Hugo Moldiz Mercado

In a tactical shift toward Bolivia, the U.S. State Department has sent Jefferson Brown to the country, indicating a likely increase in subversive activity against the Morales government. He was apparently sent to clean house, and replace all embassy personnel in preparation for the July arrival of a new attaché, Peter Brennan, an uncommon diplomatic practice.

It appears that the White House has decided to make a turn - for the worse - in its relations with Bolivia. After removing Larry Memmott, considered a dove in U.S. secret services circles, the State Department has sent Jefferson Brown, as interim business attaché, who will remain on the job only through June, before handing over the position to the much more experienced hawk, Peter Brennan.

Changes at the U.S. embassy in La Paz are not limited to replacing the business attaché, the highest ranking official present in the country since President Evo Morales expelled Ambassador Philip Golberg in 2008, for engaging in subversive activity in conjunction with hard-line opposition forces in the city of Santa Cruz. All indications point toward the replacement of the entire staff, giving greater weight to secret services and an increase in efforts to destabilize the Morales government, within the framework of a regional counter-offensive. Brown arrived in Bolivia April 23, immediately after he was appointed.

According to reliable sources linked to the State Department, greater changes will take place in July, implying the nature of the task assigned Brown, a career diplomat who has worked in Brazil, El Salvador, Paraguay, Ecuador and Argentina, among other countries. He must conduct a clean-up before the arrival of Peter Brennan, who has been a State Department advisor and responsible for policies in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Cuba.

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Nil Nikandrov

Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), (Former President) Lula da Silva (Brasil), Hugo Chávez
(Venezuela), (Current) Dilma Rousseff (Brasil) and C. Fernández de Kirchner (Arg.)

In a series of his public speeches Hugo Chávez called an “epidemic” of cancer among Latin American presidents a strange and alarming phenomenon. This hard to cure desease was identified in case of Chávez himself, Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, Dilma Rouseff and Lula da Silva (Brazil), Crisitina Fernández (Argentina). Al of them are known as left of the center politicians struggling to expedite Latin America’s integration process and to get rid of the US dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Chávez let drop words about empires that go to any length to achieve their goals.

The Washington’s response didn’t keep waiting. Victoria Nuland, US State Department official spokesperson, said the Chávez’ words were “horrific and reprehensible.” That is they were perceived by the Obama administration as imputation of using special biological technologies to cause cancer among Latin American leaders not friendly towards the USA.

Of course, Hugo Chávez was not that rude. He understood Washington would demand evidence. So the president explained his position saying he never blamed anyone but rather used freedom of thought facing a strange string of events that were hard to explain. The anxiety is well understood, to overcome the decease he had to go through harassing session of chemotherapy in Cuba. And the anxiety is here to stay. How did the desease appear? What made a malignant tumor hit a healthy man, a retired serviceman, former baseball player, regular gym goer and race runner? Why only the populist politicians got into the trouble that never occurred with the right wing presidents who stay in favor with the Empire?

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Nil Nikandrov

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta listens at left as Joint Chiefs
Chairman Gen. Martin E. Dempsey speaks during a briefing
at the Pentagon, Thursday, May 10, 2012. (Susan Walsh/AP)

While UNASUR is gradually moving towards the creation of an autonomous regional security system, Washington's perspective on integration initiatives of such scale is well-known: the U.S. typically frowns on the projects unless it gets the controlling stake. It might seem surprising in the light of the above that the recent UNASUR moves in the security sphere received no hammering from Washington. Since one can hardly expect the Pentagon with its perpetual open and clandestine wars in Asia and Africa to lose interest in its own "backyard", there must be a profound explanation behind the unusual tolerance of the Empire which, in the majority of cases, is quick to punish defiance.

Apart from the routine anti-Iranian rhetoric, the Pentagon's chief Leon Panetta generously dispensed expressions of friendship and peace-loving during his recent Latin America tour, in which he visited Colombia, Brazil, and Chile. Predictably, Panetta talked about fighting against drug cartels and slammed Venezuela at media briefings, citing, in particular, the U.S. concerns over its rearmament assisted by Russia and China. Panetta's point - a fairly ridiculous one - was that the policy looked suspicious when pursued by a country facing no external threat. It is completely natural, though, that the U.S. wars for oil prompt the military buildup in Venezuela where the administration realizes that sooner or later the U.S. attack will follow.

