Former FARC hostage Pablo Emilio Moncayo said at a press conference Monday that he snubbed Colombian President Alvaro Uribe following his release because to thank the president would have made him "a hypocrite."
Moncayo explained that he thanked the presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil, but not Uribe, because "I would have been a hypocrite if I had thanked him," after, in a proof-of-life video made during his captivity, Moncayo aggressively pounded the table and demanded that Uribe "open the door" for his liberation.
Moncayo made his explanation at a joint press conference with former FARC hostage Josue Daniel Calvo, which was called to reveal new details about the two Colombians' time in captivity.
Moncayo revealed that despite his twelve years as a FARC hostage, he still plans to remain in the Colombian military, saying that he wears the Colombian military uniform "with pride."
Calvo also told the press that he is planning to return to military service.
This appeared as a small part of IKN46, out last Sunday:
Colombia: A roadmap to the May 30th Presidential election
This week The Economist ran a note (6) on the Colombian congressional elections of last week that, in my opinion at least, sums up the main story in as few words as possible. IKN continues after the break:
ALTHOUGH he is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term in the presidential election in May, Álvaro Uribe’s influence over Colombia will remain great. As votes were slowly tallied in an election for a new Congress on March 14th, it became clear that parties which formed part of his centre-right coalition will retain a clear majority. Who will command these legislators is less so.
The vote seemed to strengthen the claims of Juan Manuel Santos, a former defence minister who more than anyone else embodies the continuation of Mr Uribe’s “democratic security” policy. Mr Santos’s U Party (that’s U for Uribe) won 25% of the valid votes, and increased its representation in the 102-seat Senate to 28, from 20.
But Mr Santos looks unlikely to win an outright victory, avoiding a run-off vote. He wants a broad coalition with other uribista forces, including the Conservative Party. The Conservatives did well, winning 21% of the vote and raising their total of senators by four, to 22. But their primary, held on the same day, was so close that it was unlikely to produce a result for days. Only then will it be clear whether or not the party offers a strong challenge to Mr Santos.
A less welcome potential ally for Mr Santos is the new National Integration Party (PIN), formed by friends and relatives of former legislators accused by prosecutors of links to right-wing paramilitary militias. This party won nine senate seats and 8% of the valid votes, mainly in the north of the country.
Some of Mr Uribe’s main opponents fared poorly. The left-wing Democratic Pole party lost two senate seats and was outpolled by the PIN. A parliamentary list backing Sergio Fajardo, a former mayor of Medellín running for the presidency as an independent, managed to elect only one senator. Mr Fajardo faces a strong rival for independent-minded voters in Antanas Mockus, who won a presidential primary for the newly formed Green Party, which secured five senate seats.
For most of the past two centuries, Colombian politics was dominated by just two parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. Mr Uribe, a Liberal who ran as an independent and behaved as a Conservative, upset that pattern. He is bequeathing a politically fractured country, even if many of the splits turn more around personalities than policies.
IKN back. At this point, we can say the following about the May 30th Presidential elections:
Juan Manuel Santos is very unlikely to gather enough votes to win during the first round of voting but is a virtual certainty to be one of the two candidates left in the run-off vote. Early polls have him as frontrunner with 25% of voter intention. It would be no surprise at all to see that number float up to the 35% mark and the field becomes more decided.
We now know that seven candidates will go to round one: Juan Manuel Santos (“U” party and probably in alliance with the hard right PIN party), Noemí Sanín (Partido Conservador, Conservative Party), Rafael Pardo (Partido Liberal, Liberal Party) Antanas Mockus (Partido Verde, Green Party) Gustavo Petro (Polo Democrático Alternativo, Alternative Democratic Pole) Germán Vargas (Cambio Radical, Radical Change) Sergio Fajardo (Compromiso Ciudadano, Citizen’s Compromise).
The candidate from the Conservative party is now decided, with ex-Colombian ambassador to the UK and former cabinet minister Noemí Sanín getting the nod over Andrés Felipe Arias (a man better known to the World as ‘Uribito’ (little Uribe) because he proposed precisely the same policies as Uribe himself).At the moment Sanín is a likely (though less certain than Santos) candidate to get through to round two. The alternative “logically possible” to get to round two at the moment is Antanas Mockus.
Whoever wins the final vote will almost certainly make it by standing on a “continuation of Uribe’s policies” manifesto. Uribe himself backs Santos (from his own party, his ex-Defence Minister and general loyal attack dog for many years) but Santos does not have the public backing, charisma and goodwill that Uribe does. Santos is the favourite right now, but if the run-off opponent can talk the same talk as the officialist candidate while offering a more positive personality the whole scenario may quickly change.
