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community activists, human rights workers, journalists, leftist political candidates and others (boys lured with promises of jobs, murdered and their bodies dressed up like FARC guerrillas, to up the military's "body count" to earn bonuses and promotions) is now being discouraged.
How can the rich get richer if the poor do not live in terror?
I don't think it's "empty babble." I think this is exactly what it means--the Santos government's discouragement of the easy murder of the poor and their advocates and also discouragement and some limited remediation of the brutal displacement of five MILLION peasant farmers from their land, by state terror, i.e., no more easy pickuns of the best coca leaf growing and other farm land.
The fascists' whining and carrying on has significance. Santos is actually trying to give back some of the peasants' land and is also trying to clean up Colombia's image as one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. How sincere he is is a real question. But there is no question that both he and the U.S. have been profoundly affected by Uribe's criminal regime, as to serving the interests of U.S. and other transglobal corporations and even the interests of U.S. war profiteers, in the rest of Latin America. For instance, Ecuador's new leftist government threw the U.S. military (Dyncorp) out of Ecuador, and the U.S. and the DEA are persona non grata in Bolivia. And these governments still stand--despite every effort of the U.S. and its local fascist operatives to overthrow them. Or, for instance, Exxon Mobil can't dictate the terms of their contracts in Venezuela any more. The Chavez government stood up to them, and has survived every effort of the U.S. governments and its local fascist allies (including Uribe) to overthrow Venezuela's democracy and re-install Exxon Mobil-friendly tools.
The political landscape of Latin America has undergone huge change for the better. And one of the reasons that all of the above governments have survived is that they and their allies--significantly, Brazil--have stuck together. No matter how much "divide and conquer" pressure the U.S. has tried to exert, it has failed. This really and truly is a new situation for the U.S. The Bushwhack response was to get even more belligerent and to design Oil War IV. Uribe was their lead operative in that belligerence and war mongering, and war planning. For instance, he helped to set up a war between the U.S./Colombia and Venezuela/Ecuador back in 2008, but Venezuela and Ecuador and their allies demurred (--wouldn't be drawn into the trap) and furthermore showed extraordinary unity in dealing with Uribe (unanimous condemnation and isolation of Colombia). Uribe also secretly negotiated and secretly signed a U.S./Colombia military agreement to add at least seven more U.S. military bases in Colombia, and including "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia--a secret agreement that, when disclosed, caused a firestorm of criticism in Latin America including Venezuela withdrawing its ambassador to Colombia and closing its long border with Colombia. The new military bases included one overlooking the Gulf of Venezuela only 20 miles from the Venezuelan border. Also, it has recently come to light that Uribe's "Black Eagle" death squads were infiltrating into Venezuela, killing people and setting up drug trafficking mafias to destabilize the border areas. This border shutdown was very painful to Colombia, economically (as to both licit and illicit trade), and was typical of Colombia's general isolation from the "south-south" trade policies that the new leftist governments of the region have created. Colombia acted as, and was seen as, a tool of U.S.
It appears that the Obama administration has faced this reality--the reality of the horrendous Bush Junta/Uribe policies in Colombia and the unity of the rest of South America against these bloody, war mongering and extremely socially unjust U.S. policies. Santos has apparently been given leave to try to establish some independence--some sovereign dignity--with some effort at social justice (or at least discouragement of the death squads) so that U.S. corporations, banksters and war profiteers can regain some footing in the region. That is how SERIOUS a problem the leftist democracy movement in Latin America is for the U.S. The U.S. has to bend--to appear to be more cooperative and respectful--or Latin America will trade with China, Russia and other powers, along with "south-south" trade internally and across the "Global South" from Africa to Asia. Either the U.S. "bends" or proceeds to Oil War IV. And the U.S. really cannot afford another oil war.
So-o-o-o, all of the rich who have depended on the U.S. to fill their pockets--the rich in Colombia, for instance, who have depended on $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid to prop up their fascist regime and to decapitate the grass roots leadership in the country--have a "real" complaint. They cannot simply order the military and its deaths squads to murder the poor any more. There might be legal consequences, for one thing. They have to be subtler in their thefts and self-enrichments. If they're smart, they'll play along--because Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, Monsanto, Chiquita, Dyncorp, U.S. retail slaveshops, et al, aren't going anywhere, as to Colombia--but, like the fascist elites throughout Latin America, they aren't very smart. Their long dependence on the U.S. has made them stupid, whiney, lazy, corrupt and in many cases seriously criminal and traitorous. They care nothing for their own country's development--as to, say, education, health care for the poor, land reform--and have been utterly neglectful and malfeasant when they have been in power, including giving away their country's resources to multinational corporations while raking some off the top for themselves, and often falling back on brutality to maintain illegitimate, undemocratic power. They can't even write their own "talking points" to feed to the corpo-fascist media for promulgation. They need to be "trained" by the USAID--billions of U.S. tax dollars lavished on their rightwing front groups for these purposes--how to lie, how to look kind of democratic.
The Colombian fascist elite is in shock, I imagine. Their level of outrage may be an indicator of Santos' sincerity--although "Tea Partyers" everywhere (the front gang for the rich) exaggerate to extremist degrees. Their "pain" may be a symptom of only SLIGHT curtailment of their murderous, thieving "lifestyle."
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