Colombia cuts ties with Clinton strategist

[Joanne98]

Source: CNN

CNN) – The Colombian government severed ties with Clinton strategist Mark Penn and his public relations firm Saturday, unhappy Penn referred to a recent meeting with the Colombian ambassador as an "error in judgment."

"Mr. Mark Penn, President and CEO of Burson Marsteller, responded to claims by Union representatives who questioned his relationship with the Colombian Government by declaring that it was an 'error in judgment' to meet with his client the Colombian Ambassador on March 31. The Colombian government considers this a lack of respect to Colombians, and finds this response unacceptable," a statement from the Colombian embassy said.

Penn's comments came Friday after it was reported he had met with the Colombian ambassador in his role as CEO of his P.R. firm to promote a free trade agreement with the country that Hillary Clinton has sharply criticized on the campaign trail.

"The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it," Penn said in an issued statement. "The senator's well known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed," Penn said in a statement.



Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/05/colombia-cuts-ties-with-clinton-strategist/

[AlphaCentauri]

1. Uribes government always says one thing today and another tomorrow n/t

[GodlessBiker]

2. If a company or person I paid said that meeting with me was an error in judgment, I would fire them.

[DLnyc]

3. Good.

Glad he (was forced into) rejecting union-busting death squads.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It must have gone against his principles, considering other fascists his company has represented.n/t

[DLnyc]

27. Yes, I don't think he has any problem with death squads,

philosophically. That's why I say it's good that the issue was forced out into the public eye (somewhat).

[atal]

4. Damage control a little too late!

(CNN) — Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn said Friday it was an "error in judgment" for him to meet with the Colombian ambassador to advocate for a free-trade agreement Hillary Clinton has said she opposes.

"The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it," Penn said in an issued statement. "The senator's well known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed."

The meeting, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, occurred Monday. Penn appears to have been acting in his role as chief executive of the international communications and lobbying firm, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide. The Colombian Embassy hired the firm to help achieve congressional approval of a bill allowing free trade with the country — a proposal Clinton has sharply criticized.


SNIP


"I don't think people should come to Ohio and tell the people of Ohio one thing and then have your campaign tell a foreign government something else behind closed doors," Clinton said then. "That's the kind of difference between talk and action and that I've been pointing out in this campaign."

"I would ask you to look at that story, substitute my name for Senator Obama," she also said. "If some of my advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments and basically saying ignore what I'm saying because it's only political rhetoric … I think it raises serious questions."


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/04/penn-calls-trade-meeting-error-in-judgment/


The two-faced Hillary Campaign showing it's dirty face!

[Peace Patriot]

5. Bill Richardson (Gov-NM) was also down south schmoozing with the death squad

rulers of Colombia, on whose behalf it is hard to say. Beneficiaries of the thousands of murders of union leaders, political leftists, small peasant farmers, human rights workers and journalists: Chiquita, Drummond Coal, Occidental Petroleum, Monsanto, major drug and weapons traffickers, the U.S. "police state industrial complex," DynCorp (runs the U.S. military in South America, recently helped Colombia bomb Ecuador--with U.S. surveillance technology and ten 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs," and probably U.S./DynCorp aircraft and personnel as well)--a long list of bad guys.

BILLIONS of U.S. taxpayer dollars larded on the worst government in South America. Now they want a Colombian "free trade" deal (free fire zone against union leaders), to use as economic warfare against the countries who seek social justice--Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina. Donald Rumsfeld is behind all this, believe plan--designing Oil War II: South America.*

We need to rid the Democratic Party of these corporate schmucks, and make it a peoples' party once again.

----------------

* "The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

[catgirl]

7. Mark Penn Fired - By Government of Colombia

Source: ABC News

The Colombian government has fired Burson Marsteller, a firm run by Mark Penn (Clinton chief strategist), for calling his deal with them an error in judgment.

The story is that Mark Penn was hired by the Columbian government to ensure that a Colombian trade deal was passed -- one that President Bush supports but that Sen. Clinton has made clear that she opposes.

When it was revealed publicly that Penn was involved in helping the Colombian government secure the passage of the trade deal, the Clinton campaign released a statement from Penn Friday saying, "The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it."

Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/mark-penn-fired.html

---

It was more than a meeting. It was a deal.

[Yael]

8. Tis going to be ok for BM -- they still have Blackwater and McCain!

[mod mom]

9. Columbia Mining interests, free trade & the Clintons:

When the Clintons Mine Big Bucks
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 03 April 2008

-snip


In June 2005, Giustra provided his luxurious MD-87 jet for Clinton to make speeches in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Brazil. According to Bloomberg News, the tour earned Clinton $800,000 in personal income. Giustra "has since put his plane at Clinton's disposal at least a dozen times to raise money for charity, his wife's presidential campaign or himself," Bloomberg reported.

American law does not permit Giustra, as a Canadian, to contribute directly to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Whether providing his plane to raise campaign money counts as a contribution, I leave to the legal eagles.

A far more telling payoff involved Colombia, which has long faced international condemnation for its well-documented violations of labor and other human rights. In the oval office and after, Bill Clinton never let this get in his way, steadfastly backing a free trade agreement with the country along with a $3 billion "Plan Colombia" to fight drug traffickers and guerrillas. As he publicly told Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and others in Bogota, he was "absolutely convinced that it was vital to American interests that Colombia succeed" against the left-wing narcotraficantes.

In September 2005, Clinton hosted "a philanthropic event" at which one of his aides arranged for Giustra to meet Uribe. According to The Wall Street Journal, the two men sat in the hallway speaking for about ten minutes. A Clinton aide later told Giustra the meeting had gone well.

