Chavez: 'Today I don't smell sulfur.'
Obama: 'Thank you very much.'
[This
is in reference to Venezuela President Hugo Chavez' remarks
about
President Bush when he spoke at the UN in 2006, saying:
'The
devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today.']
[Hoje Macau, Macau]
Gazeta, Russia
Latin Americans Will Sooner or Later Come 'Crawling' to the U.S.
"The factual
loss of American influence in its neighboring countries under Bush has turned
out to be far more painful for Washington than all of its losses in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. leaders have done
nothing but demonstrate their ineffectiveness, destroying with their own hands
the unipolar world. It has reaped what it sowed."
"The current
American elite say to Latin America, 'We love everyone, all is forgiven, and we
will no longer impose on anyone.' Translated into simple language, this means
the following: 'We are deathly tired of lecturing you and caring about democracy
and human rights in your countries. You will come back to us yourselves (or
crawl back, if repentance is belated).'"
By Yevgeniy Trifonov
Translated By Yekaterina
Blinova
April 15, 2009
Russia - Gazeta
- Original Article (Russian)
Fidel Castro was right and Hugo Chavez was wrong. The
arrival of Barack Obama to the White House really has opened a new era in U.S.
relations with its southern neighbors. It seems the current American elite consider
that the cost of caring about democracy and human rights in Latin America is
unreasonably high.
The fact that American policy
toward Latin America will undergo radical changes was clearly expressed by U.S.
Vice President Joseph Biden. During a conversation
with the Chile President Michelle Bachelet, Biden said, " The
time of the United States dictating unilaterally, the time where we only talk
and don't listen - is over. We very much … want a
conversation. We very much want a partnership." And now, three U.S. House members
have flown to Cuba for friendly conversations with the Castro brothers, to tell
the press how alert the elderly comandante
is, and that Raul Castro would like to normalize relations with the United
States and end an almost half-century log American embargo. "Our basic
message back to our country would be, it's time to talk to Cuba," emphasized
the head of the delegation, California Representative Barbara Lee. The comments
of Fidel himself were more than complimentary of the visit.
President Obama then acted to lift
additional restrictions imposed by the Bush Administration on travel to Cuba
and remittances between the countries (although, according to White House
spokesperson Robert Gibbs, this now only extends only to U.S. residents and
their Cuban relatives); authorizes U.S. telecommunication companies to resume
their work in Cuba; and asks the government to investigate the possibility of
resuming regular commercial flights to the island.
By the way, a few days after the visit by American lawmakers
to Cuba, the United States made a step toward another Latin American regime - this
time, Bolivia. Washington agreed with President Evo Morales on cooperation to
combat drug trafficking, allocating $26 million to Bolivia for the purpose. To
give this president, who is also leader of the cocaleros [coca growers] money to fight the drug trade, is comical.
Presumably, this is a bribe - not to him personally but for the entire Latin-American
left, to get them to believe in the sincerity of the updated Uncle Sam.
Implementing a change in American foreign policy in the
south is well within the scope of the new Washington administration's
geopolitical strategy.
Obama wants to prove to everyone that he's "warm and fuzzy":
he's making "come hither" gestures toward the grim Teheran, he's
speaking sweet words to the Palestinians and he's pointedly silent about
Pyongyang's nuclear shenanigans. But Latin America is right alongside the
United States - it isn't far-away Palestine - and the factual loss of American
influence in its neighboring countries under Bush has turned out to be far more
painful for Washington than all of its losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. leaders have done nothing but
demonstrate their ineffectiveness, destroying with their own hands the unipolar
world. It has reaped what it sowed.
OBAMA AND
CHAVEZ: 'RAPPROCHEMENT'
[Excelsior,
Mexico]
Obama himself, who has done
nothing but make abstract speeches, probably truly doubts the possibility of
convincing bloody villains from the Colombian FARC, Palestinian terrorists and
Iran’s deranged mullahs that killing is wrong, that everyone has to be friends,
and that the world has changed. Those who brought him to power are serious
people who nurse no illusions. They know: the use of force against recalcitrant
countries is for now politically impossible, and launching empty tirades are
useless. Let Latin America (and the world) live without the global cop for a
while and get by on their own. During the time of the Bushes, junior and
senior, powerless shouts toward Latin America amounted to nothing - and America's
last show of power, a coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002, was organized so badly
that nothing of the sort has been repeated again.