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Nil Nikandrov

Chavez took the first round of hammering over alleged antisemitism at the early phase of his presidency in 1999 for his association with Argentinian political scientist and Peronist Norberto Rafael Ceresole who, in the early 1990ies, introduced the future Venezuelan leader to his Caudillo, Ejército, Pueblo (Leader, Army, Nation) doctrine of ascension to power. Ceresole used to be a vehement critic of Israel's policy in Palestine, denied Holocaust, and upheld a plan for a Venezuelan strategic intelligence service which he evidently expected to personally chair. It used to be an open secret that Mossad operatives kept the Venezuelan intelligence community on a short leash in the pre-Chavez epoch. Even though they had to pack and go when the populist regime took over, deeply entrenched supporters of Israel in Venezuela's state machine put up strong opposition to Ceresole's presence in the country and representatives of the Jewish community of Venezuela showered its secret police DISIP with complaints that Ceresole, “a present-day Nazi”, presented a permanent problem. At the time, Chavez was preoccupied with concentrating power and preparing Venezuela's new constitution, and Ceresole's deportation came as a foregone decision. DISIP agents saw Ceresole off to the airport, and he later told journalists that Zionists coerced him into leaving by murder threats.

Zionist forces took an active part in the 2002 anti-Chavez coup. Mass rallies and middle-class protests against the regime were orchestrated by the media which, with the exception of the state-run Channel 8, were uniformly Jewish-controlled. The distorted media coverage fanned unrest and left much of the population under an impression that Chavez and his inner circle were about to resort to armed force with the aim of retaining power. In the settings, the shootout perpetrated by unidentified gunmen at the Llaguno Bridge, which led to fatalities among both Chavez's supporters and opponents, was seen by a part of the population as the regime's attempt to regain control at the cost of violence. It is still unclear who the gunmen were, though, according to a fairly realistic hypothesis, they could be agents of the municipal police whose command sided with the opposition. An alternative hypothesis is that the gunmen were skilled snipers who came from abroad, which indeed used to be a recurrent scenario throughout the 1990ies era of “anti-terrorist” wars.

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Stephen Lendman

America's business isn't just war and grand theft. It's also regime change by whatever means.

A previous article mentioned General Wesley Clark, from his book, "Winning Modern Wars," saying that Pentagon sources told him two months after 9/11 that war plans were being prepared against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. Months earlier, they were finalized against Afghanistan.

Clark added:

"And what about the real sources of terrorists - US allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia? Wasn't it repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second, that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists? And what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia?"

"It seemed that we were being taken into a strategy more likely to make us the enemy - encouraging what could look like a 'clash of civilizations' - not a good strategy for winning the war on terror."

On September 5, Nil Nikandrov's Global Research.ca article asked if "After Libya: Is Venezuela Next?" saying:

NATO insurgents attack on Venezuela's Tripoli embassy and compound narrowly missed claiming casualties as "ambassador Afif Tajeldine and the embassy staff moved to a safer location at the last moment and left Libya shortly thereafter."

Nikandrov added that Venezuela's embassy was the only one looted, suggesting perhaps a message threatening Chavez as America's next target.

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Nil Nikandrov

As of today, Libyan security service seems successful at keeping M. Gadhafi safe amidst the West's air raids. Targeting him, NATO drones dropped “point strikes” which left schools, hospitals, and shopping malls in ruins, but Libya's defiant leader remained unharmed. The Libyan security service also manages to shield Gadhafi from the death squads sent by the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and BND which are literally rivaling over his head.

Following a series of consultations, Pentagon chief R. Gates and UK Secretary of State for Defence L. Fox synchronously expressed the view that any shelters from which Gadhafi might be exercising control over his army are legitimate targets. British Foreign Secretary William Hague supplied the underlying political philosophy of the hunt for Libya's leader by pledging to pursue it until Gadhafi bows to the Western coalition's demands. The message to be heard is: if he does not capitulate, there is going to be no mercy. By the way, Commander of Operation Unified Protector, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard from Canada faced a media quiz with less determination: he maintained that the coalition was not trying to kill Gadhafi but simply bombed the destinations from which his orders to open fire on civilians might be coming. Gen. Bouchard did not elaborate any further, essentially limiting his statement to something like: war is war, and Gadhafi may be unlucky to get hit like anybody else.

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Nil Nikandrov

"It is an established pattern that political murders become widespread wherever the US “helps restore democracy”."

President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya was displaced slightly over a year ago in a coup staged by the local oligarchy and the US intelligence community. The coup came as a punishment for Zelaya’s alignment with H. Chavez and other populist Latin American leaders. Since the time, the news flow from Honduras abounds with stories of political assassinations, the victims being activists of trade unions, peasant and student organizations, and the National Popular Resistance Front opposing the pro-US regime of Porfirio Lobo. Ten journalists who expressed support for the ousted Honduran president have been killed this year alone.

The most recent case of the type was the murder of Israel Zelaya, 56, who was kidnapped by an armed group which easily crossed by car numerous police checkpoints set up as a part of the security-tightening campaign. The journalist was taken to a secluded location, tortured, and shot two times in the head and once – in the chest.

Dozens of similar incidents show that a program of ”political cleansing” is underway in Honduras. Killers selectively target potential leaders capable of galvanizing protesters. Peasant leader Maria Teresa Flores, 50, was the coordinator of the Council of Peasant Organizations of Honduras and a proponent of an agrarian reform including the abolition of latifundias and the establishment of rural cooperatives. She was kidnapped, and a week later her bullet-ridden body with numerous traces of machete strikes and one hand cut off was found by the roadside in the Comayagua department.

