I think the comment
YANKEE, GO HOME applies to about 90% of the articles on Truthdig.
I think thats a good idea.

I sense Amy’s anger toward her former love child Mr. Obama.

What’s the matter Amy, feeling angry that you were duped?  Mr. Obama is inter
changeable, with every single president since The Great Cowboy.

He will do exactly as he is told. Drug policies will not be changed can you imagine what
would happen to our banks that are being kept from insolvency by laundering drug
money?

A better plan might be for Central and South America to sanction the good ol USA for a
few months. That would sure as hell get someone’s attention. How about a suspension
of drug sales and smuggling for a few months?

Prices would sky rocket and millions of addicts from coast to coast would go apeshit.

Their parents and relatives in the Washington hive would demand action. The banks
would run short of funds. It would be Kaos.

How about a 10 million addict march on Washington?

In January 2012, when Iranian president Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited four Latin American states (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador),  The Washington Post, had claimed that Tehran is trying to woo Latin American states who are shunning it. However, none of the Israeli media or Jewish bloggers claimed that Ahmadinejad’s staff members were involved with hookers in those four countries.

http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/oas-summit-spoiled-by-hookers/

moonraven,

Thats the diplomacy of which I speak, They mostly showed Obama their back.

Patrick:

Some of those leaders made their asses unavailable for kissing, too—Ortega and Correa boycotted the summit and Chavez went to Cuba instead.  Dilma Rouseff, Evo Morales and Cristina Fernandez left early once they heard the Old Gringo Bullying Yadayadayada.

Gulam:  You are preaching to the choir when you post to me.

The gringo grunts wanto to kill all the non-whites they can get in their cross-hairs, but first they want to rape all the non-white women they can grab.

The Cartagena Caper is tpical—they think all non-white women should give them pussy for free, even ones who have clearly stated their price.

Obama refused to be democratic at a forum on Democracy with his peers and fellow leaders and demonstrated to the region and the world how fucked up the United States has become.  In diplomatic language he was invited to kiss their collective asses.

We have to normalize relations with Cuba and address some of the valid concerns of these southern neighbors of ours whether we like it or not.

Thank you, Milord, for your sense of optimism.  I do wish I could share it with you.
Im trying to remember all the things that Obama has accomplished so far…..I have to admit, I am not impressed in the least.
Obama’s signiture achievement, Health care reform, in my opinion is an absolute failure and sellout to the insurance industry and Big Pharm.  If he had fought like hell and lost, I could get over it.  But he didn’t.  He capitulated without so much as a serious disagreement. 
I didn’t like the assasinations of Obama bin Ladin and Libya’s Kaddafi.  They should have been brought to justice.  That is what civilized nations do. 
I don’t like that it is now ok to assasinate US citizens or hold them, like other nationals, without habeous corpus protection. 
Obama’s supreme court picks are unimpressive too.  His war policy is to continue occupation of Afganistan even though it is very clear by any standard, that the war is lost.  So was the war in Iraq.  War is just a racket to make profits for the defense industry.  The military, and of course, the CIA, continue to be unaccountable to congress or the American people.  They have no budget which they are obligated to consult or abide.  There is no way to account for the amount of treasure they spend.  Nothing has changed on that count since Bush.
The so called War on Drugs continues and Cannabis is still persecuted despite Obama’s campaign rhetoric.
I guess he tossed us leftys a crumb when he appointed Linda Solice to the Department of Labor, but the NLRB has gone without a quorum because the president has not asserted his appointment responosibilities.
Bush’s faith based initiatives are alive and well under Obama and that urks me to no end.  How dare they do that.  Some of us believe, as the late Christopher Hitchens wrote, that God is not good.  The US Constitution remains as irrelevant under this administration as it was in the last.
The Bail out was inadequet and most should have gone to the people who spend the money in this society and not to the corrupt crony capitalists who just hord it.
White collar crime and war profiteering should have been vigoressly proscecuted during this administration.  War Crimes too.  But rendition continues and our overcrowded prisons are cruel and inhumane for a civilized society.
Congress is a world laughingstock.  Noam Chomsky has said that what passes for debate and deliberation is off the irrational spectrum of international behavior.
There is just too much wrong and too little effort by the Obama administration.  I don’t feel like he is on our side.  He sides with the 1% and talks well while he throws us a few (very few) crumbs.
I’m sorry, Milord.  I just don’t see anything to be hopeful about with the Obama presidency. He will be reelected because, I believe, that has already been determined by our corrupt electoral system.  But I will support and vote for a third party candidate hoping that it will effect the debate in the long run.
Thank you also, Milord, for the nice comment about my web gallery.

