Those of us old enough to have lived through the 1980s remember Bhopal as a major industrial disaster. On December 3, 1984, an accident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant (UC was bought by Dow Chemical in 2001) released poisoned gas that killed an official estimate of approximately 3,800 people (actually doctors on site claim that 15,000 died within a month). Over 500,000 have been affected by inhaling the gas.
LARRY KING, HOST: Good evening and welcome to a very special edition of LARRY KING LIVE — special because of our special guest.
Ingrid Betancourt joins us from the Hotel Meurice in Paris. We all know the story. One week ago, she was released from six years of being a hostage.
Has it all — has it all set in, Ingrid?
Is it a week now that you can say I — I’ve got it down?
INGRID BETANCOURT, FORMER FARC HOSTAGE: I’m trying to keep myself together. It has been a very intense and very tiring week. I’m just exhausted. And I’m going to try to do my best to — to give my best to you. I hope that my English will survive, because I’m not sure I will find my words. But I’ll try to concentrate the best I can.
KING: Well, you sound terrific.
How are you physically? Are you getting medical treatment?
BETANCOURT: Yes. Yes. I — I had all kind of medical tests, which I think it was important because it gave me like a bit of tranquility. I have other tests to go through, but I’m under — I’m being taken care of by good doctors. So I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m fine.
KING: You were reunited with your children, Lorenzo and Melanie, in Bogota after the rescue. You spoke in Spanish, but we’ve got an English translation.
Let’s take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETANCOURT (through translator): The children, they are my pride and my reason for living — my sun, my moon, my stars. Because of them, I continued my — the wish to leave that jungle, because I wanted to see them again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Ingrid, what changes have you noticed in your children?
BETANCOURT: So many. They are bigger than me. They are stronger. They are amazing human beings, Larry. It’s — you know, during all these years I had like dreamed of that moment of being with them. And then when I came to live that moment, it was just like better — much, much better than what I dreamed. So I am just so thankful with God because, well, I know they suffered and I know they could have been full of anger and bitterness. And I found — how to say this — like higher spiritual beings. I think they went to — well, I don’t know if I explained what I mean, but it’s like…
KING: Yes.
BETANCOURT: …feeling that they are…
KING: A higher place.
BETANCOURT: Yes, in a higher place with light, with spiritual lights inside themselves.
KING: Nine days before you were taken captive by the FARC, you and other political candidates met with their leaders.
Warning: This video is not for the feign of heart. It contains images from of rescues of hostages by the Colombian Security Forces.
Colombians the world over will march on Colombia’s 198th Anniversary of Independence, the 20th of July, against kidnapping and against the FARC. We invite you to join us.
For information on events world-wide please visit my updated post Marchas por la libertad del 20 de julio. All information (in Spanish) by region is available there.
In Ingrid’s Wake
Ingrid is a friend but politically we see things differently. I have supported her in Senate runs in Colombia but balked at her Presidential bid. I thought her anti-corruption drives one of the most important political moments in Colombian history. I will always work with her on that and on other matters as well. But I will not support her for the Colombian Presidency should she choose to run.
As a Colombian, I admire and respect her but at the same time it was her own stubborness that got her in this mess. As we say in Colombia, terca que da miedo. She was told not go to San Vicente del Caguan. She went anyway. While we in Colombia admire her tenacity in her campaign against President Samper (1994-1998) and his Minister of Government Horacio Serpa, her unothordox approach may play well for foreign audiences but for Colombia we need solutions not quixotic leftist fixes. Her comments that the FARC is a product of Colombian social inequality offend. That may have been true in the 1960s, that’s not the case now. Colombia has a long way to go in advancing social justice, I do not deny, but the FARC offers no solutions in that regard and has only retarded Colombian development and social progress. The FARC are nothing but criminals and terrorists. The entire nation was their hostage. They are not yet done but they will be and the sooner they recognize that they have been defeated the better for all.
