U.S. OPPOSES INSULZA’S REELECTION AT OAS

Source: Santiago Times

U.S. OPPOSES INSULZA’S REELECTION AT OAS
Monday, 13 July 2009
Criticism Directed At Support Given Chávez And Cuba

National media reported this weekend that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has twice stated to Chile’s government that the U.S. will not support the re-election in 2010 of Chile’s José Miguel Insulza to head the Organization of American States (OAS).

Insulza, a former Chilean Interior Minister, apparently rubbed the U.S. the wrong way following his leadership role in the OAS’s decision to readmit Cuba to the organization. Cuba was removed from the OAS in 1962 .

The U.S. wanted stricter regulations to be imposed on Cuba to assure greater democracy in the country. Clinton was reportedly unhappy with Insulza’s personal attempts to get Cuba unconditionally reinstated.

Insulza’s position was further undermined by Clinton’s naming Costa Rican President and Nobel Prize winner Óscar Arias as the sole negotiator in the Honduran crisis , ignoring Insulza’s efforts, reported Chile’s conservative media this weekend.

Read more: http://www.santiagotimes.cl/santiagotimes/index.php/2009071316667/news/political-news/u.s.-opposes-insulza-s-reelection-at-oas.html

Latin American countries are sovereign nations, not pools of cheap labour for American corporations or source for hired help by American elites, of which you are one.

Goddamned neoliberals are as imperialistic as the neocons they replaced.

This is more evidence that Obama Administration intends to re-colonize Latin American, supporting military coups, and getting rid of anyone that does not bend over to America's will. Let's face it, this is Reaganism without Reagan.

Hillary's only experience with Latin America was with the hired help at her big New York home.

The Obama Administration is no friend of ours, and is an enemy of progressive governments in Latin America.

"We"? Don't you live in Indiana?

Do you know anything about the situation in question? The Obama Administration is trying to encourage democracy in Cuba, which, with the exception of the two border countries (and Russia, as Ms. Palin will tell you), is the closest major country to ours. This is not some attempt to colonize Latin America or something, and your sentiments to the contrary are bizarre. Geez.

all people are The People - so yes, we.

I agree with IndianaGreen. Hillary Clinton is no liberal, and she's not for the people. She's for the corporations. Fuck her.

I feel nauseous.

Well, we need to put this news in the same bin with learning that James Carville and company (Stanley Greenberg, Jeremy Rosner, etc.) managed the campaign for Bolivia's President Goni, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.



Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada
Their razor-sharp sense of moral perspective :sarcasm: allowed them to back the same man who had his miltary gun down many, many Bolivian people who were protesting his government's impossible policies.

