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over the last decade and it certainly occurred to me that relatively petty corruption (relative to the Bush Cartel) is a means of control. It's not that they recruited sincere Republicans (if there is such an animal) who then became corrupt. It's that they sought out known larcenous individuals, put them in the way of greater temptation (seat in Congress) and then controlled them with blackmail or threw them to the dogs, depending on the needs and desires of the greater organization.
Those are the ones we know about (i.e., the "Duke" Cunningham's and Tom Delay's). There are many still operating (thieving) with impunity, protected by a highly controlled and corrupt justice system--thieving with immunity, but, of course, under control (can be exposed, caught, prosecuted at any time, if they don't do their masters' bidding or for any organizational reason). The 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines are a final control. But blackmail is one of a number of mafia-like methods (I'm thinking of the "anthrax letters" to Congress, i.e., terror, fear) that turned a relatively decent Congress in year 2000 into what we see today--a Congress full of Mario Uribeses. (Sex can also be used this way, with an effective spying operation--and I think has been used this way--so many Pukes with sex weaknesses. And this method can also be used, and I think has been used, not just for controlling congress critters and other politicians, but also, say, the Enron execs, who were used to bust California's budget surplus, were led along, making oodles of money, were extorted for huge campaign contributions, and, when things got too hot, were jettisoned.)
So, with regard to Alvarito (and his larcenous family), I've been thinking there are levels of duplication of these mafia-like methods wherever the Bushwhacks sought and gained control of the state apparatus (and also, as to Colombia, the trillion+ dollar cocaine apparatus). Alvarito was both controlled by these methods and used these methods to control those beneath him. His spying operation wasn't just to provide "hit lists" to the death squads--yet another mafia-like method, murder--but as a general control mechanism. Alvarito has had an extraordinary number of legislative cohorts and other public officials (some 70 of them) called up on corruption and other charges. These are not innocent people recruited to the legislature or other public office who then let power go to their heads and thus became corrupt, but people who were already corrupt or with detectable criminal tendencies and associations, who were recruited because they were corrupt and were thus controllable (or, In some cases, were already members of Uribe's criminal organization). What the lower rungs of a mafia-like organization do not understand is that they WILL be sacrificed, as necessary, by those above them, no matter how obedient they are. A self-blindness afflicts them, that they are a member of a privileged and protected elite. Ir never occurs to them that the ruthlessness that they have exhibited against others can be turned on them, from above, and, if it does occur to them, they acquire their own "dossiers," create their own spying/blackmail/murder network, get even more ruthless and rise through the organization to become "dons" themselves, rivaling people like Alvarito.
I do think that there is a difference between the U.S. (Bush Junta-influenced) justice system and Colombia's justice system, in Colombia's favor--and that Alvarito may have made a mistake as to this. He thought that he could extend the immunity that the Bush Junta (with help from the Obama administration) have given to him, to those beneath him who were/are a danger to him should they come under prosecutorial pressure. This is true of our system. It is not true of Colombia's. Many of the lower rung players in Uribe's criminal organization have come under investigative pressure, or have been indicted/punished.
It appears that Uribe has the U.S. government--the Obama administration, the CIA, the State Dept., and possibly the Pentagon (because they are vulnerable if Uribe ever gets indicted) and a network of U.S./RW operatives in LatAm (at the least Martinelli in Panama)--assisting him in getting witnesses and potential witnesses against him out of Colombia, and out of the reach of Colombia's prosecutors, by various means (extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S. and their "burial" in the U.S. federal prison system on mere drug charges; instant asylum for the chief spying witness against him granted in Panama), in addition to help in "laundering" his image (Gerogetown U., Harvard U. and others).
The difference between the justice systems, I think, is this: NO ONE who has been indicted/punished by the U.S. justice system has been caught without the consent of the mafia-like organization that is running the U.S. (I should say almost no one--there might have been a few slip-ups as this organization got control of the U.S. justice system in 2000-2002, starting with its suborning of the Supreme Court, on the '00 election, and the shakedown of the FBI in summer '01, with Gary Condit--Chandra Levy's lover--on the House committee doing the shakedown. (I think her murder may have had something to do with Condit's membership on the House Intelligence Committee as the Bushwhacks purged the FBI that summer, just prior to 9/11. Condit met with Cheney on the very day Levy disappeared--5/1/01).
Alvarito could never get such control over Colombia's justice system--though he tried to. He was spying on prosecutors and judges who were subjected to death threats and intimidation; his spying also allowed him to anticipate their moves. But they did not cave. In other words, he had delusions of grandeur. He thought of himself as a rival to Bush Jr., on the same level. Colombian prosecutors have just arrested his second in command in the spying operation and have issued an Interpol warrant for the arrest of his chief of spying, Maria Hurtado, in Panama. He is unable to control Colombia's justice system. Uribe clearly is not on the same level as Bush Jr or any of the Bush Junta principles, none of whom have even been threatened with investigation, for their many, many crimes, let alone prosecuted. The ONLY one of the Bush Junta principles who has seen prison time is "Scooter" Libby, and that was by consent of the "organization" running the U.S. (--the agreed upon fall guy, in the internal war between Rumsfeld's Pentagon and the CIA).