President Uribe is on the right path with his zanahoria y garrote (carrot and stick) strategy and the policies of seguridad democratica. Whether he deserves a third term to finish the job, I do not know. I remain confident that others perhaps Juan Manuel Santos or Carlos Holguin Sardi may continue Uribe’s policies beyond August 7, 2010. Let us recognize that Colombia is on the cusp of great things and that the nightmare of drugs and guerrillas may soon be behind us. We have one of the most educated populations in the developing world and Colombia’s greatest natural resources remains its people. And Alvaro Uribe has been masterful not only in his planning but in his execution of his plans. I do not know if non-Colombians can truly appreciate what Colombia has endured. I do not expect sympathy for our plight, we failed ourselves to recognize the scourage of nacrotrafficking would have on our society and we failed to adequately lift millions of Colombians out of endemic poverty. Those are two mistakes that we intend to fully correct. Still, I have been to too many funerals and have lived too many years in exile to ever forgive the FARC. I will not forget Eduardo Garces, Rodrigo Lara, or Benjamin Barney. They did not need to die.
“Iran is a great threat. We have to make sure we are working with our allies to apply tightened pressure on Iran,” the Illinois senator said.
Which one is it? A threat? Not a threat? Make up your mind.
You don’t just sound foolish, you don’t just look foolish, you are foolish. You don’t just sound weak, you don’t just look weak, you are weak. And foolishness and weakness are not qualities for a Commander in Chief. Consistency in foreign affairs is not just a nicety, it is a requirement for keeping the peace. Which of these messages are the Iranians going to believe when you have told them two very different things?
Unexpectedly or perhaps surprising to me anyway, energy policy is actually getting debated. That’s a good thing even though I don’t really expected it to lead to the tough choices we need to make in the time frame we need to make them. To be honest, we are past the tipping point. We’re doomed. The only question left is when does it all unravel. A few wise investments and we might push out the end line a few decades but unless some new technology arrives on the scene in the next twenty years, our way of life will come to a sudden and crashing end.
I have never liked Barack Obama. In fact, I can’t stand Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois either. The reason? They voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy, the worst piece of legislation ever to pass the Congress. Thomas Friedman referred to the bill as “the sum of all lobbies.” U.S. PIRG noted that the bill’s “heavy tilt toward big oil companies reflects the influence of Exxon Mobil and other oil companies on policy-makers in Washington, DC.” The Washington Post editorialized that the bill was a “piñata of perks for energy industries.” Indeed, the bill contained $6 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and $12 billion to the nuclear power industry through 2015. Past that, the sum is likely to approach $30 billion.
Although Sen. Obama voted for the legislation, he speaks as if he opposed it on the campaign trail, criticizing it repeatedly. At a presidential debate he said “You can look at how Dick Cheney did his energy policy…he met with oil and gas companies forty times, and that’s how they put together our energy policy.” He’s attributed the failure of our current energy policy to Congress’s “failure to stand up to the lobbyists.” In Pennsylvania he ran this deceptive ad.
Here’s Brit Hume debunking the Obama ad:
That’s Obama, one big deception. But Obama probably owes his presumptive nominee status to corn ethanol. Without his support for corn ethanol, it is unlikely that he would have won the Iowa caucuses and without that victory I think it fair to say his candidacy would have been finished by Super Tuesday. Winning Iowa gave him a boost. To win Iowa, Obama touted corn ethanol. From the New York Times:
When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer (2007) in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon — and so did Senator Barack Obama.
Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.
Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.
In the heart of the Corn Belt that August day, Mr. Obama argued that embracing ethanol “ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth.” America’s oil dependence, he added, “makes it more difficult for us to shape a foreign policy that is intelligent and is creating security for the long term.”
Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”
On July 6, 2008, the man with the mouth that never quits has decided to “suspend” his nine year run of Sunday morning chats on Venezuelan television. It’s been a bad year for Hugo. His ratings are down. His approval ratings hover just under 50% now if you trust Gallup but if you prefer the Bolivarian version, they are over 70%.