Santos may benefit from any friction between the government and the FARC guerrilla movement, as it would give him chance to flex his strong point of standing up to the terrorists. He might also benefit from any diplomatic rumblings between Colombia and Venezuela (Chávez is a favourite bugbear of Santos, and vice versa). In other words, Colombia may be in for a rocky ride in the next ten weeks or so as the law of Cui Bono comes into operation. Already we can see this tactic playing out, as in Spain’s “La Razon newspaper this morning we have a headline quoting Santos that reads (translated) “The alliance between ETA, FARC and Chávez is not a secret” (7).
My personal opinion right now is “too close to call” on this election. The make-up of the runoff will be all important, but until May 30th Santos will make most of the foreign media headlines, get labelled Uribe’s favoured and be considered by many as a shoo-in. However the real battle starts in the second round of voting and the pacts, political alliances and potential power-sharing deals between the two candidates still in the running and those left behind will seal the eventual winner. It really is far too difficult to call a winner right now. The good news for foreign money is that, in general terms, whoever wins will likely win on an Uribe-esque ticket at the very least regarding the economy and very likely in political terms too. The bottom line is that Colombia’s push to be a foreign investment friendly state is unlikely to change course.
On February 28th, Morgan Stanley came out with a new call on Colombia, which you can read pasted below (or download the single page PDF with a single piechart worth looking at here).
Investment conclusion: Political uncertainty in Colombia is rising and should limit short-term market performance. We reiterate our Underweight rating on Colombian equities and we will wait for an opportunity to buy the market when the local IGBC falls below 10,000 points (15% lower than the current 11,725-point level).
What's new: Colombia’s constitutional court ruled by 7-2 against conducting a referendum on allowing President Uribe to seek a third term in office. Recent polls suggest Mr. Uribe would secure almost 50% of the vote intentions in the May 2010 Presidential election. Hence, we believe the court’s decision leaves the country with a political overhang in the short term (Exhibit 1)
What this means for the market: We think the political uncertainty – the top four Presidential candidates combined have only 38% of the vote intentions in recent polls – will weigh heavily on the equity market over the next two months. The IGBC has been the best performing local index in the region (up 7.2% in U.S. dollar terms) year-to-date and it is now due for a correction, in our view.
What’s next: On the political front, there are two near term events to watch:
1) The definition of the government’s new Presidential candidate. Former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, from the “Unidad Nacional” party, seems to be the strongest contender; and
2) Congressional elections scheduled for March 14.
The above shows the difference between the entangled web of lies known as politics and the refreshing honesty of the world capital markets. Or put more simply money talks, bullshit walks. While political analysts wring their hands over the loss of Uribe as President and have been trying to wrestle with the whole "3rd term not good for democracy in Colombia" compared to their gut feeling 'Uribe good' malarkey for months on end, the financial sphere just cuts to the chase. Morgan Stanley (and nearly everyone else out there in moneyland) would much prefer Uribe to play the dictator card, stay in power, screw over democratic niceties and KY Jelly the country's constitution yet again because it'd be good for their bottom lines.
That's how it is, like it or not,Oppenheimer. The USA likes a "good" LatAm dictator installed for decades on end. It's only when a "bad" dictator like Chávez turns up on the scene that cries and squeals for democratic process drown out the sound of the cash till. Morgan Stanley has that crystal clear when it calls the decision against Uribe running again as bad for biz. I applaud MS for telling it like it is and laugh out loud at hypocritical western media.
The insult used by Hugo Chávez against Alvaro Uribe at lunch during yesterday's CELAC summit meeting (the best chronology of events I've found is in this Clarin report, which has Uribe calling Chávez a coward first) was "vete al carajo", a phrase which is difficult to translate but I suppose the general gravitas equivalent in English is "go to hell".
But the origins of the phrase are interesting. On a ship, "carajo" is Spanish for "bird's nest", the little spot at the top of the tall mast where some sailor sits as look-out. In the days of the tallships, pirates, plundering, conquistadores and all that jazz, one of the punishments used by the ship's captain on a long transatlantic voyage was to send sailors to the bird's nest for an extended period; no water, no food, exposed to direct sunlight etc. Since that time, the punishment order, "Go To The Bird's Nest!" (in Spanish 'vete al carajo') has passed into Spanish slang as a "screw you" type of insult.
