Washington Post Editorial : Is it safe to ignore Hugo Chávez's bellicose rhetoric? - Argentina's Dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, and War against Britain

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Washington Post Editorial : Is it safe to ignore Hugo Chávez's bellicose rhetoric? - Remember Argentina's Dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, War against Britain

Washington Post Editorial
Save water, make war
Is it safe to ignore Hugo Chávez's bellicose rhetoric?
Thursday, November 12, 2009

Save water, make war

Some excerpts :

We'll accept that this is just another instance of Mr. Chávez's buffoonery. Still, it's worth noting: This is the second time in less than 18 months that Mr. Chávez has ordered troops to the Colombian border and suggested that hostilities were imminent. In the past few years he has spent more than $4 billion on arms purchases from Russia alone. He claims to be worried that a recent U.S. agreement with Colombia, under which U.S. Air Force and Navy units will have expanded access to military bases, is meant to facilitate a U.S. invasion of Venezuela. In fact, he has something to worry about: The bases will be used for U.S. drug surveillance flights, and Mr. Chávez is known to be cooperating with terrorist organizations that are trafficking drugs from Colombia through Venezuela.

Few believe that Mr. Chávez will start a war with Colombia. But then, as a couple of seasoned Latin American observers have pointed out, no one believed Argentina's similarly beleaguered strongman, Leopoldo Galtieri, when he began threatening to take Argentina to war with Britain in 1982. In the annals of the region's authoritarian populism, stranger things have happened.
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How Hugo Chavez has driven Venezuela into Misery, Poverty and the Most Ridiculous Socialism - Report from Newsweek Magazine

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How Hugo Chavez has driven Venezuela into Misery, Poverty and the Most Ridiculous Socialism - Report from Newsweek Magazine

Newsweek Magazine

Atención Deficit
Hugo Chávez looks like he's preparing for war with Colombia. Don't be fooled: he's just wagging the dog.
Newsweek Web Exclusive
By Mac Margolis
November 11, 2009

Atención Deficit - Newsweek

Some excerpts :

Instead of steering his country into combat with its neighbor, Chávez is simply wagging the dog: his popularity is plummeting precipitously, and this is little more than an act of political desperation.
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But, despite Chávez's new cache of Russian tanks and fighter jets ("How can he maintain an Army if he can't maintain the economy?" former Brazilian Navy minister Mário Cesar Flores told me recently), conflict is unlikely because this isn't so much an international standoff as it is a a domestic political crisis. Chávez—whose country has been hit by economic shortages, blackouts, and water rationing—is pressed to the wall, and analysts are starting to talk not of a shooting war, but of a poor man's cold war.
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The animating problem here is Venezuela's growing crisis. The steady erosion of the Venezuelan economy has turned his 21st-century socialism into a tropical version of 20th-century communism. Food shortages, power failures, spiraling prices, and speeches are the hallmark of the Bolivarian republic. Inflation is rising at 29 percent a year, the highest in the region.

The power failures are particularly glaring. Wedged between the Andes, the Amazon rainforest, and the Caribbean, and swimming in crude oil, Venezuela ought to be an energy powerhouse. It boasts one of the largest hydroelectric power matrixes in the world. But it has been plagued by electrical failures, including a half dozen nationwide blackouts since 2007. Now homes in some rural areas are dark for four hours a day, and steel mills have had to get by with reduced electricity and water.
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Worse, the infrastructure failures have come as Chávez has tightened state control over the Venezuelan economy by seizing private energy and utility companies in the name of the Boliviarian cause.
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Eggs and milk are hard to find. The government is scrambling to replace medicine imported from Colombia. Despite vast domestic stores of natural gas, Venezuela must pipe in gas from Colombia because it lacks infrastructure and cash to mine its own reserves.
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The droughts that drained the reservoirs of hydroelectric plants—and provoking rolling blackouts in homes and factories—recently led Chávez to scold Venezuelan "elites" for such indulgences as air conditioning, switching on the lights in the bathroom, and loitering in the shower. "Some people sing in the shower for half an hour," he reportedly admonished his ministers at a cabinet meeting. "What kind of communism is that?" He went on to order his compatriots to limit bathing to three minutes, and even appeared on national television to demonstrate how to bathe with a gourd, giving cartoonists and comedians a windfall. No wonder there's been a run on water-storage tanks and electrical generators in Caracas.
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If the War Pundits of the Media were gamblers and bettors, then they would be ruined by now and would have lost their shirts

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If the War Pundits of the Media were gamblers and bettors, then they would be ruined by now and would have lost their shirts

Some people live from betting at Horses or the Stock Market. Most people fail in this business of being a gambler or bettor.

