Condi Rice: like a good neighbor.
Topic: Bush Administraiton

Condi is at it again, this time drumming up support for a rule at the OAS, written by the U.S., which would set up a council to "monitor" democracy in Latin America. She says:

..."we have to work with other democratic leaders and governments in the region to make certain that we pay attention to and help fragile democracies to deal with whatever tensions and difficulties there are inside those states. I think we know that there are tensions in Bolivia, there have been problems in Ecuador, there are obviously potential problems in other parts of the region.

...Our only criteria are governing democratically, governing transparently, governing accountably, being in favor of open economies and free trade. These are the principles on which we have worked since Quebec and I think they are principles that are very important to a stable and prosperous region."

Now she's all about "stability." When it comes to the Middle East stability isn't as important as democracy. I think when she says she wants a
"stable and prosperous" region she really means a stable place for BP and all the other multi-nationals to do business to make them more "properous."

The countries of the OAS aren't buying it, unfortunatly for Condi and her oil company firends. It might take a little bit longer to force this dictat from the U.S. down the throats of the Latin Americans. Hugo Chavez thinks he knows who she is really talking about when it comes to working with "democratic leaders and governments in the region," just like the good work the U.S. did with Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who just decided he needed to go, all by himself, with no urging at all by the militia's armed and trained by the U.S. and the plane waiting at the airport with the special forces giving him the offer he couldn't refuse.

Chavez says:

"The times in which the OAS was an instrument of the government in Washington are gone...Are they going to try, through the OAS, to monitor the Venezuelan government? ... Those who think they can put the peoples of Latin America in a corral are mistaken..."

Rice says "We need a range of mechanisms to deal with crises that threaten to subvert democracies throughout the region."

But wait, who has subverted more democracies in the region than us? Chavez could only dream about that sort of domination of the region. Back then the "mechanisms" were gunboats. Now we're back to "dollar deplomacy." Judging by what's going on in Bolivia, we might be going to back to gunboats. [The "Good Neighbor" policy is no where to be seen.] The president of Bolivia has resigned and the masses of Bolivians aren't in the mood for more of the same. They are rejecting the next in line Hormando Vaca Diez.

NY Times:

"Protest leaders have vowed to stop Mr. Vaca Diez and the man who is next after him in line to the presidency, Mario Cossio Cortez, president of the lower house of Congress. Mr. Mesa and many others say the solution is for the two to step aside and permit the third in line, the Supreme Court president, Eduardo Rodriguez, to call elections.

But Mr. Vaca Diez signaled to reporters that the military could be used to restore order. He also warned that the protests could lead to a crackdown from the right.

"The radicalism of the left leads to totalitarian governments," he said." [Like Pinochet?]

Sounds like Washington should get another "Operation Condor" going and kill several birds with one stone. Venezuela and Ecuador are messing up the money making down there and Lula in Brazil better watch it too.

Rice says the region needs an organizatiuon that can "develop a process to assess, as appropriate, situations that may affect the development of a member state's democratic political institutional process or the legitimate exercise of power."

Something tells me if elections are called in Bolivia and its not someone we can buy, there will be many questions raised about the "legitimate exercise of power" of that person.

Jack Perkins in his book "confessions of an econiomic hitman" writes that Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, who both died in airplane crashes, "their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldos and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in." [See an interview at democracynow.org]

Watch out president Palacio, better check out the CIA fact book.