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Showing posts with label Hands Off Venezuela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hands Off Venezuela. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
U.S. Militarism in Latin America Picks Up Steam
From Eva Golinger:
On July 1, Costa Rica, a nation whose constitution prohibits the presence of any armed forces, agreed to allow 46 warships and 7000 US marines inside its territory. Last October, Colombia signed a 10-year agreement permitting the US to occupy seven military bases and all civilian installations as necessary within its territory.Evidently, Chavez has postponed a trip to Cuba because he claims that an attack from Colombia/USA may be on the horizon. I don't blame him. Uribe (and his successor) are crazy, and we know the US are capable of such things. But I'm not sure exactly what to make of Chavez's claim: it could be that Chavez is working the relationship between the (quite obviously) hostile, U.S. backed regime in Colombia in order to gain political points at home. If this is indeed what he's doing, I don't mean to disparage the tactic: the situation with the U.S. and Colombia is certainly extremely tense and the threat of violence from the U.S. military and its client states are very real.
US Air Force documents from May 2009 revealed the intention behind the occupation of Colombian bases was to combat "the constant threat...of anti-US governments in the region", as well as to conduct "full spectrum military operations" throughout South America (see below).
Last October, Colombia and the US signed a military agreement permitting the US to occupy seven Colombian bases and to use all Colombian territory as needed to complete missions. One of the bases in the agreement, Palanquero, was cited in May 2009 US Air Force documents as necessary to “conduct full spectrum military operations” in South America and combat the threat of “anti-US governments” in the region.As many on the Left already know, Colombia has for many years been the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world, behind Israel and the repressive Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt. In the last 5 years alone, the U.S. has spent over $4.5 billion in military aid to Colombia, under the false pretext (hardly believed by anyone in the foreign policy world) of fighting the "war on drugs". Imagine if we'd spent that money in the U.S., say, giving people education and health care, rather than harassing and antagonizing the Venezuelan people because elites in the US want their oil.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Venezuela's Process of Struggle
Read the excellent article (via SW.org) here. The analysis is right on target: hopeful and supportive of the emancipatory developments in Venezuela, but sober about the challenges facing the possibility of revolutionary transformation. The article nicely walks the line of "critical support"; avoiding uncritical cheer-leading on the one hand, and eschewing the ultra-leftist anti-Chavez line on the other. I like especially that the article is framed from a left-wing point of view, no time is wasted wading through the right-wing bullshit pedaled by the consensus media in the U.S. (which, of course, includes the NYTimes and their resident-hack Simon Romero).
Monday, November 10, 2008
Immortal Technique on Venezuela
Immortal Technique is a radical rapper my brother introduced me to last year, and whom we both admire a lot. Here's an interview with him, via Hands Off Venezuela. As usual I think he's incredibly sharp and good natured:
As a person in the States, with no concrete links to Venezuelans or Latin Americans to give me first-hand accounts, I find it really difficult to navigate news about Venezuela and Bolivia. Immortal's critique of the Venezuelan media and the U.S. media as being driven by bourgeois interests makes sense and sounds really plausible to me. But there's something in the back of my head that makes me say, "hey, no, what if this is propaganda and Chavez is actually Stalin incarnate?!" Ok, maybe not that extreme, but I do have a hard time knowing what to believe, when I'm getting everything through sources with vested interests. And it's not that I think Immortal would deliberately deceive me either, it's that I'm afraid he's fooling himself because he wants it to be a good thing and he wants Chavez to be a good guy. Is that just what the capitalists want me to think? Or am I right/smart to be a constant skeptic about both sides?
Anyway, check out some of his music when you get a chance. Not exactly a toe tapping good time, but it does what he said he hopes. It really gets you pumped up about revolution.
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