Today's Spanish lesson over. Three fingers of rum served. The end.
UPDATE: As for the Chavez/Uribe spat, this Bloomie note is pretty fair and balanced. Here's an excerpt:
Chavez told Uribe to “go to hell” during a closed-door lunch yesterday after the Colombian leader called him “a coward” and told him to “be a man” at a summit of Latin American and Caribbean countries in Cancun, Agence France-Presse said, citing a Colombian diplomat it didn’t identify. Chavez said today that he regrets the “painful” argument.
Mexico President Felipe Calderon announced at the summit that a commission headed by Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez will work to facilitate better ties between the neighboring Andean nations.
While lefties and righties champion their favourites in the fight, the people that really matter (Chávez and Uribe) clearly see how stupid and regrettable it all was. It'd be nice to think that that heated moment might become an ice-breaker and the two guys (who are known to have got on very well in previous years) can find some sort of solution to the current bad blood. Otto the Optimistic signing off.
.......is when you're making up. Lemme guess here.... Let's take a wild stab at "one is up for re-election and the other is struggling with just 41% approval in the polls". Cool! I win!
Yes indeedy, after the near two year spat about the trifling matter of bombing the crap out of Ecuadorian territory, Colombia's Alvaro 'Hobbes' Uribe* and Da Studmuffin Correa are getting all pally pally at the gig organized by UNASUR to help Haiti. We've had Uribe putting out bigtime before and during the visit and saying he wants to be friends we've also had Correa saying (for example):
"..... he is glad to see his country and Colombia continue to restore full ties, which were severed in March 2008.
Noting the presence of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the extraordinary Summit of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) being held here, Correa noted at a press conference that both countries have taken important steps to restore their relations.
"We have officials in charge of the business (of restoring ties). In this sense, the visit of President Uribe is very positive," he added."
I do like a happy ending. Pity 230,000 had to die before a bit of sense got knocked into the numb skulls of these two overgrown schoolboys.
...the approval ratings of President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, November 2007 to November 2009.
The bimonthly survey run by Gallup has just registered its lowest reading for Uribe in seven years. Hey, 64% is still better than most and he has a hardcore of supporters that verge of deification over there. But that 64% is also an interesting move, what with the US troops coming to breakfast and the dude battling to get the rules changed so he can be king again and all that. Plus the reasons given below, of course. Here's Reuters with the quotes:
BOGOTA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - A scandal involving accusations of improper state payouts to friends of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has cut his popularity and threatens to complicate his re-election plans, according to a poll released on Friday. Uribe's popularity dropped to 64 percent from 70 percent two months ago, said the Invamer-Gallup survey. Washington's ally in the left-tilting Andean region, Uribe may run for a third term if the subsidy scandal and sluggish economy do not bog down efforts by his supporters to change the constitution to allow him to stand in next May's election.
The conservative leader remains the most popular politician in the country thanks to his U.S.-backed crackdown on drug-running Marxist guerrillas who are widely loathed for their practice of kidnapping.
But the scandal -- in which the opposition accuses the agriculture ministry of handing out millions of dollars in subsidies to businesses and individuals, including a local beauty queen, with ties to Uribe -- has taken a toll.
"It has affected the perception of the government's handling of corruption," said Jorge Londono, head of Invamer-Gallup, which carried out the survey of 1,000 voters in the cities of Bogota, Medellin, Cali and Barranquilla.
Adding to Uribe's troubles, Colombia has been pushed into recession by fallout from the world economic slowdown.
"This is the lowest popularity rating we've ever seen for Uribe," Londono said. "When there is a scandal at a time of slow economic activity, it hurts."
In an amazing breakthrough for world democracy, Colombia's Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP) reports that there have "only" been four deaths due to false positives in Colombia this year.
Yes that's right, folks. Whoop and cheer, because in 2009 only four innocent people were kidnapped by the country's armed forces, murdered in cold blood and then dressed as FARC terrorists by the state servants to make them look like victims of battles...so that the country's soldiers could reach their quota set by Uribe and company and get extra time off.
Your author's meek question: How can any number above zero be cause for celebration on something as jawdroppingly disgusting?
Hit this link to go see The Mex Files' excellent analysis of the recent Foreign Policy article that compares the economies and drug-related problems of Colombia and Mexico. So much neolib dross is bandied about regarding LatAm that it's hard to keep track of it all, but every now and again the crass and facile analyses from the very doctrine that causes, rather than solves, the problems in question needs to be spanked the way Mexfiles has spanked 'em. Here's an extract, but you really need to see the whole thing to appreciate RG's sharp brain at work here.
