The US accused Bolivian President Morales of acting like a four-year-old ? Good God ! How evil and low can the US go ? How unexpected and surprising !

Thank you, Wikileaks !

Obama needs to take a long hard look at US dimplomatic efforts in developing countries. 'Business as usual' is deeply despised and a dismal failure. A new paradign is called for.

US presidential empathy for the long suffering South American public and giving public support for political leaders who want to lift their poor out of poverty by asking wealthy elites to share more of the burden would hit the right cord, not just in South America, but domestically and around the world.

But Obama seems afraid at the vehement reaction that this would provoke from Murdock and his legion of Fox attackers.

But business as usual has a down side. Obama's liberal democratic support is evaporating. He seems set to become a one term president. Obama needs to re-invent himself as a fighter and champion for the downtrodden. By showing backbone against those responsible for the GFC and deal with the obscene gap between rich and poor is a high risk, high reward strategy. Win or lose it will make him a legend.

Business as usual after the Bush years will mark Obama's term as the great dissapointment. The few modest achievements he has wone from a broken polical system is just not the kind of change we can believe in.

Last I heard, Murdoch had one vote, just like the rest of us. [How naive !]

The point is: there are tens of millions of hicks in the US. No, that's not news, but they also vote, and usually for candidates for Congress who are hysterically hostile to Obama. He does represent the threat of change and, as you say, any strategy to bring about change is a high-risk one. Give him a break.

And does this have something to do with the vast continent of South America, you know, the one which stretches from Antarctica to level with Vietnam, and has about three US bases across twenty million square kilometres south of Colombia ?

For the first time for decades, the vast majority of South and Central American countries are both free of US bases and led by left-wing governments. Whether they succeed or fail in changing their policies and structures, is to a very large extent up to them, and to their supporters.

Sucking up to a reactionary right-wing dictatorship like Iran won't really promote a socialist agenda, but that seems to be what some of the more phony populist governments are doing. If I were the US, I would certainly want to keep tabs on that nexus. Perhaps Wikileaks can fill us in ?

Joe

South American nations are so heavily addicted to drug war money from the US that they will even invite them to pesticide bomb their own country. It is an addiction bordering on pathological considering the clear evidence of overtly harmful consequences of waging war against their own people i.e. the rise of the drug cartels and the widespread corruption of the police and military.

South America is it's own worst enemy.

After the title of the piece I expected to hear that the US was funding right wing revolutionaries.

But in fact its worse. The US is registering its disapproval in unkind language. And its considering not donating quite as much money to the workers paradise, whose leader ( And chief coca grower )has claimed to want to be "the US permanent nightmare". By any independentt assessment, Morales behaviour does, at times, look like that of a four year old.

I think the South American leaders might have more to say about Assange were he leaking their personal cables. These are the documents which might actually uncover the truth for the people of South America.

But no dictatorial regime will have its cables leaked because
1) Assange isn't interested in real dicators
2) Real dictators secrets are closely guarded and those who reveal them risk their lives and those of their families.