Fwd. Rick Rozoff
Henk Ruyssenaars - Ex Latin America correspondent
November 22nd 2009 - It might make it easier to see what already happened in the past, so the reader understands what the future may bring.
Because Dutch and Belgian Navy units were also involved in Venezuela's April 11, 2002 coup d'etat - Url.: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=6820
And as always the totally brainwashed troops, including the Dutch armed forces are at the disposal of the cartel's US/UK and NATO warmongers, including the israeli mercenaries. - Url.: http://www.williambowles.info/venezuela/2006/0406/brainwashed_dutch.html
Nut this is the latest story concerned: "Rumors Of Coups And War: U.S., NATO Target Latin America" and insightsful written by Rick Rozoff.*
It was published on Voltairenet: "The United States are back in Latin America. The military coup in Honduras marked the beginning of Washington’s renewed grip on that continent. While another coup was thwarted in Paraguay, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have been deploying new forces to encircle the ALBA countries with a view to attacking Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela. Readying for the gathering storm, Chile has embraced the North-American camp and stockpiled a powerful arsenal.
20 NOVEMBER 2009 - Chicago (USA) - SouthCom: Control of Latin America - Picture: "The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, and his Colombian opposite number, General Freddy Padilla de Leon, shaking hands outside the Pentagon (November 13, 2009) ©DoD."
November 28 will mark five months since the coup led by U.S.-trained commanders deposed the president of Honduras, the next day will see a mock election in the same nation designed to legitimize the junta of Roberto Micheletti, and the day following that will be a month since Washington signed an agreement with the Alvaro Uribe government in Colombia for the use of seven military bases in the country.
While intensifying a full-scale war in South Asia, continuing occupation missions in Iraq and the Balkans, maintaining warships off the coasts of Somalia and Lebanon, and deploying troops and conducting war games in most parts of the world, the United States and its NATO allies have not neglected Latin America.
Central and South America and the Caribbean are receiving a degree of attention from the U.S. and its partners not witnessed since the Cold War and in some ways are the targets of even more intense scrutiny and intervention.
Nearly five months since the June 28 coup d’etat against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya led by General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, a graduate of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas, Washington has not used its substantial - decisive - leverage with the illegal government and its military supporters to reverse the armed takeover of power. Instead it has conspired with the junta to drag out deliberately futile negotiations and has thrown its weight behind the November 29 election which, occurring without the previous reinstalling of President Zelaya, will be a travesty of law and international protocols and is in fact intended to lend false credibility to the current regime. - [snip]
On November 16 a photograph appeared on a Pentagon website, Defense Link, of the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, and his Colombian opposite number, General Freddy Padilla de Leon, shaking hands outside the Pentagon three days earlier (see above). No story on or details of their meeting are available, not even on Defense Department sites. Only the photograph and brief notices on Facebook and Twitter.
Padilla’s resume is both illustrative and typical. He earlier matriculated in "terrorism studies" at George Washington University and received a fellowship for the Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University, as well as taking a course on advanced military studies at Fort Belvoir, Virginia and and training in strategic intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center in Washington, D.C.
The transcripts of his discussions with Mullen would prove intriguing, focusing as they no doubt did on the buildup at the seven military bases in Colombia recently turned over to the Pentagon and on the uses thereof. Since the agreement on their acquisition by the United States was signed on October 30 confirmation of the bases’ dual purpose - escalating the counterinsurgency war inside the country and containing and confronting two of its neighbors, Venezuela and Ecuador - has been witnessed.
Bogota reported that nine of its soldiers were killed and four wounded in a major clash with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) fighters in the southwestern department of Cauca on November 10. Five days later Colombia seized four Venezuelan border guards on a river off Colombia’s Vichada Department. A few days earlier two Venezuelan National Guard troops were killed in the state of Tachira on the Colombian border, leading Caracas to deploy 15,000 troops to the area on November 5.