"Whistling in the dark — claiming that the “war on drugs” is not a factor in foreign investment — is plainly silly. It is. And, while that does make economic recovery all that much more difficult, ignoring the Administration’s creation of a crisis — and mishandling of it — while simultanously ignorning the clear signs of a problem with a one-market export economy — made the Foreign Policy article an exercise in ad hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning..."
Y'know, sometimes I wonder whether all this blogging from LatAm in English is worth it. It sometimes occurs to me that there are enough intelligent people around that can work it all out for themselves without the aid of a safety net or this humble corner of cyberspace, even in the US military.
But just when these thoughts start to well up I'm invariably reminded that the vast, cavernous majority of the commentary available in the English language about matters LatAm is TEH STOOOOOPID....
"....Ecuador ordered the American aircraft out because the new president there, Rafael Correa, was elected with the assistance of drug gangs, and getting rid of those American patrol aircraft has been a longtime goal of the drug smugglers. Correa also allowed leftist Colombian rebels, like FARC, to set up bases in Ecuador. This was exposed when Colombian troops captured FARC documents, when one of those border bases was raided. Correa was very angry about this, and tried to divert attention from his close relationships with the drug gangs and FARC, by accusing Colombia of being an American puppet and assisting the Americans in taking over South America. Or something along those lines...."
...and it keeps me rolling on. I mean, would you actually believe the name of that website quoted above is "strategy page", devoted to all things military and all things...errr...like thinking, right?
So let us salute the other 99% of those souljas who would Change™ the world....
....and remind one another that yes, oh yes, you need IKN in your life. Just admit it.
Even though all the MSM newswires have put out reports from Colombia concerning Uribe, US troops, bases, FARC bombings, relations with Ecuador, relations with Venezuela etc in the last 24 hours (here's an example from the evermore right wing WSJ), not one of them mentions the story that's making Spanish language news down on this side or the Darien Gap. (don't believe me? Well here's a Google News list of 191 Spanish language reports and counting). Once again, the place to get the real news on Colombia in English is reserved for the class news webpage, Colombia Reports. Here's an excerpt from the story:
Uribe, speaking in Medellin, apologized for the breach of Ecuador's sovereignty in March 2008 when the Colombian army attacked a FARC camp in Ecuadorean territory killing 25 guerillas and the FARC's number two, Raul Reyes.
"Concerning the issue of our incursion into the Ecuadorean jungle and the bombing against Reyes, I ask them forgiveness for that," the President said, adding the deal with the U.S. is only to fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.
"Our objective is making an end to terrorism: this is the bandit. Ecuador and Venezuela are our brothers," Uribe said.
Tonight's question: Why don't they want you to hear about this? The soft censorship of your newsflow about South America never ceases to amaze me. Left to the classic media channels you really don't have much of a clue about what's going on down here.
This youtube video is the talk of Colombia and Ecuador this evening and comes from this report.
What it seems to show is the FARC leader 'Mono Jojoy' talking to his troops just after the death of Tirofijo Marulanda, but the explosive information it holds is the part where Jojoy clearly says that the FARC contributed funds for the presidential election campaign of Rafael Correa.
There are no English subtitles and the Spanish is not super-clear so it's really only for those proficient in the language right now, but I've played over the key part several times (minute 3:10 onwards of the 4.14 youtube) and although we don't get the context of the sentence from the moment before Jojoy takes his drink, he clearly says:
"...y ayuda en dolares a la campaña de Correa y posteriores conversaciones con sus emisarios..."
...which translates as;
"...and help in dollars for the Correa campaign and subsequent conversations with his representatives...."
So, here we go with the next scandal, folks. They are never too far in the future down this way.
UPDATE: Ecuador's Interior Minister Miguel Carvajal is reported here as saying:
"We have to verify if the video is real and not a fake. If it is real, the FARC will need to be asked the names of the people they gave money to, because neither the País Movement (Correa's party) or the government has asked for or received money from the FARC."
The above photo is taken from today's "El Chigüire Bipolar"(The Bipolar Capybara) as it reports on yesterday's meeting between Uribe and The Hawaiian and the results of the game of Boggle they played .
I always feel a bit cheesy stealing a Chigüire photo and putting it up here, but it's only cos I want you guys to go over and check out his blog. It's the best Spanish language coverage of Venezuela by a long, long way. If you know the language you just gotta go there early and often, so here's the link; now use it.
