Venezuela's Chavez arrives to Colombia to broker hostage for rebel deal

[Judi Lynn]

Source: International Herald Tribune/Associated Press

Venezuela's Chavez arrives to Colombia to broker hostage for rebel deal
The Associated Press
Published: August 31, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez entered Colombia's bitter hostage standoff Friday, seeking to broker a deal between the government and leftist guerrillas to free hostages including politician Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors.

"I ask God that I can contribute in this issue of this humanitarian swap, in the search for peace, a peace for all of us," said Chavez, after stepping of his plane in Bogota on Friday.

Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is holding 45 hostages, including soldiers, politicians and the three U.S. contractors abducted more than four years ago. In return for releasing the hostages, the FARC is demanding that hundreds of guerrillas be freed, including two commanders serving time in the United States.
(snip)

Nevertheless, the families of the kidnapped have expressed optimism the left-leaning Chavez can mediate in a process stagnated by the mutual distrust between the conservative government and leftist rebels.

Chavez was set to spend Friday mostly in meetings with Uribe at the president's farm just outside of the capital, Bogota.

Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/31/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Chavez-Prisoner-Swap.php

[BlackHawk706867]

1. As I stated in a post yesterday, Chavez has to be the greatest...

humanitarian on the face of the planet today! If only the US were so lucky with their leader.

ww

[JTFrog]

2. Is that headline

proper grammar? Are reporters getting dumbed down too or is this acceptable English: "...Chavez arrives to Colombia..."

Sorry, just something I've been noticing more and more of lately.

[Peace Patriot]

4. It strikes me as the mistake of a bilingual reporter. Just a guess. If so, it might be

a good sign (that the reporter actually knows something about Latin America). In general, look down the long url line for the near hidden "ap" (Associated Press), which most often means rightwing, fascist, corporate crap news that cannot be relied upon, especially when it comes to Chavez, Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution (social justice and Latin American self-determination) and the leftist (majorityist) movement that is sweeping South America, that is an increasingly potent political force in Central America, and may come here, too, when North American voters get mad enough and rid themselves of Bushite-corporate controlled electronic voting machines run on 'trade secret,' proprietary programming code.

Did you know that all U.S. election data coming from Diebold/ES&S's "trade secret" voting machines went through one AP computer (to other news outlets) on the night of 11/2/04, when the corporate news monopolies doctored their exit polls (Kerry won) to force the exit polls to fit the results of Diebold/ES&S's 'trade secret' vote tabulation (Bush 'won')? Just a little fact I picked up along the way. Interesting, huh? (--although I think the data was doctored before it ever reached AP's computer.) AP has been a CIA disinformation conduit for some time now, in my humble opinion (--now with a Bush-purged CIA). IHT has been generally better written and more reliable, but look IHT lends undeserved respectability to AP news articles by coming first in the url line, as if this were an IHT article. You then kind of look past the 'Associated Press' in the sub-line. You think it's International Herald Tribune (i.e., brings some sort of international objectivity in its selection of facts, quotes, "experts" consulted, common assumptions and framing). But it is not. It is AP--whose reporters/editors never met a South American leftist they couldn't find SOMETHING bad to say about--repeatedly, in every article, as a mantra (--like "increasingly authoritarian" for Chavez--"according to his critics"--which I tracked to an 'Opus Dei' Venezuelan Cardinal who spent his career in the Vatican finance office during the fascist banking scandals of the 1980s; to that moment, a couple of years ago, nobody had actually said it, except the Cardinal, and it was never attributed--always "according to his critics.").

There have been some omens of slightly better editing/writing at AP lately. We'll see. They may be feeling some pressure from McClatchy News Service which (under the influence of Knight-Ridder, which McClatchy just bought) has been providing some great investigative articles and and hard-hitting pieces on the Bush Junta, and seems to be making a bid for the REAL journalism market (which the American people are hungering for).

I look for sloppiness, too--degraded standards of thought and English usage. I'm not sure that this one is one of those red flags. The "ap" in the url line was of more concern to me. That is a red flag, always.

[JTFrog]

5. Interesting. Thank you. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. Yesterday, the French President asked Chavez to help with the hostages ......

Sarkozy calls Chavez for help on Colombia hostages
Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:23AM EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called left-wing Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to back his offer to try to help secure the release of hostages held by rebels in Colombia, including a French-Colombian politician.

Chavez has offered to act as an intermediary between Colombian guerrillas still fighting a 40-year conflict and the administration of conservative President Alvaro Uribe who has led a U.S.-backed military crackdown on the rebels.

The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has held hundreds of police, soldiers and politicians for years, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, seized in 2002, and three Americans kidnapped while on a counter-narcotics mission the year after.

Sarkozy has made securing Betancourt's release a priority.

