Larry Birns
Larry Birns
Larry Birnsis the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal, not-for-profit organization monitoring human rights and political developments in Latin America. Birns grew up in New York City and graduated from Columbia University, eventually doing postgraduate work in the social sciences at Oxford University. Before founding the Council in 1975, Birns taught at Hamilton College and served with a United Nations mission in Chile during the Salvador Allende government...
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He (Chavez) is popular because he needles the United States and he talks like the average Latin American would talk.
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Here you have an elected leader with skills and money who doesn't throw people in jail and pull out their fingernails. That's what makes him so dangerous.
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This is being done devoid of public scrutiny. I personally think that it's outrageous that the US government can dispose funds with no real consultation.
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Rice has an enormous task to repair the present disarray in which we find U.S.-Latin American relations.
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Chavez's antics are a form of merriment for him. He's part buffoon, part visionary and part deadly effective strategist.
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How are you going to retaliate for keeping people warm for winter? It's a pretty brilliant strategy.
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It's a decisive moment, ... It's not Chavez's nasty tongue that has earned him Washington's odium. It is his policies. What he stands for is a declining role for the U.S. in Latin America.
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Will the administration be wise enough to pull back from its hostile attitude? What is needed is a sober accounting of what is needed, instead of turning to the CIA.