By CARMEN GENTILE UPI Energy Correspondent MIAMI, Jan. 30 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced his country’s decision to build a refinery on the Caribbean island of Dominica, part of his effort to further integrate the region’s energy …
Monthly Archive: January 2008
Permanent link to this article: http://www.coha.org/analysis-venezuela-expands-influence/
The Blitz is On
Part I
The Colombia Card is Being Played, with Chávez Scheduled to be Taken to the Cleaner. Meanwhile, Rice heads today to Medellin with Democratic legislators in tow, to win approval of controversial FTA with Bogotá
• A prime weapon in the U.S. inventory to reduce Chávez to size, and build up Colombia’s President Uribe, is a recent government-funded report produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which claims that the South American nation, Colombia, is safely “back from the brink of crisis.” But in terms of its conceptualization and implementation, the contracted document and the campaign surrounding its publication raises serious questions. These include the conservative organization’s objectivity due to its longtime advocacy of Plan Colombia, and its vigorous support of the pending free trade pact with Bogotá.
• The CSIS Colombia project is more about being part of a well-timed public relations campaign than about bona fide research.
• The CSIS report represents an important component in the lobbying effort by Bogotá and the Bush administration to convince Capitol Hill to approve the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, and is based as much on half truths and strategic omissions as it is on value-neutral research.
• If anything, it could be argued that Colombia’s prospects for modernization and stability and its credentials as a voracious foe of regional drug trafficking have at best stagnated, and at worst have suffered grave attrition, under the Uribe administration. The discarding of extradition for demobilized paramilitaries is an example of this.
• Uribe is lionized by State Department, but is a doubly tainted figure
• The Bush administration relates a fading tale to Democrats over Colombia’s demure virtues
Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, on her way to Medellin, Colombia today, leading a delegation of ten Democratic House members, has the mission of rewarding one of Latin America’s most hardline leaders who has had direct links to some of the country’s most prominent right-wing death squad leaders and has indirectly sanctified the possible assassination of prominent labor and human rights leaders, even though U.S. legislators are well aware of the impunity for such crimes that exist.
In spite of multiple legislative delegation that have been ferried to Colombia and several trips of Uribe to Washington, the Congressional leadership remains unconvinced that President Uribe is not the soaring paladin of democracy as the Bush administration tries to present him.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.coha.org/the-blitz-is-on/
All is Not Well in Georgetown: Guyana’s Emerging Hemispheric Role
• Guyana and Venezuela’s longstanding territorial dispute: the “frozen conflict,” which is asleep for now and hopefully forever
• Will Guyana’s Jagdeo become Washington’s new best friend on the continent?
The latest confrontation between Venezuela and Guyana, which indisputably took place on Guyanese territory, has reminded Washington that Guyana exists and that complexities abound for the long troubled nation which is located in one of the South America’s hot spots. The recent clash, which briefly revived the border dispute long bedeviling the two nations’, has pushed Washington into approaching Georgetown in a less cautious, and more engaged, effort in order to gain its friendship at the hoped for expense of Washington’s most determined regional adversary, Hugo Chavez. The recent meeting between Guyanese and American military officials over defense issues may very well put Guyana’s weakened leader, President Bharrat Jagdeo ultimately in an untenable position where he may have to reluctantly pick sides, even though most specialists dismiss the recent Georgetown visit of high U.S. naval officials as nothing more than a coincidence involving a long-scheduled event.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.coha.org/although-all-is-not-well-in-georgetown-guyana%e2%80%99s-emerging-hemispheric-role/
Analysis: Brazil strikes gas again
By CARMEN GENTILE UPI Energy Correspondent MIAMI, Jan. 23 (UPI) — Brazil’s energy fortunes appear to keep growing with the discovery of a new gas field right next door to a bounty of undersea oil found last year, officials at …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.coha.org/analysis-brazil-strikes-gas-again/
Methamphetamine: Among Mexico’s most Dangerous Exports to the U.S.
U.S. supply-side strategy is failing as production of the
dangerous drugs soars and expansion of its trade widens
Recent reports issued by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in Washington D.C. have concluded that Mexico has become the United States’ primary source of the methamphetamines now flooding the country. In response, U.S. and Mexican authorities have initiated a major domestic operation to crack down on the production of the dangerous drug. The North American demand for methamphetamines has been growing at a precipitous pace since the early 90s. As a result, the focus of the Bush administration’s current war on the drug has been one of containment and reduction, with less attention being paid to drug prevention and treatment.
The United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime recently released its annual World Drug Report which stated that globally there are 24.9 million users of methamphetamines and that in the United States alone, there are 12 million who acknowledge habitually using the drug. The estimated global production of methamphetamines in 1990 was 70 metric tons; fourteen years later it peaked at 291 metric tons. The average price per pound of methamphetamines in the U.S. is 13 thousand dollars, according to the United States Department of Justice, for an estimated value of 7.56 billion dollars of methamphetamines produced and exported to a worldwide market.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.coha.org/methamphetamines-among-mexico%e2%80%99s-most-dangerous-exports-to-the-us/
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