Only a fraction of the cases of political assassinations in Honduras become widely known. The operations are carried out in secrecy by specially trained and lavishly paid death squads staffed by police agents, bandits, and professional killers of Honduran origin or brought in from Columbia. These days, mass graves of opponents of the current regime are discovered in Honduras increasingly often. It is an established pattern that political murders become widespread wherever the US “helps restore democracy”. Berta Oliva, president of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras, told the media a few days ago about the discovery of another mass grave with the bodies of over 100 people reported missing in June-August, that is, after the coup that propelled P. Lobo to power.

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Nil Nikandrov

The US is Synchronously Preparing to Launch Aggressions Against Iran and Venezuela

The Colombian government voiced a new round of allegations that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is secretly supporting the FARC and ELN guerrilla movements in Colombia and giving shelter to their leaders. Venezuela reacted harshly – Chavez severed the diplomatic ties with Colombia, and the Organization of American States had to hold an urgent meeting on July 22 on Colombia's request. This was the third time this year that the administration of Alvaro Uribe leveled such charges at Caracas and claimed to possess solid evidence that leftist groups are operating from the territory of Venezuela.

Venezuela rejects the allegations that it supplies weapons and money to FARC and ELN, trains their guerrillas, or allows them to use its territory. The border between Venezuela and Colombia is 2,000 km long and lies in the area which abounds with mountains and rainforests. It is also crossed by countless rivers. As a result, the border is practically impossible to seal off and – long before the advent of Chavez – the terrain became homeland to various smugglers, drug dealers, seekers of gold and diamonds, and all brands of adventurous people. Secretary General of the Organization of American States Jose Miguel Insulza agreed that Colombia's charges are groundless, citing the fact that the terrain where the guerrillas come and go is too difficult to be controlled by any single country. He noted that while Uribe is lambasting Venezuela for not arresting the guerrillas Colombia is just as unable to get a hold of them.

Insulza praised Chavez for calling FARC to put down arms as this is the precondition for the resolution of the crisis and a political settlement between Venezuela and Colombia.

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Nil Nikandrov

U.S. Military Presence near Venezuela Raises Concerns.

The US SOUTHCOM electronic surveillance base has been functioning in Aruba for several years. One day, an individual looking like a typical American, wearing shorts, a Hawaii shirt, and sunglasses, walked into it effortlessly and started roaming around. The US marines must have been too tired of the heat and assumed he actually was one of their countrymen - the base has been hosting numbers of visitors from the US recently amid the preparations for serious operations against Venezuela.

The visitor moved across the site with its standard blocks, glanced at the impressively proportioned radar and froze by the door to a large room with four giant screens in it. The screens were showing the contours of Venezuela's Tachira and Zulia states and the locations of military installations, tank parks, aerodromes, and army bases as well as Venezuela's industrial infrastructure including oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and plants. Even a brief look made it clear that the Caribbean coast and the west of Venezuela were under permanent surveillance from the base.

The Western media say noting about the buildup of the US surveillance activity at Aruba and Curacao bases and generally filter away any information concerning the US espionage targeting Venezuela. The US intelligence services are spying on the country from Columbia, Puerto-Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Washington wants to know everything about Venezuela's military capabilities and mobilization plans, to assess the level of loyalty to the government in the ranks of the country's officer corps and the combat readiness of its armed forces, and to find out to what extent those are prepared to engage in long-term “asymmetric” guerrilla warfare.

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Nil Nikandrov

The exact number of inmates who had been to the CIA jails in Lithuania is unknown. In most cases, eight individuals are reported to have been held in the Antaviliai torture chamber by the time it was closed in November, 2005. The truth is that chartered planes from Afghanistan came to Lithuania with certain regularity, and the number of people tortured had probably been some ten times higher.

The «Amber Rebuff» was the code name of the operation jointly carried out by the CIA and Lithuania's Department of Homeland Security during which they transferred supposed Al Qaeda militants captured in Afghanistan to the country. In Lithuania, they were subjected to interrogation with tortures with the goal of obtaining information about Muslim extremist groups.

The Lithuanian parliament's inquiry into the hosting of secret CIA jails is unbelievably perfunctory, if at all trustworthy. The findings are inconclusive: the jails did exist but it is unknown whether inmates were actually brought to them, and aircrafts of undeclared origin did land in Lithuania, but it has not been proven that they were used to carry Al Qaeda militants. Since no complaints have been received from the supposed victims of abuse, there is essentially nothing to discuss.

In contrast, the facts unearthed by the Lithuanian media prior to the parliamentary inquiry were quite serious. It appears that at least two secret jails concealed from the public and the human rights watchers were illegally operated in Lithuania in 2002-2005 by the CIA.

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