DESTABILIZE THE GOVERNMENT OF VENEZUELA
The preceding week Venezuela arrested eight Colombian nationals and two locals suspected of paramilitary activity on the two countries’ border. Government official Ricardo Sanguino "denounced increasing paramilitary activity as a strategy to conceal soaring US access to Colombian military bases" and said "they are trying to destabilize the government of Venezuela...." [2]
Recently Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez renewed repeated concerns over the new American bases on the territory of his western neighbor, saying "that according to recently produced documents, the military bases would be used for espionage purposes, allowing US troops there to launch a military offensive against Venezuela." [3]
PROVOCATION OF THE ALBA COUNTRIES
On November 8 Bolivian President Evo Morales said that "the use of Colombian military bases by U.S. troops meant a provocation to the Latin American peoples, mainly to the members of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA)." He specified that "With the excuse of fighting against drug trafficking and terrorism, thousands of U.S. soldiers will be deployed in Colombia." [4]
ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, consists of Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras (until the coup), Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda, the last three nations joining this June. Washington using Colombia as the nucleus of a new Latin American military bloc to counteract ALBA has been explored in a previous article in this series. [5] Other prospective candidates include post-coup Honduras, Panama, Peru and Chile, with pressure placed on Brazil, Guyana and Suriname to either supply bases or in other ways augment American and European military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. [6]
The seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia allow the Pentagon far more scope than is required merely for alleged drug interdiction surveillance and even for the counterinsurgency war against the FARC. The agreement on the bases, bearing the sleep-inducing title of Supplemental Agreement for Cooperation and Technical Assistance in Defense and Security Between the Governments of The United States of America and the Republic of Colombia, lists where U.S. military personnel and equipment will be deployed:
German Olano Moreno Air Base, Palanquero; Alberto Pawells Rodriguez Air Base, Malambo; Tolemaida Military Fort, Nilo; Larandia Military Fort, Florencia; Capitan Luis Fernando Gomez Nino Air Base, Apiay; ARC Bolivar Naval Base in Cartagena; and ARC Malaga Naval Base in Bahia Malaga. [7]
The document also states that "the Parties agree to deepen their cooperation in areas such as interoperability, joint procedures, logistics and equipment, training and instruction, intelligence exchanges, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, combined exercises, and other mutually agreed activities" and Washington’s Colombian client concedes, in addition to the seven bases named above, "access to and use of other facilities and locations as may be agreed by the Parties."
Furthermore, "The authorities of Colombia shall, without rental or similar costs to the United States, allow access to and use of the agreed facilities and locations, and easements and rights of way, owned by Colombia that are necessary to support activities carried out within the framework of this Agreement, including agreed construction. The United States shall cover all necessary operations and maintenance expenses associated with its use of agreed facilities and locations."
U.S. military, intelligence and drug enforcement personnel - and American private contractors - "and their dependents" are granted "the privileges, exemptions, and immunities accorded to the administrative and technical staff of a diplomatic mission under the Vienna Convention....Colombia shall guarantee that its authorities verify, as promptly as possible, the immunity status of United States personnel and their dependents who are suspected of criminal activity in Colombia and hand them over as promptly as possible to the appropriate United States diplomatic or military authorities."
One of the military bases obtained by the United States - the Larandia Military Fort in Florencia - is within easy striking distance of Ecuador (as the Alberto Pawells Rodriguez Air Base in Malambo is of Veneuzela).
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and Defense Minister Javier Ponce visited Russia late last month and on October 29 the two nations signed a declaration on strategic partnership. Correa and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev discussed energy and military cooperation. Ahead of the visit Ecuador’s president stated, "We need to restore the might of our army" in reference to the U.S. buildup in Colombia, its neighbor to the north.
"Ecuador has been alarmed by the decision of Colombia, with which it severed diplomatic relations in March 2008, to allow U.S. troops to use its bases." [8] The severing of relations occurred after Colombia’s army launched an attack inside Ecuador.
Ecuador and Russia signed a contract for the delivery of Mi-171E Hip transport helicopters to the Ecuadoran Ground Forces and a Russian newspaper said "Russia could supply six Su-30MK2 Flanker multirole fighters, several helicopters, and air defense systems to Ecuador, which would increase the value of their military cooperation to over $200 million." [9]
Like other members of ALBA - Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua - Ecuador is purchasing Russian military equipment as a counterbalance to traditional U.S. domination of its defense procurements, with the potential for sabotage and blackmail it entails, and as protection against potential attacks from Washington and its proxies, most notably Colombia. - [snip]
That the Honduran putsch is intended to be the first in a series of similar plots in Latin America and is neither an aberration nor the last of its kind was also indicated last week when Nicaragua expelled a Dutch European Union parliamentarian. Radio Netherlands characterized the motivation for the action as follow: "Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says Dutch MEP Hans van Baalen was in Nicaragua to see how the army felt about attempting a coup d´etat, but found no officers willing to go along with the idea."
[Van Baalen is an extreme right-wing moron, a fascist and long time 'leader' of thepolitical VVD party in The Netherlands. VVD stands according to many thinking people for 'Association of Thieves.' In Dutch: Vereniging Van Dieven. - HR]
Van Baalen then moved to Honduras to "mediate in the political conflict between ousted President Manuel Zelaya and his de facto successor Roberto Micheletti." [12]
Mexican journalist Luis Gutierrez, speaking at a conference against NATO’s global expansion in Berlin last month and in particular of the bloc’s Article 5 military mutual assistance clause, observed that "Mexico’s 3,000 kilometer border with the United States is also a border with NATO." [13] Troops from 50 nations on five continents and in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and the South Pacific are serving or pledged to serve under NATO command in Afghanistan at the moment because of Article 5.
