Alert – Eyes on – Venezuela, Columbia, and Panama
Since returning from a job in the corner of Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, known as the Tri-Border Area (TBA), in the early 1990s I began warning people of the boiling threat to our nation and every person in South and Central America. I rattled on about it on my radio talk show nearly every week from 1996 on after returning several times and having my first encounter with the PLO, Hezbollah, and what is now known as al Qaeda.
According to the Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Report on the Tri-Border Area (TBA):
“Hizballah clerics and members of other violent Islamic groups reportedly began planting agents and recruiting sympathizers among Arab and Muslim immigrants in Latin America in the mid-1980s, at the height of the Lebanese civil war.
Hizballah cells began to form in the TBA as a result of Hizballah proselytizing in the Lebanese communities. Islamic fundamentalist organizations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya—Hamas), Hizballah, and al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group) actively use the TBA as a support base, and al Qaeda reportedly has been establishing a presence in the region since at least the mid-1990s. By mid-2000, an estimated 460 Hizballah operatives were thought to be living and working in the TBA.
Numerous Lebanese and Palestinian extremists arrived in the TBA from Colombia in October 2000.” (see the entire PDF document click here)
The Main Stream Media has a centuries long history of turning a blind eye or forwarding the advance of communist and socialist dictatorships and rebel hit squads highlighted by the ELN and the FARC. Millions have died and have been subjugated by them over the past century and a quarter. If you do not believe that, simply educate yourself to what they do not tell you in school or the media. Web search “Yellow Journalism”, read my article Yellow Journalism or try some of the links here.
There have been many mistakes made over the years politically between the USA and the nations of South and Central America. That does not negate the fact that those regions due to their nearly ubiquitous corruption and complicity with enemies of the USA represent an existential threat. It is the duty of the government to employ all possible means to exert its power, first to assure the safety, security, stability of the nation, and the world. The desire to “stay out of it” because “it is not our fight” would rapidly evaporate if the economies of the world collapsed as a result of a lassie fair attitude. It is not imperialistic for a nation to negotiate for and advocate in favor of its interests. In fact, it is cultural and national suicide to do otherwise. It is only the opponents of a free nation that lecture it to be passive.
There has long been an existential threat brewing in Venezuela and through South and Central America. US news media is silent on the issues that plague the regions. The US problem with illegal immigration would evaporate if there was stability in even one country there. Thirty second searching the internet for South or Central American governmental corruption will yield 100 hours of intensive reading. The problem is out of control. Venezuela is at the top of the list for threats.
The poor people of Venezuela are trapped by their government. They are being gunned down in the street by FARC rebels working with their socialist communist government. It has gotten so bad that the people have eaten dogs, cats, rats, and worse.
Venezuela is in serious crisis. Their government owned oil company was sold to the Russian owned oil company (See this article for details). Rosneft the Russian State owned company swapped its collateral stake in Citgo for stakes in three additional PDVSA oil fields, two natural gas fields, and fuel supply contract. To compound the threat, that means by default, Rosneft now has the contract to operate the Panama Canal.
Just in case you don’t understand, if the Panama Canal was shutdown, attacked, or “seized” it could collapse the economies of every advanced nation in the world. The only alternative to the Panama Canal is to circumnavigate then entire continent of South America. Such an issue would doom world commerce.
The crisis in Venezuela is more threatening because a dark horse in the background is challenging President Maduro for his power. If the dark horse were to take control the Venezuela may spiral into a Muslim Brotherhood Caliphate. If Venezuela falls there are others in the region barely holding on. The US military analysts believe that Columbia would be annexed into Venezuela in under three months. Unfortunately, the trouble would not stop there. The expectations are that they would continue on to seize Panama. They believe that Panama would fall to the ETN and FARC in less than a week. The ramifications would be so devastating to the continent and the USA that the US would be forced to respond to repel or contain them and seize control of the Panama Canal.
