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[quote=”sprite”]Let’s hope Ticos do not adopt your insane vision of the world. Soldiers are a cancer within any nation that undertakes their use for internal problems.
You are completely wrong in your analysis of Colombia. As soon as the US can get a military foot in the door, whether if just with equipment and surrogates or with actual US boots on the ground, your country is finished.[/quote]
Sprite, I admire your child-like naievity …could you explain to me then how Colombia (which I visit frequently) has improved faster than virtually every other Latin American country on any dimension you care to mention – social, freedom of speech & democracy, health, economic, education & literacy, housing, reduction of poverty, gini coefficent reduction (disparity fo rich and poor measured across a nation) etc etc. Millions and millions of middle class Colombians have emerged over the last 15+ years, in part because they have embraced capitalism and fought back the noxious influence of the narcos. Maybe Venezuela & Cuba are your kind of role models???
There are many complex, inter related reasons for the well being of a population. Costa Rica, in 2009, was number one on the Happy Planet list of countries with the happiest population. Yet it has no army. It barely has a police force and there are no US military bases here. How do you explain the last 30 years of peace and quiet in Costa Rica with no armed uniforms running around? Of the many reasons, one might be that the U.S. never intervened here.
Columbia, on the other hand, has had a close military relationship with the US. Guns and uniforms attract trouble, they don’t necessarily prevent it. Columbia has suffered decades of armed struggle with right wing death squads supplied by the U.S.. It has only recently emerged from that mess and there is still a danger it will fall back again.
[quote=”sprite”]There are many complex, inter related reasons for the well being of a population. Costa Rica, in 2009, was number one on the Happy Planet list of countries with the happiest population. Yet it has no army. It barely has a police force and there are no US military bases here. How do you explain the last 30 years of peace and quiet in Costa Rica with no armed uniforms running around? Of the many reasons, one might be that the U.S. never intervened here.
Columbia, on the other hand, has had a close military relationship with the US. Guns and uniforms attract trouble, they don’t necessarily prevent it. Columbia has suffered decades of armed struggle with right wing death squads supplied by the U.S.. It has only recently emerged from that mess and there is still a danger it will fall back again.[/quote]
Agree on 1st paragraph, and long may Costa Rica remain so. I think a great deal of that will depend on how they deal with the narco thugs …if there’s money to be made they won’t politely give up and walk away.
On the second paragraph, I think you’re confusing cause and effect …US intervention did not cause drug trafficking but arose as a result of. Also there is no evidence the US directly funded the right wing death squads that arose in opposition to the left wing anarchists/narco traffickers and then morphed into narco traffickers themselves. You could arugue the US supplied by proxy through the Colombian government, much of which turned a blind eye to the right wing death squads however. Did this in some manner “contain” what FARC and ELN would otherwise have achieved? Who knows??!!
There is rarely in a complex situation an “OBE” (= One Big Explanation) – there are always a multitude of competing, sometimes contradictory factors; to blame US military intervention for all the world’s ills is simplistic idealogical nonsense. there is good and bad in lots of what goes on, US involvement or not.
BTW – the country is ColOmbia, not ColUmbia – which is a district below NY and above MD which houses the nations seat of government (if you can call the current mob a government!)
Sprite seems to have a problem with US involvement in smaller vulnerable countries, like Colombia. I assume that he does not like the idea that the US government has trained officers in the Colombian army. Or put uniforms on Costa Rican police. Hmmm. What about Egyptian army officers who so far have been rather restrained in treating the demonstrators demanding freedom.
As a matter of fact, didn’t the US military have a bit to do with the training of the militaries in South Korea, Taiwan and Chile – all solid democracies?
I bet sprite loves the new President of Brazil, a communist in the process of dismantling the Brazilian constitution. I do not think the US had anything with that “progress” of freedom.
Has it occurred to him/her that Costa Rica has profited from the involvement of our government and businesses doing so much to help Costa Rica advance economically and maintain an umbrella of military protection over her as we have over Panama. How many Americans and Canadians would stay in CR if the availability of US Marines evaporated? Those expats would scamper back to Norte America the moment their gated communities’ walls are broached. Safety in CR is only assured in this day and age by the hope of US intervention when trouble rises up = and that will happen! Oh, maybe the Chinese will help after they finish the soccer stadium.
Michael
Hello, Michael.
By the way, I am a “he”. Please read the Greg Grandin article Scott has posted on the Home page. This explains what Colombia has been turned into after so many years of US military involvement there.https://www.welovecostarica.com/public/Building_a_Perfect_Machine_of_Perpetual_War_The_MexicotoColombia_Security_Corridor_Advances.cfm
The US military has been training uniformed terrorists for various of its corrupted puppet governments for a long time.
The list of these governments’ countries is long and runs from A to Z, from Argentina to Zimbabwe…..and the crimes are terrible. Torture and murder of millions is the result.
The very last thing these sweet, gentle and naive Ticos need is ANY U.S. “assistance.I have no idea how many frightened Americans would “scamper back to Notre America” if they thought their gated walls would be “broached” by the savage, machete waving Ticos your fevered mind conjures. No doubt there are some who think as you do and no doubt they are the ones living in gated communities. If they perceived a diminished US military in the world, they might just “scamper”. Good riddance to them! Let them languish at the center of an imploding empire.
Your view is so skewed, biased and corrupted, that I fear reason and facts will do no good here. I sincerely hope for a quick and relatively painless end to the US military. I doubt that will be the case, though. Perhaps Costa Rica will be a good place to live through the ordeal.