Bookies know that only the most intelligent people, only the super wise can win in horses, dog fights, cock fights, grasshopper fights, etc ...

Many Horse Races, Baseball Games, Soccer Games, etc ... are fixed, around the world.

Most Pundits have been IDIOTS, PERFECT IDIOTS, TOTAL IDIOTS, in what they have told us about Iraq and Afghanistan, during 8 years or more. If they were gamblers and bettors, then they will be ruined and would have lost their shirts.

And we continue reading the same Pundit Idiots in the Newspapers. And the same imbeciles talk on TV Networks, asking for more troops, that is for more Violence.

There was a book called "The Dogs of War" about the big Traffic of Weapons and the Business of War. The Military Industrial Complex earning millions in defense contracts.

Add all those mercenaries that are called "contractors", but that are armed and carry dangerous weapons, fulfilling strict military missions.

This is Madness, Crazyness, at its best .... Probably fueled by Greed, Money and Petrodollars.

Vicente Duque

Afghanistan : Impossible to win, but possible not to lose - Best Course : Diplomatic Political Solution : Peace with Honor - Washington Post

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Afghanistan : Impossible to win the War, but possible not to lose - The Most Intelligent Course : Diplomatic Political Solution : Peace with Honor - Washington Post

Very Prestigious Pundits told us that the Wars of Afghanistan and Iraq would be a Piece of Cake and all their predictions and forecasts failed.

I don't see any Victory in Iraq, no Bush or Cheney Victory. I don't think that Iraq will be a Client Nation of the USA or a Pro Western Nation in any way. Same for Afghanistan.

Turkey has become less and less Pro Western and more and more Pro Islam.

Iran has increased her prestige and standing, thanks to the two wars.

Pakistan is being progressively destabilized, and blamed for what others do to that State.

The Population of Egypt has no Sympathy for what the USA is doing in those two nations at war. Same for other Islamic countries.

Starting Civil Wars in Iraq is no Victory. Millions of Refugees are no victory, thousands of Iraqi Girls in Prostitution in Damascus Syria are no victory, these girls sell their bodies, so that their families can eat. They were the Middle Class of Iraq, aspiring to graduate in College.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths ( perhaps a million ) is no victory.

But a Diplomatic and Political Solution is necessary, ideal and convenient for everybody. Honorable Peace, Peace with Honor.

So please read this wonderful article :


Washington Post and Real Clear Politics
Cutting Our Losses in Afghanistan
By Richard Cohen
November 10, 2009

Cutting Our Losses in Afghanistan

Some excerpts :

Between World War I and World War II, Britain fought all across the Islamic world, battling insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name just two, and usually losing. This caused a fair amount of worry, introspection, angst and the usual commissions to determine why history was being so unkind. What the British discovered was what Pogo could have told them: They had met the enemy and it was them.

Nowhere is Britain's interwar predicament better stated than in David Fromkin's brilliant and invaluable book about the creation of the modern Middle East, "A Peace to End All Peace." He writes, "What Britain faced in the Middle East was a long and perhaps endless series of individual and often spontaneous local rebellions against her authority. The rebellions were not directed by foreigners (as Britain usually suspected); they were directed against foreigners" -- in other words, Britain herself.

The lesson that Britain learned the hard way now has to be learned all over again. The trick for the United States in Afghanistan is to eradicate al-Qaeda and suppress the Taliban -- and do both in such a way that it does not go from self-proclaimed liberator to perceived oppressor. Can this be done?

Once again, Fromkin has something to say: "Perhaps if the British Empire had maintained its million-man army of occupation in the Middle East, the region's inhabitants might have resigned themselves to the inevitability of British rule ... but once Britain had demobilized her army, the string of revolts in the Middle East became predictable." In other words, what we now call a surge might have done the trick, but Britain was out of men, out of money and out of sorts. It wanted to make war no more.
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There are many good reasons to put as much as we can in Afghanistan. But America has been at war there since 2001, at war in Iraq since 2003, and like Britain between the World Wars, is out of both treasure and patience. Leave Afghanistan to the drones and the Special Forces. It's no way to win, but it's a good way not to lose.
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Hugo Chavez is drumming for War against Colombia - The Dreams of a Madman and Demagogue - Danger for the Western Hemisphere

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Hugo Chavez is drumming for War against Colombia - The Dreams of a Madman and Demagogue - Danger for the Western Hemisphere

The Bolivarian Revolution is a Great Failure : in Economics, Politics, Culture, etc ...

