Friday, March 25, 2016

Prelude to a Coup: Obama Does the Latin America Hustle


In a prelude to a coup, American President Barack Obama kicked off his Latin American hustle first visiting with CIA funded dissidents in Cuba, then visiting the CIA installed new President of Argentina.   The purpose of the trip was to set new coups in motion and to congratulate the grand wizards of the clans of the coups already in progress.  



It was time for Obama to take inventory of the handiwork of the neocons in the State Department installed under George W. Bush and untethered by Barack H. Obama.  From Wayne Madsen at Strategic Culture:


Obama’s Grotesque Legacy in Latin America


President Barack Obama’s recently announced trip to Cuba, the first for an American president since that of Calvin Coolidge in 1928, does not represent a new chapter in US-Latin American relations.


Instead, Obama’s Latin American trek is meant to put his seal of approval on more than a decade of gross US interference in Latin American affairs that has seen Central Intelligence Agency covert support for coups, attempted coups, economic warfare, separatist movements, and open treason by opposition party leaders.


Yowza, that can’t be.  Obama is opening up new opportunities for the people of Latin America who have been living under corrupt leaders, unlike our “Dear Leader.”  We, Americans are exceptional and we want to make the world exceptional.


Adding insult to injury by visiting Argentina and its new neo-fascist president Mauricio Macri following his trip to Cuba, Obama chose as the date of his trip to Buenos Aires March 24, 2016, the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s last military coup.


The US ambassador to Argentina, Noah Mamet, insists that there is no significance to Obama’s arrival date but every Argentine citizen knows March 24 as the date military dictatorial fascism last swallowed democracy in Argentina….


Gawd, Obama sounds like a tin horn dictator, first they fly Russia’s flag upside down, now they spit in the face of the Argentine people by awarding a visit to the CIA installed dictator Macri.


In 2002, the George W. Bush administration became so mired down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it only had time to try to pull off a single coup in Latin America. The Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April 2002.   After that coup failed, the Bush administration largely retreated to a policy of «benign neglect» in Latin America…


All that changed after Barack Obama became president….


The CIA-financed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) stepped up its influence operations and economic warfare against the Evo Morales government of Bolivia, the Chavez government in Venezuela, and Correa in Ecuador, as well as the Dilma Rousseff government in Brazil and the presidency of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina…


Obama’s visit to a remerging fascist state in Argentina more than offsets his burying of the decades-old conflict with Cuba...


But Obama’s choice of Argentina to visit, a country where progressive opposition forces to the Macri regime are being fired from their jobs and even imprisoned, represents a victory dance for an American president who could never shed the CIA clothing earned while a Latin American analyst for the CIA front company Business International Corporation in Manhattan during the early 1980s.


Whoa Nellie, run that by me again.  Did you just say that Barack Hussein Obama worked for the CIA as an analyst for Business International Corporation in the 1980’s?  Why weren’t Americans told this when he ran for President?  Didn’t we have a right to know?  From LewRockwell.com:


Excerpt:


Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen has discovered CIA files that document the agency's connections to institutions and individuals figuring prominently in the lives of Barack Obama and his mother, father, grandmother, and stepfather….


President Obama's own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world's most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation…


In 1967, Obama and his mother joined her husband in Jakarta. In 1965, Lolo Soetoro had been called back from Hawaii by General Suharto to serve as an officer in the Indonesian military to help launch a bloody CIA-backed genocide of Indonesian Communists and Indonesian Chinese throughout the expansive country...


Dunham Soetoro worked for the elitist Ford Foundation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Bank Rakyat (the majority government-owned People's Bank of Indonesia), and the CIA-linked USAID while she lived in Indonesia and later, Pakistan.


Meanwhile, Dunham Soetoro's mother, Madelyn Dunham, who raised young Obama when he returned to Hawaii in 1971 while his mother stayed in Indonesia, was the first female vice president at the Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu. 