I think of the 40 or 50 year war on drugs as the US social security plan for the drug cartels. Now days I think it more like a federal bailout for the drug cartels. Beneficiaries of the money spent on the war on drugs since it was first purposed so long ago have been the federal government itself, also without a doubt the DEA, the CIA, the FBI, the Costa Guard and now Homeland Security just to name a few the past and new player in the ball game. This cash cow has also benefited also many federal contracting companies that have raked in a bundle no matter which party has been in power.
I wonder if any of this cash outflow has ever helped any American citizen decide to stay off drugs? With the people I see riding my bus every Tuesday and Thursday on the way to the free methadone clinic already high, I must wonder what have we accomplished with our huge annual cash outlay? With the conversations I hear this happy group having, I don’t think we have done much or succeed much.
Why haven’t we legalized all of this, taxed the hell out it like we have done with tobacco products? Then I think of Winston Churchill’s comment after the US Congress passed lend lease for Britain at the start of WWII, “After American tries everything else, it does the right thing!” Maybe we need a 100-year payout for our war on drugs in order to finally do the right thing!
What the hell do I know, I am now officially an “old fart?” Is now the younger generation to either fix this or keep paying for it I would suggest.
I don’t think any of this matters any longer. The current world society has reached the end of its tether and is going to implode. If any thing rises from the ashes, we can hope it will be more intelligent in the way it deals with human behavior, which is mostly determined by environmental influences.
Just think of the titles “War on Drugs” or “War on Poverty” or “WAR on crime or against terrorism. The selling of solutions which approaches behavioral problems, whether invented or real, with a war should be seen for what it really is; a way to control people by deception. A false flag enemy and confrontation is created as a diversion from the real problem.Talking about false flags Sprite – Did you see this?
Terror threats rising as FEMA orders $1 Billion in dehydrated food.
Earlier this month, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) put out a Request for Proposal, or RFP, for even more dehydrated food. The RFP called for a 10-day supply of meals – for 14 million people. That’s 420 million meals. Typically, FEMA maintains a stockpile of about 6 million meals.
Why the sudden need to increase the stockpile by 420 million more?
Any ideas?
[ http://www.beaufortobserver.net/1FeedbackAllbody.lasso?-token.specificitem=21535.112112 ]
[ http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/2011/02/does-fema-know-something-you-and-i-dont.html ]
Yeah,,I have been following a lot the web sites regarding most of the issues surrounding the economic meltdown and potential world wide depression. It is difficult to know just how severe consequences are going to be as there are so many theories and proponents of extreme sounding ideas. Facts and interpretation of facts can be manipulated to fit nearly any bias.
The list is long;
Globalism
police state terror
shadow governments
crash of the dollar
high world unemployment
world riots
world war
loss of civil liberties
rising oil costs
rising commodity costs (inflation)It seems that any geopolitical event of consequence that happens right now could precipitate a total, unstoppable fall of the markets which in turn could bring about all of the above simultaneously culminating in a feudal society at best or a Mad Max world at worst. Some are saying that oil, at $150 per barrel, will surely bring it all down.
My concern right now is not whether disaster will hit. I am convinced it will. My concern now is WHEN will it hit? I don’t want to be caught in the States when the pooh hits the fan.
I have been squirreling away canned food and rice for a while now and have been thinking about converting cash into silver or gold but there is also the question of whether or not the precious metals market may be just another bubble…and you cannot eat gold. More importantly, who wants to be in the middle of a large, starving US city where many citizens are armed to the teeth?
[quote=”sprite”]There are so many frightened, misinformed, brainwashed Americans. The biggest drug movers are to found within the us government. The war on drugs is just one of many false flag wars being used by banking interests and the US government as manipulative tools.[/quote]
LOL!
Is that nervous laughter, Johnr? Or laughter of disbelief?
If it is the latter, there is a state of mind which scientists explain and call the “NORMALCY BIAS” You may have this. We are facing a disaster and we are experiencing various forms of control by the people causing this disaster.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The normalcy bias refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.[1]disbelief – really you need to get your underground shelter in order – put the cash in the mattress and save up enough to get the hell out of the United States. Brazil is lovely this time of year. 😆
I am working on this as fast as I can, though money under the mattress is obviously not a way to go and Brazil is not high on my list of places to live.
Please read the Normalcy Bias definition. I know it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff in the current information environment we have, but a little reasoned thinking and some fact checking goes a long way towards finding out a semblance of truth. Consider the possibility that the world may very well not be what your government tells you it is.
Sprite! That bastion of jounalistic integrity (sic) AM Costa Rica has an article today that two US Blackhawk Helicopters are going to be in Guancaste and Punttarenas on Medical Training missions. Please alert all of your friends along the Pacific so they can stock up on supplies for the invasion.:lol:
Aren’t you curious as to why the US military has to have these “exercises” in Costa Rica, or anywhere else outside the US? It is more economical to do this sort of thing back home or at a near base.
I have a theory as to why these things are done outside the States. But I suppose you accept whatever reason is given officially and any other reason must be coming from people who fashion tin foil caps.From an article by the Fellowship of Reconciliation”
US Military increases Construction in Region. The Army Corps on Engineers Mobile District’s plans indicate that US military construction in Central and South America has more than doubled this year compared to 2009. This includes a SouthCom Counter-Narco-terrorism account that is funding construction in summer 2011 of facilities in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador and Belize, as well as a $10 million upgrade in Soto Cano, Honduras. [see our interactive map for details]
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