Sarkozy thanks Chávez for "tireless efforts" at hostages' freedom

[Judi Lynn]

Source: El Universal (opposition newspaper)

Sarkozy thanks Chávez for "tireless efforts" at hostages' freedom

Caracas, Tuesday July 08, 2008


French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent a letter to his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez thanking him for the "tireless efforts that helped" release last week several hostages held by the Colombian guerrillas, including Ingrid Betancourt.

"As we celebrate the release of Ingrid Betancourt and other 14 hostages, I thank you again for your tireless efforts that helped the hostages of Colombia to come back to freedom and the love of their beloved ones," said the French president, as quoted on Tuesday in a press release from the Venezuelan government.

Early this year, Chávez welcome six hostages in Venezuela, who were unilaterally freed by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) as a token for him, AFP reported.

Since then, the Venezuelan president was viewed as a key actor to deal with new releases. The French president has made it known in this way on several occasions.



Read more: http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/07/08/en_int_art_sarkozy-thanks-chave_08A1776641.shtml

[Demeter]

1. Proving Once Again that Some Nations Are Led By Adults

while others are led by the reincarnation of Caligula.

[Taverner]

2. He's far to stupid to be Caligula

[eridani]

10. He ain't stupid. Just brain-damaged and sociopathic. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

4. Really ?

Does that mean I've been wasting my time trying to figure whether he's Larry, Curly or Moe ?

[Demeter]

11. Do You Mean Bush, Sarkozy, or Chavez?

[dipsydoodle]

13. I meant Bu ush,

NOT Chavez. I was refering to the Caligula reference.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Figured as much! Two of the 3 responses to the Caligula references seemed to understand it!

At first I wondered about you and eridani, after seeing the 1st one! Holy smokes!

However, I know the two of you are very bright, after a quick reality check.

We've got only six more months of our Caligula, unless he can figure a way to pull off a national emergency and declare martial law and stay in the stolen White House. Wouldn't that truly be the pits of hell?

[dipsydoodle]

15. I was hardly likley

to have meant Hugo ! :hi:

BTW - there was a post yesterday, your time, concerning amounts paid by telecoms companies to lobby members of congress.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6472008
It reminded of the early '70s when one of your large multinationals threatened to withdraw all contributions to the Republican party if they didn't do something about the copper mines in Chile being nationalised.

[Judi Lynn]

16. After seeing your post I looked for a quick link to more info. I always have heard that Anaconda

Copper, of course, was heavily invested in getting Allende removed, operating that vast mining operation there. Also, I've heard of ITT as a BIG player.

Here's a short article which is very helpful:

Chile Overthrow

~snip~

Orchestrated Overthrow

When Allende won the presidential election on September 4, 1970, he set off panic in the corridors of American power. He was a lifelong anti-imperialist and admirer of Fidel Castro who had vowed to nationalize the American owned companies that dominated his country. On November 6, 1970, just two days after Allende donned the presidential sash in Santiago, President Nixon convened the National Security Council to discuss ways of disposing him.

The Americans needed to push Chile toward chaos. Kissinger set out to do so, using all of the considerable resources at his command. Kissinger would be more directly responsible for what happened in Chile than any other American, with the possible exception of Nixon himself

Agustin Edwards, one of Chile’s richest men and owner of its largest newspaper, El Mecurio, was personally, professionally, and ideologically close to most of the leading American executives with interests in Chile. Through them, he had access to the highest circles of the Nixon administration. President Nixon had repeatedly declared his determination to protect American business interests abroad and fight communism.

Kissinger asked Helms to meet with Edwards to glean “whatever insight he might have” on ways of stopping Allende. Kissinger met with another powerful figure eager to protect large interests in Chile, his friend and patron David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank.

ITT was one of the world’s largest conglomerates. It had large holdings in Chile and faced the same threat that hung over Edward’s business empire. Its prized asset, the Chilean telephone system, was high on Allende’s list for nationalization.

John McCone, the former CIA director, had joined ITT less than a year after leaving the CIA but remained a consultant to the agency, meaning that he was simultaneously on both payrolls. This unique arrangement made him the ideal link between ITT and the top levels of the United States government.

Economic Warfare

The first blows they struck were economic. The cutting of aid, loans and credits to Chile became know as an “invisible blockade. Two principal American foreign aid agencies, the Export-Import Bank and the Agency for International Development announced that they would no longer approve any new commitments of U.S. bilateral assistance to Chile. The Inter-American Development Bank was instructed to lock all proposals for loans to Chile. When the bank’s president protested, the administration forced his resignation. The new president reduced Chile’s credit rating for B to D. Private banks followed suit. The Export-Import Bank canceled a scheduled $21 million loan intended to pay for new Boeing jets for Chile’s national airline. The World Bank suspended a $21 million livestock improvement loan to Chile.

