Bush urges approval of trade deal with Colombia, raps Democrats for blocking vote

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Bush urges approval of trade deal with Colombia, raps Democrats for blocking vote
By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press Writer
9:56 PM EDT, September 20, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe renewed their push on Saturday for Congress to approve a free-trade deal before lawmakers leave town to campaign for re-election.

"It's in our economic interest that we continue to open up markets in our neighborhood, particularly with a nation that is growing like yours," Bush told Uribe in the Rose Garden. "And yet we can't get a vote out of Congress. I've been asking the Democrat leadership in Congress for a vote, and they've consistently blocked the vote."

Congressional Democrats say they are delaying votes on trade deals involving Colombia, Panama and South Korea until the Bush administration resolves questions about the impact on U.S. jobs and other issues. But time is running out on the legislative calendar. The Colombian pact was negotiated in late 2006.

Bush urged lawmakers to reconsider their opposition, but seemed resigned that it might not happen on his watch. Bush called Uribe an "honest man" who has responded to U.S. concerns about crime in Colombia and has been successful in reducing homicides, kidnappings and terrorist attacks.



Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/nationworld/ats-ap-bush-colombiasep20,0,4118872.story

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How dare Democrats embarrass _Bush in front of his puppet.

[midnight]

1. I'm tired of Markets being opened up to the world so that the

rich can screw us. The rich can not work with the money from the last eight years, and are asking more americans to jepordise their family incomes so the markets can mirror their greed.

[arcos]

2. Keep it up Bush!

Although I don't think Obama will bring a substantial change in these topic, the push by the Bush administration to get the approval of these agreements, I hope will certainly help Democrats. They would be stupid not to use it. :)

"Free Trade Agreement with Colombia? That's a NAFTA extension!" :)

[jeff30997]

3. Bush called Uribe an "honest man"...

Yeah,and Chimpy is a saint.

[BulletproofLandshark]

4. It's the DemocratIC leadership, you worthless turd. n/t

[happygoluckytoyou]

5. McCain "you wont fool me this time... he's the president of Spain, right?"

[happygoluckytoyou]

6. McCain "you wont fool me this time... he's the president of Spain, right?"

[bluesmail]

7. FUGWB

AMERICA WAKE UP

[Judi Lynn]

8. To die for:Being a trade union organiser in bottling plants used by Coca-Cola in Colombia is a dange

To die for
Being a trade union organiser in bottling plants used by Coca-Cola in Colombia is a dangerous business - they are prime targets for death squads. Can Coke be held responsible? Mark Thomas follows the trail from Bogotá to New York
The Guardian, Saturday September 20 2008

~snip~
This building is where we meet two men, Giraldo and Manco. They arrive on different days and give their testimonies separately, but they tell the same story. Campaign posters in the room where we talk demand boycotts and justice; the images are of handguns painted in the company colours of red and white. The names and pictures of dead trade unionists are everywhere. Giraldo and Manco knew these men, they were friends and relatives. Now they speak of how they died.

Oscar Alberto Giraldo Arango is 42, but he carries a few more years on his shoulders. Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists - since 1986, 2,500 of them have been killed. "To be a trade unionist in Colombia is to walk with a gravestone on your back," the two men told me the first time we met - and they looked as weary as if they had physically borne their stone.

Giraldo was raised in Carepa, Urabá , in the north-west of the Colombian countryside near the Panama border. He started work bottling Coca-Cola in 1984, at the Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá (Drinks & Foods of Urabá) bottling plant. When he told his friends, they congratulated him on landing such a good job. And it was, too. The union had done well for the men, securing bonuses, overtime and health benefits. But this was not to last. Graffiti announced the paramilitaries' arrival in Carepa in 1994: "We are here!" Shortly after the graffiti appeared, so did the bodies.

The first Coca-Cola worker and trade unionist in Carepa to be assassinated was José Eleazar Manco, in April 1994. The second was killed days later on April 20. He was Giraldo's brother, Enrique. In the mornings, Enrique travelled to work on the back of a friend's motorbike. Three men emerged from the side of the road and aimed guns at the bike, forcing it to stop. Enrique was dragged off into the bushes.