http://www.narconews.com.nyud.net:8090/images/gonitrial_filomena1.jpg

Filomena León a few days before her death.
Photo: Verónica Auza
This woman, Filomena León, suffered, paralyzed for months before dying with a fist-sized hole in her back. Because she was one of MANY who were shot, but didn't die on the scene, she was not counted as one of the 67 murdered by Goni's troops.

~~~~~~~~~~

Several times over the past few years I and others have written in this space about both the criminal and civil legal cases against former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in connection with the government killings that took place under his command in September and October 2003. In the nearly six years since, the families of those killed and wounded in that repression have sought justice from the deposed president and his chief ministers, with little result. Sanchez de Lozada himself remains in self-imposed exile in suburban Maryland, enjoying the political protection of the U.S. government.

This week begins the historic trial of the President and those top aides before the Bolivian Supreme Court. In the U.S. people concerned with this case have been engaged in a series of activities to draw attention to U.S. support for Sanchez de Lozada, including pamphleting his Maryland neighborhood last night to let their neighbors know that a man charged with murder lives, politically protected, in their midst.

http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2009/05/trial-of-gonzalo-sanchez-de-lozada.html

when her campaign apparatus is advising the Pinochettis. Poor Honduras. :(

the party which championed civil rights, does it?

How CAN these people stand on the side of the viciously radical, anti-democratic racists in Latin America?

Not a bunch of perpetually outraged pseudo-revolutionaries.

They have nada to do with the party.

but you're a real Democrat, because you oppose Obama's foreign policies. That makes sense. Not.

ETA: And it doesn't really matter how often you post that I am unreliable or unAmerican or against the party. You're too transparent for anyone to take seriously, let alone the people that have worked with me for years.

what great Democrats they are, how much in line with the Democratic Party they are, when that detail seemed to slip their minds all throughout the _Bush regime, when they boasted of their firm support for his aggressive actions toward Latin America.

They just never brought it up back then. Now, they are busting at the seams with pride in being "Democrats."

Didn't Hillary belong to the Republican Party when she was younger? I could swear I heard she worked for Goldwater's campaign.

I doubt she has EVER been spiritually connected to the heart and soul of this party.

http://espressoroastblog.com.nyud.net:8090/bush_clinton.jpg http://aftermathnews.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2007/06/bush_clinton_kennebunkport.jpg

http://www.prisonplanet.com.nyud.net:8090/Pictures/Sept05/220905clinton_bush.jpg

Maybe he should spend less time trying to bash me and more time learning about our party.

http://www.changetowin.org.nyud.net:8090/connect/images/mark_penn.jpg

From last year:

Today's Wall Street Journal contains a fairly damning story about Mark Penn, the chief strategist for Senator Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign:

Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist met with Colombia's ambassador to the U.S. on Monday to discuss a bilateral free-trade agreement, a pact the presidential candidate opposes.

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....

Howard Wolfson, communications director for Sen. Clinton's campaign, said in an email that "Mark was not there on behalf of the campaign" and referred further questions to Burson-Marsteller. "Sen. Clinton's opposition to the trade deal with Colombia is clear," Mr. Wolfson added.

More:
http://www.changetowin.org/connect/2008/04/mark_penn_has_to_go.html

And the writing is on the wall about the FTA with Colombia. President Obama went from a firm stand on behalf of the workers of Colombia who have been getting slaughtered by death squads with a clear line directly to Colombia's President's cabinet, since his own D.A.S. chief, Jorge Noguera was found to have been giving hit lists to the death squads containing not only the names of politicians and indigenous leaders for them to assassinate, but union workers, as well.

Now we learn President Obama is leaning toward that FTA, by god, claiming he believes Uribe is going to start doing something about clamping down on the torture and assassination, even done publicly, of union workers.

Sure sounds like you are.

this is why this particular Zorro always takes the side of the landed gentry against the peasants, just as Captain Esteban did.

lol

Keep this shit up and see how many that voted for these crooks will bother to vote for them again.

So maybe not so unfathomable.

Al GiordanoPosted: July 14, 2009 12:37 AM
Lobbyist Lanny Davis Seeks a Rematch with Obama over Honduras Coup

Dear Mr. President:

Remember, during the 2008 presidential primaries, the constant screeching national media presence from lawyer-lobbyist Lanny Davis? Yeah, him. The guy who night after night went on every cable TV channel to scream that Obama wasn't electable, that Obama couldn't win swing states, that Obama couldn't win white voters, that Obama had to explain his position on race, that Obama couldn't answer the 3 a.m. phone call...

He's baaaack.

And now he's representing the Honduran coup d'etat.

Yup, one of those very same bottom-feeding lobbyists who you banned from your administration is now out to prove that you really are the "inexperienced" rube he said you were.

And (as your Spanish-speaking US citizen it is my duty to inform you) the way that much of Latin America sees it, your administration - and particularly your Secretary of State - are being successfully played by.. cough... cough... Lanny Davis!

Who can forget Lanny's January 17, 2008 "Open Letter" to you, asking: "What Exactly in the Clinton-Era Nineties Did You Not Like?"

Well, other than lobbyists wagging the dog of Washington (in general) and Lanny Davis (in particular), I'll bet that heavy-handed US policy over the previous 28 years (including the 1990s) toward Latin America didn't leave a good taste in your mouth either, Mr. President. It certainly didn't down here.

When Lanny Davis bellies up to the roulette wheel and shouts "bet on red" you know it's the hour to put all your chips down on black. The guy is a walking, talking piece of inverted litmus paper with a bow tie, like on February 28, 2008, when he lectured, "Recent Polling Data Shows Serious Concerns About Senator Obama's "Electability" over Senator McCain vs. Senator Clinton's."

Or when, on March 2, 2008, Lanny Davis claimed:

One in five white Democrats (20%) would defect to Senator McCain if Senator Obama were the nominee.

Mr. President, you won 85 percent of that group last November.

In that same tome, Lanny wrote:

When the phone rings in the middle of the night at the White House, isn't it valid for voters to ask whether Senator Obama tends towards indecisiveness, given his past record of ducking votes, voting "present," or saying "I don't know" when asked how he would have voted on the war -- all the while criticizing Senator Clinton's "judgment" for voting for the resolution at the time?

See what he's trying to do with the Honduras coup, Mr. President? Lanny Davis' Honduras gambit is an attempt to prove that he was right all along: that you are "indecisive," and that you'll "duck" your civic duty to put the hammer down on the coup through the tools at your immediate disposal: full-on economic sanctions and by unleashing your law enforcement agencies on the gang of money launderers, narco-traffickers, ex-Cuban terrorists and others that have conspired and acted to turn Honduras into the rebirth of the 1950s Batista project in Cuba: a veritable mobster-state and safe haven for all of them.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-giordano/lobbyist-lanny-davis-seek_b_231152.html

Who's behind Lanny Davis' putsch paycheck?
Posted by Bill Conroy - July 14, 2009 at 9:13 pm

Following the money trail in the Honduran coup

Going to bat for an illegal coup used to be the job of shadowy CIA operatives back in the good ol' days of the Cold War.

But that is bygone era. Today’s junta-enablers no longer have to work in secret. In fact, illegal usurpers can now shop openly in Washington for a hired gun of their choosing to grease the wheels of Congress and commerce to assure their coup d'état remains a fait accompli.

Enter Lanny Davis — a long-time friend and Yale Law School chum of Hillary Clinton and former White House Counsel to Bill Clinton .

Davis also is a lawyer and lobbyist now employed by the D.C. office of global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. In that capacity, Davis was recently retained by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) to hawk for the coup in Honduras — or as is the preferred description among the pushers of simulation, the administration of “de facto” Honduran President Roberto Micheletti (elected by virtue of having cast the most bullets in deposing the people’s choice in Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya).

Davis is now scampering about the Hill setting up meetings with Congressional insiders and throwing money around on advertising and other such frills to build a case for supporting the new militarily elected Honduran regime.

Davis may be many things, but one thing he is not is cheap. So the question is begged: Whose paying for this charade?
The best way to get a peek under those covers most certainly should be to take a look at who is in bed with CEAL, Davis’ current contract employer.

More:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/07/whos-behind-lanny-davis-putsch-paycheck

(1) Hillary is no liberal? I don't know where to begin. We'll agree to disagree.

(2) The Secretary of State does not do much of anything of significance without consulting with the President and the President's West Wing advisors. Accordingly, it's really Barack Obama that you're quarreling with, and whom you're obscenely slurring.