Soon after Allende’s inauguration, most of the leading American companies active in Chile, including ITT, Kennecott, Anaconda, Firestone Tire & Rubber, Bethlehem Steel, Charles Pfizer, W.R. Grace, Bank of America, Ralston Purina, and Dow Chemical, joined to form a Chile Ad Hoc Committee. It was dedicated to working with officials in Washington who were “handling the Chile problem.” Over the next few months, its members set out on a quiet destabilization campaign of their own that included office closings, delayed payments, slow deliveries, and credit denial. It was so effective that within two years, one-third of Chile’s buses and 20 percent of its taxis were out of service due to lack of spare parts.

More:
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/11/8/3334807.html

[John Q. Citizen]

3. Why, he's so stupid, Obama is voting his way on FISA. That's how stupid he is.

And I'm so stupid, I replied to the OP instead of to #2

Doh!

[theliberalking]

5. The media was silent when Chavez helped released 2 hostages

It was 1 or 2 hostages, I'm not sure. But the media gave those rescues much less coverage than the rescue of the Bentancourt.
I wonder why.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Chavez negotiated a total of six hostage releases, after the Bushbot president

of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, requested his help (publicly announced). Days before the first two hostages were to be released, Uribe abruptly withdrew his support of Chavez's efforts, Donald Rumsfeld wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that Chavez's help was "not welcome in Colombia" (12/1/07) and, on the same day (12/1/07), the Colombian military bombed the location of the first two hostages, as they were in route to their freedom, driving them back into the jungle on a 20 mile hike to safety (unreported by the corporate press, though the hostages held a press conference about it). Chavez later got them out by a different route--and got four more released in Feb 08. Then, on March 1, 08, the U.S./Colombia brought this SUCCESSFUL hostage release effort to a dead halt, by bombing the camp of the chief FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, just inside Ecuador's border, killing him and 24 others (and almost starting a war with Ecuador).

I think what this adds up to is a set up of Chavez. They lured him into negotiating with the FARC for hostage releases, intending to hand him a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages. When that didn't work--and Chavez was getting praise for his efforts, and world leaders and the hostages' families were begging him to continue, despite Uribe's treachery--they had to end it, and they did so using U.S. high tech surveillance, ten U.S. "smart bombs" and possibly U.S. aircraft and personnel-- to blow Reyes away, and everyone who was with him. Ecuador's president, Betancourt's husband, and others, have since revealed that Raul Reyes was about to release Betancourt. French, Spanish and Swiss envoys were in Ecuador for this purpose, and had apprised Uribe of their purpose. He also had access to U.S. high tech surveilance (of Reyes' phone calls). So he surely knew that this high profile hostage release was imminent.

My guess for who was calling these shots--Rumsfeld himself. This is his "retirement" project--Oil War II: South America.

One other evidence of Rumsfeld-type behavior (devious, treacherous, evil): after they blew Reyes away, Uribe claimed to have retrieved Reyes' laptop (later, laptopS) from the bombed campsite, and started leaking items from it to the press, to slander and defame Chavez, and Rafael Correa, as "terrorist lovers." This was so like the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries and all the other clandestine bullshit that Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans" was up to, preliminary to the invasion of Iraq, that it still has me worried about Rumsfeld war plans to regain global corporate predator control of Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil, now controlled by governments that believe in using their countries' oil profits to benefit the poor.

I think the South Americans can fend this off. They are pretty united these days, with leftist governments everywhere (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, and recently elected, Paraguay). Also to be noted: France's state oil company, Total, is one of several oil development partners that agreed to Chavez's 60/40 cut of Venezuela's oil profits to go to social programs in Venezuela. Exxon Mobil got booted out, because they wouldn't agree (and they then took punitive action in first world courts, to seize $12 billion in Venezuela's assets--legal action Exxon Mobil is losing). Chevron is also one of the partners, as are Norway's Statoil and others. This is not only motive for Sarkovy to refuse to participate in the corporate 'news' disinformation campaign against Chavez, it is also French motive for wanting peace in the Andes region. Peace means that the oil profits will be fairly dibbied up--various companies and the Venezuelan people sharing in it. The Bushites and Exxon Mobil, of course, want it all--all the oil, all the power, all the profit--but they may finally have over-reached.

[arcos]

7. Mainly, because they had a slightly lower profile...

Ingrid Betancourt has been the "face" of the hostages ever since she was first kidnapped.

Plus, in Latin America the coverage of the release of Consuelo González and Clara Rojas (who was Ingrid Betancourt's running mate) received LOTS of coverage... not as much as the release of Ingrid, but I wouldn't say it was much less. It was broadcasted live, just as the arrival of Betancourt and the other hostages, and it ran on all news reports for days.

[balantz]

8. And once again, as expected, we are fed only propaganda.

The fascist media tells us who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys. I'd like to see a little social democracy in this country. It's been stifled and thwarted some forty years now.

[The Straight Story]

9. It's a scam, Chavez pays people to kidnap others, then he frees them

:)

[MasonJar]

12. Good for the Old Europe French!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[WatchWhatISay]

17. But most of the French detest Sarkozy

I just got back from Paris, and everytime I apologized for Bush, the Parisians said they didn't care for Sarkozy.

[Vidar]

18. I suppose Sarkozy's good taste in world leaders will lead to another "freedom fries" debacle.