So Chavez is taking the easy route of Jingoism, Nationalism, and Chauvinism.

This is also called "Patrioterismo" or ridiculous, Idiotic, Imbecile Patriotism. Meaning Aggression and Vulgarity against other nations.

Venezuela has been invaded by Narcos, Mafia and Crime. Her cities have higher indexes of criminality than the Colombian cities that had the Powerful Drug Cartels of the past.

Each day several "Munñecos" or "Dolls" appear thrown out in the outskirts of Venezuelan cities. They are the corpses of the Mafia Wars.

Foodstuffs have to be imported from other nations, mainly from Colombia. When Chavez closes the border, then hundreds of little Colombian Ants ( the Poor and workers ) cross the rivers and creeks, with loads of foodstuffs and products like paper toilet in their backs, they are smuggling products that are scarce in Venezuela.

Venezuela has idiotic price controlls and so many products like milk, beans, meat, poultry, eggs, etc ... are scarce.

Corruption is rampant, the Government tries to implement State Distributions that favor the Chavistas, his family and the corrupt cronies.

There is no respect for private property. Next to a beautiful mansion or villa, you see shanty houses, ramshackle cabins of the poor and destitute. The Government allows and encourages these invasions of properties.

There is no respect for a Free Press, each day the enemies of Chavez see their TV or Radio Stations closed, their newspapers are finished.

I saw the mothers of the Venezuelan Soldiers crying for their sons, the last time that Chavez mobilized his troops.

They have reason to weep, because the Colombian Terrain, and the battleground in Colombia is extremely different from that of Venezuela. It is colder, mountainous, with very thick vegetation and ideal for ambush and guerrilla warfare.

The Colombian Army knows a lot about Guerrilla Ambush. The Venezuelan Army knows nothing.

But all that is unnecessary. The U. S. Force can destroy the Venezuelan Air Force in five minutes with Robot Airplanes ( drones ).

And the Colombian soldiers know how to maneuver airplanes in horrible mountains and thick vegetation with tall trees.

And I forgot something : It never stops raining. Nothing is dry in your equipment.

The Venezuelan mothers are very right and correct in their lamentations.

Their sons are going to die for a Demagogue like Alcibiades, that destroyed the Athenian Army in Sicily while promising easy conquests.

My prospects and futures for Latin America are dark. This is going to get worse and Americans should be on Yellow Alert. ( later Orange and Red alerts )

Please everybody in this Sad World : Let's be Vigilant attentive; watchful.

Vicente Duque

Video : A Canadian Lady asks her Government to Withdraw Troops from Afghanistan - Considers the War Absurd, Counterproductive and Unwinnable

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Video : A Canadian Lady asks her Government to Withdraw Troops from Afghanistan - Considers the War Absurd, Counterproductive and Unwinnable

October 29, 2009
I read an essay I wrote discussing why Canadian troops should leave Afghanistan, discuss how Rethink Afghanistan vid series has helped bolster my view as a Canadian that troop presence in Afghanistan is only worsening the situation for Afghanis and is not a winnable war, that Matthew Hoh from the US military is a man with integrity for resigning his position as a uniformed officer at the Pentagon in opposition to the Afghan War, and that the insurgency only grows with foreign troop presence in Afghanistan. There MUST be a better way to secure Afghanistan for Afghanis.

Canada Must Withdraw Troops from Afghanistan

Videos : Rethink Afghanistan, Brave New Films - PT. 1/2 - Top military official resigned his post because he didn't agree with the military strategy

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Videos : Rethink Afghanistan, Brave New Films - PT. 1/2 - Top military official resigned his post because he didn't agree with the military strategy

October 29, 2009
Earlier this week, the story broke about a top military official who resigned his post because he didn't agree with our military strategy in Afghanistan. Before that, we had people like Arianna Huffington calling on Vice President Joe Biden to resign for wanting to escalate the number of troops in Afghanistan. While the traditional media is just now starting to pay attention to the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the folks over at Brave New Films have been on this issue for more than a year, and they've put together another great documentary series called Rethink Afghanistan. Mike Papantonio talks about this latest film series with Derrick Crowe, the senior Afghanistan blogger for Brave New Films.

