Venezuela prepares for war

[Magda Hassan]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-1...415641.htm

Xinhua News Agency
November 9, 2009

Venezuelan president calls on soldiers to prepare for war


CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged the army and civilians on Sunday to prepare themselves for war.

"We cannot waste one day to fulfill our mission: to prepare for war and help the people to get ready for war," Chavez said during his weekly TV-radio show.

His words came after Colombia and the United States signed a military agreement allowing the United States to use seven military bases in the country, which has aroused protest from its neighbors.

"Let's form the militia. The workers, the women, all ready to defend this sacred homeland," Chavez announced, adding that the best way to avoid war was to prepare for it.

After the signing of the U.S.-Colombia military agreement on Sept. 30, Venezuela has stepped up its military presence in states bordering Colombia.

According to the U.S.-Colombia agreement, the United States' military presence would be increased by up to 1,400 people across seven military bases in Colombia to fight local drug traffickers and insurgents.

However, Colombia's neighbors Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela have been criticizing the agreement since it was first discussed in July, saying it posed a threat to their national security.

Colombia remains the world's largest producer of cocaine, and has two large active rebel movements - the National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) both listed as terrorist groups by the United States.

Colombia has been accusing Venezuela of covertly supporting the FARC. Venezuela denied the charge and in turn accused Colombia of backing U.S. ambitions allegedly going far beyond fighting drug deals and terrorists to control the region's raw materials.

[Mark Stapleton]

According to the CIA World Factbook (each fact stamped with the seal of integrity), Uribe in Colombia has to face an election in May next year, which might make the timing of this provocative deal with the US on military bases an interesting coincidence, although Uribe did get 62% of the vote last time.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications...os/co.html


It looks like the time is right for the US to get Chavez at last. Brazil won't like this prospect on their border, since their economy has been growing, along with their trade with Venezuela, and Rio has just been awarded the 2016 Olympics. This won't sway the US oil interests. It's not the bad things he says about the US and Israel, although they are annoying, its about all that black gold. This Chavez character charges higher royalties, the communist bastard.

[Magda Hassan]