Besides, the U.S. looses nothing: its Southern neighbors
can't survive without the U.S. market (Chavez only threatens to stop selling
oil to the Americans. In fact, he cannot make good on his threats). Even Hoya
de la Torre, "father" of the Latin-American left, warned that
since they had no other markets, socialist governments in Latin America would have to learn to cooperate with the
United States. For Latin Americans, China,
Europe and Japan, even all together, can't substitute for the United States. Cuba
is a perfect example of this: free trade with the entire rest of the world isn't
capable of compensating Havana for the U.S. embargo, and the economy of "Freedom
island" has been in continual decline for the past 50 years.
The current American elite say to
Latin America, "We love everyone, all is forgiven, and we will no longer
impose on anyone." Translated into simple language, this means the
following: we are deathly tired of lecturing you and caring about democracy and
human rights in your countries. You will come back to us yourselves (or crawl
back, if repentance is belated).
What is described in Gabriel Marques'
The
Autumn of the Patriarch has happened: the gringo, having put the general in the president’s office, sailed
back to the States, shouting to him: "That's it! Stay here alone in this
dirty brothel! Lets see how you get by without us!" Now Americans are
doing just that - but in a much more sophisticated manner.
'A PASSING
FAD?'
[El
Nuevo Diario, Nicaragua]
The nanny (the United States) is tired, has gone to bed and has
closed the door. The mischievous "children" (marginal regimes -
including those in Latin America) are having a festival of disobedience.
Although the fun of these "children" is far more extreme than a
pillow fight. The Castro brothers, for instance, have decimated the economy to "feed"
army and special forces officers. Public and military officials in Venezuela sell
drugs with a vengeance and entertain themselves with money from the state
budget. Those sober Iranian moralists have turned the country into a
concentration camp for the female population. Hamas in the Gaza Strip entertains
itself with the killing of Jews. And the Kim Jong-il regime feeds off of racketeering
and extorting bread and fuel from other countries by threatening to either
explode an atomic bomb or launching a rocket somewhere.
In Latin America, Washington's stubborn support of the
failed neoliberal model has brought extreme anger from the populace. And almost
everywhere, the left has come to power. Among them are boisterous demagogues
like Chavez, accidental señoras like [Argentine
President Michelle] Kirschner and [Chilean President Michelle] Bachelet and completely
wholesome politicians - Brazil's Lula, Uruguay's Tabare Vasquez and Costa Rica's
Oscar Arias.
The later, by the way, are in the majority. The problem lies
elsewhere: the majority of Latin American voters - badly educated, angry and poor
(thanks to neoliberalism) are bewitched by leftist ideas and drugs. The trouble
is that even someone like Lula, who is a fairly successful president, holds on with
the support of this dark mass and is forced to act out as though he were
Chavez. It's pathetic to read his nonsense about the "blue-eyed blondes"
who are responsible for the crisis, but what is Lula to do if the presidential
elections are approaching and the candidate of the governing party's approval
rating doesn’t even reach 10 percent?
The gringo-bashing
Chavez is far more dear to Latin American paupers than the rational Lula. And
when the wise [Uruguayan President] Vasquez honestly explains to his people that
they must trade with the United States rather than Venezuela [which has only
oil] because the U.S. absorbs 83 percent of Uruguayan exports, his own "Broad Front"
rises up against him.
At the next election, the Broad Front intends to put into
office the former terrorist Jose Mujica - he is
one who really knows how to swear at the gringo.
His other talents have yet to be discovered, but the poor need nothing more. That
is why all the leaders of the continent repeat, as if to chant: "no to the
U.S. embargo on brotherly Cuba!"