Various CIA front entities used the bank. Madelyn Dunham handled escrow accounts used to make CIA payments to U.S.-supported Asian dictators like Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu, and President Suharto in Indonesia.


In effect, the bank was engaged in money laundering for the CIA to covertly prop up its favored leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.


While in Pakistan, Dunham's son Barack visited her in 1980 and 1981. Obama visited Karachi, Lahore, and Hyderabad, India during his south Asia visits…


The Thailand and Philippines delegations were pushing hard for U.S. funding for an economic development fund, which may have provided the impetus for later USAID projects in the region, including those with which Peter Geithner and Obama's mother were intimately involved.


President Obama has twice postponed official state visits to Indonesia, perhaps fearful of the attention such a trip would bring to the CIA connections of his mother and Indonesian step-father.


Barack Obama’s employment as an editor for CIA front Business International Corporation (BIC) after his graduation from Columbia University in 1983, came at a time when such small business and political risk consulting firms were mushrooming and their ranks growing with retired senior CIA personnel.


The expansion of BIC and similar firms in the early 1980s also came at a time when major corporations were phasing out their internal risk departments and relying more on companies like BIC.


However, Obama’s contacts with the CIA came earlier than his work for BIC. Obama’s attendance at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981 is significant considering the college’s close ties with the CIA….


Two recruits came from Columbia University. Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 after reportedly studying under Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Adviser to President Carter. 


After eight brutal years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the nation was ready for any change….


The CIA answered the call with Obama and most of us bought him and his “Hope and Change” propaganda fecundity “nurtured” by CIA programs going back some sixty years.


Well, well President Obama’s mother and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s father were intimately involved with the CIA and USAID.  That puts Obama’s Latin America hustle in a whole new light. 


You know what strikes me?  The Reagan Democrats knew all about Obama’s CIA ties in the 2008 primary and with the assistance of Zbig Brzezinski whose daughter Mika an MSNBC analyst were able to steal the candidacy away from Hillary Clinton. 


From Rachel Maddow to Chris Matthews’ tingling leg at the sight of Obama, MSNBC shouted over and over Hillary can’t win, she doesn’t have the delegates.  She’s trying to steal the election from the black guy, the Clinton’s are racists. 


So let’s see what others in the world think of Obama’s jaunt to Cuba to meet with dissidents who are being paid by the CIA.  From Sputnik:


Obama’s ‘Historic’ PR Sham in Cuba


When US President Obama touched down in Cuba at the weekend the visit was hailed as a “historic” occasion. Only in a crassly superficial sense can the official state visit be viewed as historic.


Yes, Obama is the first American leader to visit the island in nearly 90 years since President Calvin Coolidge in 1928.


But otherwise, fundamentally, the relationship between the US and Cuba has not changed and is unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future. It is still a relationship of unmitigated and criminal domination by Washington towards its southern Caribbean neighbor.


Washington continues to impose a crushing trade embargo on the island state and it continues to occupy Cuban territory at Guantanamo Bay — all in defiance of international norms and Cuban sovereignty…


Obama and his family will spend three days in Cuba where he will dine with socialist President Raul Castro. The White House has ruled out meeting the elder Cuban statesman, Fidel, brother of Raul. It was Fidel who led the revolution to victory in January 1959 against the US-backed despot Fulgencio Batista…


However, US media coverage of Obama's visit is the usual weird triumph of hype over reality. All the supposed changes in bilateral relations do not alter the fact that the United States remains a reprehensible aggressor towards the nation of Cuba…


What 2016 Presidential Race Means for the Future of US-Cuban Relations… That any power appoints itself the right to use economic warfare against other countries is the real issue here.


Right now, the US not only slaps punitive economic measures on Cuba, it also entitles itself to do the same on several other countries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. The political claims that Washington invokes in each case to justify its sanctions are dubious if not outrightly fraudulent…


Cuba is a particularly lamentable example of Washington's bully-boy behavior in the world. It is this imperialist behavior that needs to be exposed, questioned, prosecuted and overturned. Washington's rogue conduct is the primary source of world conflict and the relentless threat of war….