Giustra wanted Colombian oil. He was working with a Canadian group that subsequently paid more than $250 million to operate oil fields in conjunction with Colombia's state-owned petroleum company. Giustra's associates - now operating as Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. - also signed an oil pipeline deal and was invited to do further oil-development work in Colombia, the Journal reported.

-snip

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040308R.shtml

[catgirl]

14. It's amazing that this isn't bigger news

This crap should have ended Hillary's campaign before it even
got started! Can you imagine if stuff like this had surfaced about
Obama? The news would've been all over it.

And the "loaning" of the corporate jet doesn't equal a large contribution?

[Fridays Child]

10. There is an inner sanctum in DC, the admission to which requires the sale of one's soul.

And within that sanctum, the Ds or Rs at the ends of names fade so far into obscurity as to be rendered meaningless.

[Elspeth]

15. My guess is that Senator Wellstone was unwilling to do this

Which is why he had to go.

[Tellurian]

18. Then why does Obama relegate, The Great Senator Wellstone to a "gadfly"

where's the outrage?

[Elspeth]

22. Link, please

Thanks

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

25. Yeah.

I would love to see a link that bears out that assertion. I am sure you must have one. Maybe over at your website?

[seemslikeadream]

11. Mark Penn = Burson-Marsteller

THE HEAD OF THE COMPANY THAT DEFENDED UNOIN CARBIDE


AND BLACKWATER

AND EXXON VALDIS

AND CHALABI

AND ARGENTINA FASCIST JUNTA

AND THE INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT

AND THE EL SALVADORIAN GOVERNMENT

AND THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT

AND SAUDI ARABIA ON SEPTEMBER 14 2001

AND THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT TO PROMOTE NAFTA

AND ROMANIAN DICTATOR NICOLAE CEAUCESCU

AND SOUTH KOREA South Korea (to avoid discussion of human rights issues during the 1988 Olympics)

AND THE UNITA - The US sponsored Angolan guerrilla army

AND BABCOCK AND WILCOX (for Three Mile Island nuclear accident

[annabanana]

13. huh.. nice company to keep, I'd say

NOT

[stillcool]

16. What a wide variety of interests...

...all that, and U.S. Presidential Campaigns.

[Judi Lynn]

19. My God. Thanks for providing this essential info. I'm saving your post for future reference. n/t

[seemslikeadream]

20. Look what the YES MEN did

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/01/09/bhopl.DTL

On December 3, 2002, the 18th anniversary of Bhopal, the Yes Men posed as Dow representatives and sent out a cleverly snitty e-mail press-release "explanation" of its actions to journalists and activists, made all the more stinging because of how closely the parody rings true. The fake release is a masterwork of irony, quoting a Dow spokesperson as saying, "We understand the anger and hurt. But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and compensation ..."

The fake release was immediately forwarded around the world, and the Yes Men put up a fake-yet-official-looking Web site at www.dow-chemical.com to showcase the release, which received hundreds of enraged e-mail responses from those who didn't realize the site, which strongly resembled Dow's corporate site, was a spoof. The flap was reported in national and international news sources, and the Dow parody site got hundreds of thousands of hits -- and it wasn't long before Dow also came calling.

Within a day of the release, Dow threatened the www.dow-chemical.com upstream provider, Verio. Under the rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Dow's legal reps said, the Yes Men's site violated Dow's copyright in Web design, images and text. Chastened, Verio shut the Yes Men's ISP, Thing.net, down for 24 hours and informed the tiny ISP that it'd have to find itself a new backbone provider. In the meantime, Dow did some swift legal maneuvering. The company discovered that the prankish Yes Men had actually registered www.dow-chemical.com in the name of the son of former Dow President Michael Parker as a joke. Parker's kid did his dad's company a favor and claimed the site from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), arguing successfully that the site was, after all, registered in his name. If you click on www.dow-chemical.com, you'll see it now redirects to Dow's official site. The original Yes Men parody site, however, is still mirrored elsewhere.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Excellent actions by the Yes Men, and by Hardin. Dow and Burson-Marsteller

deserve every possible opportunity for exposure, condemnation, ridicule. The world they've been conspiring against needs to know who the people are who've caused so much suffering. They shouldn't be allowed the protection they crave to conceal their murderous disrespect for their fellow human beings.

Never heard of these guys until seeing your post, your link. It's great they've taken this creative path putting people first, instead of the ugly alternative.

[seemslikeadream]

24. Here's the movie Judi Lynn, It's really FANTASTIC

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5119261857162106907&q=%22THE+YES+MEN%22&total=164&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

[Judi Lynn]

26. Holy smokes! Didn't know this film existed.Just started it,intend to share it,have to thank you! n/t

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

12. The loaning of corporate aircraft, to candidates...

Surely does qualify as an "in-kind" contribution to their campaign.

Sounds like another knot waiting to be untied at Chez' Clinton. Have at it, Obama supporters.

I know about these things from my congressional campaign experience. Just one of those things that floated through the conversations, from the candidate and her hubby. Two whip-smart, well-off and very progressive veterans of banking and Wall Street.

[1776Forever]

17. He seems to get fired a lot - Al Gore fired him back in 2000..........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5394312&mesg_id=5394312

[yurbud]

21. So he's too distasteful for Third World, Bush crony thugs, but not for Hillary?

[C_U_L8R]

28. Hillary's strategist still represents Blackwater

Are they going to fire Penn too?
(seeming as the Clinton campaign just cannot do the right thing here)

[gateley]

29. Another K&R. nt