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Last edited by wistahpatsfan; 03-05-2008 at 11:46 PM..
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Columbia is obviously at fault but with the backing of the CIA and Bush they will most surely win. Columbia has violated International law here, not Venezuela.
It's scary how the corporate media has convinced the American public that Chavez is the bad guy here, even after the U.S. sponsored a coup and tried to assassinate a man whose last referendum was voted down and, unlike the "dictator" people have been told he is, has acknowledged defeat.
Quick question: how would you feel about a another country's president covertly sponsoring a coup in the United States and trying to assassinate Bush?
Quick question: how would you feel about a another country's president covertly sponsoring a coup in the United States and trying to assassinate Bush?
Bad analogy. Let's say there was an Al Qaeda branch, who also happened to hold 400 people hostage, operating within the outskirts of the Northern US. If Canada moved in and attacked them, I'd be embarassed for the US because we were allowing them to operate on our land. Then, if I found out the US government had given them $300 million dollars to help fight Canada, I'd be downright ashamed.
There's the correct analogy.
Chavez is funding hostage-taking terrorists, and he and Correa are allowing them free passage in their countries.
Bad analogy. Let's say there was an Al Qaeda branch, who also happened to hold 400 people hostage, operating within the outskirts of the Northern US. If Canada moved in and attacked them, I'd be embarassed for the US because we were allowing them to operate on our land. Then, if I found out the US government had given them $300 million dollars to help fight Canada, I'd be downright ashamed.
There's the correct analogy.
Chavez is funding hostage-taking terrorists, and he and Correa are allowing them free passage in their countries.
So a more correct analogy would be Reagan funding and aiding the contra rebels in El Salvador against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua?
Or the CIA funding and backing the Mujah Hadeen in Afghanistan?
Actually, the best analogy would be the U.S. funding and backing a Columbia government that has committed the same, if not worse, atrocities against union leaders and political dissidents in their own country?
Columbia is obviously at fault but with the backing of the CIA and Bush they will most surely win. Columbia has violated International law here, not Venezuela.
It's scary how the corporate media has convinced the American public that Chavez is the bad guy here, even after the U.S. sponsored a coup and tried to assassinate a man whose last referendum was voted down and, unlike the "dictator" people have been told he is, has acknowledged defeat.
Quick question: how would you feel about a another country's president covertly sponsoring a coup in the United States and trying to assassinate Bush?
I literally cannot believe the spin you put on this issue. It is mind-boggling how blinded and compromised your mind has become regarding the most basic of human rights.
Is FARC not an international terrorist organization which specializes in growing, processing, and selling highly dangerous drugs like cocaine?? Has FARC not engaged in the numerous murders of elected officials, judges, mayors, and even presidential candidates in Colombia?? Does FARC not engage in kidnapping of civilians for purposes of extortion and ransom??
Any group like that deserves to be hunted down and brought to justice; and the only justice that is befitting for such heinous crimes FARC has committed is exile to the North Pole. FARC is a deadly, well-financed terrorist organization, existing for more than 30 years, hiding in the jungles of Colombia, supported by the likes of Fidel Castro and now, Hugo Chavez. Chavez should join FARC in permanent exile to upper Alaska.
If anybody deserves to go before an international court and tried for crimes against humanity it is FARC and Hugo Chavez.
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"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing."
You have no idea how much I'd love it if Columbia's charges stuck in international court.
Nothing better than seeing Hugo with egg on his face... again. And hopefully behind bars.
Not behind bars. This guy is too evil for a regular prison. He is a wanna-be Castro. He thinks he is the new Fidel.
Hugo Chavez needs to be sent to upper Alaska with the clothes on his back and a book of matches; nothing else. He is bad, bad news. His backing of FARC, a terrorist organization which murders elected officials and judges, produces and sells cocaine by the ton -- it is estimated that 70% of the world's cocaine production is done by FARC -- and routinely uses kidnapping for extortion and to influence the government of Colombia and now, probably, Ecuador.
