[Newspoetry] FW: LNN.COM: Big Guns Back Aid To Colombia

[Mike Lehman]

Looks like a conflict of interests, rather than a "confluence of
interests".

End of essay, 4,888 words short, but enough said.
Mike

enslin at prairienet.org wrote:
> 
> I get 3-5 mostly distressing articles on Colombia per day culled from
> various press services and newspapers by Dennis Grammenos, which often are
> preceded by comments by him. This one contained a writing assignment which,
> though sarcastic, newspoets may wish to take up.
> --Mark
> ----------
> From: Colombian Labor Monitor <xx738 at prairienet.org>
> To: News from CLM <clm-news at prairienet.org>
> Subject: LNN.COM: Big Guns Back Aid To Colombia
> Date: Fri, Feb 25, 2000, 5:44 PM
> 
>  [NOTE:  Your assignment for this weekend is to read this article
>  and then write a 5,000 word essay on the role of multinational
>  corporations in setting U.S. foreign policy toward Colombia and in
>  the dirty war against workers, peasants, human rights activists,
>  indigenous people and any progressive forces that might think of
>  ever standing up to the rapacious appetite of neoliberalism and
>  yanqui imperialism. The best essay wins a one-year subscriptions
>  of the Colombia Bulletin: A Human Rights Quarterly -DG]
> 
> Wednesday, 23 February 2000
> 
>   Big Guns Back Aid To Colombia
>   Well-financed U.S. lobby seeks
>      relief from drug wars
>   ------------------------------
> 
>  By Sam Loewenberg
> 
> Nothing in Washington ever happens in a vacuum. And the Clinton
> administration's recent proposal to give Colombia $1.3 billion in aid to
> help combat drug trafficking is no exception.
snip

> Through the U.S.-Colombia Business Partnership -- founded in 1996 to
> represent U.S. companies with interests in Colombia -- the Occidental
> Petroleum Corp., the Enron Corp., BP Amoco, the Colgate-Palmolive Co., and
> others played an important part in pressing the administration and Congress
> for the aid. The business partnership is now actively pushing the Clinton
> initiative.
> 
> "Right now, you see a confluence of interests," says Lawrence Meriage,
> Occidental's vice president for public affairs and the company's point man
> on Colombia.