Moonraven you made a reference to the prostitutes at Cartagena scandal.

Why is it that nobody ever questions the American right to go in and build for
their “service people” (or allow to be built) brothels and bars, right in the heart
of Kabul? This is one of the first things that happened; they were up and flying
by early 2003. Such places of business had never been there before. This was a
seriously religious Muslim country; imaging a federal occupation of Salt Lake
City in which someone was allowed to build a built a bunch of whore houses for
the soldiers right in heart of the nicest residential district. Anybody who wanted
to rule peacefully over the Muslims or the Mormons, or make them into close
allies, would never do such a thing. None of the experienced diplomats whom
America and Europe had had out there for decades would have done such a
thing. But, it did happen, and the press never talks about it because the
feminism angle has them stuck.

This was a stunt that came right out of the first generation of women as serious
players in Washington think tanks. They chose as their target those patriarchal
Pashtuns, whom they would show a thing or two. I can show you the reference
in UN records where it states that under the Taliban government the number of
girls attending school increased steadily and reached record records for
Afghanistan. The Swedish committee had been in there building schools, and,
as elsewhere in Asia the boys went in the morning and the girls in the
afternoon. The Taliban refused when outsiders wanted to score points by
building separate girls’s schools. The hysteria about the Taliban, who were after
all religious students, was created by Washington think tanks. The Afghans
were exporting food with a zero carbon footprint. They had to be stopped. And,
America needed a new feeding frenzy for its military/supply/aid/press/careers
machinery. This is the forth Anglo/Afghan War, and these are a simple, pastoral
people off in the middle of Central Asia who have seriously threatened nobody
for centuries.

I don’t know about that surfer, I think Failed Rogue State comes closer to the truth.

hawkny:

Prostitutes in latin America may be cheap—some of them—but they are not FREE!

The agents got into hot water by starting a fight when they refused to PAY!

And, just to point out your racist bedrock:  There are plenty of prostitutes in Latin America that are NOT cheap.  or at least, they are out of YOUR price range.

Gulam:  Thanks for posting something that actually coinsides with reality!

This site is so crammed with trolls (volunteers and pros), lunatics, patriots pimping for genocide and for the interests of the super-rich, knee-jerk racists smearing white supremacy dreams and folks who come here because they apparently have no place else to go, that it’s extremely rare to read something here that is not just word salad or hatespeech.

This point in the article is the central one:

“Dempsey is right. It also served as a metaphor for the U.S. government’s ongoing treatment of Latin America.”

Spot on:  The US government’s ongoing policy towards Latin America is:  Fuck ‘em and refuse to pay!

The Us grabs all the natural rsources of Latin America that it can—but the only “refined” or “manufactured” products it buys from latin America are:

Black tar heroin
Cocaine
Mariguana
Synthetic illegal drugs.

Dilma Roussef, Brazil’s president, took Obomber to task on the refusal to buy other manufactured goods in both her meeting with His Royal Skinnyass in the Oval Office as well as in the roundtable economic discussion in Cartagena.

He just frowned and then showed all of his 350 teeth and changed the subject.

His presence in Latin America for 3 days is not that of a gift horse that should not be looked in the mouth, but of a trojan horse that should be booted out on his bellicose butt.

He refused to allow Colombia to invite Cuba—to which Colombian president Santos said in his opening speech:  No more summits without Cuna.  Correa and Ortega both boycotted the summit to protest.  Chavez did them one better, and went to Cuba for radiation treatment.

He refused to entertain the possibility of legalizing drugs, although it is the dominant posture in latin America, where thousands and thousands and thousands have been murdered, disappeared and displaced since NIXON kicked off the gringo War on Drugs in the early 70s—a war which has always been outsourced to Latin America and where the profits of gringo arms dealers have been enormous—and continue to be the main reason why drugs have not been legalized.

