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So Uribe--with Bush Junta backing--has done everything he can to sabotage the release of FARC hostages and to prevent the growing movement toward a political settlement of Colombia's 40+ year civil war--a war on the poor that has earned him and Colombia $5.5 BILLION in military aid from our bankrupt country, to solve Colombia's "labor problem" and to rid its lands of small peasant farmers, preparatory to the Colombian "free trade" deal. The "terrorism" card that Uribe is playing is a joker--like the one Bush plays. For, of course, they are the terrorists. Bush has slaughtered 1.2 million innocent people to get their oil, has tortured thousands, has jailed thousands indefinitely without charge, and has committed far worse and far larger crimes against Muslims than any jihadist group has ever committed against us, or anyone--and that's just the quick description of the reign of terror of the Bush regime.
Uribe--the Medellin Cartel's go-to guy, in his early career, now the Bush Cartel's go-to guy--is himself under investigation for attending a meeting at which a mass murder of innocents was planned; at least 50 of his associates, including relatives, are under investigation, or in jail, for their close ties to rightwing paramilitary death squads and drug trafficking. Thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers and journalists have been killed by these death squads, many of them tortured. Political candidates, voters, and community organizers have been bullied, intimidated and killed. That is how elections are run in Colombia. The Bushites have more sophisticated methods of stealing elections, but the effect is the same--illegitimate, criminal leadership.
In the rest of South America, however, democracy, peaceful change, human rights and social justice are succeeding, spectacularly. Leftist governments have been elected--in election systems that put own to shame for their transparency--in Venezuela, Bolivia (first indigenous president, in a largely indigenous country), Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay (first leftist government), Nicaragua and Guatemala (its first progressive government, ever). The one exception to clean elections is Mexico, where a leftist came within a hairsbreadth of winning (0.05%) in a probable stolen election, with the Bushites rewarding the rightwing with billions of dollars in military aid, also from our bankrupt coffers. If the OAS and others can keep the elections honest, El Salvador and Peru will likely go leftist next year.
Virtually the entire continent of South America has gone "blue"--with the sole exceptions of fascist Colombia, and Peru which is currently run by corrupt "free traders." Central America is getting "bluer" with every election.
This is the reality in Latin America. Colombia is a Bushite dinosaur, with an extremely corrupt and vicious leadership. They not only have sabotaged FARC hostage releases, they tried to hand Hugo Chavez a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages, by slyly asking him to negotiate with the FARC and then bombing the location of the first two hostages that were to be released, sending them back into the jungle on a 20-mile hike, back into captivity. Chavez successfully got them and four others out, a bit later. And because he managed to make a success of it, Colombia then bombed the location of FARC's chief hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, inside Ecuador's border, using ten 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" and U.S. surveillance (and possibly U.S. aircraft and personnel), killing Reyes and 24 others, while they were asleep, and then crossing the border into Ecuador to shoot any survivors. The Ecuadoran military found dead bodies in the pajamas shot in the back.
Reyes was the main contact with Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, and the presidents of France and Venezuela, and possibly Argentina, in what Correa described as "very advanced negotiations," for the release of FARC hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, a French/Colombian citizen and former Colombian presidential candidate, and others. Chavez's success with hostage negotiations had inspired others to proceed in a similar vein, and hope for a peaceful end to Colombia's long war was very high.
Uribe and his sponsors in Washington DC destroyed those hopes, for the time being--with unbelievable treachery. So, this is why no safe ground can be established in Colombia for the release of hostages. Uribe's government and military want war. They love war. War impresses their funders. They kill civilians and dress them up as FARC fighters, to impress the Bush Junta with their "kill score." It is a mutual admiration society.
Plan B--after failing to hand Chavez a hostage disaster--was to draw Venezuela into a war with Colombia, by bombing and invading Venezuela's close ally, Ecuador--deliberately and unnecessarily targeting everyone's hostage negotiator. Correa was furious and rushed Ecuadoran battalions to Ecuador's border with Colombia. Chavez did the same--reinforced Venezuela's border with Colombia. But Chavez, who had avoided the first trap, apparently smelled another one--a war trap (which is surely was)--and talked his ally out of retaliating in kind. Correa settled for OAS and Rio Group resolutions condemning Colombia's action as a violation of Ecuador's sovereignty.
And since that time--surprise! surprise!--Uribe has come up with Raul Reyes' laptop computer, supposely seized at the bombing site, which he claims contains "evidence" that both Correa and Chavez are "terrorist-lovers." Interestingly, one analysis of this "evidence" that I have read points out that the Chavez contacts with FARC are all clustered around the period of hostage negotiations that Uribe had asked him to undertake. Uribe enticed him with hopes of peace--and now accuses him for contacting the FARC.
Rafael Correa is a courageous politician. Under attack by Uribe and the Bushites, with their absurd charges, he now again offers Ecuador as a safe haven for hostage releases. He is also hugely popular in Ecuador, with something like a 75% approval rating. Ecuadorans and the Venezuelans are sick and tired of the harrying of their borders by the Colombian military, rightwing paramilitaries and Bush's phony, corrupt, murderous "war on drugs." Both countries also have to deal with thousands of refugees from Colombia, displaced by Colombia's civil war, and mostly fleeing the rightwing death squads and the U.S. pesticide spraying (which somehow does nothing to stem the big drug trade--the cocaine trade--but does manage to clear the land of small food farmers who grow a few coca leaves for local use, and organize unions).
Colombia's fascist government is THE major problem in the region. Colombia itself is the sponsor of terrorism, quite literally, and it feeds on conflict, just like the Bush Junta. Its neighbor governments want peace. They are good governments, legitimately elected, with social justice agendas. War is ruinous--economically and in every other way. That is why Chavez jumped at the chance to get FARC hostages released, and get peace talks going. That is why Correa did the same thing. That is why the president of France, and the hostage relatives, have begged them to continue. That is why Argentina's Cristina Fernandez offered her help as well. Good governments, and sane and honest leaders, want peace. Only bad governments and insane--or insanely greedy--leaders foment war and actively try to prevent peace. Fear and lies are their M.O. They have nothing else.
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