Of all of Chávez’s problems, none is greater than the on-going collapse of the FARC for it severely weakens his ambitions to resurrect a ne “Gran Colombia” with him at the helm. That has always been his goal, a greater Colombia followed by some bizarre continental enterprise. No one else want it but those quixotic Bolivarian cells that Chávez funds up and down the Americas. Chávez is the man with the mouth and the golden cheque book. But Chávez is also being implicated with supporting the FARC financially, morally and militarily (supplying arms) and under Chávez Venezuela has become a drug transfer point.
President Uribe is to travel to Caracas this Friday to meet with President Chávez. Chávez has promised to receive him “like a brother.” Noticias 24, an opposition TV channel in Venezuela, compiled this video (en español/castellano) of the less than brotherly statements Chávez has said recently about Uribe.
“Uribe you are servile peon of the Empire.”
“I have nothing to say to Uribe. Uribe is a farse, a liar. As long as I live I will have nothing to say to Uribe.”
“Uribe does what Bush tells him what to do. Bush wants war. Uribe then wants war.”
“I accuse the President of Colombia of being a sad peon of the Empire out to destroy the people of Latin America.”
“The government of Colombia has become the Israel of Latin America.”
“Uribe is a mafia.”
“The oligarch President of Colombia. Uribe is a criminal. He is just not a liar, he is a paramilitary government, he is just not a lackey, he directs a narco-government.”
“Uribe wants a war. Uribe plays the game that the Empire wants.”
Brotherly. Hugo does have a way with words. Uribe went to Harvard and Oxford. Chávez barely finished high school before enrolling in the Venezuelan Army. I am not quite sure why Uribe is going to Caracas but Uribe has been running circles around Chávez this past year. It should be interesting.
Chávez’s Contribution to the Spanish Language
Venezuelans are not known their Spanish, it is rather grotesque to be frank, typical of the Spanish spoken in the Caribbean basin. S tend to disappear and everything is peppered with the word coño. It can be difficult to comprehend at times. And Chávez’s Spanish is horrific however colourful. However, Chávez has inspired a new word in Spanish– petrochequera, or oil checkbook. It describes Chávez’s lavish spending outside Venezuela. He subsidies the oil of his friends or gives it away even at times but he also funded campaigns of numerous radical leftists in Latin America among other projects such as paying for Bolivia’s voter identity cards. That’s an odd project for him to fund unless you want to suspect him of voter fraud, which I do.
Here is the Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.
US-Czech Missle Defense Shield Plan Signed
The Czechs are against it. The Russians are upset. I am not sure it works. But this is the first that I have seen of my former professor in months. I suppose I am glad she is still on the job. She was a great professor. Secretary of State, not so much. A video report from the Associated Press:
Corruption Trial of former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra Begins
The former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra today went on trial in Bangkok’s supreme court accused of corruption. The criminal trial is the first against Thaksin, the billionaire owner of the Manchester City football club, since he was ousted from office in a pro-royalist military coup in 2006. The former prime minister is accused of having corruptly used his position to help his wife, Pojaman, to buy land. The full report in the UK Guardian.
Qatar Emerges as a Regional Broker
I was very close friends with Daniel Pearl. We were fraternity brothers at Stanford. We last saw each other in August 2001 in India and we had a conversation about how the Middle East was changing. Danny said, watch Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. That’s the future of Arab politics. Danny, as always, was ahead of his times. He was a brillant journalist even at the Stanford Daily. I miss him. This story in today’s New York Times highlights Qatar’s emergence as a mediator of disputes. It is not by coincidence either that Al Jazeera is based in Doha. In terms of liberalism, Qatar is hardly liberal but it is opening up.
Canada to Deport Robin Long
Canada as a haven for conscientious objectors may be ending. Canada intends to deport Robin Long. 25, a US Army deserter as early as Monday. There are approximately 200 Americans seeking refuge in Canada at the moment. More from Toronto’s Globe and Mail.
Germany Ponders Giving the Children the Right to Vote
Every German citizen should have the right to vote in national elections, even those under the age of 18, says a group of parliamentarians. They’ve proposed a law that would allow parents to vote for their children. Deutsche Welle covers the latest German lunacy.