He nattered on about free trade—this time putting the bite on Colombia.  No hemispheric agreement can beput in place because Morales, Chavez and Diego Maradona took out shovels and buried the hemispheric free trade agreement that Bushbubba went to Mar de Plata to “impose” in the 2005 summit.

He made his usual bellicose barks at Venezuela—a posture not welcome in Latin America nor anyplace else.  Venezuela’s chancellor responded by indicating that the US is out of touch with global reality.  BINGO.

The agents whored and boozed it up and started a fight by refusing to pay the whores.

Hillary put on her dancing shoes and headed out to a bar called La Habana to wiggle her beerkeg body and make a fool of herself.  If she’s campaigning for 2016, she got plenty of exposure here:  made the front page of La Jornada the next day—in full color, too.

Grigos do not know how to behave themselves—not at “home” (sic for a colonial settler state they call the US), nor abroad.  They are the Ugly Americans of this hemisphere.

To proletariatprincess:
I believe the fact that our current President is better spoken and seems more reasonable is, indeed, a good thing. I look at what he has accomplished (despite constant negative and often spurious attacks, I might add) and I wonder what he could have done with even the slightest cooperation. Don’t let your “whisper of hope” be silenced by disappointment over what could have been.
The photos on your website, incidentally, are marvelous.

Yes, thecrow, that is right. With UN Demining I was in Kabul,
Kandahar, Herat, Gardez, Jalalabad, and Jaji in 2000, and
everywhere the people were pleased as punch to have the
Taliban finally providing some kind of authority and protection
for the common people . The Taliban Government cut the
number of road blocks from Kandahar to Kabul from 28 to five,
and they totally stopped opium production. That season I saw a bit of opium for
personal use growing here and there in Badakshan and the Panjsheer, but I saw
no large stands of it and none at all in the Pashtun South.

When I first arrived in Kabul I had to threaten an old Hazara shop keeper in
Kabul who had once cheated a friend of mine, in order just to get a piece of
hash, and when he dug it out of its hiding place his hands were trembling. The
Taliban had put a stop to the opium production entirely. When asked about a
crop for opium someone would roll his eyes and draw a finger across his throat.

Remember where all the opium was said to be coming from during the Vietnam
War years? Yes, it was said to be coming in from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia,
another reason Americans had to drop more tons of bomb on Cambodia alone
than were dropped on all of Europe during WWII. Go read up on how involved
Air America was in heroin production. The whole war on Drugs is an American
scam, and their spooks and mercenaries clearly play both sides. Over an over
we have discovered that drug money was used to fund off-record military
boondoggles. They they turn, accuse the enemy of being behind America’s
addictions and use that as yet another excuse for their military occupation.

People who believe that half-educated Arabs with box-cutters planned an
attack sophisticated enough to penetrate multi-billion dollar American security
systems will believe anything, and anyone who thought that meeting in the
wilds of Afghanistan was necessary or even useful for planning that is a
complete moron. Those who think that major steel-frame skyscrapers can be
melted with kerosene never did enough playing with fire as young boy to have a
clue how the real world operates. Any America that can gloss over and ignore
the attack on the USS Liberty long ago lost every shred of its self-respect and
its liberty. By and large the whole world of Islam was a sleepy, satisfied
community living by ancient laws and habits that would have seemed
comfortably familiar to anyone raised in remote, small town, religious, America
of a century ago. This whole attack on Islam has been intentionally carried out
in order to destroy their religion and culture, so that those lands can be
dominated by the same industrial money that has given America its media and
consumer products circus.

Proletariatprincess I like the handle. Mr. Debs saw a lot of violence in his life . I think he offered that suggestion in his later years. When he began to associate with Democrats out of a need to make a living.Voting for the lesser evil is giving up your principals . Sortta like Roberto Duran saying NO MAS after Ray Leonard scared him into submission.

I am convinced now that the only way to have my vote count is to cast it for a third or even a 4th party candidate. 
I think it was Eugene V. Debbs who said that it is better to vote for the one you want and lose than to vote for one you don’t want and win.
The whole system is totally corrupt and dysfunctional.  If it were not, the situation we are now in could not have come to be.  We need a new form of government (including the department of Justice) that is more immune from the evil influences of money and power.  The parlimentary system seems to function better in other countries, but I recognize that none are perfect.  And yet, ours is one of the worst among the industrialized nations.
I would like one day to not be ashamed of my country’s foreign policy.
Some kind of revolution is past due in the USA.  Let us hope the good guys prevail.

