The recent news that Hillary's campaign strategist Mark Penn had a meeting last week with the Ambassador of Colombia should come as no surprise, as the sovereign state of Colombia is one of his other clients:
Attendance by the adviser, Mark Penn, was confirmed by two Colombian officials. He wasn't there in his campaign role, but in his separate job as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, an international communications and lobbying firm. The firm has a contract with the South American nation to promote congressional approval of the trade deal, among other things, according to filings with the Justice Department.
Susan Davis - Clinton Aide Met on Trade Deal WSJ 4 Apr 08
The Clinton campaign was clearly unhappy with this news but was clear that Penn was meeting solely in his capacity of chief executive. The Colombian government apparently didn't get the memo as their rebuttal was more ambivalent and suggested a 'level playing field' defence involving other campaigns.
- Shaun Appleby's diary :: ::
This statement seems at odds with the Clinton campaign explanation:
A spokesman for Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe said the ambassador met with Mr. Penn to discuss the bilateral agenda. "There have also been meetings with the advisers to the campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain," he said. "It's the embassy's job to explain Colombia's reality."
The spokesman said he didn't know if Mr. Penn was representing Sen. Clinton or Burson-Marsteller, which signed a $300,000, one-year contract with the Colombian Embassy in March 2007 to work on behalf of the trade deal and anti-drug-trafficking initiatives, according to the Justice Department filings.
Susan Davis - Clinton Aide Met on Trade Deal WSJ 4 Apr 08
They seem a bit confused. But wait, there is more to this story, as recently as Friday after the Penn meeting, President Uribe piled on to Senator Obama on his foreign policy credentials, sound familiar?:
In an interview with the Journal's Jose de Cordoba published Friday, Uribe said opposition to the trade agreement would deal a serious blow to U.S. relations with Colombia, one of Washington's strongest allies in South America where anti-American attitudes have been resurging in recent years. "I deplore that Sen. Obama, apparently because he wants to be president of the U.S., ignores all that Colombia has achieved," he said.
Labor unions have fought hard against the trade deal, arguing that the Bogota hasn't done enough to quell violence against trade union organizers. Uribe said that the country had made progress, and that the number of assassinated union members and teachers had fallen to 26 last year from 205 in 2001.
Nick Timiraos - Obama Refutes Colombian President WSJ 4 Apr 08
And here we go down the rabbit hole of surrealistic political statements, emphasising the disconnect between our political realities and some of our erstwhile geopolitical allies, the notion that the number of assassinated union members and teachers had fallen to 26 last year from 205 in 2001 was considered 'progress.'
Obama, quite understandably and to his credit, refuted this argument:
"I think the president is absolutely wrong on this," Obama told reporters on his plane Friday morning. "You've got a government that is under a cloud of potentially having supported violence against unions, against labor, against opposition." The Illinois senator has promised to rebuild America's reputation abroad.
[...]
"That's not the kind of behavior that we want to reward," Obama said. "I think until we get that straightened out its inappropriate for us to move forward."
Nick Timiraos - Obama Refutes Colombian President WSJ 4 Apr 08
Oh well, Hillary opposes this agreement too, right? It's just another misdeed on the part of Mark Penn which her campaign deplores? Right? Well, then why did Uribe single out Obama for criticism? There may be more to this story than meets the eye.
The history of Uribe's presidency and Colombia's role as US surrogate in Latin America, our bulwark against leftist governments like Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, predates their current warm relationship with the Bush administration:
That Uribe singled-out Obama is revealing: the Illinois senator's rival for the Democratic nomination for president in the United States, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, also says she opposes the US-Colombia "free trade" pact. That clearly doesn't worry Uribe: the Clinton organization has a long history of backing - politically and economically - the Colombian far right, its narco-politicians and paramilitary death squads, of whom Uribe is supreme leader. In 2000, then-US president Bill Clinton went on Colombian national TV to announce "Plan Colombia," the multi-billion dollar US military intervention that keeps Uribe and his repressive regime in power to this day.
Al Giordano - Uribe's Attack on Obama Narco News Bulletin 3 Apr 08
Interesting. But these are issues of the past, even though they touch on her claim to foreign policy involvement in her husband's administration, and Hillary is committed to her campaign promises, isn't she? Let's assume so. Who is this guy, Uribe, anyhow?:
Uribe - the emblem of narco-corruption and violent repression of unions and other social movements in Colombia and, indeed, all of Latin America - clearly believes Obama is serious about his positions toward the region that, if implemented by a US president, would ring in a sea change in US policy toward its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.
The United States - under the Bush administration and the Clinton administration - turned a blind eye to the Colombian's government's tacit and explicit backing of paramilitary death squads, often funded by private sector companies and drug trafficking organizations, to break unions, farmer organizations, opposition political groups and assassinate leaders of all of them. As recently as last week, 24 leading religious and human rights groups signed a letter to the Colombian president denouncing statements by an official in his government that contributed to "a climate of political intolerance that fosters violence" toward union leaders.
More than 600 trade unionists have been assassinated under Uribe's watch. Attacks on reporters have made Colombia the most dangerous country in the hemisphere for journalists, too.
Al Giordano - Uribe's Attack on Obama Narco News Bulletin 3 Apr 08
Well, not a nice resume, to be sure, but he's one of our foreign policy stalwarts, isn't he? Why would we negotiate with 'dictators' when we have allies like that?:
His Democratic rival, Senator Clinton, and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, both cling to a failed status quo in the United States' anti-democracy policies of imposition toward its neighbors to the South. Clinton, last summer, went so far as to call Obama's willingness to meet with US-shunned world leaders like Chavez and then-Cuban leader Fidel Castro as "naïve and frankly irresponsible," and her campaign reiterated - after Obama's call last August to ease the Cuban embargo - that Senator Clinton, if president, would make no changes to US-Cuban policy.
Al Giordano - Uribe's Attack on Obama Narco News Bulletin 3 Apr 08
And why would we imagine that Hillary's relationship with Uribe was any different from any good, progressive Democrat's who sought justice, labour freedom and human rights worldwide?:
The Uribe regime, after all, continues a chummy friendship with Bill Clinton, granting him the government's "Colombia Is Passion" Award last June. That, during the same 2007 spring when former vice president Al Gore cancelled his appearance at a Miami environmental conference because he did not want to share a podium with Uribe, the hemisphere's poster boy for state-sponsored terrorism, narco-trafficking, and assassinations of opposition political, labor and social movement leaders. Angela Montoya, representing the awards committee, told AP that former president "Clinton is Colombia's best tourism minister because every time he opens his mouth to talk about the country he's helping to improve our country's image without even realizing it."
Bill Clinton returned the favor by hosting Uribe as a "featured attendee" at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York last September.
Al Giordano - Uribe's Attack on Obama Narco News Bulletin 3 Apr 08
Food for thought there gang. Maybe Obama isn't so 'naïve and frankly irresponsible' after all. Maybe we are.
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