Clinton Stumped By Colombian Trade Deal Question

The conflict of interest is readily apparent here between her claims of being against the Colombian trade deal yet her husband has made money speaking in favor of it. Yet when a reporter asks her about it, her only answer is to laugh nervously in front of the press.



I don't care how many angels dance on the head of a pin (um, wtf does that mean?), I want to know why or why not you think that conflicts with your position. Why was that so hard Senator?

Pelosi Stands Up For Fair Trade And Against Republicans

Today in Washington Congressional Republicans and the White House are whining that Speaker Nancy Pelosi played unfair by blocking a vote on a trade deal between the United States and Colombia. As usual when it comes to Republican tears and the truth, neither were anywhere near each other. What Pelosi did today was stop an unfair trade deal from going through that would have helped the pockets of the Colombian government and American corporations while screwing the workers of both countries.

From the AP:

"The president took action" in submitting the Colombia free trade agreement to Congress on Tuesday, she said. "I will take mine tomorrow." Pelosi said that Bush called her Monday to tell her he was sending the agreement to Congress.

The White House has aggressively pushed Congress to approve the trade deal with Colombia, arguing that helping a key ally in South America is in the political and security interests of the United States.

But most Democrats, backed by organized labor and some human rights groups, are against it. They have cited violence against union organizers in Colombia and have also made clear they won't consider further free trade agreements until legislation is passed to expand current programs to help American workers displaced by foreign trade.

Pelosi, at a news conference, said that if legislation approving the trade deal were taken up now, it would be defeated, "and what message would that send" to the Colombian people?

She denied that the rule change doomed action on the agreement this year, saying that "depends on the good faith in which we conduct these negotiations." The administration has been talking to Democrats about ways to help American workers. The House last year passed legislation to expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program that provides financial aid and training to people who lose jobs as a result of trade, but the White House threatened a presidential veto and the Senate never took it up.

Trading with our friends around the globe is certainly important, but how we trade should come first. Before George Bush became President our country was looked up at as a symbol of freedom and equality. We should demand that of our international trading practices as well as what goes on internally here at home. As Representatives Hale and Michaud said yesterday, they would be dead in Colombia for doing what they do with labor here in America. That needs to change before we agree to anything.

Chiquita Banana Lady Is A Terrorist

The dancing woman with the fruit on her head isn't as innocent as you think. It turns out that Chiquita is a terrorist supporter, to the tune of $1.7 million dollars. Ok so it isn't her but the company has been found to have paid off U.S.-identified terror groups. The money went to the AUC in Colombia, a group that has committed terrible atrocities in the highly unstable region.

From the Huffington Post:

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.

Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. In addition to paying the AUC, prosecutors said, Chiquita made payments to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company's banana-growing area shifted.

In a violent area like the banana-growing region of Colombia, paramilitary groups are constantly at war and corporate money is a sizeable income in order to pay for weapons. The protection money ended up costing the company a lot more than they thought. Their settlement with the Justice Department wound up at $25 million dollars. The company's attorneys advised corporate executives not to make those payments, yet they did so anyway according to court documents. Chiquita thought their problems had ended when they sold their Columbia division three years ago, but now it has come back to bite them and the taste does not come close to a ripe banana.

Jokes and Consumerism Dominate Media: Human Event Stories Suffer

With numerous twenty-four hour cable news networks, a declining but still healthy print media and a plethora of local news outlets you would believe that what is news in this world would be covered. The human interest story that connects people with their fellow man should be an easy decision to cover. Unfortunately the media in America is not interested in items like that. Botched jokes and the latest gadget that is sold on gadget.com takes far more space in what we see and read than matters of life and death around the world.

Truly Equal points us to Doctors' Without Borders annual top ten list of underreported stores. Of these ten, seven minutes of airtime was dedicated, combined! The top ten are listed below in no particular order.

Somalia - Somalis Trapped by War and Disaster
Central African Republic - Fleeing Violence in the Central African Republic (CAR)
Tuberculosis - Increasing Human Toll Taken by Tuberculosis
Chechnya - Consequences of Bitter Conflict in Chechnya
Sri Lanka - Civilians Under Fire in Sri Lanka While Assistance is Limited
Malnutrition - Effective Strategies for Treating Malnutrition Not Implemented
Democratic Republic of Congo - Congolese Endure Extreme Deprivation and Violence
Colombia - Living in Fear in Colombia
Haiti - Violence Rages in Haiti’s Volatile Capital
Central India - Clashes in Central India

Where is the in-depth reporting on these issues? Is it too much work for our journalist community to send reporters to put these matters on the front pages of our newspapers and in the thousands of news segments taped daily? Perhaps the press believes that people want to be happy in a state of delusion and that George Foreman's seventh edition grill is much more important?

Earth to journalists, it is your job to cover the news, no matter what it is. Stop showing us garbage that you think will give you the best ratings and give us the truth!