Bush to welcome Chilean president to White House this month

[Judi Lynn]

Bush to welcome Chilean president to White House this month

U.S. President George W. Bush will welcome his Chilean counterpart Michelle Bachelet to the White House on June 8, the White House said in a statement on Friday.

"Chile is an important ally and this visit underscores the friendship and cooperation between the United States and Chile," the statement said.

"The president and President Bachelet will discuss a range of issues including their shared commitment to advance freedom and democracy, the importance of free trade to sustained economic growth, and continuing cooperation in areas of mutual interest," the statement said.

The United States has been trying to strengthen relations with countries in Latin America, a region traditionally regarded as the backyard of the United States.
(snip/)

http://english.people.com.cn/200606/03/eng20060603_270728.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Michelle Bachelet under pressure; Bush wants Chile to shun Venezuela

Published: Friday, June 02, 2006
Bylined to: Progreso Weekly


Michelle Bachelet under pressure; Bush wants Chile to shun Venezuela

Progreso Weekly: With an arrogance bordering on intimidation, the administration of George W. Bush wishes to impose its will onto Chile's sovereignty and force that country to impede Venezuela's admission to the United Nations Security Council.

That attempt came to light on Sunday, April 28, when the Chilean daily La Tercera published a report -- based on Chilean diplomatic sources -- titled "White House Ultimatum." Progreso Weekly has translated that report and summarizes it here. Words are PW's clarifications.

During a visit by Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley to the US State Department on April 21, "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice devoted an overwhelming proportion of her meeting with Foxley to only one issue: Venezuela's candidacy to the United Nations Security Council," La Tercera reported.

"She differentiated this issue from all other regional and multilateral decisions and said its singularity is that 'it aims at the heart of US interests.' Foxley attempted to explain that Chile must consider the opinions of its neighbors and that, in any case, has not yet made a decision {...} but the Secretary of State was unequivocal: the United States 'will not understand' a vote by Chile in favor of Venezuela at the Security Council."
(snip/)

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=59583

[AlamoDemoc]

2. Would he take her for lunch...like Angela Merkel kind of lunch?

[Robbien]

6. Chile didn't get to say a word to Rice, they just got threatened

Rice just kept the topic on that bad Chavez while Chile wanted to talk about US/Chile trade. Nice to see Chile not cowering under all the threats, or at least not so far. Hopefully they will stand firm when visiting the WH this month.

[pushycat]

3. Chilean gold

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29223

<snip>The Pascua-Lama deposit holds proven reserves of 17 million ounces of gold and 635 million ounces of silver. The transnational plans to invest 1.5 billion dollars over 20 years to exploit it, with annual output in the first five years of 750,000 ounces of gold and 30 million ounces of silver.

Barrick Gold proposes to begin work on the project in January 2006, but before that, it must respond satisfactorily within 90 days to a lengthy questionnaire on the project's impacts, presented in early June by the Chilean government's national environment commission, CONAMA.

''Water is worth more than gold. The Pascua-Lama project is a brutal example of the type of economic development Chile is carrying out,'' Lucio Cuenca, the Chilean coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), told Tierramérica.

Ecologists say the Andean glaciers, one of the Earth's important reserves of freshwater, are suffering sharp decline as a result of global warming, and that in this case the removal of 20 hectares of ice as part of the Pascua-Lama project -- with a volume of 300,000 to 800,000 cubic metres of ice -- would cause serious environmental harm. <snip>

[Joanne98]

4. The Carlyle Group is involved.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/25/14120/0457

[Peace Patriot]

5. Yup, I figured something like this was being tried, the moment I heard

that Condoleeza Rice, of the Kill and Torture Regime, was visiting Michele Batchelet, one of Pinochet's torture victims who is now the new socialist president of Chile.

How Batchelet views all this, I can't imagine. Condi would just as soon torture her again, and dump her 'disappeared' body out of an airplane over the Pacific, as negotiate with her. That's who Condi is. Ms. Ghoul, in league with the Dark Lords.

I don't know what "free trade" has done for Chile. It's blighted most of the rest of South and Central America. Has Batchelet traded Venezuela for higher sweatshop wages and maybe bathroom privileges for the workers? I hope not.

I hope she is shrewd and clever and independent. I hope she says, "Sure, Mr. Bush, sir, we'll help vote Venezuela out of its rightful temporary seat on the Security Council, which all General Assembly countries are entitled to, from time to time, if you will disclose all your secret prisoners, stop torturing them, publicly disavow torture, and grant Geneva Convention rights to all detained persons--and also turn over the terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted in Venezuela for the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, in which 73 people were killed, who was on the CIA payroll at the time, and whom you are protecting in a Texas jail."

