[Mb-civic] Rumsfeld in Nicaragua....

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

“ To sustain its current shaky global control, the United States has to 
dominate Latin America and its energy resources. No one will invest 
money in a United States that cannot control its own backyard.” 

”Rumsfeld is preparing the terrain for a trouble-free military intervention 
in Nicaragua should the FSLN win the Presidential election in 2006.”

http://207.44.245.159/article7360.htm
Rumsfeld in Nicaragua : The reason?: Fallujah and SAM-7s.
by Toni Solo 

 11/20/04 "ICH" -- Donald Rumsfeld visited Nicaragua last week. The 
apparent reason why seemed to be to offer moral support to President 
Enrique Bolaños after his disastrous showing in Nicaragua's recent 
municipal elections. Like US cats-paws President Gutierrez of Ecuador 
and President Toledo of Peru, Bolaños, with less than 10% of last 
week's vote, is clearly rejected by more than 90% of his people.

 It is important to note that the Sandinista party led by Daniel 
Ortega, the FSLN, won around 45% of the vote on a turnout very similar 
to that of the US elections in 2000. That's pretty much the same 
turnout that saw supporters of President Chavez of Venezuela returned 
overwhelmingly to power in Venezuela's local elections at the end of 
October. The Sandinistas now administer over 80 municipalities in 
Nicaragua including almost all the main cities. The Liberal Party 
controls around 55 municipalities. 

 The party supporting Bolaños, APRE, won just 10 municipalities, with 
one major city, traditionally Conservative Granada, in dispute. So 
Nicaragua has delivered another blow to United States' attempts to 
railroad Latin Americans into an ever tighter neo-liberal "free trade" 
straitjacket, with ever greater inequality in the distribution of their 
countries' wealth. But encouragement for Enrique Bolaños was not the 
main purpose of Rumsfeld's visit. 

 Control of Latin American resources is vital for the economies of 
North America, Europe and Australia. That is why Paul Martin of Canada 
and President Chirac of France supported the US coup in Haiti. That is 
why Britain and Australia are the main supporters of the US occupation 
of Iraq. 

 That is why energy giants like Spain's Repsol (dominated by US 
shareholders), France's Total, Britain's BP and British Gas are working 
together with the IMF, the World Bank and the US government to 
strong-arm Bolivia's President Mesa into resisting overwhelming popular 
demand in Bolivia for greater State control of the country's gas 
resources. Right now, Russia, China and other Asian countries are 
negotiating energy deals with countries like Brazil and Venezuela. That 
is the main reason for Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Nicaragua. 

 The United States is the only country with the military might to 
defend European, Canadian and Australian needs for energy resources. 
There are three keys for the foreseeable future to keep open ready 
access to cheap energy for those countries. One is the key that opens 
up energy reserves in Central and South West Asia. Another is the key 
that opens up West Africa, hence France's recent intervention in the 
Ivory Coast. The third key is the one that opens up Latin America.

 To sustain its current shaky global control, the United States has to 
dominate Latin America and its energy resources. No one will invest 
money in a United States that cannot control its own backyard. 
Likewise, investor perception that the United States is unable to 
guarantee its energy needs would provoke a rapid, catastrophic collapse 
of the dollar. That is why the United States government has such a huge 
budget for military spending. It has to be able to terrorize energy 
rich countries into bowing to its demands.

 If the peoples of small countries like Nicaragua fail to submit to US 
rule, international investors will quickly begin to ask what that fact 
implies for confidence in the dollar, already weak, as a strategic 
reserve currency. Having won the municipal elections so emphatically 
and having demonstrated the capacity of their followers to deliver on 
promises locally, the FSLN is very likely to win the presidential 
elections in 2006. If the FSLN wins those presidential elections the US 
will be faced with another country alongside Venezuela and Cuba 
governed by people with the determination, resourcefulness and talent 
to defend the interests of their people. 

