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The recent mid-April Summit of the Americas highlighted growing regional disenchantment with Washington under a new administration no different from its predecessor and in some respects worse. It demands everything and offers nothing but failed policies and rhetorical promises that leaders like Chavez and others know are hollow.
James Petras is a long-time Latin American expert. In his new book due out in August titled "Global Depression and Regional Wars," he addresses what he also discussed in his May 21 article, "Obama's Foreign Policy Failures: Diplomacy, Militarism and Imagery."Â
He explained that the US financial collapse and "accompanying economic depression has led to a major crisis and conflict between North and South America with profound long-term consequences," including hundreds of billions of repatriated US dollars harming regional countries dependent on American capital, "financial protectionism," and the virtual "de-capitalization of Latin America" to the detriment of credit-starved regional exporters and importers.
America first policies and stepped-up militarism are contrary to "any 'harmonization of interest' and strengthen nationalist, regionalist and statist political and economic policies and governments in Latin America." Like his predecessor, Obama's policies have "accelerat(ed) the shift in Latin America away from US dominance." It's evident in Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, for half a century in Cuba, and the reason their governments are targeted.Â
Spinning the News - Dominant Media Efforts to Vilify Chavez
In America, Chavez bashing remains in vogue with major media contributors especially vocal after he accused the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon of being behind the Honduran coup with clear evidence it's true after decades of US meddling in the region.
A July 31 Washington Post editorial headlined "Rockets for Terrorists" in accusing Chavez of supporting FARC-EP "insurgents." It cited "extensive evidence that the government of Venezuela had collaborated with a Colombian rebel movement known for terrorism and drug trafficking....The evidence was contained on laptops captured (from) a guerilla base in Ecuador."
In fact, none existed, according to INTERPOL's forensic experts after examination discovered "no evidence of modification, alteration, addition or deletion in the" supposed user files from "three laptop computers, three USB thumb drives and two external hard discs seized during a Colombian anti-narcotics and anti-terrorist operation on a FARC camp on 1 March 2008." INTERPOL also acknowledged that Colombia likely manipulated the contents, rendering them bogus and fraudulent.Â
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