From Aporrea, here’s one for the scratch-yer-head-till-it-hurts files:
Translation mine.Fuck, shit, shuck fit.How the hell did this happen? El Narco wasn’t even invited, yet he got in AND wangled a free-trade agreement with my home and native land–most of whose citizens don’t want free trade, let alone with a narco-terror state like the current, unhappy Colombia. (We get a lot of imports from there already–most of them refugees! In fact, before Harpo, Colombia was our #1 source of refugee claimants.)Now, don’t get me wrong. We don’t want “free” trade with anyone, but we would love fair trade. I’m sure Colombia, the part of it that has no truck with Uribe, has something to offer us besides cheap bananas, flowers grown with dangerous chemicals, and former narcoterrorist paramilitaries looking to avoid getting killed by their ex-bosses (who, go figure, are mighty close to El Narco). But here’s the rub: We want to see Colombia get its house in order before we do business with it, because we don’t believe doing business with it is enough to put said house in order. Why is it so hard for certain people to comprehend this? Why do they keep pushing for an agreement which would only deepen a current disaster?“No” is the same word in English and Spanish, and spelled slightly differently, but pronounced the same, in French. So why can’t our respective so-called leaders seem to hear it when we’re all screaming it at the top of our respective lungs?Even though Colombia is not a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum, its president, Alvaro Uribe, travelled to Peru to meet with a group of leaders from various parts of the world and to take advantage of the opportunity to establish contacts with China, Japan, Canada and others, with the objective of increasing trade.Uribe arrived in Lima on Friday afternoon and a few hours later signed a free-trade agreement with Canada, his country’s ninth. This Saturday, he signed an agreement to promote and protect investments with China. According to Uribe, the agreement with Canada will generate some 120,000 agricultural jobs and 97% of Colombian exports will have free access to that North American nation.
Bina, not to be picky, but “non” in French is not pronounced the same as in English and Spanish (the vowel is nasalized in French — English speakers don’t hear it, but the French do)
You have new readers in Pretoria, and some strange bumfuck Egypt place in the middle of the Australian desert.
Yes, I’m aware of nasal French…it’s a fun language to hear others mispronounce. Just as it’s fun to hear non-native speakers get German umlauts wrong. Watch out when I start learning Chinese, whenever that may be. LOL!
I wonder who in the Outback is reading me. They must have satellite. Can’t imagine anyone stringing that place with telephone wires…the expense of maintaining them must be unreal. And Pretoria! WTF??? I’ve written nothing on South Africa, but Cape Town and Pretoria are reading me? I must be doing something right.
BTW, I see Panama is also in da house.
The FTA with Colombia has yet to be ratified by Canadian parliament – where it will meet considerable -opposition sometime in January.
One hopes it will meet some opposition–but one isn’t optimistic that the opposition will do anything about it. Harpo held his sham election to try to eliminate opposition, and he succeeded by a few seats. It’s a joke compared to the majority he thought he could get, but he’ll take anything he can get to eliminate “obstructionists” (i.e., people who actually care about not screwing their country.)