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[Teneb]

I don't think US imperialism is as severe in South America as it used to be, say 50 years ago. Though granted, we still see South America as being in our sphere of influence and ours alone and see it as our personal backyard from time to time, despite mostly ignoring South America.

Yeah, it's not as bad as it used to be back in the days of US-backed dictatorships, but 'staters are still seen as an acceptable target (it is very rapidly being dropped in Brazil for a Left vs Right split).

[Reelya]

I don't think US imperialism is as severe in South America as it used to be, say 50 years ago. Though granted, we still see South America as being in our sphere of influence and ours alone and see it as our personal backyard from time to time, despite mostly ignoring South America.

You don't have to go back quite 50 years. The peak meddling was Reagan/Bush Senior. Remember that the invasion of Panama was just over 25 years ago.

The democrats (Carter and Clinton) tended to dial it back however - Carter signed a deal to return the Panama Canal to local control, then Bush Senior invaded Panama a few years before that deal could go ahead, then Clinton beat Bush in the election, and he went ahead with the planned handover. Basically, if Clinton hadn't won the Republicans probably would have reneged on Carter's deal: they were still yelling about how the communists would get us if we do that right up to 1999, but of course since the Soviets fell, this time they were claiming that the Communist Chinese would take over Panama if we hand back ownership.

Bush junior just didn't focus on the area because he was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they did massively prop up their regional proxy - Colombia. So you have a muddled policy there where Bush was basically funding a highly aggressive local rising military power (Uribe's Colombia) as an "Israel"-like proxy. And there is a far amount of evidence of US involvement in the 2002 Venezuela military coup, plus they were cheering Colombia when those guys bombed Ecuador in 2008. Basically, there's good evidence that the Republicans were trying to move to a "proxy" situation with Colombia like they have with Israel, e.g. a permanently aggressive client state justified because of FARC.

But when Santos did the FARC demobilization deal then all that planning went to shit basically. Note that the Republicans have been screaming murder over the FARC peace deal. Google "republicans on farc peace deal" and all the stories are about the Republicans wanting to block peace. They don't want civil war to end in Colombia, because FARC in Colombia is their main excuse for propping up the Far Right in Latin America.

[smjjames]

Or their position is that they view the FARC as terrorists, but really, it’s the same thing as the US tending to view South America as our personal stomping grounds.

[Reelya]

I'm really skeptical of that terrorist point. The republicans backed the amnesty for right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia in 2002/2003, The Bush Administration even de-listed them as a terrorist organization to make it all work. And those guys were responsible for around 80% of all civilian casualties in the civil war.

This is just a rather extreme form of partisanship from the Republicans. Propping up right-wing people literally as bad as Hitler and trying to prevent an accord with the rebels they're fighting, since they know that would be the political end for the type of aggressive militarism in Colombia of the type Uribe was pushing.

[smjjames]

You mean left wing, the Republicans are right wing and FARC are communists/socialists which is left wing.

[Teneb]

You mean left wing, the Republicans are right wing and FARC are communists/socialists which is left wing.

No, Reelya is saying that the Republicans are propping up people who are Hitler-tier bad, rather than propping them up as being Literal Hitlers.

[Reelya]

You mean left wing, the Republicans are right wing and FARC are communists/socialists which is left wing.

No i don't. Maybe you just didn't parse my statement properly.

Or you don't know who the paramilitaries are or the history there. Here' an overview for clarification of why i did mean right wing when I said right wing:

- The paramilitaries are the extreme-right, they have strong links to Uribe's family and political allies.
- They were responsible for 80% of all civilian killings in the civl war, including torture and rape of children. one favorite was chainsawing people in half, including kids.
- popular Para targets were unionists, teachers, human rights activists, journalists, etc. Basically, hired goons killing liberals and protesters, while the government called them "Secret FARC members".
   - NOTE: this stuff is why I can legitimately say they are "hitler level" bad. Pro-government assassin squads straight up murdering the political opposition. Squads made up of insane chainsaw murderers at that.
- The paramilitaries were declared terrorist organizations by the Clinton administration
- Bush Administration then de-listed them as terrorists.
- They then got given an amnesty by Uribe. Basically admit killing kids is bad, and the government slaps you on the wrist "well now you know! don't do it again" and lets you go

So, this is the right wing I was referring to.

[smjjames]

I didn't quite parse it properly, Teneb got the misparsing.

