As Colombian Oil Money Flowed to Clintons, Hillary Renged on Campaign Promise to Oppose Trade Deal

[amborin]

As Colombian Oil Money Flowed To Clintons, State Department Took No Action To Prevent Labor Violations

By David Sirota @davidsirota AND Andrew Perez @AndrewPerezDC AND Matthew Cunningham-Cook @mattcunninghamc On 04/08/15 AT 4:09 PM

For union organizers in Colombia, the dangers of their trade were intensifying. When workers at the country’s largest independent oil company staged a strike in 2011, the Colombian military rounded them up at gunpoint and threatened violence if they failed to disband, according to human rights organizations. Similar intimidation tactics against the workers, say labor leaders, amounted to an everyday feature of life.

For the United States, these were precisely the sorts of discomfiting accounts that were supposed to be prevented in Colombia under a labor agreement that accompanied a recently signed free trade pact liberalizing the exchange of goods between the countries.

From Washington to Bogota, leaders had promoted the pact as a win for all -- a deal that would at once boost trade while strengthening the rights of embattled Colombian labor organizers. That formulation had previously drawn skepticism from many prominent Democrats, among them Hillary Clinton.

Yet as union leaders and human rights activists conveyed these harrowing reports of violence to then-Secretary of State Clinton in late 2011, urging her to pressure the Colombian government to protect labor organizers, she responded first with silence, these organizers say.

The State Department publicly praised Colombia’s progress on human rights, thereby permitting hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to flow to the same Colombian military that labor activists say helped intimidate workers.

At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife.

The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.

The details of these financial dealings remain murky, but this much is clear:

After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation -- supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself --

Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact.

Having opposed the deal as a bad one for labor rights back when she was a presidential candidate in 2008, she now promoted it, calling it “strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States.”

The change of heart by Clinton and other Democratic leaders enabled congressional passage of a Colombia trade deal that experts say delivered big benefits to foreign investors like Giustra.

[Politicalboi]

1. Why isn't this is the Hillary Bubble?

All the NY polls and other bad stories about Bernie make it there. I guess they don't want those pesky facts to get in their beautiful minds. Don't forget, Tom Hayden supports Hillary Coattails too.

[DanTex]

2. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511690900

[amborin]

7. highlighting terrible facts about a candidate is not smearing them

[Katashi_itto]

3. k&R!!!

[Scuba]

4. Yet some here still wonder why the rest of us don't trust her. Weird.

[pdsimdars]

5. K & R

[KoKo]

6. Thanks..had forgotten about that and good to see it posted.

[Skwmom]

8. Yet we are supposed to believe this is just another mere coincidence?