Bizarre.

that expresses my disdain for so-called progressives who side with the fascists every time. So I'll repeat, in bold this time in case you didn't get it, FUCK HER.

I haven't gotten to the "fuck him" stage with Obama. But so far I've seen no reason to believe that the US did not have a hand in this latest Latin American coup. I hope he'll prove me wrong, and recall the Ambassador and put severe sanctions on their coup-plotting asses until Zelaya is reinstalled.

I guess it depends on your definition of liberal. 99% of the the people our right wing media paint as liberal are anything but. You can have the word if you want. I prefer simply "left" or Socialist if you want to be specific.

You sound like a lot of fun. I'd tell you that people who don't use profanity to make their points usually get their point across far more strongly than those who do, but . . . never mind.

Nothing expresses my feelings toward Hillary Clinton in this matter than those two words. If that gets your panties in a wad, that's your problem and you probably shouldn't hang out on politics forums.

No, not really . . . just someone that's turned off by foul-mouthed critiques. Especially those that aren't backed up by much other than silly invective. Sorry if that doesn't comport with your normal SOP. :shrug:

Lots of people with real jobs do.

What's your point?

Guess I don't hang around the same corporations you do.

However, many of your fellow citizens work for corporations, and when you state she's "for the corporations", it really means she's acting in the interest of millions of people.

Why don't you drop the Zorro name and come out clean for what you are, a champion of the investor class.

making life a living hell on earth, raining down executions, bombings, torture for Latin American AND CARIBBEAN leftists, suspected leftists, and next door neighbors to leftists can come all unglued over someone's LANGUAGE!

http://image.examiner.com.nyud.net:8090/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/snooty.jpg

and has been an unflagging source of information here across a broad spectrum. One thing the poster has clearly shown for years is an detailed, complex grasp of Latin American politics, US actions in Latin America and the devastating consequences for the masses.

Could you begin to explain what on earth has possessed you to represent Cuba, population 11,000,000 as a major country?

http://www.oceanoasis.org.nyud.net:8090/teachersguide/images/hemispheremap.gif
Cuba spends less in ONE YEAR than the United States spends in TWELVE HOURS on its national defense.

I characterized Cuba as the major country closest to our borders other than Canada, Mexico and Russia so that some handwringing, near-hysterical poster of the type on clear display in this thread didn't come along and start quibbling about a Pacific island under its own control or the sovereign control of another nation being closer to Guam or the Northern Marianas than Cuba is to the continental United States. In other words, it was just an overcautious qualification.

Nonetheless, your response is revelatory and interesting. You cite Indiana Green's detailed knowledge of Latin American politics, but then blow off Cuba?? Um, they're 90 miles from Key West. Significant, no? And isn't this entire thread about caring and compassion toward Latin American countries? But Cuba, I suppose, need not apply? Sooooooo many contradictions here, and that's fine when there's a complicated subject that none of us fully understands, but typically, unless you're a fully qualified, Spanish-speaking foreign diplomat and recognized Latin American affairs expert, I'm not going to look past fervent, mouth-breathing attacks on the State Department that accompany and occlude your analysis.

and has their best at heart. No.

The State Department has always been about what Wall Street wants from Latin America. That is their "expertise". And now that Hillary Clinton's people are advising the squatters in Honduras, you will be able to connect the dots more easily every day.

It goes back even farther than that to when Bill was getting fat fees for promoting free trade agreements in the region at the expense of the people and when Mark Penn and others were doing the same. Who is the guy that looks like Skeletor? I've suppressed his name but he's in it up to his dictator advising eyeballs, too.

ETA: Carville, The @sshole's name is Carville.

and they no doubt know much more than you do about the situation and what is in the best interests for the US.

And when you say what is in the best interests for the US, you really mean what is in the best interests of Wall Street, the bankers, and financiers. When we speak of what is in the best interests for the US, we only speak of the working class in America and in Latin America for we are allies of one another.