Rethink Afghanistan From Brave New Films - PT. 1/2



Rethink Afghanistan From Brave New Films - PT. 2/2

Huffington Post publishes the Most Intelligent or Least Stupid Article on Afghanistan and what to do there.

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Huffington Post publishes the Most Intelligent or Least Stupid Article on Afghanistan and what to do there.

I have read hundreds of Articles on Afghanistan, some of them are formulas to solve the crisis, written by the same Idiots that recommended War and that said that it was very easy to "win" there.

Others are very intelligent and recommend withdrawal, but that is impossible, because the only source of power in America is not Mr Obama ( an Intelligent Man ) and it is extremely easy to start wars, but it is extremely difficult to end them. The Republicans would eat alive Mr Obama if he withdraws, and Obama would lose governability. Obama has to be Machiavellian, cowboy, John Wayne, Dirty Harry and macho or lose in the Political Game.

These Republicans have incessantily painted Obama as a Sissy Coward, an appeasing weakling, a fool afraid of enemies. So Withdrawal is impossible.

For me the War is irremediably lost, and the Political Situation in Afghanistan and in other nations whose opinion counts are beyond the point of no return, consider the NATO allies and the rest of the World in General.

Only way to win the War in Afghanistan is to exterminate all Afghans, leaving no people alive, and repopulate the country. And that solution is impossible because many Afghans are elsewhere, could return, or the other nations would continue the rebellion lending support to the "Illegal Aliens" that would be furtively introduced.

Every effort to continue fighting only aggravates the Deaths, Victims, Maimed Children, Murder of Women and Old Folks by airstrikes, etc....

Nothing of these bellic efforts is going to produce a Tsunami of Gratitude and Good Will for America. Nothing of this is going to produce Great Fame and Respect for America in the Future.

"It is better to be feared than to be loved" only works for tyrants and is short lived.

So the article inside the Huffington Post is a breeze of fresh air in the stifling and putrid atmosphere of War Games, and Idiotic Solutions given by the Super "Pundits" of Press and TV that led the USA to very stupid war actions.

Huffington Post
Afghanistan: A Whole New Approach
By Jim Wallis
Founder of Sojourners; speaker, author, activist
October 29, 2009

Afghanistan: A Whole New Approach

Some excerpts :

Many of us have advised the president that the people who know places like Afghanistan the best are neither the military nor the private contractors who increasingly dominate U.S. foreign policy in war-torn regions. Rather they are the NGOs doing relief and development work who have been there for years, have become quite indigenous, and are much more trusted by the people of the country than are the U.S. military or their mercenary friends.

So here is the new approach. Lead with what works -- development. Yes, effective development needs security, and when you massively intervene in a country as much as the U.S. has in Afghanistan, you can't responsibly just walk away -- as has tragically happened to this country too many times before. But we should lead with development now, and only provide the security necessary to protect the strategic rebuilding of the country that is urgently needed -- and that kind of security might better attract the international involvement we so desperately need in Afghanistan, even from Arab and Muslim countries.

And here is an idea of how to do that. Bring to the White House the international organizations who know Afghanistan well because they have been there so long -- such as World Vision, Mercy Corps, Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, Tearfund, Christian Aid, Church World Service -- and many others. Ask them what U.S. policy would best work, and what kind of security they would need to really do the kind of development in Afghanistan that is most needed.

