “the bank of Killer Coke,”

In solidarity,

Javier Correa, President, Sinaltrainal
William Mendoza, President of SINALTRAINAL, Barrancabermeja.
Ray Rogers, Director, Campaign to Stop Killer CokeCampaign to Stop Killer Coke


OMAL (Observatorio de Multinacionales en América Latina)

Stop Killer Coke, Dollars and Sense

THE REAL TERRORISTS, THE REAL CRIME

Green Left Weekly’s Raul Cienfuegos interviewed Raul Reyes, a member of the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The United States and the Colombian government are putting on pressure for the FARC to be included in lists of supposed terrorists. And — to justify its war against the Colombian people and their revolutionary army — the Colombian government has added the narco-terrorist label to the FARC.

• The government does this to hide its dictatorial nature and its known links with the paramilitaries and drug trafficking,

• The FARC expects this from the class enemy.

• The real terrorists, those at the top of the list in world terrorism, are the US administration and their main war allies, including Uribe, who heads a government committed to state terrorism.

• These murderers label those who try to defend people from their aggression as terrorists.

• The aggressors want to appear to be the victims.

• But the real victims are the dispossessed, the people who have the courage to dissent against the government’s bad policies.

• These are the victims of neoliberalism and globalisation, which have been imposed by the United States on all countries throughout the world.

• Dialogue between the paramilitaries and Uribe’s government is the same as dialogue that would occur between father and son.

• Paramilitarism is a child of the [Colombian] state, and Uribe has always been its backer.

• Colombian and international communities remember all that Uribe did as the governor of Antioquia province [in the mid-1990s to establish] “Convivir” to legitimise and promote paramilitary activity

• [According to Amnesty International, Convivir served as government-sanctioned death squads recruiting to the paramilitaries.]

• one of the commitments they are trying to carry out in government is to legitimise the paramilitary gangs, so that the government can go on killing its opponents,

• killing popular, social leaders who disagree with the government.

• All those who protest against human rights abuses or the neoliberal model, or state terrorism, are considered their enemy and are attacked.

• With the legalisation of the paramilitaries, they hope to legitimise impunity for these crimes against the Colombian people.

• What we see with the people in Bolivia, the people of Ecuador, the people of other parts of the region and the world is a struggle against the devastating effects of the neoliberal economic model;

• a model generated by globalisation,

• the imperialist war against the peoples of the world,

• carried out by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

• There are thousands of millions of human beings from the so-called Third World who have not had breakfast today, nor will they have it tomorrow,

• whose children are dying of malnutrition.

• Some women cannot feed their children because they don’t even have food for themselves.

• The real crime, the real terrorism carried out by the world’s financial institutions is seen in the deaths of men, women and children, from hunger, so that a minority can appropriate the wealth of the majority.

MAGLEV

...and can move vast amounts of water over long distances to eliminate droughts.

Maglev operating costs will be only 3 cents per passenger mile and 7 cents per ton mile, compared to 15 cents per passenger mile for airplanes, and 30 cents per ton mile for intercity trucks. Maglev guideways will last for 50 years or more with minimal maintenance, because there is no mechanical contact and wear,

...does not burn oil, but instead consumes electricity, which can be produced by coal-fired, nuclear, hydro, fusion, wind, or solar power plants (the most efficient source now being nuclear)

...energy consumption per passenger mile will shrink to the equivalent of 10,000 miles per gallon.

...Maglev vehicles emit no pollution

wikipedia

Mariscal Estigarribia -- US Military Base in Paraguay

This insinuates that the US, from this base, could control the Bolivian Natural Gas Reserves, especially the "La vertiente" fields in Chaco Department of Bolivia, one of the largest in the World.

GRAN CHACO DEPT WIKIPEDIA

La Vertiente
The 375 sq km La Vertiente exploitation block contains the La Vertiente, Escondido and Taiguati gas condensate fields. Production from La Vertiente began in August 1978 and from Escondido in October 1989.