Bad, bad news, these people are.
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__________________
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing."
To understand the current crisis in Northern South America, it is important to recognize what most books and classes on Colombia state from the outset: the geopolitical importance of Colombia to the interests of the United States in the region. In recent years, Colombia has been recognized as one of the last and most hard-line outposts of neoliberalism in Latin America. Others may arguably include countries like Chile and Paraguay, or even Peru; but the shifts towards more progressive governments backed by popular social movements have been widely seen as a reaction to years of dictatorships and pragmatic leftist political parties that, once in power, were as pro-free market as the dictatorships that had imposed neoliberalism with an iron fist in the first place. More recently, countries like Venezuela and Bolivia have promoted people power backed by social movements that have represented at least one alternative to the inevitability of rich and poor, abundance and misery, and have broken at least a few fingers in the 'invisible hand' that, it is claimed, answers all of life's problems.
Without getting too much into that discussion (though mentioning it because it is a part of this story), we can certainly say that, for years, Colombia has been the US' most eager ally in the region: receiving billions of dollars in 'aid' for the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on terror', and more recently, challenging (through force and the threat of force) the revolutionary processes currently underway in Venezuela. Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, has been the staunchest US ally in the region, his discourse mimicking that of the Bush administration. But he takes it a step further. He liberally labels his political opposition 'terrorists' or 'communists in disguise', and has promoted as the only viable path to peace in Colombia the military annihilation of the FARC (the oldest and strongest armed insurgency in the continent). Talking with Colombians, one will almost always hear about Uribe's animosity for the FARC as stemming from the murder of his father at their hands, a personal vendetta. Recall George W. Bush's comments while making his long-discredited case for invading Iraq: "Saddam Hussein planned to kill a US president [his father]."
Uribe has always maintained the stance that he would never negotiate with the FARC. Aside from denying the reality of an armed conflict in Colombia ("We don´t have a war in Colombia. We have a terrorist problem"), Uribe refuses to recognize FARC as a social and political actor. No matter how disgusting their crimes (murders of innocents, kidnappings, drugs, etc.), no matter how despised they are by most Colombians today, they remain a social and political actor. Recently, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez did what Uribe and the US would never do: he recognized the FARC through giving them what is known in international law as 'belligerent status'. This meant that they would have to follow the norms of war (insofar as they exist... Let's assume they do) described by the Geneva Convention and so on. Chavez' reasoning was not that he supported the FARC, though much of the media is zealously reporting this, but that it was a concession he would grant to them in order for them to release some of the hostages they've held in captivity for years. There are thousands of Colombian politicians and citizens held by the FARC, an issue that mobilized thousands against the FARC this past 4 February. But it was Chavez (and Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba), not Uribe, who made the necessary first steps in securing the unilateral release of two groups of hostages in the last two months – huge steps towards a humanitarian accord and a negotiated solution to the conflict. However outlandish his comments may be, Chavez was the 'unstatesman-like' statesman who actually acted on the wishes of the millions who marched on 4 February, not Uribe.
But like I mentioned, Uribe is not interested in a negotiated solution. Upon the release of the first group of prisoners by the FARC, Chavez and Cordoba bargained for an area in which the prisoner release could occur. The reaction of the Colombian government was to bomb the place, nearly killing the Senator Cordoba. The Colombian journalist, Claudia López, wrote an article in El Tiempo, Colombia's national paper, not too long ago, describing the recklessness of Uribe in pursuing military rescue over negotiation. The article was aptly titled, "How many more dead, Mr. President?"
I challenge those who think they hate Chavez in this forum to post evidence of his atrocities. In the meantime, here's a short list of tidbits about Columbian President Uribe, our terrorist friend:
colombia has the highest murder rate of labor organizers in the world.
these murders are often carried out by right-wing paramilitaries closely aligned with the colombian military themselves.
what is worse is that US companies are linked to them too:
Columbia vs. Venezuela (& Ecuador)
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