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(Part Two)
I promised I would continue the reflections
today, using textual news and adding pertinent
commentaries.
“NEW YORK, March 13 (ANSA) – The absence of
Argentina in the itinerary of the new trip by
the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to
South America is another sign of Washington’s
annoyance with the authorities in Buenos Aires,
according to the New York Times today.
“The
newspaper recalled that Rice is visiting Brazil
and Chile this week but ‘notably absent from her
itinerary’ is Argentina where Cristina Fernández
de Kirchner, wife of ex-President Néstor
Kirchner, ‘became the first woman elected to be
the country’s President.’
“The omission underscores Washington's
disappointment with the new Kirchner government,
which has continued to strengthen ties with the
President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, while
‘accusing the United States of political
motives’ in the case of the $80,000 illegally
brought into the country by Venezuelan
officials.
“The New York Times describes this money
as ‘suspected to be a secret contribution made
by Venezuela to the Kirchner campaign’.”
“BRASILIA, March 13 (EFE) – The U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice expressed her hope
that Colombia’s neighbors would fulfill their
commitment to prevent FARC guerrillas from using
their territories ‘to continue killing innocent
people.’
“’We are very concerned with the regional
situation (in South America)’, said Rice at a
press conference today in Brasilia accompanied
by Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Celso
Amorim.
“’Countries cannot be threatened from within or
from outside. And we must avoid that the
terrorists continue killing innocent people’,
the head of U.S. foreign policy said after
meetings with both Amorim and with Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.”
“BRASILIA, March 13 (ANSA) - […] the official
said that the U.S. government maintains good
relations with left-wing leaders such as
Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva and
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
“After the press conference, Rice and Chancellor
Celso Amorim had lunch together at the Itamaraty
Palace.”
“BRASILIA, March 13 (AP) - […] Rice made these
declarations a day after President George W.
Bush said that the recent crisis between
Colombia and Ecuador was ‘the most recent step
of a worrisome pattern of provocative behavior
on the part of the Caracas government’.
“Washington is toughening its rhetoric against
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, at the same
time it is praising its South American allies
for firmly confronting terrorism.”
In Brazil, after dealing with the subject of the
future composition of the Security Council,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice clearly
explained that the United States would not be
opposed to Brazil’s entry into that Council, but
she warned that its support was committed to
Japan, its strategic and economic partner.
“SANTIAGO, March 13 (AFP) – The U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice will make a brief
visit to Chile on Friday, where she will be
meeting with President Michelle Bachelet to
consolidate bilateral ties and review the
regional situation.
“Rice will arrive in Santiago Friday afternoon,
coming from Brazil, where she had arrived this
Thursday. The chief of the United States
diplomacy will be in the Chilean capital for
almost six hours, and she will be returning to
Washington on the same Friday, just before
taking off on a trip to Moscow.”
According to that same agency, the U.S.
ambassador in Santiago, Paul Simons, declared:
“The fact that she is coming to Chile in the
middle of a very busy schedule shows the
importance she is giving to conversations with
her colleague, Chancellor Foxley, and with the
President about our positive agenda.”
“Brazil and Chile ‘are countries that are
friends and strategic regional partners of the
United States’, the diplomat added in a press
conference.
“With the Chilean authorities, Rice will be
discussing the state of bilateral relations, but
also the regional situation following the
serious crisis created by the Colombian military
incursion into Ecuadorian territory, resulting
in the death of the second-in-command of the
FARC guerrillas, Raúl Reyes.
“’We shall be talking about the regional
situation’, Simons disclosed.
“In Santiago, Rice will also give the go-ahead
to her Chilean colleague for the so-called
‘Chile-California Plan for the Twenty-first
Century’, an agreement that would like to take
advantage of similarities in geography, climate
and productivity between the South American
country and that U.S. state.
“The agreement is unprecedented and it came up
following a personal conversation between Foxley
and Rice, according to ambassador Simons without
disclosing any more details.”
Unquestionably, the U.S. ambassador in Chile, as
it is his habit let too much slip out, speaking
of a plan that the Chilean government still
hasn’t even publicly mentioned, nor has there
been any decision made about something that
appears to be a fantasy from Arabian Nights.
On the Internet there is also much news about
the U.S. Secretary of State's tour. On March
13th, the following headlines could be read:
BBC World – London, Great Britain. “Rice:
Borders, No Hiding Places.”
Terra – News Portal, Spain. “Rice Ratifies in
Brazil U.S. Commitment with Colombia and Against
the FARC.”
Alarde
– Brazilian newspaper. “U.S. Defends South
American Security Plan."
El Observador
– Venezuelan newspaper. “Rice Insists that U.S.
Studies Information about Alleged Venezuelan
Ties with the FARC."