Let the non-military strategies lead the way, rather than the other way around, which often just makes aid and development work another weapon of war; but then provide the security needed for that work, and make it as international as possible. Also bring in some of the religious and other nonprofit leaders from the Obama Advisory Council and others, to focus on the deeply ethical and moral issues that are at stake in our decisions about future policy in Afghanistan -- legitimately protecting Americans from further terrorism, defending women from the Taliban, developing a diplomatic surge, genuinely supporting democracy, and saving innocent lives from the collateral damage of war -- to name a few.
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Why Colombia's Leftist Guerrillas Are Defecting - Time.com, John Otis - Army Soldiers, Airstrikes and Money have caused great damage to the FARC

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Why Colombia's Leftist Guerrillas Are Defecting - By John Otis - Time.com - Army Soldiers, Airstrikes and Money have caused great damage to the FARC

Why Colombia's Leftist Guerrillas Are Defecting
By John Otis
October 30, 2009

Why Colombia's Leftist Guerrillas Are Defecting

Some excerpts :

By contrast, as the army hammers rebel positions, many of the FARC deserters say they were desperate to get out. "Every day it's one or two deaths in combat or five or six deaths in a bombing," says a 21-year-old former rebel explosives expert who goes by the nom de guerre Visages. "Many rebels decide that they better get out before it happens to them."

Even FARC higher-ups are throwing in the towel. Perhaps the most high-profile deserter was Elda Mosquera, a one-eyed female comandante better known as Karina, who led a series of devastating guerrilla attacks in the late 1990s. Hemmed in by soldiers last year, Karina cut a deal for herself and her rebel boyfriend. Now she appears on armed forces radio to urge her former comrades-in-arms to give up. "For us, it's much better for these terrorists to turn in their weapons than to die on the battlefield," says General Miguel Pérez, commander of the army's rapid reaction force, based in the southern town of La Macarena. "That's because when rebels desert, it demoralizes the remaining guerrillas."

The exodus has produced a virtuous circle for the army. Deserters often provide key intelligence for army operations, and as the military strikes more blows against the FARC, more guerrillas lose their will to fight. Last year, an army raid that killed FARC spokesman and No. 3 leader Raúl Reyes was based on information provided by a rebel turncoat. A few days later, the bodyguard of Iván Ríos, a member of the FARC's ruling secretariat, pulled off a mafia-style hit job. He executed his boss with a shot to the forehead, cut off his right hand as proof, then turned himself in to the army to collect a $2 million reward.
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Probable Decision in Afghanistan : Send more troops - American Foreign Policy is hostage to Credibility, Image, Show Power, MachoMacho, Don't be Sissy

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Probable Decision in Afghanistan : Send more troops - American Foreign Policy is hostage to Credibility, Image, Show Power, Macho Macho, Don't be Sissy


I saw Bill O'Reilly and Dick Morris saying on Fox News that Obama has no choice but to send more troops and escalate the War.

Bill and Dick are not Fools even if I insult them every day and spit on my TV, they have an Extremely Powerful kind of Intelligence to make money, sell books, preach only "What you want to hear", and show only "What you want to see" and not give the news that contradict their World Vision and their Prejudices and Comfort Ole Theology, Mythology, Escathology, and their Powerful Cultural Memes of a Beautiful Bygone Past.

They are genius of Manipulation, Stimulation, and Occulation, and they can manage the Automatons ( a term of Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm to describe those than can't think for themselves but follow the herd of sheep )

This time, I think that Bill and Dick are right.

If Obama decides to leave Afghanistan then he would be a Sissy for the rest of his four years of Presidency and he won't be reelected for failing to be a Real Strong Man, a John Wayne Cowboy, a Dirty Harry, a Macho Macho.

Obama is continually being painted as a weakling and a coward, from the beginning of year 2008 when he was only one of many candidates.

Everybody has painted Obama as a coward and fool, Beginning with Hillary Clinton. And that was the Best Winning Card of John McCain : Obama is a poor fool, that doesn't know Foreign Policy and he is a Weak Coward and not a Real Cowboy and Macho Macho like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Obama will lose all Governability, if he decides to leave or reduce the War. He will be eaten alive by the Republicans.

Have you seen the Republicans in the last days ??? ... They seem bloodthirsty wolves. They are missing the Good Ole Times in the Ole South !

There are wonderful and beautiful people in the Republican Party like Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, Arlen Specter ( defected ) and even John McCain ( even if this last guy is a warmonger ). John McCain won the Republican Nomination because he was sober in Racial Matters and didn't want to fall in Racial Demagoguery and Populism.

Judd Gregg is also a nice person, even if he made a circus of the Commerce Department Appointment, but he is superb with numbers..

There are more beautiful people in Republicanland, but they are very subdued now by the General Verbal Violence and Imbecility. And the strong wish to proceed Jingo Jingo Jingo.

Tora Tora Tora !!
Jingo Jingo Jingo !!

Vicente Duque