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nefarious schemes for looting other countries and killing whoever gets in their way. And with their pals in the paramilitary death squads killing off candidates, and terrifying voters, who can say what the people of Colombia want?
Uribe's legitimacy is as tenuous as Bush-Cheney's, and he has made a very great mistake in allying Colombia so closely with them. I think Colombia needs outside help, but not theirs - the OAS or UN - or a group of Colombia's neighbors - to broker a peace agreement, and hold elections under better conditions.
I think the U.S. should get out - out of Colombia, out of South America - before we have a second Iraq on our hands. The U.S. has done nothing but harm there - often egregious harm. And the U.S./Bush Junta's "war on drugs," massive military funding, horrid "free trade" deals, and ill intentions on every front are a grave economic and political threat to the region.
Chavez is an important, highly respected, and very much supported player in the region - by right of his position as president of Venezuela and by earned right, in his leadership of the region moving it away from global corporate predator domination, and infusing new independence and pride in the Latin American political atmosphere. Yeah, he mouths off a lot, sometimes to his own detriment, but I like his attitude and his lip, on the whole. Time our own leaders started telling the truths he's telling, about our own servitude to transnational corporations, who clearly...CLEARLY... have no loyalty to us - to the American people - and have royally fucked us over. I'll take mouthy Chavez to our mealy-mouthed corporatists and sneaky "have it both ways" warmongers any day. And he's right about Uribe. The guy is a tool. And he has NOT done well by his people - they're all fleeing into Venezuela!
Colombia needs to have clean elections, in safe conditions, and it needs to establish its INDEPENDENCE - as the Bolivarian states are doing. South America could be - and is going to be - an economic powerhouse, and Colombia's going to be LEFT OUT. Becoming an economic powerhouse requires local control of local resources, people development - education, medical care, help for small and local business enterprises, good labor laws - development of LOCAL manufacturing and other infrastructure development, and pulling together, as an economic block, to get the most advantage that you can for your region. That is what Venezuela is doing, and Bolivia, and Ecuador, and Argentina, and Brazil, and Uruguay, and, to some extent, Chile, and now Paraguay (which joined the Bank of the South). Uribe is colossally wrong, as a politician, to have allied with the Bushites, and to have gone for the easy money - the U.S. "milk train." That train is de-railing, due to gross Bushite mismanagement of the economy, malfeasance and grand theft. And Uribe and his pals have committed the same kind of crimes as the Bushites - including huge neglect of what makes a country viable and prosperous - its work force - and, in Uribe's case, tolerating heinous violence against union leaders. And I think, for Colombia to come out of all this, and have a decent future, Uribe needs to go.
That's my opinion. I have no say in who Colombians want to lead them. That's up to them. But I don't see adequate - let alone optimal conditions - for free and fair elections there. And the only way to change THAT is collective regional intervention. Colombia presents a similar problem to Argentina when it went into World Bank/IMF-induced economic meltdown in 2001. If you have a basketcase on your border - whether from outside economic looting, or civil war - you need to DO something about it, for the welfare of your own people and the region. Venezuela did so, with regard to Argentina. It provided the easy-term loans Argentina needed to get out of debt to the World Bank/IMF, with its ruinous terms--the seed of the Bank of the South. Argentina is now on the mend--well on its way to recovery. Venezuela thus helped to create a healthy trading partner for itself, Brazil and other countries.
Colombia isn't an economic basketcase YET (although its reliance on billions of U.S. tax dollars could turn it into one, fast), but it IS a political basketcase. This civil war has been going on for more than thirty years. 2 to 4 million people have fled the country, and are refugees in Venezuela. And its alliance with the Bushites has made it unreliable and devious, and a bad actor, whom other leaders are rightfully suspicious of. The best solution is a peace settlement, with some outside entity sponsoring safe elections. That seems to me to be what Chavez and others are aiming at. Uribe is nothing if not a survivor. He might get himself actually elected - but without paramilitary intimidation of voters, I doubt that he can. But that is neither here nor there. My point is that with the Bush Junta - and Donald "Iraq Disaster" Rumsfeld - meddling in the region, infusing billions of dollars into rightwing military and political activity, and doing their best to "divide and conquer" - the best solutions for Colombia and the region are difficult to pursue, and probably impossible to achieve.
How long is this civil war going to go on? Another thirty-plus years? And how long are U.S. taxpayers going be footing this huge bill, when we're already looking at a $10 trillion deficit, and we're already funding two other corporate resource wars?
I think that what nettles Chavez is that he offered the hand of friendship to Uribe - he met with him and accepted his apology for Uribe's pals and their assassination plots against Chavez - and even went ahead, and got two of the FARC hostages released, despite every manner of obstruction and backstabbing from Uribe (under orders from the Bushites, I'm sure), and he can't understand how any leader, with his peoples' interests at heart, could act like this. He was willing to work with Uribe, and achieve things that would be a credit to Uribe as well as Chavez, he was willing to forgive and forget the personal affront of the assassination plot, and put his own socialist political beliefs aside, and achieve something, together, with a rightwing leader, no matter how that leader was elected or (s)elected. He was trying to "turn" Uribe, to bring him on board for the regional cause. And he appears to have failed. And, Chavez, being who is, doesn't hide his disappointment in Uribe.
But Chavez is right, on this. A regional solution is needed - for all of their economies, and for Colombia's endless conflict and dependence on Washington. He's right, Bacchus. Even if you despise him, he's right. Colombia cannot thrive as Washington's puppet. And that is the "cutting to the chase" that is needed.
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