Being a professor is no guarantee of honesty (or rationality)

Hey Folks -

The column below is the kind of crap that passes for journalism in central Ahia (Ohio). This Professor Southgate has "written" several columns for the Columbus Dispatch over the last year or so, and they have all been slanted, right-wing hatchet jobs on Latin countries.

Maybe because he is a "professor" he thinks he can get by with distortions, name calling, guilt by association, double standards, and whining rather than by honestly considering the facts (see the evidence - his column - below).

On top of that, as I discovered via email, he is a smart-ass besides. He evidently sees himself as a wit armed in sarcasm. Nothing pleases the Uke Man more than a chance to take on a pompous nitwit.

In the next posting I will share his email and my response.

- Uke Man

Colombia's dust-up with neighbors underscores U.S. policy need
Friday, March 21, 2008
By Douglas Southgate


Early this month, war threatened in South America. Thanks to electronic eavesdropping, Raul Reyes, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was located in a jungle camp in Ecuador, less than 2 miles from Colombia's border. This triggered military action of a sort familiar in the Middle East, but without recent precedent in Latin America. The Colombian military bombed the camp and sent in troops.

The previous evening, Reyes and two dozen comrades had settled in for a long night's sleep -- a pleasure long denied them in their homeland. Only a few survived the next morning.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who had exhibited little concern about violations of national sovereignty by the predatory nihilists of FARC, suddenly became a stalwart defender of his country's borders and mobilized troops. His ally, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, followed suit, rushing 10,000 soldiers to a border region where another FARC leader has taken refuge.

Denouncing Colombia as the Israel of Latin America, Chávez and Correa severed diplomatic ties with Bogotá and encouraged other nations to do likewise. But only Nicaragua, governed by senescent Sandinista Daniel Ortega, recalled its ambassador.

The diplomatic campaign fizzled in part because of strong U.S. support for Colombia, which is the second-largest nation in South America and our strongest ally there. Furthermore, support for the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan leaders evaporated as the contents of Reyes's laptop, which was captured intact during the March 2 raid, were made public.

E-mails archived on the computer provided documentation of overtures to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi in 2000, as well as dealings with Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer arrested recently in Thailand. Also, unmistakable evidence now exists of FARC's ties with Chávez and Correa. The terrorists donated money, raised through kidnappings and drug dealings, to the Ecuadorian president's 2006 campaign. Support for the Venezuelan dictator dates to his unsuccessful coup in the early 1990s. Chávez has reciprocated by pledging up to $300 million to FARC's campaign to subvert the Colombian state.

Already popular because of his aggressive suppression of FARC and other armed groups, Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, has seen his approval ratings soar since the raid. He was returned to office with nearly two-thirds of the vote in 2006 and petitions are circulating for a constitutional amendment that that would allow for a second re-election.

The main accomplishment that eludes Uribe, whose father was assassinated by FARC, is a free-trade treaty with the United States. However, the AFL-CIO and other unions, which are prepared to donate $300 million this year to Democratic candidates, are vociferously opposed. And any doubts about Democrats' willingness to pander to protectionists were dispelled during the Ohio primary campaign.

Correa will end up suffering more than Uribe. His countrymen may be reluctant to fight FARC, but they are also unenthusiastic about harboring terrorists. Ecuadorians must also think about maintaining duty-free access to U.S. markets, where most of the country's oil, bananas, shrimp and cut flowers are exported.


If it cared to do so, the United States could subject Chávez to enormous pressure. Refineries owned by Venezuela's state-owned oil company and located along the U.S. Gulf Coast are about the only places where its crude petroleum can be converted efficiently into gasoline. Accordingly, banning imports from Venezuela, which might result if Chávez's regime is declared a state sponsor of terrorism, would devastate the national economy, perhaps provoking an uprising by students and disaffected soldiers.

But don't hold your breath for a confrontation. Few U.S. politicians from either party seem willing to do anything that might drive up gasoline prices, even though the declines that would result in consumption in this country would cause international prices to drop and put the squeeze on our oil-rich antagonists.

Barring our adoption of an energy-security policy worthy of the name, Chávez and other villains with whom he is allied, such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have little to fear from us.

Douglas Southgate is a professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at Ohio State University.
southgate.1@osu.edu