They are on the far right of the Republican Party, and their agenda for a post-Castro Cuba (under their control, of course) is to impose the sort of rightwing government that people like Sarah Palin would love to impose in the US. For starters, they oppose non-denominational prayers. There is only one true faith, an Opus Dei version of Catholicism, and that is the future official religion of "liberated" Cuba. They hate gays, so all the gains made by LGBTs under the Revolution will be reversed. They hate abortion, so all abortion rights gained under the Constitution will be repealed. They hate socialized medicine, so expect Cubans to suffer under the same greedy system that we are currently under. They hate freedom of speech that is not rightwing speech. The hate freedom of the press, that is not rightwing press. They want to privatize all of Cuba's beaches and natural resources. They will not hesitate to kill and imprison anyone that stands in their way.

There is nothing resembling American traditions of tolerance in them.

I know quite a bit about them, and their apparatchiks in Congress, Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balarts.

What does fully appropriate criticism of wingnut Cubans or Cuban-Americans have to do with disgusting, misguided attacks on Hillary Clinton? We all know you dislike the Clintons, and IIRC you're not much of an Obama fan either (I could be wrong about that), but you seem to have gotten a little ahead of yourself and muddied whatever point you were trying to make. Maybe Ralph Nader could straighten this all out for us.

to the right in Latin America. Lanny Davis is now advising the Pinochettis as well as others in the Clinton apparatus.. It's up in the LatAm forum.

. . . but thank you for the tip.

That wouldn't happen to be the same kind of "democracy" that was encouraged in Russia, Poland, China, Argentina and Chile? The FREE MARKET KAPITALIST kind, would it?

n/t

They publish and blog and in general, eat right wing assholes for breakfast. :scared:

I wasn't referring to that group of people, which includes yourself.

They're the ones that have actually been there or have lived there.

However that doesn't include virtually all of DU's armchair revolutionaries that chant the praises of Hugo and Fidel in the Latin America threads.

They are the mirror equivalent of the keyboard kommandoes that live in Bizarro World.

~snip~
Even Hillary Clinton's sister-in-law, Maria Victoria Arias, is a pro-embargo Cuban-American Miami lawyer responsible for the Clintons' campaign contributions and consequently hard-line views on Cuba.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5045

Also, from the same source:

Hardliners
Similar to what happened with Iraq, where a disgruntled contingent of an exile community spun its own "intelligence" that helped lead us down the path of war, through Democratic and Republican administrations alike, the United States has allowed and underwritten a wealthy, politically entrenched subset of hardline, pro-embargo Cuban-Americans determine policy despite the best interests of much larger sectors of the population.

While Cuba evolves, U.S. policy will remain static as long as this special interest group sets the terms by which any opening can occur. These hardliners know U.S. ultimatums will never work to bring change to Cuba; they don't expect them to. The hardliners' goal is to punish the perpetrators of the Cuban revolution and create the chaos and institutional breakdown in Cuba that might allow them to regain a foothold on the lost island of their fantasies.

http://mensual.prensa.com.nyud.net:8090/mensual/contenido/2004/01/11/hoy/fotos/295863.jpg

Maria, on the right.

http://mensual.prensa.com.nyud.net:8090/mensual/contenido/2005/12/02/hoy/fotos/597188.jpg

María Victoria Arias, Billy Arias, Raúl Montenegro y Elvirita V. de Arias

Time Magazine, on Bill Clinton's posture on Cuba:

~snip~
Four years ago, senior State Department diplomats hoped Clinton would breathe fresh air into U.S.-Cuban relations. Miami's fiercely anti-Castro Cuban-American community had long blocked any thaw, though the Pentagon had concluded that Havana posed no threat to the region, and Washington had made peace with almost all its cold war enemies. But half a dozen Cuban-American Democrats who raised huge sums for Clinton in 1992 convinced the new President he could win Florida in '96 if he became even more anti-Castro than Ronald Reagan or George Bush had been.

Senior Clinton aides call the cabal the "core group." It includes Maria Victoria Arias, a Miami lawyer married to Hugh Rodham, the First Lady's brother; and wealthy businessman Paul Cejas, who occasionally stays overnight at the White House. Arias telephones Hillary frequently and often sends Clinton clippings from Florida newspapers. In regular meetings at the Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables or at Little Havana's Versailles Restaurant, the core group plans strategy and prepares appeals, which are sent by way of private notes to Clinton's top political aides. "When an issue comes up, we try to get a consensus and present a united front," says core-group member Simon Ferro, a Miami Democratic activist.

