Kind of no shit news

Preparations are underway for renewed US militarization and intervention in Latin America. To protect its own hegemony and economic interests, the US government is using the threat of terrorism as an excuse for military operations aimed at destabilizing leftist movements and governments and securing natural resources such as oil and gas.

By focusing on social programs in education, land reform and healthcare, many of the region's new leaders have put the needs of the people ahead of the demands of multinational companies. This leftist resurgence makes corporate investors and other harbingers of the free market nervous. Recently, the Bush administration has gone to extreme measures to ensure that this leftist trend is put in check.

Hundreds of US troops arrived in Paraguay on July 1st for secretive operations and are believed to be populating a military base 200 kilometers from the Bolivian border. Political analysts in the region consider this questionable activity to be part of a strategy to quell popular uprisings in Bolivia -- where upcoming presidential elections are expected to favor a leftist candidate -- and take over the country's vast gas reserves.

Bush administration officials blame of left-leaning "instability" in Latin America, particularly in Bolivia, on funding and support from President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Lately, Bolivia has gone through politically tumultuous times; protests against plans to privatize the country's gas reserves have ousted two presidents in two years....

Speaking to reporters on the same trip, a top Rumsfeld aid charged that Cuba had, "reactivated its underground networks throughout the region, particularly in Bolivia," and warned that Cubans were, "providing political guidance, stimulating street violence and attempting to discredit the country's democratic institutions."

However, US officials have yet to offer any evidence to support these claims, citing concerns that doing so would reveal secret sources....

The US is justifying its current military presence in Paraguay by citing Islamic terrorist activity in the triple border region where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet, an area home to the largest water reserves in the hemisphere. In March, William Pope, the U.S. State Department's principal deputy coordinator of counterterrorism, said that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is believed to have visited the tri-border area for several weeks in 1995.

See also this on the situation in Paraguay: "Gringo, Go Home!"