Colombia, Venezuela trade slowly reviving after spat

[gbscar]

Colombia, Venezuela trade slowly reviving after spat
Monday, 15 August 2011 18:05
Ezequiel Minaya / Dow Jones Newswires

Trade between Venezuela and Colombia continues to slowly recover after a diplomatic thaw between the previously bickering neighbors but lingering uncertainty over lapsed preferential tariffs prevents a full return to pre-conflict levels, according to Cavecol, a bilateral trade group.

Trade between the nations totaled $1.04 billion in the first six months of 2011, a 16% jump when compared to the same period a year earlier, according to figures gathered by the Caracas-based Cavecol. On Friday, Colombian Trade Minister Sergio Diaz-Granados said that Venezuela has paid $828 million in the past 12 months of outstanding debts to Colombian airlines and exporters.

But the bilateral trade posted in the first half of this year is still less than half the totals posted during the same period in 2008 and 2009, before relations between the nations began to unravel. In the January through June period in 2008, trade between Venezuela and Colombia totaled $3.2 billion, and in 2009, $2.8 billion, according to Cavecol data.

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A return to pre-crisis levels, however, will not be possible until Venezuela permanently replaces the accords that were voided when the country exited the regional trade group of the Andean Community of Nations, or CAN, Luis Alberto Russian Russian said.

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Venezuela's trade preferences within CAN -- which includes Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador -- remained active for five years, lapsing earlier this year.

http://www.colombiareports.com/colombia-news/economy/18346-colombia-venezuela-trade-slowly-reviving-after-spat.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Dow Jones Newswires won't tell you what really went down in "the conflict," as they call it.

1. 2006-2007: Venezuelan and Ecuadoran leftists win their 2006 presidential elections, hands down. "Operation Get 'Em" gets the green light. Very likely a Donald Rumsfeld "Office of Special Plans" operation, Bush Junta Mob Boss...er, president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, invites Hugo Chavez to Bogota, in mid-2007, and asks him to contact the FARC guerrillas in Colombia and negotiate hostage releases. Chavez proceeds to do just that, thinking he may also be helping to bring about a peace negotiation in Colombia's 70 year civil war, if he can get the FARC to release all their hostages. By late November 2007, he has arranged for the first two hostages to be released. The first thing that goes wrong is that the FARC curriers carrying the "proof of life" documents to Chavez (a requirement in any hostage negotiation) are arrested by Colombian security forces. Before the first two hostages begin their FARC-escorted trek to their freedom, Chavez has a Colombian peace negotiator (Senator Piedad Cordoba) contact someone in the Colombian military, likely trying to ensure the hostages' safety along their route. A few days before these first two hostages are to be released, Uribe publicly rescinds his request to Chavez and denounces Chavez for contacting the Colombian military, claiming that Chavez violated some protocol in doing so. The first two hostages are already en route, and four more have been negotiated. On the very day of the first two hostages' release, 12/1/07, two things occur: a) Donald Rumsfeld publishes an op-ed in the Washington Post, entitled, "The Smart Way to Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez," and, in the first paragraph, states that Chavez's help in getting hostages released "is not welcome in Colombia," and b) the Colombian military fires rockets at the hostages' position, on their route to their freedom, driving them back on a 20 mile hike into the jungle.

Pretty clearly the plan was to present Chavez with a diplomatic disaster--a failed negotiation, dead hostages. But this plan didn't stop there.

Chavez got those first two out, some time later, by a different route and got a total of 6 hostages released. Chavez had been besieged by hostages' families, and by numerous governments and human rights groups, to keep trying on hostage negotiations, despite Uribe's ploy of rescinding his request (at Rumsfeld's insistence? --or was Uribe in on it all along? probably the latter). Eventually, it became too risky for the hostages, and Chavez quit after six were released.

2. March 2008. The FARC guerrilla commander most interested in a peace negotiation, and who was arranging the hostage releases--Raul Reyes--moved his hostage release camp to the Ecuador border. He planned to release Ingrid Bettancourt and other hostages and sue for peace. Her family had been notified and envoys from Switzerland, France and Spain were in Ecuador, on route to this camp (just inside Ecuador's border), to receive her and other hostages. They were warned away by an unknown party who told them that "everyone in that camp is going to be killed." That night, the Colombian military dropped 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on the camp, killing Reyes and 24 sleeping people, and crossed over the border to shoot any survivors in the back as they fled for their lives, as later reported by the Ecuadoran military (they found dead bodies in the pajamas, shot in the back). The Ecuadoran military also reported that the Colombia military has neither the bombs, the plane nor the technology to do what was done to this camp (huge crater). Likely plane, bombs and pilot came from the U.S. military base in Manta, Ecuador (a U.S. base that President Correa evicted from Ecuador the following year). Waking to a major bombing of Ecuador's territory, and not having been notified, let alone asked for permission (international law with rare exceptions for "hot pursuit"), Ecuador's president ordered several military battalions to the border and Venezuela did the same, in solidarity with Ecuador.