Clinton came to the Oval Office with his own Castro obsession. In 1980 he lost re-election as Governor partly because Cuban refugees rioted at an Arkansas Army post. As President he ordered the CIA to estimate the chances of an upheaval in Cuba during his first term: the agency said better than fifty-fifty. Clinton aides later pressed the cia to fund Cuban dissidents secretly. Burned by a dirty-tricks campaign against Castro in the '60s, the agency sidetracked the idea.

http://www.hermanos.org/feb24/time.html

Why is the OAS even *listening* to the U.S. anymore?

noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial. Originally regional from American South. Thought to originate from contraction of "hysterical fit."

Maybe time for Hils to grow up.

Who would have guessed anyone, especially a Democrat, could get angry about this!

that someone has already unrecommended this whilst lurking and providing no response either postive or negative.

They long for the days of imperialism unabated and unchallenged, like it was before Bush got distracted by Iraq. They want Reaganism without Reagan.

the children must've got bored with playing with themselves today.

allow the US membership.

http://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/06/05/cubas-fidel-castro-calls-oas-a-u-s-trojan-horse/

could be that they kick out the USA. :rofl:

Tell the U.S. to take its N.E.D. and its CIA and its SOA and its covert ops and its Drug War and its Washington Consensus and its fucking DLC neoliberals and its right wing expat Latin American Oligarchs & terrorists, and just butt the hell out of Latin America's business.

The South has managed to make so much progress toward recovery of their sovereignty and freedom for their people, it's just maddening to see the DLC fucks in the Obama administration trying to reverse all the progress and re-enslave them.

Come on, OAS, tell Clinton to fuck off!

It's standing by helplessly, while the whole world is watching as your government is trying to choke someone to death.

The entire United Nations General Assembly, with the exception of the arm-twisted Palau, and occassionally Marshall Islands, and Israel, stands together in condemning the U.S. internationally illegal embargo year after year after year.

It's an old tradition, bullying a Cuba which balks at being seized and used as property. Here are two quotes from the Breckenridge Memorandum, written Christmas Eve, 1897 by John C. Breckenridge who was the Undersecretary of War for William McKinley:

~snip~
We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army.

~snip~
To sum up, our policy must always be to support the weaker against the stronger, until we have obtained the extermination of them both, in order to annex the Pearl of the Antilles.

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/bmemo.htm

Slight difference.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Guess you weren't around then.

If America can base missiles in Europe, the USSR can sure base missiles in Cuba. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

It was the Americans that came up with the psychotic MAD strategy. The USSR merely responded in kind.

The Cold War was a sham designed to frighten Americans into supporting the military-industrial complex.

They have made threats to us regarding Taiwan ..not to mention dissecting our spy plane.

Ok ..that spy plane bit was mostly bushes fault.

Insulza showed an abysmal lack of leadership skills in opening the door for Cuba to regain membership in the OAS, and all he got was a big "Fuck you" from Castro for all his hard work.

but you know that.

Hillary is as bad as her husband when it comes to fucking the liberal base in the ass. FRAK HER FAT ASS!

The Clintons were no more a “friend” of the common people than any of the Bush Dynasty.

Nice to see Ol’ Hillary recognized for the role she has played all along!

Thanks to Judi, Indiana & Eferrari – as always.

edit to add Recommend

(Cross posting from Latin American forum)


Bachelet greets Insulza in Santiago today.

Bachelet said in Santiago today that when she spoke with Hillary Clinton at no time did the issue of Insulza's re-election come up.

"The first thing I want to say is that it is absolutely false. I spoke with her by telephone because she was (under) bed rest and clearly the theme of the OAS was not a theme we talked about at all."

(Lo primero que yo quiero decir es que esto es absolutamente falso. Yo hablé en Estados Unidos con ella por teléfono, porque estaba en reposo, y claramente el tema de la OEA no fue un tema del cual hayamos conversado para nada", dijo la Mandataria.)

"It is not true that we have received any message in that regard ... the government of Chile has not received any official or unofficial information in that respect."

(A renglón seguido aseguró que "no es efectivo que hayamos recibido un mensaje de esa naturaleza, para nada, el gobierno de Chile no ha recibido ninguna información oficial ni oficiosa a ese respecto".)

Chilean foreign minister Mariano Fernandez and Insulza himself also denied in the strongest terms the story published Sunday by the Santiago newspaper El Mercurio.