But the only thing historic about Obama's visit to Cuba is that it is a grotesque manipulation of public relations and reality. If the US was to remove its boot off the Cuban nation's neck, then perhaps we could indulge in plaudits.


As things stand, Washington's relations with Cuba — as with any other country that dares to defy its hegemony — is testimony to more despotic American business-as-usual.



Yep, that’s the state of the American President’s “historic” trip to Cuba, to increase pressure on its boot on the Cuban nation's neck.  After leaving Cuba Obama’s next stop was Argentina to take financial inventory after the CIA coup that removed the term-limited Kirchner’s socialist government and restore the brutal dictatorship.  From Greg Palast:



Except:


Obama Lands in Argentina Vultures Circle


Today, President Barack Obama travelled to Argentina to speak with the country's new President Mauricio Macri.


Marci just concluded a deal paying off US vulture fund operator Paul Singer, a $2.5 billion pay-out which the Argentine government described as "extortion."


The story of Argentina versus Singer, aka The Vulture, looms hugely over the US Presidential election. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton attempted to prevent Singer from collecting this "extortion" pay-off from Argentina. Singer, the top donor to the Republican Party, is fuming.


So how did Macri come to power in Argentina?  From Global Research:


Argentina: A Quiet Neoliberal Coup d’Etat in Latin America’s Southern Cone


For the past few weeks the world has been and still is focussing all attention on Syria...  plus the endless fear mongering of more terror in Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Copenhagen — you name it….


The neoliberal coup d’état in Argentina happened almost unnoticed. Never mind that it is just about bringing some 42.5 million people (2015 pop. estimate) under Washington’s rule.


Argentina’s general election 2015 ended on Sunday 22 November in a run-off – the first in Argentina’s history – between Daniel Scioli, the incumbent Governor of Buenos Aires Province, a Kirchnerite from the ruling Front for Victory Party and Mauricio Macri, a neoliberal multi-billionaire and Mayor of Buenos Aires from the right-wing Cambiemos party.


Against all odds, Macri won with 51.4% against Scioli’s 48.6% – a margin of 2.8%. A margin small enough not to raise many questions of fraud.


At the end of July, three months before the first election run, Scioli was leading with a 13.6% margin (38.8% vs. 25.2%). The outcome of the 9 August Primaries left Scioli still with a more than 12 point lead (36.8% vs 24.7%)…


This is not a typical pattern of error for pollsters, nor an indication for a public opinion change, a public that has benefitted from their government to the extent Argentinians did within the last 15 years, since the economic collapse in 2001:


An average annual growth of between 6% and 8%, a highly distributive economic development, helping reducing poverty from 65% in 2002 to less than 10% in early 2015 and with a massive increase in countrywide free education and health services, including in rural areas; not to mention the elimination of foreign debt.


A simple question of logic: Would a people of which 80% to 90% have massively benefitted from the ruling government policies vote with more than 50% against the continuation of such policies – and instead for a neoliberal politician, who promised to turn the clock back?


Hardly. Unless they have been subjected to a massive media brainwashing and slander campaign, vote buying and other democracy-destroying measures, through foreign induced destabilization.


We know about the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and other US based think tanks (sic), receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department to train and fund “NGOs” throughout the world, to infiltrate in counties’ internal affairs, where Washington wants to achieve soft regime change, as opposed to hard-core regime change – which involves the US military, proxy-armies, mercenaries and – of course – the ever present NATO. – So far the election fraud worked in Argentina without bloodshed…


If propaganda alone doesn’t do the trick, the Washington imposed changes are being helped with false flags, inducing armed conflicts and ‘civil wars’. Recent cases in point are the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, to name just a few…


In 2011 Wikileaks revealed that Mauricio Macri asked the US Embassy in Buenos Aires to launch a strong anti-Kirchner campaign, slandering her and her political alliances, thereby massively discrediting Cristina Kirchner’s Presidency…


Who is Mauricio Macri? – He was born in 1959 into a family of owners of the country’s most important industrial and economic groups. In 1975, the Macri family possessed 7 enterprises; at the end of the military dictatorship the Macri fleet of companies had grown to 46.