FARC: (courtesy WikiLeaks)
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army was a guerrilla movement involved in the continuing Colombian armed conflict since 1964. It was known to employ a variety of military tactics in addition to more unconventional methods, including terrorism. The FARC-EP was formed during the Cold War period as a Marxist–Leninist peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism. The operations of the FARC–EP were funded by kidnap and ransom; illegal mining; extortion or taxation of various forms of economic activity; and the taxation, production, and distribution of illegal drugs. The United Nations has estimated that 12% of all killings of civilians in Colombian conflict were committed by FARC and National Liberation Army guerrillas, with 80% committed by right-wing paramilitaries, and the remaining 8% committed by Colombian security forces.
The ELN – National Liberation Army in Columbia (Courtesy Wikipedia)
The National Liberation Army (Spanish: Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN) is an armed group involved in the continuing Colombian armed conflict,[6] which has existed in Colombia since 1964. The ELN advocate a composite communist ideology of Marxism and liberation theology. In 2013, it was estimated that the ELN forces consisted of between 1,380 and 3,000 guerrillas.[3][4][5] According to former ELN national directorate member Felipe Torres, one fifth of ELN supporters have taken up arms.[7] The ELN has been classified as a terrorist organization by the governments of Colombia, Peru, United States,[8] Canada[9] and the European Union.[10]
Panama and the areas surrounding Columbia and Venezuela are on the Gulf of Mexico and areas of which the coastal rights are highly disputed. That area is patrolled by and under the oversight of the US Naval Forces Southern Command and US 4th Fleet. The US has numerous treatise and agreements with most of the nations in that region. In the even of an “event” they stand ready to deploy rapidly into the area to contain conflict.
Make no mistake, a battle in with FARC and the ELN would be no cake walk. The region has been so corrupt and the nations so war torn for so long that these two rebel factions are quite formidable adversaries. The ELN is heavily armed, highly skilled, it even employs engineers, doctors, has tanks, anti-aircraft weapons, and more. They are rated as the 39th most powerful military in the entire world.
The ELN has also occasionally operated with the FARC-EP and like FARC it has targeted civilians, according to a February 2005 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: "During 2004, the FARC-EP and the ELN carried out a series of attacks against the civilian population, including several massacres of civilians and kidnappings by the FARC-EP. There were occasional joint actions by the FARC-EP and the ELN."[11]
We are seeing the results of leading from behind. While serving the interests of the nation, a nation cannot withdrawal from the world stage or it will be left to fend for the scraps of those who are engaged. The meek shall not inherit the earth, they will be forced to eat rats and live enslaved.
The likelihood that the Trump Administration will be able to avoid direct military action in the event that the issues escalate as expected is very low. Over the past year the US has shifted into high gear building the Navy’s capabilities for the long term. There are several new weapons and support ships and platforms that were stalled during the Obama Administration. Hopefully those systems will come online and will afford the ability to make a decisive and overwhelming response to limit casualties and human loss.
In the background there are things that have caused impediments to future negotiations with the US. In an article that is in editing, I have written extensively about Paraguay and the current negotiations between the small impoverished nation with its neighbors, Argentina and Brazil. That are of South America is in a crisis over access to water. The Bush family slowly purchased 121,407 hectares of land encompassing a large portion of the Guarani Aquifer System. The aquifer is the largest renewable fresh water resource in the world. Throughout the world there are mass shortages of fresh water threatening famine and death. Many of those areas have water which has been usurped by companies like Nestle and others who seize the water and resell it the people at a ransom price. Such a “seizure” of such a critical resource leads people to believe that the US is trying to manipulate and hurt them.
The United States’ military presence at the Mariscal Estigarribia military base, which has its own international airport feeds the FARC/ELN communist narrative of USA imperialism. The strategic importance of the US Military presence in proximity to both the notorious tri-border area and the Guarani Aquifer is certainly no accident. The presence of the US military there is likely the only reason that the Islamic terror and communist rebel groups have not seized the aquafer and overrun the three dependent nations.
Stay tuned, this situation is boiling.