Ansalatine – Italian News Agency. “Rice
proposes joint action against FARC.”
BBC World – London, Great Britain. “Rice Visits
‘Strategic’ Partners”
El Nuevo Diario
– Nicaraguan newspaper. “U.S. Toughens Rhetoric
against Chávez in Rice’s Tour”
AFP – French News Agency. “Rice Will Visit
Chile to Consolidate Ties and Talk about the
Regional Situation.”
EFE – Spanish News Agency. “Rice Ratifies in
Brazil U.S. Commitment with Colombia and Against
the FARC.”
AFP – French News Agency. “Rice: U.S. Examines
Ties between Chávez and FARC and will Take
Action".
La Prensa
– Argentine newspaper. “Borders cannot be a
Hide-Out, U.S. Warns".
On March 14th, O Estado de Sao
Paulo, a Brazilian news site, successively
sends three articles titled: “Untimely
Interference”, “Rice Discusses African Tourism
in Bahia” and “Amorim and ‘Condi' Make
Mistakes.”
O Globo on Line – Digital Site of the Brazilian
TV channel. “Condoleezza: Borders are not
‘Hiding Places’”.
El Mercurio
– Chilean newspaper. “Rice, Arriving Today in
the Country, Will Discuss with the Chilean
Government a Request to send Peace Forces to
Kosovo.”
Crónica Digital – Chilean News Site. “Policy:
Sticks and Carrots: Condoleezza Rice’s Chilean
Agenda.”
Condoleezza Rice herself would have to answer
some questions: How many Americans have been
killed by bombs sent by Cuba? Has even one
single brick ever been broken because of an
explosive device coming from our country? Why
are we being included in the grotesque list of
terrorist countries, the same one on which
Venezuela’s inclusion is being arbitrarily
threatened? Who used terrorism against our
homeland to blow up planes in mid-air, commit
acts of sabotage, and launch mercenary invasions
and threats of bombings and wars, economic
blockade and actions that have cost thousands of
lives and hundreds of billions of dollars? Who
is going to believe you or Bush? Why are you
insisting on provoking fratricidal wars between
the peoples of Latin America?
In Iraq, more than a million people have died.
How many deaths does the United States of
America offer Latin America, a region with over
500 million inhabitants, to defend its democracy
and its empire?
It is a real fact that Bush and his group are
much more trapped in their foreign policy errors
than even Nixon when he resigned in 1972. The
bloody Iraqi War and its rejection by the U.S.
people, the toll in human lives, the extremely
high number of wounded and maimed for every
death in the military adventure, all reveal a
situation full of contradictions: the
deteriorated image of the United States and the
impossibility of giving up the wars of conquest
for raw materials, the dollar and the price of
gold, currency devaluations and inflation,
consumerism and the inability to supply
themselves with consumer goods, production of
ethanol and the world shortage of food, fascist
methods and democratic demagoguery, torture
practices and secret prisons and human rights,
maximum environmental pollution of the country
and the species’ right to survival, the benefits
of science for health and the use of the same to
massively liquidate or invalidate human beings,
the brain drain and underdevelopment of poor
countries, the price of oil and the ever-greater
wasting of energy, the November elections and
growing numbers of Latinos dying on the border.
The list would be endless. It is, in essence, a
contradiction between life and death.
Today, on Sunday March 16th, we can
read the dispatches which correspondents were
writing in Havana yesterday night, Saturday,
about the material published today in
Juventud Rebelde, received by them in
advance on the previous day.
It is remarkable that none of the capitalist
news agencies have published a single word on
what was written about the former guerrilla
Pedro Pablo Montoya who killed a leader of the
FARC and cut off his hand in order to receive a
bounty of 2.6 million dollars that was legalized
by an Attorney General of Colombia. He was
probably an agent infiltrated by the Yankees.
The issue has elicited a great debate due to its
ethical implications.
Condoleezza is off to Moscow, Bush announces a
trip to the Ukraine and Bucharest for the first
days of April and he will conclude the tour in
Croatia, Serbia’s neighbor, from which
imperialism ripped its vital province of Kosovo,
site of its culture and source of essential
material resources that formed the basis of its
development.
McCain has just arrived in Iraq for the eighth
time, to offer his full support to Bush’s war,
and to the 3 trillion dollars it has cost, to
which millions of victims must be added, among
the displaced and the dead, for the price of the
fallen and mutilated Americans already
mentioned.
What can the world expect from such a policy?
The imperialist leaders and officials are
working feverishly, threatening everyone with
their brutal strength, but the empire is
unsustainable and it doesn’t give up. It is
thirsty for blood. We must persistently
denounce it!
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 16, 2008
6:15 p.m. |