The Macri family benefitted greatly from business relations with the totalitarian military government of Videla. In connivance with US banks, they built up false debt which later had to be assumed by the Argentine government…


Mr. Macri is known as an extreme conservative, right-wing politician following neoliberal policies, who will most likely turn the wheel of progress of the Kirchner Administration back by seeking reduction of public expenditures to the detriment of labor, privatization of public services and ending fiscal policies aiming at redistribution of wealth…


All the while the Great Dictator and its paid foreign minions are diligently working at discrediting the Governments of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela, and of Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil; the former with infiltrated and local mercenaries spreading unrest and violence; the latter with defamation of corruption linked to the oil giant Petrobras, all manufactured via henchmen and associated banks in Florida and New York.


My, my, my.  That was last year so how are Argentina and more importantly their people doing since Obama’s “financial shock treatment” kicked in?  From World Socialist Website:





Excerpt:


Obama hails Macri’s attacks on Argentine workers


US President Barack Obama arrived in Buenos Aires on Wednesday March 23, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the CIA-backed military coup that installed the fascist military junta of Gen. Jorge Videla.


Amidst a massive police operation, involving helicopters and military surveillance and fighter planes—some 700 security personnel had arrived earlier in Buenos Aires to prepare for the US president’s arrival—Obama moved to Argentina’s Government House, the Casa Rosada, met with the recently installed Argentine president Mauricio Macri and gave a press conference.


An effusive Macri welcomed Obama: “This is your house,” he declared. In a reference to Obama’s visit to Argentina and Cuba, Macri praised the US for trying to establish a “mature” relationship with the nations in the region.


In turn, Obama called for the US and Argentina to become “universal allies” and praised the new president for his measures of economic shock that have so far resulted in the destruction of more than 100,000 public sector jobs, wiped out energy subsidies and devastated living standards…


“I can tell you President Macri is a man in hurry,” said Obama; “I’m impressed because he has moved rapidly on so many of the reforms that he promised, to create more sustainable and inclusive economic growth, to reconnect Argentina with the global economy and the world community.”


This was a thinly veiled reference to the Macri administration’s decision to pay off the Wall Street vulture funds that acquired billions of dollars worth of Argentina’s pre-2002 debt…


As he did in Cuba during the previous three days, Obama posed as a defender of civil liberties and open government…


“Argentina is re-assuming its traditional leadership role in the region and around the world,” declared Obama. Those words are ominous, given the content of a US State Department information press release that was issued following Obama’s discussions with Macri on Wednesday…


Buried in a list of proposed areas of cooperation…  there is a proposal for the beefing up of Argentine military reserves so that the Argentine armed forces can better intervene in so-called peace-keeping operations in Africa and elsewhere.


March 24 is a day of remembrance in Argentina, marking the anniversary of the Videla coup that the US supported in 1976. Following the coup, it helped establish an alliance between the military regimes that ruled in Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s and assisted in the blood bath that followed…


Do cry for me Argentina, looks like the military dictatorship has returned to Argentina.  And then there’s this article from Reuters:


Excerpt:


UPDATE 4-Argentina names banks for bond offer


NEW YORK, March 22 (IFR) - Argentina has hired seven banks to manage its upcoming international bond sale, its first in over 15 years, sources familiar with the matter told IFR on Tuesday.


Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan and Santander were awarded the top role of global coordinators for the bond sale, while BBVA, Citigroup, and UBS will join as bookrunners, one of the sources said.