"The president took the initiative yesterday to call his Venezuelan counterpart, President Hugo Chavez," Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon told a news conference.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL3082983120070830

[Peace Patriot]

6. As I said in the other thread, imagine "Give peace a chance" as a government policy!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2972477

It's so unusual these days, from our own government--which never misses a chance to make war whenever it can, literally with bombs, or with bullying words, or with torture, or with stealing from the poor to give to the rich--that we are startled. I was. I read these articles on Chavez's peace initiatives with Colombia's rightwing plotters against him, and I was...surprised. Imagine. Then I remembered that, in my long life, this used to be ROUTINE in a world that had seen too many world wars, and had organized a United Nations to prevent disputes from becoming wars, and had developed entire diplomatic corps, well-studied in languages and cultures, to help keep the world at peace. Didn't always work--due to some of the same malefactors we have now, only worse (war profiteers, etc.)--but at least our country and other countries were TRYING. Today, some of the rest of the world has been trying--although they get short shrift in our corporate press (--which promotes idiocy like the rightwing "freedom fries" thing). But our government NEVER TRIES. It's as if it had been taken over by Klingons! And here comes Chavez, doing what should be a normal, common sense thing...and it just kind of blows you away.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Chávez flies to Colombia for talks to free hostages held by guerrillas

Chávez flies to Colombia for talks to free hostages held by guerrillas

Sibylla Brodzinksy in Bogotá and Rory Carroll in Caracas
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, made a bold attempt yesterday to broker a deal between Colombia and leftwing guerrillas to free hostages languishing in jungle redoubts.

Mr Chávez flew to Colombia hoping his unique position in the region could secure a humanitarian breakthrough in his neighbour's intractable 40-year civil conflict.

He was scheduled to hold talks with President Álvaro Uribe before making an appeal to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - Marxist rebels known by the Spanish acronym Farc.
(snip)

Richard Howitt, a British MEP who has campaigned for a humanitarian accord, shared the widespread optimism that Mr Chávez could succeed. "I don't think Chávez is the type of person who, if he fails initially, will walk away and just say, 'I did my best,'" he said.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,,2160194,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

8. This paramilitary operation was mentioned in a chastizement by Human Rights Watch on Alvaro Uribe,

the only strong South American ally of _{George Bush:}

Colombia: Uribe Must End Attacks on Media
Government Should Investigate Charges of Extrajudicial Executions, Fraud

~snip~
According to García's statements to prosecutors and journalists, for approximately three years the DAS worked in extremely close contact with several paramilitary groups, particularly the "Northern Block" led by paramilitary commander "Jorge 40." He claims that these links were established by Jorge Noguera, then director of the DAS and currently the Colombian Consul in Milan. Among García's many detailed allegations, which have received extensive coverage in Colombia, are:

• Extrajudicial executions of labor union leaders: García states that during this period the DAS provided the paramilitaries with lists of labor union leaders and academics, many of whom were subsequently threatened or killed.
  
  
• Electoral fraud: According to García, Noguera collaborated with the paramilitaries to carry out massive electoral fraud when he was Uribe's campaign director in Magdalena state during the 2002 presidential elections. García alleges that the fraud resulted in 300,000 additional votes for Uribe. A similar plan, he claims, had also been implemented in congressional elections in several northern states. If proven, his allegations would confirm recent studies attributing highly unusual voting patterns in the 2002 congressional elections to electoral fraud.
  
  
• Political assassination in Venezuela: García recently said in an interview that the DAS collaborated with paramilitaries in a plot to assassinate several Venezuelan leaders, including President Hugo Chavez and a prosecutor, Danilo Anderson. More than 100 alleged paramilitaries were arrested near the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, and a few months later, Anderson was killed. Based on testimony by one of those arrested, Venezuelan authorities have charged former DAS director Noguera with knowledge of the alleged plot.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/17/colomb13196.htm

[Judi Lynn]

9. Colombia, Israel and rogue mercenaries

Colombia, Israel and rogue mercenaries

Image: Jason Howe
Outside assistance with Colombian 'counterinsurgency' efforts in the form of Israeli 'expertise' has created dangerous rogue mercenaries and prolonged a bloody conflict.

By John C K Daly for ISN Security Watch (03/09/07)

Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos has acknowledged that Bogota had quietly hired a group of former Israeli military officers to advise local defense officials on their counter-insurgency tactics against leftist Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, the Colombian daily Semana newspaper reported on 10 August.

FARC - founded in 1964 and the Western hemisphere's longest-running guerrilla movement - countered that Israeli mercenary commandos were actually involved in combat against their insurgents in Colombia's jungles.

The Israeli advisors - reportedly consisting of three senior generals, a lower ranking officer, an unnamed Argentinean officer and three translators - were hired under a reported US$10 million contract by the Colombian Defense Ministry to advise on how to improve the army's intelligence gathering capabilities. Santos reportedly approached former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami last year about the deal.

The Israeli group operates from Tolemaida in Cundinamarca Department, 240 kilometers from the capital Bogota, where the Colombian army runs its "Lancero" counterinsurgency training course, with Colombian army instructors being assisted by US military personnel.

The Israeli forces specialize in debriefing former guerrillas; previously, the interrogations were handled by civil servants without specialized knowledge, while the Israelis provide specialized interrogation techniques to improve the flow of intelligence from the de-briefings.
(snip/...)

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=18064

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Russia police nab Israeli wanted by Interpol for training militants

<snip>

"Russian police detained an Israeli man wanted by Interpol for training militants when he arrived at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, Russia's agency for fighting organized crime and terrorism reported Tuesday.

Yair Gal Klein, 61, had been sentenced in absentia to 10 years in jail by a Colombian court in 1991 for training militants for drug cartels in the late 1980s, the agency's spokesman said, citing intelligence reports.

Interpol had tipped off Russia's Interior Ministry that Klein could attempt to travel to Moscow in August. He was detained when he arrived at the airport on Monday.

"To get through passport controls in many countries without any difficulties, he changed the date of birth, his surname and the passport number," the spokesman said."

Read more: http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/898286.html

Posted by Scurrilous
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2969316