 Last month, the United States people elected a government that will 
not permit such sovereign autonomy of other nations in opposition to 
the needs of the United States empire. So when Donald Rumsfeld came 
to Nicaragua he could not have cared less about the de facto illegitimacy 
of the government of Enrique Bolaños. What Donald Rumsfeld had on his 
mind when he came to Nicaragua was the heroic Iraqi resistance in 
Fallujah. 

 The reason Donald Rumsfeld came to Nicaragua was to press for the 
destruction of the main anti-aircraft defences of the Nicaraguan armed 
forces, namely 1,367 SAM-7 ground-to-air missiles. One of the 
agreements Bolaños reached with Rumsfeld on the veteran war criminal's 
visit to Managua was the destruction of those missiles. Rumsfeld is 
preparing the terrain for a trouble-free military intervention in 
Nicaragua should the FSLN win the Presidential election in 2006.

>From the point of view of the Pentagon 1,367 SAM-7s represent what? A
50% effectiveness means over 500 airplanes down. A 30% effectiveness 
means over 300 airplanes down. Could a US intervention in Nicaragua 
with support from the armed forces of El Salvador and Honduras succeed 
readily without total air dominance? No. Could 30% effectiveness of 
1,367 ground-to-air missiles deny total air domination? Yes. So the 
SAM-7s have to be destroyed prior to any US armed assault against 
Nicaragua, hence Donald Rumsfeld's visit to the politically enfeebled 
Bolaños.

 Fallujah has proved an old truth : only peoples in arms can defend 
their basic rights against the aggression of colonial predators like 
the United States. No one should have any doubt at all that US 
government plans for Latin America or any other part of the Americas, 
including the United States itself, have absolutely nothing to do with 
democracy. The Bush regime and its foreign accomplices are doing 
everything in their power to bully and bribe politicians throughout 
Latin America into continued subservience to US, European, Canadian 
and Australian corporate interests. 

 Since they are no good at diplomacy, the war-criminals in the White 
House are clearly making arrangements for massive armed intervention 
so as to cow whole populations into voting against their best interests 
out of sheer terror. In doing so the US is merely confirming its 
long-standing total break (since at least the 1986 World Court 
judgement condemning the US for terrorism against Nicaragua) with 
the international humanitarian and human rights consensus since the 
Nuremberg trials of 1945. For the moment, perhaps until the United 
States finally slumps into definitive decline, the Geneva Conventions 
and the other international human rights and humanitarian conventions 
have become irrelevant bits of paper. 

 The United Nations has become just another arena for the deployment 
of bribes and other inducements to the betrayal of its objectives and 
Charter. President da Silva of Brazil has sent troops to Haiti to 
consolidate the United States instigated coup. Why? Most likely so as 
to demonstrate that Brazil too can be a willing accomplice of the 
delinquent US empire, doing its dirty work whenever the current emperor 
whistles and always with one ear pricked alert to the wishes of the IMF 
and international investors. 

 Brazil may well be rewarded with a place on the UN Security Council - 
that most sophisticated of protection rackets. This reality also 
explains why Brazil is treading so carefully in defending its State oil 
company's interests in Bolivia. Da Silva needs to sustain his bogus 
popular credentials without frightening off foreign investors and big 
business.

 It is unlikely that the peoples of Latin America are so foolish as to 
fail to realise all this. Nor are they likely to ignore the experience 
of Iraq, of Fallujah. They may well consider it simple prudence to 
prepare adequately for armed resistance to the coming aggressions 
being planned against them by the government of the United States 
and its local allies in the region.

 Before he moved on recently to other duties, General James Hill of the 
US Southern Command had made over a dozen visits to Ecuador in the 
last year of his assignment. His purpose was to press the US servant 
there, President Gutierrez, to step up military pressure along Ecuador's 
frontier with Colombia on the Colombian FARC armed resistance. 
Rumsfeld's visit to Nicaragua ups the ante in Central America and the 
Andes, confirming that the United States has well-advanced contingency 
plans for yet more aggressive military interventions in Latin America
-------


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