Anyone with some information can immediately see that the sweetened ‘Complementation Agreement for Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical Assistance between the Governments of Colombia and the United States’ signed on October 30, and made public in the evening of November 2, amounts to the annexation of Colombia to the United States.
The agreement puts theoreticians and politicians in a predicament. It wouldn’t be honest to keep silence now and speak later on sovereignty, democracy, human rights, freedom of opinion and other delights, when a country is being devoured by the empire as easy as lizards catch flies. This is the Colombian people; a self-sacrificing, industrious and combative people. I looked up in the hefty document for a digestible justification and I found none whatsoever.
Of 48 pages with 21 lines each, five are used to philosophize on the background of the shameful absorption that turns Colombia into an overseas territory. They are all based on the agreements signed with the United States after the murder of the distinguished progressive leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, and the establishment, on April 30, 1948, of the Organization of American States debated by the foreign ministers of the hemisphere meeting in Bogota, with the US as the boss, during the dramatic days when the Colombian oligarchy cut short the life of that leader thus paving the way to the onset of the armed struggle in that country.
The Agreement on Military Assistance between the Republic of Colombia and the United States of April 1952; the one related to Army, Naval and Air Missions from the US Forces, signed on October 7, 1974; the 1988 UN Convention against the Illegal Trafficking of Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; the 2000 UN Convention against Organized Transnational Delinquency; the 2001 Security Council Resolution 1373 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter; the Democratic Security and Defense Policy resolution and others referred to in the abovementioned document, none of them can justify turning a 713,592.5 square miles country located in the heart of South America into a US military base. Colombia’s territory is 1.6 times that of Texas, the second largest state of the Union taken away from Mexico and later used as a base to conquer with great violence more than half of that country.
On the other hand, over 59 years have passed since Colombian soldiers were sent to distant Asia, in October 1950, to fight alongside the Yankee troops against Chinese and Korean combatants. Now, the empire intends to send them to fight against their brothers in Venezuela, Ecuador and other Bolivarian and ALBA countries, to crush the Venezuelan Revolution as they tried to do with the Cuban Revolution in April 1961.
For more than one and a half years before the invasion of Cuba, the Yankee administration fostered, armed and used counterrevolutionary bandits in the Escambray the same way it is now using the Colombian paramilitary forces against Venezuela.
At the time of the Giron [Bay of Pigs] attack, the Yankee B-26 aircrafts piloted by mercenaries operated from Nicaragua. Their fighter planes were brought to the theater of operations in an aircraft carrier and the invaders of Cuban descent who landed in our territory were escorted by US warships and by the American marines. This time their war equipment and troops will be in Colombia posing a threat not only to Venezuela but to every country in Central and South America.
It is really cynical to claim that the infamous agreement is necessary to fight drug-trafficking and international terrorism. Cuba has shown that there is no need of foreign troops to prevent the cultivation and trafficking of drugs and to preserve domestic order, even though the United States --the mightiest power on Earth—has promoted, financed and armed the terrorists who for decades have attacked the Cuban Revolution.
The preservation of domestic peace is a basic prerogative of every government and the presence of Yankee troops in any Latin American country to do it on their behalf constitutes a blatant foreign interference in their internal affairs that will inevitably elicit the peoples’ rejection.
A simple reading of the document shows that not only the Colombian airbases will be in the Yankees’ hands but also the civilian airports and ultimately any facility that may be useful to their armed forces. The radio space is also available to that country with a different culture and other interests that have nothing in common with those of the Colombian people.
The US Armed Forces will have exceptional prerogatives.
The occupants can commit any crime anywhere in Colombia against Colombian families, property and laws and still be unaccountable to the country’s authorities. Actually, they have taken diseases and scandalous behavior to many places like the Palmerola military base in Honduras. In Cuba, when they came to visit the neo-colony, they sat astride the neck of Jose Marti’s statue, in the capital’s Central Park. The limit set with regards to the total number of soldiers can be modified as requested by the United States, and with no restriction whatsoever. The aircraft carriers and warships visiting the naval bases given to them can take as large a crew as they choose, and this can be thousands in only one of their large aircraft carriers.
The Agreement, which will remain in force for successive 10-year periods, can’t be modified until the end of every period, with a one-year prior notice. What will the United States do if an administration as that of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush sr. or Bush jr., and others like them, is asked to leave Colombia? The Yankees have ousted scores of governments in our hemisphere. How long would a government last in Colombia if it announced such intentions?
Now, the politicians in Latin America are faced with a sensitive issue: the fundamental duty of explaining their viewpoints on the annexation document. I am aware that what is happening in Honduras at this decisive moment draws the attention of the media and the foreign ministers of this hemisphere, but the Latin American governments cannot overlook the extremely serious and transcendental events taking place in Colombia.
I have no doubts about the reaction of the peoples; they will be sensitive to the dagger being shoved deep inside them, especially in Colombia: They will oppose! They will never cave in to such ignominy!
Today, the world is facing serious and pressing problems. The entire humanity is threatened by climate change. European leaders are almost begging on their knees for some kind of agreement in Copenhagen that will prevent the catastrophe. They practically concede that the Summit will fail to meet the objective of reaching an agreement that can drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and promise to continue struggling to attain it before 2012; however, there is a true risk that an agreement cannot be reached until it is too late.
The Third World countries are rightly claiming from the richest and most developed nations hundreds of billion dollars a year to pay for the climate battle.
Does it make sense for the United States government to invest time and money in building military bases in Colombia to impose on our peoples their hateful tyranny? Along that path, if a disaster is already threatening the world, a greater and faster disaster is threatening the empire and it would all be the consequence of the same exploiting and plundering system of the planet.

[Magda Hassan]

Colombia to release Venezuelans


The men's release would be a gesture of 'brotherly affection', Mr Uribe said

Colombia has said it will shortly release four members of the Venezuelan national guard who were detained on Colombian territory.
Colombia says they were stopped on Friday by its navy in a boat on a river in the border province of Vichada.
But President Alvaro Uribe said on Saturday they would be returned to the Venezuelan authorities.
There has been no comment from the Venezuelan government, which last week sent troops to the border region.
President Hugo Chavez, in deploying the forces, said a new US-Colombia military co-operation agreement set the stage for an invasion of his country.
Both Bogota and Washington dismiss the claims.
Mr Uribe said the troops would be released and sent home as a message of the "unbreakable affection" between the two countries.