(El canciller Mariano Fernández y el propio Insulza, quienes también negaron de forma rotunda la información publicada ayer por el diario El Mercurio.)

La Tercera made contact with Shannon, who also denied that the U.S. government had said that Washington would oppose Insulza. (In Chile, Insulza has the nickname "Panzer.")

(La Tercera se contactó con el secretario de Estado adjunto para América Latina, Thomas Shannon, quien también desmintió que el gobierno de EEUU haya expresado que no apoyará al pánzer.)

Insulza arrived in Santiago this morning and said the sources for the rumors "are not the most qualified, but for some reason the newspaper people think they should be given credibility."

(Por su parte, Insulza, quien llegó a Chile a las 6.50 de la mañana, manifestó que "no son las fuentes más calificadas, pero por algún motivo la gente en los diarios piensa que hay que darles credibilidad".)

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

Spanish, from Santiago

http://latercera.com/contenido/674_155068_9.shtml

(Reminding that the reports came from CNN en Espanol, which has an anti-leftist agenda, and from the ultra-conservative El Mercurio, the same one that received millions of dollars from the CIA to help topple Allende.)

Bachelet's statement is that she did not discuss the issue with Hillary. There is nothing in this statement about whether Bachelet was aware of any efforts by US to get rid of Insulza.

The proof is in the pudding. Let's see what happens when Insulza runs for another term. Let's see if the US puts another name forward.

I want to add a little for the general information of anyone who hasn't had the time to learn about this action taken by the Nixon administration:

The CIA's Campaign
Against Salvador Allende

~snip~
As the 1970 elections approached, the CIA and the United States ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, again sought additional funds from the 40 Committee. In March of that year, the 40 Committee decided not to back any single candidate but to wage a "spoiling" campaign against Allende. (This policy was apparently circumvented by the CIA when it advised ITT on how to use agency funding conduits in feeding money to the National party candidate.) In all, the CIA spent close to $1 million to influence the 1970 elections. Some of the money went for "political action" and "black" (false) propaganda to break up the leftist coalition that had formed around Allende. The lion's share, however, went into another shrill media scare campaign. An Allende victory was equated with violence and Stalinist repression, and the message was sent out, the Senate Committee reports, by an editorial support group that provided political features, editorials, and news articles for radio and press placement; and three different news services.... Sign-painting teams had instructions to paint the slogan 'su paredon" (your wall) on 2000 walls, evoking an image of communist firing squads.... Other assets, all employees of El Mercurio, enabled the Station to generate more than one editorial per day based on CIA guidance. Access to El Mercurio had a multiplier effect, since its editorials were read throughout the country on various national radio networks.

~snip~
p25

After Allende's inauguration, the CIA funneled over $6 million into its attempts to subvert his government.

... The CIA concentrated its efforts in four key areas: Adding to its previous subsidies, the CIA spent another $1.5 million in support of El Mercurio. Under the agency's guidance, the paper was transformed from a publication resembling the Wall Street Journal to one in the style of the New York Daily News, complete with screaming headlines and pictures of Soviet tanks on the front page. The CIA justified this heavy expenditure on El Mercurio to the 40 Committee on the grounds that the Allende government was trying to close the paper and, in general, threatening the free press in Chile. On the contrary, according to the Senate report, "the press remained free," and even the CIA's own intelligence estimates stated that El Mercurio had been able to maintain its independence. The supposed threat to the press was the most important theme the CIA used in an international propaganda campaign aimed against Allende. With the fabricated charge, the CIA was able to convince newspapers around the world-including most of the American media-that Allende posed such a threat. Additionally the CIA circulated its propaganda throughout Chile by means of a complex assortment of captive newspapers, magazines, and radio and television outlets.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NSA/CIA_Allende_LS.html

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Wildly sad to know El Mercurio's owner, Agustín Edwards continued to pump hard right bilge from his publication steadily after that, and that his son is similarly engaged spreading right-wing spew himself. The father's influence in Latin America's media has only grown, and his poisonous reach is far greater now than ever.

Wikipedia:

Criticism