I am convinced now that the only way to have myt vote count is to cast it for a third or even a 4th party candidate.  I think it was Eugene V. Debbs who said that it is better to vote for the one you want and lose than to vote for one you don’t want and win.
The whole system is totally corrupt and dysfunctional.  If it were not, the situation we are now in could not have come to be.  We need a new form of government (including the department of Justice) that is more immune from the evil influences of money and power.  The parlimentary system seems to function better in other countries, but I recognize that none are perfect.  And yet, ours is one of the worst among the industrialized nations.
I would like one day to not be ashamed of my country’s foreign policy.

Straw man. We never knew what Obama thought judge by his actions not words

Obama or Romney? Which is the bigger liar? Which is more in the pocket of the Kleptocrats? Which will more likely stop Amerika’s crimes against humanity? Which one do you like the least? Screwed now or after Nov. ‘12? What difference does it make? Elections are meaningless! The time draws nigh for rebellion, starting with electoral boycotts and a general nationwide strike to bring this corrupt regime and its criminal economic system down once and for all! FREE BRADLEY MANNING & TIM DeCHRISTOPHER!!!!!!

SO Amy are you still soldiering for Obama after another foreign policy disaster in Latin America? Great post Crow. Hawkny why continue to alibi this Friedman accolyte. University of Chicago is where all the worlds current financial woes sprang from. Obama’s an alumnus

It’s hard to determine what Obama really thinks anymore, given the yawning chasm between what he campaigned on and his subsequent actions, but I am gradually reduced to believing that if he actually recommended any progressive (rational) policies, he would be be torn to shreds by the willfully ignorant.

Each passing year dims my hope that any president could overcome the hidebound hologram in which at least a plurality, if not a majority, of the electorate dwell.

Politicians do not like to initiate controversy with major policy changes in
an election year.  Thus, anything the president said in support of the status
quo on matters concerning drugs, Cuba, etc…has to be taken with a grain
of salt.  His views after the election is over will count, that is, if he wins.  As a matter of opinion, it
is high time that marijuana usage be de-criminalized at the Federal level. 
Further, it is high time we started normalizing relations with Cuba, despite
the impact doing so might have on the political feelings of the Cuban community in south Florida. 
They re holding the rest of the country hostage.  It has to stop.

No unions, no contrats….  it is that simple….  We need jobs that pay living
wages in America…  now, Barak!!!

As to the scandal in Cartagena, the Secret Service used to be an elite corps
of federal agents with a very narrow mission.  That has changed to the
point where the secret service is no longer secret.  They are a run-of-the-
mill policing force now with a far too broad mission.  Run- of-the- mill policemen,
if given the opportunity will “party” whenever they think they can get way
with it.  They are mostly young, full of testerone, and, usually,  not too smart.  This is
what happened in Columbia.  Young guys, on the loose, in a country where
prostitutes are a dime a dozen….and cheap.  Too tempting to avoid but the
got caught…now they pay the price with criers in ruined…etc.  Stupid.

Although I didn’t vote for him, I did have some whisper of hope that Obama would be different.  That he would end the rediculous drug war like FDR ended prohibition.  Now I know that my initial instinct was correct:  Obama is as bad or worse, in many ways, as GW Bush.  The fact that Obama is better spoken and seems more reasonable is not a good thing…it just makes him more capable of continuing the outrage that has destroyed the USA as a credible and reasonable voice in the world.
Fortunately, most of the rest of the world has figured all this out by now and the USA has lost credibility and prestige.  They have figured out that the world would be better off without the involvement of the USA. 
USAmericans are still, for the most part,  clueless.

What is the content of the colombian trade deal anyways?  Export more of our manufacturing jobs to cheap colombian workers as usual?

“Taliban’s Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Say

May 20, 2001

The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement’s ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world’s largest crop in less than a year, officials said today.

The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of the world’s opium and most of the heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season.”

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/just-say-no/