The not knowing who the paramilitaries and the history (other than that it was a civil war, had been going for some time, and was/is brutal) is true, but it really was a misread of the sentence as I was reading pretty fast.

[smjjames]

Turns out the sattelite signals weren't from the missing sub, no word yet on what they think those were from, but yeah, bad news and popping the bubble of everybody hoped. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42055676

[Helgoland]

   - NOTE: this stuff is why I can legitimately say they are "hitler level" bad. Pro-government assassin squads straight up murdering the political opposition. Squads made up of insane chainsaw murderers at that.

That's not Hitler-level bad, that's just Stalin-level bad. Hitler-level bad is qualitatively worse.

[scriver]

Being trapped underwater with oxygen running out is one of my absolutest worst ways to go. I really hope they're okay out there somewhere, somehow.

[Reelya]

   - NOTE: this stuff is why I can legitimately say they are "hitler level" bad. Pro-government assassin squads straight up murdering the political opposition. Squads made up of insane chainsaw murderers at that.

That's not Hitler-level bad, that's just Stalin-level bad. Hitler-level bad is qualitatively worse.

There are mass-graves with thousands of bodies that have been discovered by UN inspectors near army bases there. They've been exterminating whole villages, and to give you an idea, they are the world leaders in trade union murders. But by "world leaders" I mean they kill more than the entire rest of the world combined:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Colombia

Between 2000 and 2010 Colombia accounted for 63.12% of trade unionists murdered globally.

Seriously, they win the "murdering trade unionists" world cup.

And to give you an idea, the Colombian army in 2008 published their kill-count figures, which were 110,000 for 2002-2008 even though there are less than 30,000 rebels. And remeber, 80% of the killings aren't the official army, but by the allied paramilitaries. Basically, i just haven't documented the scale of this shit for you, but it's big. It's not as concentrated as the Nazis, however they were at this for around 10 times the length of WWII.

The most current report on killings is 220,000. However, I think there are a number of categories of killings by pro-government forces that they aren't counting in that.

[Sheb]

Yup, pretty much Stalin-level.

[Reelya]

Also another thing I didn't touch on was the systematic kidnappings and murders by the official army of teenagers. Basically from 2002-2008 it was common practice to round up random young people (or lure them with fake employment adverts), dress them in fatigues then machine-gun them down and claim they won a battle against rebels. Just the ones that are known and identified that are being prosecuted exceeds 3000 murders of this type, and this only covers roughly 2002-2008. You see, Uribe gave Colombian soldiers cash bonuses and promotions based on bodycounts. The head of the entire national army was  personally implicated in doing this stuff and had to resign - it's how he got promoted in the first place:

For its part, HRW notes that at least 44 alleged extrajudicial killings were carried out by the Fourth Brigade under the leadership of General Montoya (who then later became the army’s top commander), while at least 48 alleged false positive killings were carried out by the Ninth Brigade under the leadership of General Lasprilla Villamizar.

And since that 3000 is only a tiny fraction of the kill-count claimed by the Colombian military for the 2002-2008 period ... it's anyone's guess as to how many their actually were.

EDIT: aaaand my figures are out of date. They're now saying around 6000 deaths for that particular scam:
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/colombian-army-killed-innocent-civilians-to-boost-rebel-body-count/
 
However, if you want to compare them to the Nazis then it needs to be done on a proportional basis. What percentage of the population of Europe did the Nazis kill vs what percentage of Colombia did the army+paras kill? Since the population Colombia is about 10% of the population in Europe circa 1940, then you'd have to inflate their kill-count by about 10 to get an estimate of how genocidal they actually are, which assuming 200,000 deaths caused by the army+paras (inline with the 220,000 figure and the fact that the pro-government forces are responsible for the vast majority of killings) then that's the equivalent of wiping out 2 million people in Europe in 1940. Proportionally, they are almost in line with the Nazis.

[Helgoland]

Okay, the 'killing young people' thing is more like Mao. But apart from that - yeah, it all sounds like early Soviet Union stuff.

You gotta remember: The terrifying, qualitatively different thing about the Nazis is not the scale of the killing. It is that they killed not for material reasons, but for abstract ones - selecting for qualities that neither their victims nor society as a whole was necessarily aware of, and that were intrinsic to their victims, i.e. could not be changed at all. They slaughtered people for reasons that were essentially aesthetic, not political.