Germany Detains Rwandan Genocide Suspect
Callixte Mbarushimana has been arrested in Frankfurt attempting to fly to Russia. He is wanted in Rwanda and France on charges of genocide. More from Deutsche Welle.
Iran Tests Its Missiles
Iran has test fired nine long- and medium-range missiles, including one which it has previously said could travel as far as Israel and U.S. bases in the region, state media reported on Wednesday. Separately, the Israeli media reports that the Saudis are not opposed to an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. More from Haaretz.
Slovakia To Join EuroZone in January 2009 Fistful of Euros reports on Slovakia’s official ascension into the EuroZone of common currency. Europe as an economic concept gains greater currency but it is in the political unity realm where citizens retain mistrust of Brussels. The Slovak krona will convert to euros at 30.126 to 1 — which is the current rate.
Male-Female Pay Gap in the Netherlands
Men still earn an average of 11.8% more than women doing the same job, according to research by Mercer and ADP in a report from Dutch News. However, in some industries women earn more than men.
Mexico’s Drug Wars Cost Two Officials Their Jobs
The capital city’s police chief and head prosecutor resigned Tuesday amid growing public outrage over a bungled bar raid that resulted in 12 deaths. The resignation of Police Chief Joel Ortega and prosecutor Rodolfo Felix came the same day the city’s Human Rights Commission issued a scathing denunciation of the deadly law enforcement crackdown last month on a club packed with teenagers celebrating the end of the school year. The full story in the Los Angeles Times.
On the outskirts of Atlanta in Jonesboro, Georgia, a Pakistan father has been charged with killing his daughter. The daugher had been forced to marry a man in Pakistan. She did not wish to marry him. She wanted to leave her arranged marriage and file for divorce. But under the code of “honor” — an ancient cultural tradition by which hundreds of millions of contemporary Asians, Africans and Arabs live — divorcing your husband means shaming your entire family. That’s an act of “dishonor.” And that’s a crime worthy of severe punishment, including death. So her father, Chaudhry Rashid, 54, strangled his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal, 25, while she screamed “Father, Father.”
That is Islam. A father can kill his daughter. This is the West. This is murder.
A Pakistani man accused of killing his daughter because she wanted out of an arranged marriage told a judge Tuesday that he had done nothing wrong. Chaudhry Rashid, 54, later said he was “very disturbed” and “not in a state of mind” to talk because of the death of his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal.
A somber and tearful Rashid made his first court appearance Tuesday. He was advised through an Urdu interpreter of the murder charge and his legal rights. A judge also admonished Rashid, of Jonesboro, Georgia, to not make any statements without clearing them with his attorney.
“My client is going through a difficult time. As you can imagine, he is distraught,” attorney Tammi Long said after the hearing. When asked about Rashid’s comments in court, Long said her next move was to speak with him in depth.
He’s distraught. She’s dead.
“We will work diligently to provide the best defense for our client against these charges,” she said.
She requested that Rashid’s family be given privacy, but said Rashid is holding up as well as can be expected. Court records indicate that a preliminary hearing in the case has been scheduled for July 24.
Officers found Kanwal dead in an upstairs bedroom of the family’s suburban Atlanta home early Sunday, according to a Clayton County police report. Police discovered possible ligature marks on her body and made note of an iron and a necklace as potential causes of the bruising.
Authorities arrived at the home around 2 a.m., shortly after Rashid’s wife called police.
She reported that she had been awakened by screaming but couldn’t understand the language, the report said. She said she was afraid and left the house to call police.
Rashid’s wife told authorities that Kanwal recently had wed in Pakistan in an arranged marriage. The young woman’s husband was living in Chicago, Illinois, police said, but Kanwal remained at her father’s home and worked at a metro Atlanta Wal-Mart for a brief time.
“The victim was not interested in marrying, nor remaining married to her husband,” the police report said, citing information authorities received from Rashid’s wife. “This was causing a great deal of friction between the victim and her father,” so much so that the two had not spoken in two months, the report said.