Rival factions
On 18 December Morales was elected president in the first round, with 54% of the vote. He is in a difficult situation. The upper classes, determined to hang on to all the privileges they derive from the current system, will give him no respite. Neither will the US, the multinationals or the autonomist, indeed separatist, white elite in the rich oil and gas regions of Santa Cruz and Tarija. If there is a showdown, what will the army do?

the US army has rehabilitated the Mariscal Estigarribia airport in the Gran Chaco region, just 250km from the border with Bolivia. The 3,800m runway is long enough to take heavy transport aircraft, such as the B-52, the C-130 Hercules and the C-5 Galaxy. It is ideally situated as a base for intervention in Bolivia, if the separatist movement in Santa Cruz should decide that the country had become ungovernable.


From Widipedia

Mariscal Estigarribia is a town in the Boquerón Department, Paraguay.

Mariscal Estigarribia is home to an air base with capacity to house up to 20,000 soldiers, which some media reports is a US military base set up to provide access to the strategic Triple Frontera region.

Five hundred US troops arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons, and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted US troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court jurisdiction.[1]

According to the Clarín Argentinian newspaper, Mariscal Estigarribia would be a strategic location for a military base because of its proximity to the Triple Frontera between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina; the Guarani aquifer; and Bolivia (less than 200km_ at a time when "Washington's magnifying glass goes on the Altiplano and points toward Venezuelan Hugo Chávez—the regional demon according to Bush's administration—as the instigator of the instability in the region".[2]

The airbase is capable of receiving large planes such as B-52s and C-130 Hercules which the Paraguayan Air Forces does not have.

The US and Paraguayan governments deny that the US military is establishing base at Mariscal Estigarribia.The US government said "...limited, short-term deployments of U.S. military personnel are scheduled to take place for a series of joint exercises with the Paraguayan military between July 2005 and December 2006. Most personnel deployed will not remain in Paraguay for more than 45 days."[3]

FROM: Upside Down World

What is the U.S. Military Doing in Paraguay?
By Benjamin Dangl

UPDATE

AND HERE

THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY

Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. aid, after Israel and Egypt. The U.S. military mission in Colombia is by far the largest in Latin America. Under the terms of Plan Colombia, as many as 500 U.S. military advisers and 300 civilian contract employees may be in the country at any given time. The CIA, which had some significant tactical successes in fighting drug cartel leaders in the mid-1990s, has its largest Latin American branch in Bogotá. And at the School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, Colombia ranked second in 1999, behind Chile, in the number of soldiers trained there, and third behind Chile and Peru in 2000.

Northern Cauca, the Occupied Territory

Then in 1910, Manuel Quintin Lame appeared on the scene, again struggling for the land, this time using a mix of nonviolent political struggle, education, and the laws of the independent Colombian state. Quintin Lame laid the foundations for today's indigenous movement with patient underground organizing over decades, for which he was punished: by the time he died in 1968, he had been in jail 100 times.


A battle between the Colombian social movements and the government is being played out in local spheres all over Colombia. One of the arenas of battle is Cauca, a highly strategic corridor in southwestern Colombia through which the Pan-American highway carries the commerce of the South American continent. The northern zone of Cauca, mountainous and neglected by the state, has long been a stronghold of the FARC. In the valleys and cities, the sugar barons, drug cartels, and ranchers continue to wield their traditional money power, trying to forge alliances with multinational capital for megaprojects to exploit the vast natural resources of the region (Cauca, for example, has tremendous water resources).

PLUS
The battle for Colombia
JUSTIN PODUR

JOE SAYS, "JUST SIGN IT!" -- (AW, FUCK, I KNOW - LET'S GIT A BUNCH OF FLAGS)

Democrats Cave: 41 Dems Vote With Republicans To Pass Bush Domestic Spying Plan...



House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., seated, left, talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007, after signing homeland security legislation, which now goes to the White House for President Bush's signature. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., standing, left, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., standing, right, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., seated, right, join the Speaker. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)

.... for it implied that the Democratic elite were actually opposed to the essence of Bush's authoritarian/corporatist/militarist agenda, and were somehow acting against their will in surrendering to Bush time and again during the past six years. As the reader noted, drawing on Arthur Silber's analysis (more on this below), the Democrats "are not spineless or weak. Nobody pushes them to do what they don't want (no matter how much the Digbys would like to explain away their actions that way.). They're completely corrupt and fully, volitionally complicit."