In short, the difference between the justice systems is that Colombia's justice system is working and ours is NOT. Ours may put thousands of petty drug offenders in jail for decades, or may wait ten years and then put a poor, illiterate El Salvadoran immigrant in jail for Chandra Levy's murder (covering for Cheney?), or may busy itself cleaning up other details of the Bush Junta crime wave, or may send a few jettisoned, lower level Bushwhack thieves to easy, "white collar," short-term imprisonment (jettisoned for reasons that are not easy to see or get at), but it will NEVER even threaten Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or other top "made men" with investigation, let alone prosecution, let alone imprisonment for their crimes. That CANNOT happen here. But it IS happening in Colombia, where prosecutors are getting very close to Uribe, indeed.
Justice is still possible in Colombia. It is not here. Alvarito misjudged this. And he may possibly pay for that misjudgement. His protection by the U.S. government is very likely due to what he knows about Bush Junta crimes in Colombia. His protectors couldn't care less about his fate, as to crimes that are not tie-able to the Bush Junta. And, aside from control of the cocaine trade as a factor in this situation, they will not hesitate to jettison him if necessary, possibly in a deal to cover up U.S. involvement in his crimes. (Back in 2009-2010, Uribe and the U.S. ambassador secretly negotiated a U.S./Colombia military agreement that granted "total diplomatic immunity" to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. Though this agreement was declared unconstitutional by the Colombian Supreme Court, it points to U.S. motives in protecting Uribe.)
Mario's theft of peasant lands inspired me to think about venal corruption (pocket-lining corruption) and how it works (its uses to higher ups, its disposition in the justice system), there and here. Why is there not even an investigation of the billion-plus dollars gone missing in Iraq? How was the bankster heist permitted--costing the U.S. treasury any hope of solvency? Who permitted it? They're going after obvious, surface perps, and are being highly selective about those as well. But we did have a GOVERNMENT during this mind-boggling heist. And there are scads of other crimes--including very serious and heinous crimes--for which our justice system has been directed to "look forward not backward." So, big, BIG crime is ignored. And relatively petty crime, by lower rung operatives of the "military-industrial complex," is prosecuted selectively, according to dictates from unseen powers--leaving a whole lot of larcenous operatives in place to be controlled. That's how it works here. And Alvarito, in imitation of the Junta that installed these methods in the U.S., 2000 to 2008, proceeded with the same paradigm in Colombia, starting with his family.
Mario looks like a cheap crook. His thefts are not small and his methods include terror and possibly murder. But next to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their boy Uribe, he is a lower rung crook and looks it. But this phenomenon--cheap crooks--is not limited to Uribe's family. Uribe's government was swarming with them. But it is inaccurate to think of this as flies being attracted to the pig trough. It is a method of contro. It is deliberate. And the difference between Colombia and here, is that the Colombian prosecutors--like normal prosecutors, and like prosecutors in the U.S. in the past--are climbing up the levels of corruption, from bottom to top, in pursuit of the REAL perps. It may be that there are some individual honest prosecutors and judges and FBI investigators in the U.S. justice system, but the Junta that took over here in 2000 is extremely powerful and I'm sure extremely effective at cleaning their trail, where necessary (and have the help of the Democrats, out of fear or collusion). Their power apparently does not extend to the Colombian justice system, although whether or not that system can nail Uribe remains to be seen.
Although Obama/Panetta/Clinton are (thus far) protecting Uribe, they put Santos in power, who seems to be letting the justice system go after the lower rungs, including the higher lower rungs like Hurtado, without the kind of attempted interference (by Santos) that Uribe perpetrated (although the U.S. itself has interfered--for instance, on Hurtado's asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama). Also, four members of the legislative committee investigating Uribe have resigned--some admittedly due to death threats, others possibly death threats or bribes--so Uribe's criminal network is still in place. Also, rightwing death squad murders of trade unionists and others are continuing, and nothing much is being done to curtail abuses like Mario's (massive land theft from peasants). (I don't know what Mario's legal status is. Do you? In any case, the land theft goes way beyond him and probably involves the bigger, protected cocaine operations.)
They are all just cheap crooks--the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's and their "Duke" Cunningham's and Tom Delay's, and Uribe and his many Mario's. Some just wear better suits.
Cheap crooks in nice suits running the world. And "liberals" in nice suits running interference for them. Mario's mug is the "poster child" for them all.
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