Gautam wrote: > >>> I'm pretty familiar with our >>> Colombia deployment and I don't think we have anything >>> approaching the men available to do what you are >>> describing. >> >> There are just half a dozen pilots that spread the poison >> over the rain forest. > > I still want proof of that - as I said, I'm pretty > familiar with our deployment in Colombia, and I don't > think we're doing that. I also think > that our actions in Colombia are, on the whole, > entirely defensible. > ???
Defense against what? Cocaine multinacionals? > If Colombia collapses into anarchy, > AFAIK, Colombia _had_ collapsed into anarchy. And it didn�t happen in a few decades ago, it happened around 1950, or even earlier. > it will probably take the entire Northern > tier of South America with it. > There�s a minimum danger of that. Colombia�s neighbours are Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Panama. These frontiers aren�t "artificial" and undefendable frontiers, they are made of natural obstacles. Brazil has the shape it has because the Portuguese explorers [read: native enslavers, we have a bloody past too] occupied every alqueire that they could walk to. > Andres Pastrama - whom we are supporting - > is a democratically elected reformist President who > seems to be that poor country's last hope. > "Last hope" is too strong... > Some of my friends know him and speak very highly of > him. I've never even been to Colombia, but my analysis > of the country at a distance is that he's all they've got, > and we should be behind him pretty much 100%. So anything > we're doing we're doing in cooperation with the > democratically elected government of Colombia, where they > are doing almost everything involved. Again, take some > responsibility for your own part of the world, Alberto. > We're not God. Colombia is screwed up, and it's not > the fault of the American government. > Uh? Can you quote part of any message of mine where I wrote it? <evil grin> > Now, it _is_ largely the fault of > the American people, who keep buying drugs and funding > the guerrillas. Colombia's problems are, to some extent, > our fault, and we have a > responsibility to help it because of that fact. But as > far as I can tell, the best way to help Colombia is to > support Pastrama, which is what we are > doing. So what would you have us do differently? > I just criticized _one_ point of the policy. By defoliating everything, the Colombian g*vernment is reducing the productivity of all lands. And then it will become uneconomical to plan anything _except_ crops that generate a high profit per area. Guess what is that? >> But the mass-murders weren�t. Take again Argentina, with >> a minuscule population, that mass-murdered about 30,000 >> people in less than 10 years, because of political crimes. >> There�s no Eastern European country that comes even two >> orders of magnitude to that. Even "Democratic" Germany >> killed _hundreds_ of people. > > I'm fairly certain that this is not the case, actually. > Hungary lost thousands, if not tens of thousands. > Czechoslovakia the same in 1968 _alone_, and certainly > many more in the decades before and after. Romania > - easily into the tens of thousands. > Are you sure of these numbers? > The Soviet Union, of course, > somewhere between 20-40 million. > But this can hardly be attributed to USSR imperialism, because those people died before or during WW2. > On the whole, I'd rather have lived in > most Latin American countries. At least there you had > a chance to leave, if nothing else. You couldn't do > that from Eastern Europe. > :-)))))))))) The best place to live is one that you can leave? :-) >> But the way the IMF behaved in the Argentinian crisis >> was a perfect example for those that equate IMF to Satan: >> they supported Argentina until they _really_ needed >> support, and in that moment they withdrew all support. > > But I think that's a very one-sided reading of what > happened. I spoke to Stanley Fischer about the IMF's > policy in Argentina some months ago, and > while I certainly could be remembering him incorrectly, > his argument was that the IMF was offering contingent > aid - do these things, and we'll continue to help you. > Don't and we won't. They didn't, so they didn't. > But the last thing that the IMF suggested to Argentina was giving up the _peso_ and making the US dollar the official currency in Argentina. Maybe the next step would be accepting the USA constitution and becoming the 51st state... > The IMF doesn't go around writing blank checks - it > tends to impose significant demands for structural > reform. This makes sense. Countries > that are collapsing usually _need_ structural reform. > You don't see the US going to the IMF for loans. In > the case of India, for example, the current > liberalization was largely a product of IMF demands - > which means that the IMF, through that one action, > significantly improved the lives of over a > billion people. It's not often that _any_ organization > can make that claim for its entire history, much less > a single decision. Argentina pretty much > committed suicide from what I can tell, Alberto, > As I said when I mentioned the 15th floor joke. The suicide started in 1992 or so. > and I think the IMF is > little more than a convenient scapegoat for largely > internal failures - as it was in Malaysia, for example, > where Mahathir alternated between blaming > the IMF and a conspiracy of Jewish bankers. > [[interesting, because Domingo Cavallo blamed Argentina�s implosion on a conspiracy of _brazilian_ bankers :-)))]] Alberto Monteiro
