(and was horribly tortured as well)--and since the recent former president of Brazil was imprisoned for union organizing during the same era, and since the president of Uruguay was imprisoned (and tortured) on the same charge as Berenson, and since the recent former president of Chile was imprisoned for her family's leftist political activity and lost her father to torture and murder, and since the president of Nicaragua led the guerrilla force that defeated the fascist regime in that country, and since the president of El Salvador heads the party that led the guerrilla war against the fascists in El Salvador (but was too young to have been a participant), it's way past time for Lori Berenson to be free and come home.
Likely the only reason she served 15 years for merely being a member of a leftist guerrilla group--like the president of Brazil, the president of Uruguay and the president of Nicaragua--is the U.S. government's dominating influence in Peru, on behalf of U.S. and Canadian transglobal corporations. All of the above fascist regimes in Latin America--regimes so horrible that they drove future presidents to support taking up arms against them--were supported by the U.S. government and even tutored in the uses and torture and oppression by U.S. agents. The U.S. has NEVER supported democracy in Latin America over the last half century and is still actively trying to defeat it. This is why President Obama's statements about U.S. "concern" for democracy in Venezuela the other day were so egregiously hypocritical. There is nothing wrong with Venezuela's democracy. Venezuelans have elected and reelected the president they want--a president who can stare down Exxon Mobil, who fights for the poor majority and who survived a U.S.-backed fascist coup due to vast public support. Can we say the same? Do we have the president we want? Would we be permitted to elect the president we want, today? While Venezuelans vote themselves a "New Deal," can we?
The answer is no. We do not have that power any more while Venezuelans DO. So WHOSE democracy is in peril?
Peru is still in thrall to the Bushwhack-arranged U.S. "free trade for the rich" agreement. That agreement--like every other such poisonous agreement--has not benefited Peru's poor majority, but Peruvians, unlike us, still have a working democracy and were able to elect a leftist president who has pledged to mitigate the impacts of "free trade for the rich" but who evidently can't extract Peru from U.S. Corporate Ruler claws. At the least, though, he got Lori Berenson through the airport and President Obama got her home. "The times they are a-changing" in Latin America--big time. And while I appreciate some aspects of Obama/Panetta policy in LatAm that are more realistic than Bush Junta policies in the face of this vast leftist democracy revolution that has occurred, it will only take a few strokes of the keyboard in ES&S/Diebold's tech basement to toss those policies over in favor of coups and war, and some of what Obama/Panetta are doing in LatAm--including this non-stop demonization of the Chavez government in Venezuela--appears to be prep for war...to be instigated by ES&S/Diebold's next choice for U.S. president?
Lori Berenson is home, at long last, after having suffered one of the longest prison sentences for leftist guerrilla activity ever inflicted. She never harmed anyone. She was young and merely fell in love with a guerrilla group member and supported that group because of it. She was even less culpable--if fighting fascist oppression in the American Revolutionary tradition can be considered a crime--than the above mentioned presidents of their countries. Is this a good omen--signal of a reality-tempered U.S. policy that will hold? I don't know. I hope so. If it isn't--if U.S. war profiteers have their way--what we will see is a permanent alienation of the northern and southern halves of this hemisphere, as the south heads into their century of democracy and prosperity, and the U.S. loses another war for the Corporate Rulers.
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