All seven banks participated in a US $5bn one-year loan in January to help the government of newly elected President Mauricio Macri bolster foreign reserves…


The timing and currency of the bond offering are not yet certain, but the deal is expected to come to market before an April 14 deadline set in the agreement between holdouts and the government.


Expectations of a deal have been building since Argentina sealed an agreement with major holdout creditors three weeks ago.


Barring any objections from Congress, the South American country could try to issue around US $12bn of bonds in April in an effort to pay litigant investors and service past due interest on its restructured bonds…


Citigroup's head of emerging markets Guillermo Mondino wrote this month that an Argentina bond sale could pay yields of 7.25% on a five-year, 8.4% on a 10-year and 9.7% on a 30-year.


Newman said yields of around 8% for a 10-year would be realistic.


Democratic front runner in the 2016 primary, Hillary Clinton is despised by the vultures like Paul Singer and Reagan Democrats like Obama.  The Clinton Administration’s Latin American policies were the polar opposite of the years of death squads and military junta’s ushered in since the Nixon Administration and continued under Reagan and Bush.


The best example I can give you is Haiti.  Haiti, like Argentina and Brazil has been in the crosshairs since the overthrow of the American government in 2000 and the decision to destroy the Clinton legacy.  This article from 1994 should explain why today’s Duopoly will do anything to keep Hillary Clinton from being President.  From Baltimore Sun:



Excerpt:


Clinton gives ultimatum 'Your time is up,' president tells Haiti's leaders HAITI: ON THE BRINK OF INVASION


WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, invoking graphic images of the brutality unleashed by Haiti's military leaders against their own people, issued a blunt ultimatum to the island's dictators last night to give up power -- or be ousted by U.S. military force.


"The message of the United States to the Haitian dictators is clear: 'Your time is up. Leave now or we will force you from power,' " Mr. Clinton said in a 16-minute Oval Office speech televised to the American people and around the world…


Looking determined as he stared directly into the camera, Mr. Clinton recited the recent history of Haiti: its first democratic elections in 1990, won by the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide with almost 70 percent of the vote. Then, seven months later, a military coup that installed a government characterized by corruption, torture and political murder.


"Haiti's dictators, led by Gen. Raoul Cedras, control one of the most violent regimes in our hemisphere," the president said….


As Mr. Clinton spoke, 17 U.S. Navy vessels ringed Haiti, and two aircraft carriers steamed toward the Caribbean nation…


However, in a defiant message televised to the United States, General Cedras said he had decided to stay on and fight…


But the president signed an executive order yesterday authorizing the call-up of 1,600 reservists to support the 20,000-person invasion force.


Earlier, General Cedras reportedly offered through an intermediary to resign and hold new elections. But he set a condition that is completely unacceptable to the Clinton administration -- that Father Aristide not be allowed to participate…


Along with three-quarters of the American public, I strongly oppose President Clinton's threatened invasion of Haiti to 'restore democracy' to a land that, unfortunately, has never known democracy," said Rep. Floyd D. Spence, a South Carolina Republican. "The president has failed to make the case that any vital U.S. national interest is at stake in Haiti…"


In Congress, the politics of the invasion are the reverse of four years ago, when Republicans were gung-ho in their support of President George Bush's buildup on the border of Kuwait…


Now let’s take a look at the Haiti policy under George W. Bush.  This article is from the LA Timesin 2004:

Excerpt:


From His First Day in Office, Bush Was Ousting Aristide


If the circumstances were not so calamitous, the American-orchestrated removal of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti would be farcical.


According to Aristide, American officials in Port-au-Prince told him that rebels were on the way to the presidential residence and that he and his family were unlikely to survive unless they immediately boarded an American-chartered plane standing by to take them to exile….


At the airport, Aristide said, U.S. officials refused him entry to the airplane until he handed over a signed letter of resignation.