It appeared that THIS was the point of this whole plan--to instigate a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela. But this plan didn't stop there. Failing to produce a diplomatic disaster for Chavez, and failing--as it turned out--to start a war (due mostly to Chavez's efforts to head it off--Lula da Silva called Chavez "the great peacemaker" in regard to this incident), this deep layered, Rumsfeldian plan had one more twist and last resort use.

3. About a month later--after Uribe had been unanimously condemned by the Rio Group (all Latin America dispute resolution group--U.S. not a member), and war had been averted--Uribe announces that Colombia's military recovered Raul Reyes' laptop computer from the ruins of the bombed out camp, and this unscathed laptop contained "evidence" that Chavez and Correa are "terrorist lovers"--were in contact with the FARC, gave money to the FARC, took money from the FARC, were helping the FARC to obtain a "dirty bomb," etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. This propaganda saga went on through 2010 and Uribe's last weeks in office, when he was still railing about it at the OAS--how Chavez was "harboring terrorists" and the "miracle laptop" (as it had become known) "proves" it. The "miracle laptop" had long since been completely discredited, with both Interpol and the Colombian Supreme Court declaring it unusable in a court of law. (Its provenance had been compromised and thousands of files opened and changed.) But, of course, this didn't stop the propaganda "talking point" about Chavez-the-terrorist and Correa-the-terrorist getting promulgating around the world, by the corpo-fascist press, and never retracted. Mission accomplished.

THIS is WHY Chavez cut off diplomatic relations and trade with Colombia. "The conflict" was created in Washington DC. Their Mob Boss, Uribe, to the very end of his term, was trying to start a war with Venezuela, and, if he couldn't provoke Chavez, trying to damage him and Correa as much as possible with black ops propaganda so very like Iraq and the WMDs that we wouldn't even need Rumsfeld timely op-ed to know who designed it. Venezuela has THE biggest oil reserve on earth, of course (twice Saudi Arabia's, according to the USGS). Ecuador also has lots of oil, and is also a member of OPEC. And both leaders are committed to using oil profits to benefit the poor. It's harder, though, to demonize honestly elected leaders in obviously democratic countries with clean, transparent elections. It takes a lot of time and guile--and resources.

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That all this really very gravely harmed Colombia and its people is of no moment to people like Uribe, Bush Jr., Rumsfeld, Cheney or their current clones in the Diebold Congress. Their object is ultimate power and ultimate riches for themselves and their corporate/war profiteer cronies. Good government ain't in it--not even a little bit. In fact, in Colombia, the government was entirely flipped over into the Mob, probably to consolidate and better profit from the cocaine trade. Thousands of innocent people were spied upon and murdered by the Colombian government and military, and FIVE MILLION peasant farmers were displaced from their lands, by state terror. This is not even bad government. This is Mob government. The big drug lords took over the land, while Uribe gave them cover--by illegal spying on judges and prosecutors, in addition to his other "enemies"!

Now look at Dow Jones Newswire's "framing":

"Trade between Venezuela and Colombia continues to slowly recover after a diplomatic thaw between the previously bickering neighbors..."

There is a black hole of lies and disinformation in this "framing." A black hole is an object that sucks all the light into it and lets none out.

There is more to tell with regard to what Santos (Uribe's successor) is doing and why, and I won't go into it all except to say that it has to do with the new reality in Latin America, now dominated by the leftist democracy movement that has swept numerous leftist government into office and THEIR goals of independence (from U.S. dictates), cooperation, peace, "global south" trade and social justice. These leftist governments are doing extremely well as to economic growth (despite the Bushwhack Depression) and reducing poverty, and also at attracting investment from numerous countries on the new "level playing field" that the Left has created, in which LatAm countries can make demands for access to their resources, such as investment in local jobs and social programs. Colombia, which has one of the worst rich/poor discrepancies in LatAm, and has been ravaged by Uribe/Bushwhack murder and mayhem, needs to get out of the dark place that Uribe and the Bush Junta took it to, and into the light. Whether Santos and the non-criminal faction of the rightwing political establishment in Colombia can do that, or not, is a question, given the untoward power of the far right and its corporate/war profiteer backers, here.

[ChangoLoa]

2. Commercial integration between Venezuela and Colombia is a vital issue

I'm glad to see this is going in the right direction