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
[El Espectador,
Colombia]
For example, could Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (not a
socialist, by the way, but a liberal) say: excuse me, but Cuba under Castro
committed acts of military aggression against my country - why should we
forgive that, and even defend the interests of this barbaric regime before
Washington? But no; Senior Zelaya has
been the loudest in demanding a lifting of the embargo: he doesn't want his
palace decimated by crazed mobs of barbudos [fans of the unshaven
ones like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara]. All the other leaders of the
region could also accuse Cuba of deploying terrorists (the comandante only banned the deployment of los revolucionarios to Mexico, which harbored Fidel after his release
from prison). Even anti-communist stalwarts like Uribe (Colombia) and
Calderon (Mexico) are singing in tune: down with the embargo! Such is the face
of Latin American democracy …
Where this "festival of disobedience" in Latin
America will lead is hard to predict. Democracy is weak in the region - generally
weak governments that are too dependent on the volatile moods of lowest classes
of society. The crisis has hit the economy and social sphere of the region
hard, reinforcing radical attitudes and groups.
In Mexico the drug cartels are waging a treu war against the
government. Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and huge Brazilian
cities are choking on crime and drugs. In Colombia the civil war continues, and
in Mexico, "guerrillas" are aflame. New and threatening factors have
appeared: around the Chavez-Morales block, an unheard of coalition is forming steeped
in "color racism": denial of the continent's European and Christian
roots - and the rejection of democratic values. Peruvian Ollanta Humala, an
Indian racist who calls for the expulsion of all Whites from Peru and the
prohibition of Christianity, nearly became president. He received support from
Chavez and his speeches, worthy of Goebbels, gave rise to no complaint from the
Venezuelan leader.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Meanwhile in Peruvian mountains, the ranks of the "Shining Path," a separatist
group based on the ideas of Indian racism and Marxism a-la Pol Pot, have been reactivated.
Bolivia's new constitution codifies Indian privileges, destroying racial
equality in the country. Ecuador's leftist president Raphael Correa also flirts
with the Indian racists. In the meantime, Islamic radicals are growing stronger
within the region (with the help of the aforementioned Chavez): a huge area of
free trade in Paraguay is controlled by the Lebanese Hezbullah, and its fighters
have joined the ranks of the Colombian FARC. Of course, Islamists can't spread too
widely in Christian Latin America, but they can bring even greater chaos.
Moderate reformist regimes and movements of this type are relatively weak because
of their limited social base, but the capacity to suppress extremism and
banditry is limited by sub-democratic laws and lax law enforcement.
It's unlikely that Latin America will collapse into complete
chaos and anarchy as it did in the 19th century, but it will be difficult for
it to move toward stability and development, except for countries like Brazil,
Costa Rica, and, perhaps, Chile. Even more doubtful than before, however, is
the outlook for a unifying ideal: due to the economic crisis, contradictions
between nations have only been exacerbated.
SEE ALSO ON THIS:
Gazeta, Russia:
Castro and Chavez Split Over Obama
El Mundo, Colombia:
Obama: A Man Who Takes His Promises Seriously
La Razon, Bolivia:
President Morales Suspects U.S. Behind Attempt on His Life
Granma, Cuba:
Castro: Easing of Cuba Restrictions 'Positive', But Not Nearly Enough
Granma, Cuba:
Bay of Pigs Led 'Inexperienced Kennedy' to Make 'Misguided Decisions' …
El Espectador, Colombia:
Cuba in Obama's Sights
Merco Press, Uruguay:
Lula Vows Not to Embarrass Obama Over Cuba Embargo
In this situation, the "departure" of the United
States from the region should increase not only the negative, but the positive
tendencies in the economic and social spheres of Latin America. The left no
longer has anyone to blame, which means it will be harder to mobilize the masses
to support it. And the moderate right will have no one to rely on to come and
save it. Both will have to count on themselves. They will have to work more and
picket less. They will have to actually, not just verbally, deal with national
economies and regional markets, and somehow deal with the issues of terrorism and
crime. But in any case, the process will be a long and painful one.
CLICK HERE FOR RUSSIAN
VERSION
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US April 21, 4:29pm]