After being hustled aboard, Aristide was denied access to a phone for nearly 24 hours, and he knew nothing of his destination until he and his family were summarily deposited in the Central African Republic. He has since been kept hidden from view.


Yet this Keystone Kops coup has apparently not worked entirely according to plan: Aristide has used a cellphone to notify the world that he was forcibly removed from Haiti at risk of death and to describe the way his resignation was staged by American forces.


The U.S. government dismisses Aristide's charges as ridiculous. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has offered an official version of the events, a blanket denial based on the government's word alone…


Did the U.S. supply weapons to the rebels, who showed up in Haiti last month with sophisticated equipment that last year reportedly had been taken by the U.S. military to the Dominican Republic, next door to Haiti?


Why did the U.S. cynically abandon the call of European and Caribbean leaders for a political compromise, a compromise that Aristide had already accepted? Most important, did the U.S. in fact bankroll a coup in Haiti, a scenario that seems likely based on present evidence?


Only someone ignorant of U.S. history and of the administrations of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would dismiss these questions. The United States has repeatedly sponsored coups and uprisings in Haiti and in neighboring Caribbean countries.


Ominously, before this week, the most recent such episode in Haiti came in 1991, during the first Bush administration, when thugs on the CIA payroll were among the leaders of paramilitary groups that toppled Aristide after his 1990 election.


Now let’s look at the Obama Administration’s Haiti Policy.  From People’s World:


Excerpt:


Haiti: Massive electoral fraud ignored


(Morning Star) -- On Dec. 16 the people of Haiti will mark the 25th anniversary of their first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the liberation theology priest they lovingly call Titid.


This is an important date, especially because Haiti is the midst of elections - parliamentary, then presidential, the final round scheduled for December 27.


But the elections, funded by the U.S. to the tune of $30 million, are being stolen and since August tens of thousands of people have repeatedly taken to the streets to protest at an "electoral coup."


For the first time since 2004, when a U.S. coup removed Aristide for the second time, his party Fanmi Lavalas has been allowed on the ballot and its candidate Maryse Narcisse, a woman, has been personally endorsed by him.


The election has been marred by state violence and fraud. Maxine Waters, member of the U.S. congressional black caucus and longstanding supporter of Haiti, wrote to the Secretary of State John Kerry: "Many are calling for the resignation of the current CEP [Provisional Electoral Council] and the annulment of the entire first round."


She was ignored and on October 25 the second round went ahead. Again, intimidation and anomalies were reported including by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) electoral observation mission.


A review demanded by Narcisse confirmed irregularities in 98 per cent of the tally sheets re-examined. The executive director of the National Human Rights Defence Network declared they reflected "massive acts of fraud aimed at changing the results of the elections" to benefit Jovenel Moise, the candidate backed by outgoing president Michel Martelly and his US sponsors…


Meanwhile here in America the 2016 primary is in full swing and the CIA tactics used in Argentina and Haiti, of flooding millions into propaganda has had some interesting results as reported by CNN:


Excerpt:


Poll: Trump, Clinton score historic unfavorable ratings


Washington (CNN): Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton register net negative ratings in double digits, indicating the front-runners for each party's presidential nominations are viewed negatively at historic levels, according to a new CBS/New York Times poll.


That makes Trump and Clinton viewed more unfavorably than any front-runner for either party since 1984, when CBS began polling voters on the question.


On the Republican side, Trump scores a net negative of -33, with a favorable rating of 24% compared to 57% of voters who view him unfavorably. On the Democratic side, Clinton fares only slightly better with a net negative of -21, registering a 31% favorable rating and a 52% unfavorable rating, according to the poll…


The previous highest unfavorable rating since 1984 actually belongs to another Clinton -- former President Bill Clinton, who in 1992 had a net negative rating of -17.


Hmmm, go figure.  But in his prelude to a Cuban coup, Obama is dancing the night away in Argentina doing the Hustle.



By Patricia Baeten

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