"They should carry back the message that here there is brotherly affection for Venezuela and that affection is unbreakable," he said.
The Venezuelan guardsmen were arrested in Colombia's sparsely populated border department of Vichada, officials said.
Earlier this month, President Chavez urged his armed forces to be prepared for possible war.
He said the increased US access to Colombian bases would allow Washington to spy on Venezuela and attack strategic targets.
Bogota says the pact is aimed at fighting drug-traffickers and Marxist rebels within Colombia's own borders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8360999.stm

[Magda Hassan]

Venezuela Rejects U.S. Mediation Role In Dispute With Colombia



http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-1...488980.htm

Xinhua News Agency
November 19, 2009

Venezuela rejects U.S. mediation in dispute with Colombia


CARACAS: The Venezuelan government rejected on Wednesday a U.S. proposal to mediate in a dispute between Venezuela and Colombia over Colombia's military cooperation agreement with the United States.

"The mediation proposal has a clear aim of distracting the attention of its primary responsibility in the crisis and it is rude for the people of the world who are aware of it," the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said that the best way for the United States to collaborate on this issue is to stop intending to make Colombia an operational base for its regional strategy to dominate and control the countries in South America."

Venezuela said that the agreement signed between the United States and Colombia on Oct. 30 this year allows a disproportionate military presence of U.S. troops in Colombian territory, and this brings uncertainty to the South American region.

"These arguments (fight against drug trafficking and terrorism) are false and do not dissipate the doubt and questions, with the establishment of equipment for the electronic war, tasks of intelligence, military officers and staff of security contractor companies," the ministry added.

According to the statement the real arguments of the United States is to threaten the left-wing governments in Latin America, despite the fact that the agreement does not include actions in other countries, neither prohibits them.

Finally, the Foreign Ministry said the United States military presence in Iraq and at the Colombian border with Ecuador has violated the Charter of the United Nations and other aspects of international law.

[Magda Hassan]

News Americas
Colombia-Venezuela divide widens
Chavez, left, and Colombia president Alvaro Uribe have locked horns over the bases' use [AFP] Colombia has accused Venezuela of blowing up two pedestrian bridges that link the countries.
Gabriel Silva, Colombia's defence minister, said uniformed men, allegedly from the Venezuelan army, blew up the bridges that cross into Colombia's Norte de Santander state.
Other Colombian officials say they plan to file a complaint with the Organisation of American States and the UN Security Council.
Ramon Carrizalez, Venezuela's vice-president said the bridges were removed on the Venezuelan side and that they were illegal crossings used for drug trafficking.
'Prepare for war'
Al Jazeera's Monica Villamizar, reporting from the Colombian capital Bogota, said there was a real fear among local residents that the current tensions could escalate into a conflict with Venezuela.
Tensions have grown between the two countries after Bogota granted the US more access to its military bases – a move the US and Colombia say is to help in the Latin American country's fight against drugs and leftist fighters.
Venezuela's president recently told his armed forces to "prepare for war", saying the US-Colombia military pact could set the stage for a US invasion.
Chavez's comments sparked clashes on the Colombia-Venezuela border last week, where Colombians fought with Venezuelan border guards who responded by firing tear gas.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americ...50182.html

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/art...9DaM4Xv8aA

Agence France-Presse
November 21, 2009

Colombia says its military on 'maximum alert'

BOGOTA: Colombia warned its forces were on "maximum alert" and were prepared to defend against any attack, amid rising tensions with neighboring Venezuela.

Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva issued the warning after a meeting of the country's national security council in Arauca, a city on the eastern border with Venezuela.

He said President Alvaro Uribe and the military forces of Colombia were intent on remaining calm "because they know there are provocative forces on the border that must be avoided at all cost."

But this "does not mean that we are not prepared or are not on maximum alert to prevent any aggression against Colombia, against Colombians or against our territory."

Uribe's national security council met for five hours in Arauca with military and police commanders in the border area a day after Bogota charged that Venezuelan troops had blown up two footbridges across the border in northeastern Colombia.
....
Venezuela said Thursday the bridges were destroyed because they were being used by drug traffickers and smugglers.

The two neighbors have long been at odds, but tensions have sharpened in recent months over a US-Colombian agreement giving the US military access to seven Colombian bases.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on July 28 suspended diplomatic relations with Colombia and earlier this month warned his nation to "prepare for war."

Colombia responded by lodging a diplomatic note with the UN Security Council accusing Caracas of threatening to use force against it.

Caracas then accused Bogota of detaining four of its soldiers in a border river's international waters.

The four members of Venezuela's national guard, who were detained in Colombia Saturday and released a day later, were not on Colombian territory when they were taken, a Venezuelan national guard general insisted.