When Giraldo got to work, everyone was talking about the kidnapping; soon, anxious speculation turned to mourning. Another man arriving had seen Enrique's body dumped at the side of the road.

~snip~
Carlos Castaño, leader of the paras, claimed that 70% of his organisation's funding came from the cocaine industry. But he was also an ardent supporter of neoliberal economic policies and of multinational investment in Colombia - so why shouldn't national and international companies support them? In a newspaper interview, Castaño maintained there was always a reason for the paras' attacks. "Trade unionists, for example. They stop the people from working. That's why we kill them."

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/20/colombia.cocacola?gusrc=rss&feed=business

[EFerrari]

9. Time is running out. Uribe is going to be Vicente Foxed.

You'd think he'd know by that prior example that the cabal will never accept him as one of them.

[Ian David]

10. Just because they kill everyone who tries to create a Union, what's not to like? n/t

[and-justice-for-all]

11. They blocked the vote....

because, which was left out of his comment, shrub will not answer simple questions as to how it will effect US. Would it be because if they pass this, it will allow companies move offshore even more easily and with benefits to boot??

[Karenina]

13. And further enable the free flow of weapons?

[Judi Lynn]

12. Labor and the Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Labor and the Colombia Free Trade Agreement
Thursday 18 September 2008

»
by: Phillip Cryan, Foreign Policy In Focus

When Congress failed to pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement earlier this year, there was little doubt on either side of the aisle about who should take primary credit for the pact's defeat: organized labor. Whenever Democrats explained their opposition to the agreement, they started and finished with the issue of violence against Colombian labor leaders. At every opportunity they pointed out that Colombia leads the world in assassinations of unionists. To the Bush administration and most Republicans in Congress, the trade pact's failure was a clear case of the AFL-CIO holding their Democratic colleagues hostage.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) summed up the case against the trade deal that ended up winning the day - for the moment, at least - nicely. "Many Democrats continue to have serious concerns about an agreement that creates the highest level of economic integration with a country where workers and their families are routinely murdered and subjected to violence and intimidation for seeking to exercise their most basic economic rights and the perpetrators of the violence have near total impunity," he said. This is different political terrain than where debates over free trade deals are usually fought.

Human Rights

Far more than any previous debate over a trade deal, the political contest over the Colombian agreement has come to focus on questions of basic human rights - and labor rights, in particular - instead of the usual back-and-forth about protectionism, minimum acceptable standards, technical aspects of the agreements' design, and the proper definitions of "free" and "fair." Organized labor in the United States "made Colombia a unified bottom line," said Jeff Crosby, the president of a Communication Workers of America (CWA) local in Lynn, Massachusetts and a longtime activist on Colombia policy within the labor movement. As a result of that political effort, together with the simple fact that "Colombian human rights is so obscene politicians did not want to be associated with it," the trade deal went down, Crosby told me.

"The year 2008 may enter history as the time when the Democratic Party lost its way on trade," a Washington Post editorial mourned. While the Colombian accord was never officially voted down - one of the reasons the debate over its passage is still with us, as we'll see in a minute - it was nevertheless the first bilateral trade deal Congress rejected. For many Democrats (remember Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's strategist who wound up quitting her campaign over his lobbying for this agreement?) as well as Republicans, this was a sad event indeed. The Post editorial - the title of which likened Democrats' choice to saying "Drop Dead, Colombia" - took on the human rights issues central to the debate directly, castigating opponents of the agreement for their "decreasingly credible claims of a death-squad campaign against Colombia's trade unionists."

Never mind that Colombia's own foreign minister admits her country continues to lead the world in the number of unionists assassinated each year; the numbers assassinated have been going down, and U.S. labor has ulterior motives. Oh, and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe is also a demigod (not to mention the only remaining close ally the United States has in South America), so the "death-squad" claims must be overblown.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/article/labor-and-colombia-free-trade-agreement