South América, the Drug War, and Democracy

La Hermana Hermosa and I just watched The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. If you have a chance to see this marvelous documentary, do yourself the favor. It will undoubtedly be ranked as one of the all-time best documentaries for any number of reasons, but the story you see is better than any movie plot, the characters couldn't have been better scripted than they naturally appear, and the view into media manipulation is astounding. It's a riveting film.

Never again will I have any doubts about the flat-out lying and ruthless dealing of the oil interests and their lackies, which includes media outlets. What is amazing in the events that took place two years ago in Venezuela is that, despite those powerful forces, the poorly educated and economically disenfranchised people (making up 80% of the country's population), bound together by need and desire for a voice, assumed power through persistence and organization. It was encouraging on that count, because I've been concerned about what happens when the media become a tool of the powermongers and the people are cut off from accurate reporting, when the information fed to them is the line of lies that those powermongers need them to believe. If the rich elite powermongers in this country had any sense, they would take note of what happened in Venezuela and rectify the situation before we become a similar statistic of 80% disenfranchised poor.

There is just too much to the story of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, oil, globalization and U.S. interests to go into in a post. And maybe it doesn't capture your fancy as it does mine.

So, let me move on to Al Giordano, who follows the drug wars in South America, and U.S. involvement in them. It's all tied together anyway.

Jim Henry and Jeremy Bigwood have teamed up over at Henry's Submerging Markets blog, with documents unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act, to show that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency knew, more than three years and many billions of dollars ago, that Plan Colombia Won't Work.

...This report also gives creedence to those of us who said, back in 2000, that Plan Colombia was intended to fail: It is intended to spread instability to neighboring lands and prevent the breakout of authentic democracy sweeping South America. It has already done so in Ecuador. It's a cynical plan with a true intent that has nothing to do with fighting drugs. Its intent, simply put, is contrary to what Washington claims about promoting democracy. Plan Colombia is intended to destabilize democracy, not promote it, because democracy in Latin America is considered "bad" for some U.S. special interests.

When I get to the chapter on John Kerry and Plan Colombia, I'm going to be very explicit and rough. Plan Colombia is an atrocity.   article

That bit about being "bad for some U.S. special interests" is a line La Belle commented on from the documentary. One of our statesmen (I don't recall who it was now) is on camera testifying as to the events that were taking place in Venezuela when Chavez became president, stressing that it was obvious Chavez did not have the best interests of the United States at heart. As though he should.

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