That wouldn't be such a bad bargain. Chavez might even approve. (Well...).

Or maybe she has some Pinochet henchmen hiding out in the United States, whom she would like to see extradited back to Chile.

I would LOVE to see Hugo Chavez staring down the "torture and kill" nose of John "death squad" Bolton in the UN Security Council. Security Council meetings might become fun again. Can you just imagine it? Well, Condi for sure has been. That's their CHIEF INTEREST in South America???!!! Keeping Venezuela--whose elections have been approved of by the OAS, the Carter Center and EU election monitoring groups, as among the cleanest elections on earth--OUT OF the UN Security Council???!!!

Har-har! Well, DON'T DO IT, MICHELLE! RESIST! NO DEVIL'S BARGAIN, PLEASE! But if you do, make it a HARD bargain!

And watch your back at those White House functions! Killers and torturers, every one.

Yeeesh! It gives me the heebeejeebees!

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_Flight_455

Cubana Flight 455 was a Cubana de Aviación flight departing from Barbados, via Trinidad, to Cuba. On October 6, 1976 two timebombs variously described as dynamite or C-4 planted on the Douglas DC-8 aircraft exploded, killing all 73 people on board in the most deadly commercial airlines incident in the Western hemisphere until the September 11, 2001 attacks. Evidence implicated several CIA-linked anti-Castro Cuban exiles and members of the Venezuelan secret police DISIP. Political complications quickly arose when Cuba accused the US government of being an accomplice to the attack. CIA documents released in 2005 indicate that the agency had prior knowledge that the bombing was going to take place.

Four men were arrested in connection with the bombing: Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano were sentenced to 20-year prison terms, Orlando Bosch was acquitted because of technical defects in the prosecution evidence, and now lives in Miami, Florida, and Luis Posada Carriles escaped from prison and eventually fled to the United States, where he is currently being held on charges of entering the country illegally as of April 2006.

(MORE, much more...)

[Judi Lynn]

7. CHILE, VENEZUELA AND U.S. BULLYING

CHILE, VENEZUELA AND U.S. BULLYING

Leak Reveals U.S. Arm Twisting To Thwart Venezuela’s Security Council Aspirations Analysis by Justin Vogler ([e-mail])

(May 30, 2006) In a meeting in Washington, April 21, the U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, told her Chilean counterpart, Alejandro Foxley, that Washington would “simply not understand” if Chile were to support Venezuela’s bid to become a non-permanent member of the United Nation’s Security Council.

The American deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick was more emphatic. He told Foxely that Chilean support for Venezuela would “decisively damage” bilateral relations between Chile and the U.S. Furthermore, Chile would be denied the status of “major non-NATO ally of the U.S.” and the cost in terms of the commercial exchange between Chile and the U.S. would be “extremely high.”

Details of the April 21 meeting – obtained from an undisclosed source in the Chilean foreign ministry – were revealed in an article in the May 28 edition of the Chilean daily La Tercera. La Tercera is Chile’s second biggest newspaper and is believed to have good contracts within the government. The article was written by Ascanio Cavallo, Dean of the Adolfo Ibañez University’s School of Journalism.

Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, will visit Washington on June 8 when she is scheduled to hold a working lunch with George Bush. According to Cavallo, Venezuela’s Security Council application will dominate the agenda. Indeed, Cavallo says that Foxley was surprised during his meetings with American officials to find them fixated with the Venezuelan issue to the exclusion of all else.
(snip/...)

http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=11441&topic_id=1

[Say_What]

8. It'll be interesting to watch how Michelle handles this. The US-led

coup that put Pinochet in power and later tortured her father to death, tortured her and her mother at infamous Villa Grimaldi are fresh in her memory. Recently she told Washington not to "demonize" Chávez and she is light years ahead of MonkeyBoy in intelligence and political savy.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. Am I a bad person if I attempt to introduce the acronym

PILF?

[Judi Lynn]

10. She'll be speaking with a man who would have done everything Nixon

did, including supporting Pinochet as he tortured her father to death. How she could keep her composure around a P.O.S. like that is a miracle. She deserves sainthood.

Here's a photo of her and her family, taken when she was very young. I've looked for things like this before, when nothing was available. Maybe more will be published now she's the President. Very handsome family. It was taken in 1961, shows her mother, and her brother and father, both named "Alberto."