Obama he has 'unique' chance (re Latin America)

[EFerrari]

Source: Sky News Online (Australia)

Updated: 10:24, Sunday March 15, 2009

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said President Barack Obama had a unique chance to transform relations with Latin America, as he became the region's first leader to size up the new US head of state on Saturday.

The crippled global economy dominated the talks, just a few weeks before the G20 summit of developed and developing nations in London on April 2.

The two leaders also discussed alternative energy and stalled global trade talks.

Lula, who made a public call for developed nations to help thaw frozen credit markets that are punishing developing economies, said Obama was in a unique and exceptional position to improve relationships with Latin America.

Read more: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=312007

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[trthnd4jstc]

2. I would like our country to support freedom and progress.

True Progress. Progress that encourages and incites excellence from individuals. We need to have a more perfect union. Several Latino national governments have become more interested in serving the people and taking an active and a pro-active role in the economies of their nations: Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia. I find this good.

I also believe that we should prosecute all of the Americans who broke the law in all of the murder that our nation's military have performed against our brothers and sisters, the Latinos.

End Tyranny. Support Equal Justice For All. End Lies in Government. Support open government, and increase the public's power over the government. We should be the final check upon our nation. There is no way, if we lived in a more democratic nation, that the majority would have supported the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Latinos over the last few decades. Shame!

The Idiot, I mean, our last president slaughtered at least 100,000 Iraqis, and some say a million. Whatever the number, George Bush Is a War Criminal. Indict him, Indict Ollie North, Indict Cheney. Indict Richard Perle. Indict Karl Rove. And so on, and so on, and so on.

There is a wide and diverse world. I have been fortunate to talk to and meat many incredible human beings, and they were beautiful to me, and they are my friends. The War Against Freedom that our Military-Industrial Complex has waged against the peoples of the world needs to be something that we as a nation need to deal with, with the rest of the people of the world, and especially the relatives and survivors of those who our nation's military actions.

Thanks for the Post!

[Ghost Dog]

3. Thanks for your post.

Thanks for the freedom of thought, and speech,











Even in difficult times,





Para todos nosotros. For us all.

[EFerrari]

4. Democracy has never been so healthy in Latin America.

I hope our new president finds a way to support that. Our people can only benefit. :hi:

[trthnd4jstc]

5. Yes!

[Judi Lynn]

6. Absolutely! Things have been so screwed since Eisenhower overthrew the Guatemalan President

in 1954.

The rest of the hemisphere needs to be able to breathe, finally. They've all been through absolute hell.

If our right-wing thinks it can recreate the chains of fear and terrorism it used previously to keep Latin America broken, and terrified, it's got a hell of a lesson waiting for it. Latin America has lived through it all, and won't EVER consider letting it happen again. That's a given.

It has made them stronger, and more determined to keep it from happening ever again.

The days of having people like Jesse Helms set our policy on Latin America just may be over, if justice is going to prevail, finally:

Deadly Alliance
New evidence shows how far Jesse Helms went to support Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet

23 MAY 2001 • by Jon Elliston

In the summer of 1986, two residents of Washington, D.C., visited Chile, a country wracked by protests against the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

One of the visitors, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chatted amicably with Pinochet and returned to tell the American people that it was a "myth that human rights is a major problem in Chile."

The other, Rodrigo Rojas, a 19-year-old Chilean exile who had been living in the United States, died at the hand of Pinochet's security forces after they beat him senseless and set him on fire.

The incident received international publicity, and the case of Los Quemados--"The Burned Ones"--became a grisly milestone in the history of Chile's struggle against dictatorship. It also proved to be one of the most controversial chapters in Helms' foreign policy career--a chapter that has been reopened following the declassification of government documents that reveal just how far the senator went in backing the Pinochet regime.

"I am not pro-Pinochet or anti-Pinochet," Helms said at the time. But, as he had done since Pinochet seized power in 1973, the Republican senator rose to the defense of the dictator. Ignoring eyewitness accounts that Chilean soldiers had committed the attack on Rojas, Helms vilified the teenager and Carmen Quintana--an 18-year-old Chilean who narrowly survived the same burning--as "communist terrorists." He pushed Pinochet's cover story that the victims had immolated themselves.

More:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=15917


http://www.generacion80.cl.nyud.net:8090/imagenes/galeria/veronicadenegri2.jpg http://www.newint.org.nyud.net:8090/issue174/Images/keyp3.jpg

http://www.chipsites.com.nyud.net:8090/derechos/images/hitos2.jpg

Rodrigo Rojas, the image behind the women on the stage, and before and after Gloria Quintana Arancibia

http://citizenchris.typepad.com.nyud.net:8090/citizenchris/images/2008/07/04/jessehelms.jpg

Republican Senator Jesse Helms

Media Downplay Bigotry of Jesse Helms

8/31/01

~snip~
...Helms' strong if sometimes shadowy support for violent, anti-democratic forces abroad, from South Africa to El Salvador, might have given media outlets further pause in describing him as a mere conservative; few probed his ties to groups that would more accurately be described as fascist. One exception was an editorial in the Boston Globe (8/23/01):

Helms' role in supporting foreign thugs such as Roberto D'Aubuisson, the cashiered Salvadoran major who ran death squads responsible for savage political murders, did lasting harm to America's good name. In South Africa, Argentina, Mozambique, Honduras, and Nicaragua, Helms cooperated with racists and fascists who have nothing in common with the ideals of American democracy.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1871

[Judi Lynn]

7. Obama should better ties with Cuba, says Lula

Source: Agence France-Presse

Obama should better ties with Cuba, says Lula
Posted: 15 March 2009 0605 hrs


WASHINGTON - The US should improve ties with regional foes -- Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia -- President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil told his US counterpart Barack Obama on Saturday.

Speaking after a meeting between the two men in Washington, Lula told reporters he had also called on President Obama to create a relationship of "trust not interference," with Latin America.

"What I said to President Obama, and I hope he will make it happen, is that there would be closer ties with Venezuela, closer ties with Cuba, closer ties with Bolivia," Lula said.

US relations with the three countries remain strained, as Washington grapples with how to deal with Latin America's resurgent left-wing and populist governments.

"I think in Latin America we need to construct a new relationship, a relationship of trust not interference," Lula told reporters.

Read more: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/415382/1/.html

[EFerrari]

8. I hope these two good men can make this happen.

:kick:

[leftstreet]

9. "a relationship of trust not interference" Yes!

:applause:

[Kievan Rus]

10. Agreed

Especially since Russia wants to base bombers in Cuba now.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is asking President Obama to drop the embargo against Cuba,

and the travel ban. Luis Inacio Lula da Silva supports Cuba's right to exist without harassment and interference.

[movonne]

11. yes, yes and yes....and all of So. America ...

[polichick]

13. YES, WE CAN!

[EFerrari]

14. I hope the neocons read this and chew on their coffee cups!

lol


:rofl:

[hack89]

18. Many conservatives I know want the embargo lifted

they feel that the embargo does more to keep Castro in power than anything else.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Then why has Castro agitated for all these years to get the embargo removed? Reverse psychology? nt

[hack89]

25. A majority of conservatives do support the embargo

I am just saying that there is a surprising number that don't. Just like here at DU, not every republican is an ideologue in rigid lockstep with party orthodoxy. It is not a black and white world.

[EFerrari]

20. I sincerely doubt that. The conservatives have had an active lobby

just to keep it in place these many years.

[hack89]

24. That has more to do with Florida politics

get away from Florida and opinions change.

[EFerrari]

26. Half of my family might as well live in Miami, then, lol,

because they are as right wing as you can get without turning yourself inside out. And they're all in CA. Maybe Miami is a state of mind. :)

[bgr1938]

15. don't pray

I'm not a praying person, but i pray with all of my being
president obama heeds president lula and lifts all
restrictions on cuba. starts treating the south american
countries and their elected presidents like good human being
they are.

[EFerrari]

21. Welcome to DU, bge1938.

:)

[defendandprotect]

16. Yes . . . reversals that are long overdue . . . !!!

[espiral]

17. Abajo con el bloqueo n/t

[mikehiggins]

22. So now Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia are FOES of the US?

Victims seems more accurate. The US has mandated boycotts against Cuba since I was a kid and Ike managed to miss the chance to slide Castro into our camp. Was Castro actually a "dirty red commie" or was he the guy that kicked Batista and the mafia out of control of the country?

As to Venezuala, where we tried to oust Chavez through a surrogate coup, or Bolivia where we seem hell bent on trampling all over their soveriegnity (sic), are they actually our "foes" or just people who want to be treated with the same respect we give Europe, CHina or India?

This is a great country, but boy do we love to live in a world of denial.

[EFerrari]

27. You forgot Ecuador, Nicaragua and Paraguay!

And hopefully soon, El Salvador!

Imo, the US punishes Haiti and Cuba for daring to demand their autonomy and that's all. How dare they.

[RufusTFirefly]

23. Our unwillingness to put democracy over corporate interests creates repressive regimes

We should've recognized Cuba a long time ago, but it would've pissed over the Mafia and Big Business.

[EFerrari]

28. My tin foil hat says, when we end the blockade, we'll know our shadow

government is in disarray. Because it's a grudge and that, again imho, is all it is.