Colombian students protest Bush visit

[Judi Lynn]

Colombian students protest Bush visit
From correspondents in Bogota
March 08, 2007 09:10am
Article from: Agence France-Presse

BOGOTA students protesting the upcoming visit by US President George Bush to Colombia today hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at police who in turn fired tear gas at the demonstrators.

The protest, staged by about 100 students at a Bogota university, caused the 90-minute closure of a major avenue in the capital.

In the city of Cali, several hundred students and workers took part in a peaceful protest against Mr Bush, who will be in Colombia on Sunday for talks with President Alvaro Uribe, his main ally in Latin America.

Mr Bush will leave Washington tomorrow for a Latin American tour that will also take him to Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico and Guatemala.
(snip/)

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21345523-1702,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Labor Violence in Colombia Imperils Pact

Associated Press
Labor Violence in Colombia Imperils Pact
By SERGIO DE LEON 03.07.07, 11:59 AM ET

More than 800 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia over the past six years, by government count, yet the number of those murders solved can be counted on one hand.

Union organizing can be a deadly activity anywhere but is particularly dangerous in Colombia, where decades of political violence and lawlessness compel some unscrupulous employers to hire assassins.

"There's almost total impunity," claims Flavio Arias, vice president of the CUT labor umbrella organization, which represents Colombia's 530,000 unionized workers.

Now Colombia's reputation as the deadliest place in the world to be a labor organizer threatens to sink one of President Alvaro Uribe's proudest achievements: a free trade agreement with U.S. President George W. Bush, who is expected to use his visit to Colombia on March 11 to press for congressional approval.

The union-friendly Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress are so concerned about the unsolved labor murders that they are threatening to derail the trade pact entirely unless Uribe makes clear progress.
(snip/...)

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/03/07/ap3493835.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. Bush: U.S. gets little credit for generosity in Latin America

Bush: U.S. gets little credit for generosity in Latin America
POSTED: 11:09 p.m. EST, March 7, 2007



Students chant slogans during a demonstration in Bogata, Colombia, 07 March 2007, against Bush's upcoming visit.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President George W. Bush began a weeklong trip Thursday to Latin America, a region where he said the United States does not get much credit for its generosity.

Bush made the comment Wednesday, a day before he will leave for visits to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico to emphasize U.S. programs of health care, housing aid and job creation for the poor.

"The American taxpayer has been very generous about providing aid in our neighborhood, and most of that aid is social justice money -- in other words, it's money for education and health," Bush said in an interview with CNN En Espanol. Since he took office, U.S. aid to Latin America has gone from $800 million (euro609 million) to $1.6 billion (euro1.2 billion), the president said.

"And yet we don't get much credit for it," he said.

Bush's trip is widely seen as an effort to counter the growing influence of leftist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has used the resources of his oil-rich country to try to win allies in a coalition against Washington. Chavez, who has called Bush the devil, has urged protests during Bush's visit to the region.
(snip)

Bonus quote:The Bush administration remains hopeful that his death will lead to grass-roots democratic reform, but so far, Castro's decision to transfer power to his younger brother, Raul, has gone seamlessly.

Bush said Cuba's future should not be based on the fact that "somebody is somebody's brother."
(snip/)

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/07/bush.trip.ap/index.html



Truer words were never spoken!

[Judi Lynn]

4. Knowledgeable remarks from Democrats quoted in this article:

"Countless numbers of trade unionists in Colombia have been intimidated, have been threatened and have been murdered," said Rep. James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who visited Colombia last week.

"Until those issues are addressed, I think there's going to be some rough sledding for the trade agreement."

Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the powerful new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would not back the trade deal despite a lobbying trip by Uribe in November.

Nor would Rep. Gregory Meeks, also of New York: "I don't think the free trade deal with Colombia will be approved in its current form."
(snip/)

[Judi Lynn]

3. The Manta Base - A Key Component of Plan Colombia?

ECUADOR:
The Manta Base - A Key Component of Plan Colombia?
Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Aug 24 (IPS) - Reports that Colombian pilots are operating out of a U.S. military base in Ecuador have caused an uproar among the country's leftwing and indigenous groups, which are staunchly opposed to their country's involvement in the armed conflict in neighbouring Colombia.

A recent article by journalist Juan Carlos Calderón in the daily Expreso de Guayaquil reported that Colombian Air Force (FAC) pilots have long been flying at the side of Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) pilots on joint missions out of Manta, on Ecuador's Pacific coast, 320 kilometres southwest of Quito. The base plays a key logistics role for aircraft taking part in the Colombian conflict.

On Sunday, Rich Boyd, commander of an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) squadron based out of Manta, told the Guayaquil newspaper that one of the AWACS aircraft is operated by a FAC officer.

AWACS planes are flown by U.S. pilots, with an FAE officer as co-pilot to comply with the Manta Base Agreement, in which Ecuador leased the facilities to the U.S. Air Force for anti-drug operations.

The region's major anti-drug initiative is the U.S.-financed Plan Colombia, launched in 1999 by the Andrés Pastrana administration (1998-2002) as a strategy to combat drug trafficking and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

But according to the newspaper account, Colombian pilots are joining the Ecuadorian pilots on AWACS flights.

Boyd said that each country's sensitive and confidential information is protected, because the Colombian officer exits the cockpit when the plane is in Ecuadorian airspace, and vice versa.

He also noted that the United States has 27 such planes, three of which are deployed at the U.S. base in Ecuador. Each is worth one billion dollars -- almost twice the FAE's entire 2005 budget.

Boyd told the newspaper these planes make it possible to monitor all radio conversations and radar signals within a 321.8-km radius.
(snip/...)

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34456