El Mercurio has been criticized for having received funds from the CIA in the early 1970s to undermine the Socia/blist government of Salvador Allende through continuous anti-Allende propaganda and for "setting the stage for the military coup of 11 September 1973"<1>, a fact the newspaper has always denied in spite of declassified documents which detail US interventions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mercurio

The El Mercurio file: secret documents shine new light on how the CIA used a newspaper to foment a coup.
Publication: Columbia Journalism Review
Publication Date: 01-SEP-03
Author: Kornbluh, Peter

September 11, a day of infamy in the U.S., is also a dark day in the history of Chile. This 9/11 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. Although former U.S. officials such as Henry Kissinger have insisted that Washington had no involvement in the military takeover, and was trying only to preserve democracy in Chile, CIA and White House records, analyzed here for the first time, show how the CIA used Chilean media to undermine the democratically elected government of Socialist Salvador Allende, an operation that "played a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup of 11 September 1973." From these documents emerges the story of the agency's main propaganda project--authorized at the highest level of the U.S. government--which relied upon Chile's leading newspaper, E1 Mercurio, and its well-connected owner, Agustin Edwards. In Chile, the aged Edwards remains an influential media power, and here in the U.S., covert action has again been unleashed and executive-branch secrecy is on the rise. The story behind 9/11/73 continues to echo.

For the better part of two years, a group of editors, journalism students, and human rights lawyers in Santiago, Chile, have been gathering evidence against their country's leading media mogul, Agustin Edwards, to, at minimum, have him expelled from the press guild, the Academy of Chilean Journalists. The editor of the leftist magazine Punto Final, Manuel Cabieses, has filed a formal petition accusing Edwards of violating the academy's code of ethics by conspiring with the Nixon White House and the CIA between 1970 and 1973 to foment the military coup that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende and brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, thirty years ago this month.

"Doonie," as Edwards is known to his closest friends, is the patriarch of the press--a Chilean Rupert Murdoch. His media empire encompasses Chile's renowned national newspaper, El Mercurio, a second national paper, Ultimas Noticias, and Santiago's leading afternoon paper, La Segunda, along with a dozen smaller regional journals. In September 1970, when Chileans narrowly elected Allende, a Socialist, to the presidency, Edwards was widely considered to be the richest man in Chile--and the individual with the most to lose financially from Allende's election.

The ethics charges against Edwards are likely to receive a boost from a careful analysis of formerly secret U.S. documents that shed considerable new light on CIA covert media operations in Chile. Since 1975, when a special congressional committee chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church issued its report, Covert Action in Chile: 1963-1973, it has been no secret that the CIA provided significant funding to El Mercurio, put reporters and editors on its payroll, and used the paper, in the committee's words, as "the most important channel for anti-Allende propaganda:' But with the declassification of thousands of CIA and White House records at the end of the Clinton administration, the history of the "El Mercurio Project" emerges in far greater detail. Among the key revelations in the documents:

* Even before Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile, Edwards came to Washington and discussed with the CIA the "timing for possible military action" to prevent Allende from taking office.

* President Nixon directly authorized massive funding to the newspaper. The White House approved close to $2 million dollars--a significant sum when turned into Chilean currency on the black market.

* Secret CIA cables from mid-1973 identified El Mercurio as among the "most militant parts of the opposition" pushing for military intervention to overthrow Allende.

* In the aftermath of the coup, the CIA continued to covertly finance media operations in order to influence Chilean public opinion in favor of the new military regime, despite General Pinochet's brutal repression.

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-24794236_ITM

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It doesn't take a genius, rabs, to realize that if our own government was doing things like this back in the 1970's to destabilize and destroy an elected President in Latin America, only an idiot would deny the same government has probably been using the same tactics steadily SINCE THEN, especially against all the new leftist popularly elected Presidents throughout the Americas.

Thanks for the chance to bring up this grotesque manipulation of public perception which is undoubtedly being employed 24/7.