Answer: Both countries are in recession but only one of them has a decent, well-run and reliable statistics office.
Colombia's official statisticians hang out at a place called DANE and it's one of the three stats offices on this continent that are always good to take at face value (the other two are Chile and Brazil, by the way). Other stats offices are either too small to worry about (e.g. Bolivia), push the window sometimes without really lying (e.g. Venezuela) or are just plain liars (e.g. Argentina, Peru). Here's Reuters in Spanish this morning on Colombia's ministerial admission that recession has arrived. I couldn't find any English language links yet so the first paragraph is translated.
UPDATE1 Colombia Economy may have entered into Recession
Bogota, June 3 (Reuters)The Colombian economy may well have entered into recession with a drop in GDP of 0.7% in the first quarter, a similar figure to that registered in the last quarter of 2008, Minister of Finance Oscar Iván Zuluaga admitted Wednesday.
If it weren't for the integrity of DANE, Zuluaga would not be out there admitting recession, be in no doubt. If he could get away with the deception and lies of Twobreakfasts he'd do it like a shot, especially when you consider what he said just six months ago:
Nov 23rd 2008: Neither recession nor financial crisis in Colombia, said the Ministry of Finance, Oscar Iván Zuluaga in an economical forum in Cartagena de Indias last week. The Minister, cited by Portafolio, the Colombian magazine on economics, said that the national economic is preserved from the global financial crisis due to a better domestic fiscal scenario, and that Colombia is the second Latin American nation with biggest private investment related to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Go to this link and watch the video report from Australia's ABC channel and watch a really solid, well made report on today's Colombia by Eric Campbell. He does an excellent job of giving both sides of the story and pulls no punches against both the FARC and the government. It's 25 minutes long, so before you hit "play video" make yourself a coffee and find a comfy chair, but do it anyway. This isn't a soundbite special, this is real journalism.
To labour the point, this is great reporting be in no doubt. So good to see a bit of straight talk on Colombia via an English-speaking medium. Here's the link again.
How are those cries of "dictator-prez-for-life!" coming on about Alvaro Uribe in your media of choice up there? Would corrupt family business deals help tip the balance, perchance?
It would have been easy for you guys up there to miss this story, as the only English language report to be found IN THE WHOLE, WIDE WORLD is this one from the recommended Colombia Reports. Isn't it strange how the English-speaking media has completely ignored this big story getting wide coverage in Colombia? Nothing in the WaPo, the Miami Herald, CNN or Pajamas TV with Joe the Plumber. Not even in the "all that's fit to print" New York Times, though considering the NYT's representative down here is more interested in FruityRumPunch and PunchingRumFruities than actually doing any reporting, the lack of NYT coverage isn't that surprising. But I digress.
"What story, Otto?" I hear you cry. Pretty simple really. Two young whippersnappers by the names of Tomás and Jerónimo bought a nice tract of rural land on the cheap in 2006. Then suddenly, the land got re-evaluated by Colombian gov't people and shot up in value because it was deemed the new spot for a tax-free industrial zone project. The original price was 33 million pesos, but after two high ranking gov't officials that needed clearance from the President himself to announce the deal had finished, the land was suddenly valued at 3 Billion Pesos (that's around U$1.3m), a near 100-fold rise in two years.
Nice work if you can get it, of course, but getting that kind of work needs connections. And it just so happens that Tomás and Jerónimo are the two sons of President Alvaro Uribe. Strange that, innit?
I kid you not, folks. There really is a magazine in Colombia called "Jet-Set". Front cover from last year featuring Tomás and bride-to-be (thin, pretty)
In fact, as the original report linked here and from Semana magazine points out at the end of the article, these two Uribe boys have been mightily lucky in business since setting up their real estate vehicle company "Ecoeficiencia" in 2003. Back then the company net worth was 10m Pesos (U$4,400 at today's exchange rate). After doing 'a bit o dis an' a bit o dat' for six years, the company already boasts 1Bn Pesos (U$440,000) just in paid-up capital.
In Caucasia, Antioquia, medics are complaining about the heavier that normal workload of autopsies. In the period Jan 1st to April 25th 2008 there were "just" 46 murders in an otherwise sleepy old town, but this year it's got up to a pesky 102 in the same lapse. "Here we only have one autopsy table and two old storage compartments, and on average we're doing two autopsies a day", said the doc.
As for the atmosphere around the place, here are a few quotes:
"The rumours run from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but nobody knows anything when they're asked about a crime."
