Ecuador Warns of New Colombia Tensions

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Mar 22, 11:47 PM EDT
Ecuador Warns of New Colombia Tensions

By GABRIELA MOLINA
Associated Press Writer

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- President Rafael Correa on Saturday threatened to seek international condemnation against Colombia if DNA tests confirm that Colombia's military killed an Ecuadorean citizen during its raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador's jungle.

Ecuador and Venezuela sent troops to their borders with Colombia after the March 1 cross-border raid. Tensions were largely defused at a regional summit days later.

Relatives of missing Ecuadorean Franklin Aizalia say to have seen news photos that indicate a body that Colombia removed from the camp is that of their son. They will travel to Colombia on Monday in a bid to confirm the body's identity.

Correa urged the Organization of American States to "act forcefully" if tests confirm that Colombia killed an Ecuadorean citizen, saying he did not want a precedent set in the region.


Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ECUADOR_COLOMBIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-03-22-23-47-59

[JohnnyCougar]

1. South America is the new battleground

Fascism vs. Democracy. Oh, how I wish my country was on the right side of this battle. My hopes aren't high, but maybe, just maybe Obama will make things better.

[Peace Patriot]

2. 'His critics accuse him of being increasingly authoritarian.' (-AP) (Associated Pukes)

Source: Associated Pukes

Mar 22, 11:47 PM EDT
Ecuador Escalates Tensions With Nice Anti-Drug Colombians

By Juanita Diablo
Associated Pukes Writer

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- Leftist President Rafael Correa, friend of Hugo Chavez who is a friend of Fidel Castro, on Saturday threatened mayhem, disorder, poverty reduction, and use of Ecuador's oil revenues to benefit his people, if DNA tests confirm that Colombia's military killed an Ecuadoran who should have known better than camping in his own country near a U.S. bombing target.

Ecuador and Venezuela (friends of Fidel Castro) sent troops to their borders with Colombia in a silly, grand-standing, anti-Bush publicity stunt, according to their critics, after nice U.S. bombers blew 22 maniacal, drug-trafficking, dictatorial terrorists to smithereens in the cutest little smash-up of peace talks South America has ever seen. Boy, you should have seen those nifty jets swooping in for the kill. However, Donald Rumsfeld's Oil War II was headed off at a regional summit days later, disappointing many observers.

Whining relatives of missing Ecuadorean Franklin Aizalia say to have seen news photos (English is my second language) that indicate their stupid son got in the way of some homeboys' good clean turkey shoot on the Ecuadoran border. They will travel to Colombia on Monday in a bid to confirm the body's identity, but they had better watch out for the U.S. Air Force, which could blow them away, too, if George Bush feels like it.

Correa, whose critics (the local Vatican legate) accuse him of being increasingly authoritarian and wanting to feed the poor just like Hugo Chavez, dared the Organization of American States, with big gorilla U.S./Bush sitting right there, to do something about U.S./Colombian "lawlessness" in the region. He did not respond to questions about Colombia's accusations that he himself is a lawless terrorist, when asked by reporters.

If the body of the stupid Ecuadoran boy, who didn't see the bombers in the night and get out of the goddamned way, proves to be Aizalia, rather than a Colombian (who cares about them?), Correa vowed to escalate tensions in the region, which may give Rumsfeld his war after all, according to Jesus Mafioso Loco de Diablo, professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburg. "War is peace, and the dead need to understand that," Diablo said.

Correa has turned a molehill into a mountain by not renewing diplomatic ties with his nice Colombian neighbors, who only wanted to form a "Neighborhood Watch" to keep the boogiemen out. Colombia 1, Ecuador 0, they were saying in the hotel bar.

"How can we renew relations if they keep trying to link us to the FARC to justify their aggression?" he said. And that brings us to the real point of this article--to once more repeat...

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally, says documents seized at the camp from the computer of slain rebel leader Raul Reyes show that the FARC gave money to Correa's 2006 presidential campaign. He also says Correa's ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (friend of Fidel Castro), planned to give the rebels US$300 million. Guys in black masks also found a tape of Osama bin Laden among the severed body parts that were blown all over the camp, but Uribe reportedly told them, "That is going too far."

Correa on Saturday said he has requested those documents, which he said lack "technical and legal" validity, from Uribe's government through Argentina's embassy in Colombia. "In your dreams," Uribe replied, when he was asked about it by the Associated Pukes at a U.S. Embassy party in Bogota.

The scuttlebutt at the party was that Aizalia, a locksmith, who has been reported missing for more than three weeks, was the CIA patsy who ferried the doctored computer into the camp before the raid, and got his throat slit during the raid, to eliminate him as a witness. His family's lawyer said that, for unknown reasons, he had been in the FARC camp for more than a week before the raid. Low-level Embassy officials were laughing about it.

A body, initially mis-identified by Colombia (which has a habit of dressing up civilian bodies like leftist guerrillas) as that of rebel Guillermo Enrique Torres, alias Julian Conrado, alias Fidel Castro, was brought back to Colombia's capital, Bogota, in severed parts, with Reyes' body. At least 25 were killed in the raid, including four Mexican university students. And what a great raid it was--and a great party, everybody all dressed up and higher than kites on Colombia's finest!

© 2008 The Associated Pukes. All rights (including the right to lie) reserved. This outlandish material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten (except for purposes of sarcasm) or redistributed at Democratic Underground. Learn more about our Privacy (and Humor) Policy.

[bemildred]

3. "Authoritarian" == "Disobedient/disloyal ruler of a province of the empire". nt

[Peace Patriot]

4. I guess you gotta have been reading Associated Pukes' "news" articles about

South America, for a while, to get the "authoritarian" joke. This accusation appeared in numerous AP articles about Hugo Chavez--unattributed (except for "his critics")--for many months, early in the Bush junta/corporate predator anti-Chavez campaign (just after their failed coup attempt, failed recall election and failed oil strike, circa 2002-2004). I couldn't find any evidence to support the accusation--zero, zilch--nor anyone who had said it, in widespread reading about the region, and I wondered where it came from, and who (person, persons or groups) said it. I finally found a quote to that effect by a rightwing Venezuelan cardinal who had spent his entire career in the Vatican (and bore the distinction of being one of the few people the Vatican ever fired--in the Vatican banking scandals of the 1980s). That was the only source I could find for the Associated Pukes' phrase, "his critics." Since that time, of course, it has become common currency in Bushdom. Chavez, the dictator. And I think it's only a matter of time before we begin to see "Correa, the dictator." They're having fun right now with "Correa, the terrorist."

So, things are even worse than we thought. AP is getting its "talking points" from fascist cardinals and the Bush CIA, or, rather, the Bush CIA is getting its "talking points" from fascist cardinals and passing them along to the Associated Pukes. The long and the short of it--AP sucks. I mean, really sucks.