HOLLAND IS A 'LAPDOG OF WAR'
The Netherlands, for example, is not only assisting its American NATO ally in Nicaragua and Honduras, but allows its island possessions in the Caribbean - the Netherlands Antilles - to be employed for surveillance of and future military actions against Venezuela.
In Curacao, a Dutch possession only 70 kilometers from the Venezuelan coast, the leader of an opposition party, Pueblo Soberano (Sovereign People), demanded that the U.S. military base on the island be closed down.
Helmin Wiels said that "he wants to prevent Curacao from being dragged into what he predicts will be a future war between the US and Venezuela.
"The US has a number of military bases in Colombia, and Mr Wiels claims the country is intent on a confrontation with Venezuela’s leftwing President Hugo Chavez." [14]
In May of 2008 a U.S. warplane flying from Curacao violated Venezuelan airspace, conducting surveillance of the Venezuelan military base on Orchila Island. President Chavez said of the intrusion: "They’re spying, they’re even testing our reaction capacity." [15]
Moreover, Venezuela accused the U.S. of coordinating the action with Colombia, whose soldiers had crossed the Venezuelan border the day before.
In 2005 Chavez appeared on the American television news program Nightline and warned that the U.S. and its NATO allies were rehearsing invasion plans for his nation, codenamed Balboa, which involved aircraft carriers and warplanes, and said that American troops had been deployed to Curacao as part of the preparations.
He further admonished: "We are coming up with a counter-Balboa plan. That is to say if the government of the United States attempts to commit the foolhardy enterprise of attacking us, it would be embarked on a 100-year war. We are prepared." [16]
A former Dutch possession in the Caribbean, Suriname, one country (Guyana) removed from Venezuela, offered the Pentagon bases to test military vehicles for jungle warfare in 2007.
In Guyana, Venezuela’s eastern neighbor, the nation’s former colonial master Britain canceled a security agreement after the Guyanese government questioned its partner’s real intentions.
The nation’s Office of the President released a statement which in part said: “This decision by the UK Government is believed to be linked to the administration’s refusal to permit training of British Special Forces in Guyana using live firing in a hinterland community on the western border with Brazil and Venezuela.” [17]
The Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, stated, "It could be that the UK Government did not fully appreciate how dearly held was our position on the non-violation of the sovereignty of Guyana. Their insistence in installing in their design in April...management features that seriously compromise Guyana’s ownership and when our new design re-established ownership that was more consistent with our notions of sovereignty, the plug was pulled...." [18]
With U.S. bases in Colombia to the west and in the Netherlands Antilles to the north, British military presence in the east would tighten the encirclement of Venezuela. A collective siege conducted by NATO allies the U.S., the Netherlands and Britain.
Several days later a report titled "U.S. Authorizes Sale of German Missiles to Chile" detailed: "Seven months after Chile’s Defense Minister expressed interest in purchasing a fleet of used (U.S. made) F-16 Fighter Jets from Holland, the U.S. government helped seal the deal by supporting Chile’s bid to buy missiles for the jets."
It added: "Also last week, the Pentagon endorsed two other possible defensive arms sales for Chile’s army. The first purchase would include six new Sentinel radar systems and six SINCGARS radio systems, at a cost of US$65 million. The second deal could include 36 Avenger planes and 390 ground-to-air missiles at a cost of US$455 million." [27] - [snip]
The accelerating pace and wide-ranging scope with which the U.S. and its allies are militarizing the world is unparalleled. Even during the depth of the Cold War most nations avoided being pulled into military blocs, arms buildups and wars. No longer.
And Latin America is no exception.
Rick Rozoff
Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of Stop NATO international.
Source with all references: Voltaire Net - Url.: http://www.voltairenet.org/article162980.html#nh14
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RELATED:
* THE (UNFORTUNATE) LIES OF MICHAEL MOORE (ABOUT HUGO CHÁVEZ) - MICHAEL MOORE IS A MOST UNFORTUNATE COWARD. - Eva Golinger - Author & Lawyer - Venezuela - Caracas - Monday October 19th 2009 - Url.: http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=126856
* Curacao Bars Use Of Its Territory To Hit Venezuela - By Vanessa Carolina del Valle Marcano - 3 June 2005 - Url.: www.rense.com/general63/curaco.htm
* The Netherlands (Holland) - An American 'Lapdog of War' - Url.: http://apfn.net/Messageboard/03-30-05/discussion.cgi.93.html
* All 'wars' of aggression: 'Cover Up' Claim over Iraq War Legal Advice - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/yh5yafr
* Google search - Web results 21 - 30 of about 416,000 for "Latin America" +NATO +Netherlands. Url.: http://tinyurl.com/ydzvecj
Henk Ruyssenaars
Url.: http://tinyurl.com/yevvgup
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