"They say that two men were in a hairdressers. On hearing a woman talk about the conflict they made the hair stylist shave her bald and remove her eyebrows, and then gave her 24 hours to leave Caucasia."
"The assassins rent one house in every neighbourhood, which allow them to hide quickly once they commit a crime and we (the police) cannot enter without a search warrant."
"The people fear for their lives, because those committing the homicides are locals, young men that were born and raised here."
So, gentle reader and lover of freedom, how does the situation in Caucasia compare to the US-backed shouts of "oppression!" that comes from the mouths of theVenezuelans with painted hands as they march noisily down streets tilting against windmills? The above is what real fear, real terror and real oppression are all about. When it's the genuine article, noise is replaced by a roaring silence and you rarely get to find out about it.
.........you'll be hearing howls of anti-democratic, thug, dictator etc thrown at Alvaro Uribe (da dude dat got da medal from da Bush last year) as he re-writes Colombia's constitution and lets himself run for a third time as Prez(Spanish language link).
So get ready for the cacophony of boos, hisses and general shouts of "oh you nasty man" from Fox, the WSJ, WaPo, all the McClatchy tribe (headed up by the Miami Herald).
Or maybe not.
Mojitos served.
UPDATE: Borev got the story, too. He's even found a link to an English language report that I can't be bothered to link here, so go find it over there.
We haven't done an update on this for a while, so as the new Mitofsky poll of polls for regional presidential approval ratings was published this week (here's the link to the Spanish language PDF) and we have the Summit of the Americas on the event horizon it's as good a time as any.
Here's the full table, all colour-coded for your dee lek tay shun. The base source for the ratings is the Mitofsky report, but I've also added the latest updates from Angus Reid Monitor (example, Bachelet's recent 62.1% polling from last weekend). Click the chart to expand it if necessary and feel free to swipe it for your own blog, website or whatever (but a h/t this time, please guys, yeah?):
click to enlarge
So now a few selected OttoComments:
Lula: He is Yoda. The end.
Uribe: It's high but it's also dropping. NastyBrutishAndShort was polling 80+% this time last year. It's the economy, stupid.
Calderón: Must be really annoying Lopez "legit" Obrador by polling so well. He's been surprisingly likeable in his first two-and-a-bit years, in fact. An example of the 'art of the possible' definition of politics.
Chávez: Amazing how the Venezuelan majority opinion gets lost in translation via the English media, innit? Media bias is one thing, but ignoring the views of almost 2/3rds of Venezuelans is nothing short of disgraceful.
Bachelet: Probably the best recent performance. Michelle was in the low 40s this time last year. Chileans are going to miss this quality head of state when her time is up at end 2009. We like Michelle, yay!
Correa: Studmuffin wins April 26th. Nuff said.
Lugo: Very likely to drop in the near future, all things considered.
Morales: Steady as she goes, he always polls high 50s.
Ortega: Low at 38% but was a lot lower. Notable that when this ratface STFUs and gets on with the job in hand he gets better numbers. The world would still be better off without him, though.
García: The man least likely to go on hunger strike in THE WHOLE WORLD. Amazing how outsiders think Twobreakfasts is doing a good job in Peru. The man is a disaster.
Klishtina: Ugh. She deserves less and is going to get hammered at the polls in June.
1) If the US funded Plan Colombia (at seven billion dollars and counting) is working, then why hasn't Colombia's cocaine production dropped?
2) If there's the same or even more cocaine being produced at the same time as the FARC is being defeated, then who is in control of the industry now? And who is making all the money?
Any suggestions, folks?
By the way, that chart from an official UN report (available as a download from that Plan Colombia article) doesn't take into account the 27% rise in coca plantations YoY 2008 recently reported by the UN.
On Monday April 13th 2009, President Hugo Chávez plays host to a visit from one of his country peers. Who could it be?
The Axis of Evo Morales? Nope.
Iranian dwarf Ahmadinejad? Nope.
Kim Two of Rocketland? Nope.
All wrong, folks. In fact, to confuse the blueeyedwhitey world that can't seem to handle anything more complex than "you're either for us or against us", it's this dude:
U: Where's the bathroom again? C: End of the corridor on the right.
America's friend Uribe arrives for bilateral talks with Chávez that are aimed at the 'further reconstruction of the dynamic' (or somesuch translated phrase used by Hugo) between Venezuela and Colombia. Sounds fine by me. It also gives a chance to point out that opposites do indeed attract, because it's an open secret that these apparent polar opposites (ok..apart from the shared obsession with re-election) are friends that like, respect and get on well with each other.
