hello everybody and good afternoon. welcome to the council for the americas for the latest conversation on venezuela. i apologize for making you wait. i had to run and get my reading glasses. i have turned 50 years old and i m not too proud to admit it. here we are. [laughter] indeed. indeed. but thank you everyone for coming to what promises to be a timely and important conversation on a country of increasing concern to all of us , that of course being venezuela. for those of you who are tuning , thank you for doing so. the council of the americas is an organization that for over 50 years has promoted democracy, open markets and the rule of law. most people associate us with a business agenda, and that is true, but democracy comes first. the reason why is because everything else we try to promote in the western hemisphere context is difficult if democracy is not strong and healthy and growing across the region. that is one of the reasons why we re so deeply concerned abo
hello everybody. i m having meetings and i know you re going to be watching a couple of them. we have a lot of people here today and a loft subjects uncolluding north korea and venezuela and i think we re making tremendous head way. welcome to the council for the americas for the latest conversation on the venezuelas i had to run and get my reading glasses. so i have turned 50 years old and i m not too proud to admit it. here we are. indeed. indeed. but thank you everyone for coming and what promises to be a timely conversation on a country of increasing concern to all of us that of course being venezuela for those of you who are tuning in thank you for doing so. the council of the america s is an organization that for over 50 years has promoted democracy, open markets and the rule of law. most of us associate was the hemisphere and that s absolutely true but notice the democracy comes first and the reason why is because everything else we try to promote in the hemisphe
hello everybody, good afternoon. welcome to the council of americas for our conversation on venezuela. my readingn and get glasses, sorry for keeping you waiting. i ve turned 50-years-old and i am not too proud to admit it. so here we are. ] huckling in deed thank you everybody for coming to what promises to be a fascinating and timely conversation about a country that is of increasing concern to all of us. that is in his window. for those of you tuning in, thank you. of the americas is in an organization that for over 50 years has promoted democracy, open markets, and the role of most people associate us with business agenda and the hemisphere but democracy comes first. the reason why is because everything else we try to promote in the western hemisphere context is much more if about to do if a democracy is not strong and healthy and growing across if democracy is not strong and healthy and growing and one of the reasons why we re so deeply concerned about the directio
thank you. nelson. in my 20 years of daily and weekly engagement with brie bsh brazil, which, by the way, in this room i know is a flash in the pan. than our moderator. so i don t know if the rules permit this, but given we ve heard tom shannon side of the u.s. side of this. could i ask our moderator. what will it take from the brazilian side for us to put this disclosure issue behind us? i think it s a recognition in brazil of the importance of the relationship. you can see it coming from the business community that feels that brazil has, in a sense, somewhat isolated itself in the trade arena, for instance. this is daily [inaudible] part of the national conversation. you had the recent speech in againer have addressing this directly significantly is very close to the president. he s very close to who is likely to run for the governor of the [inaudible] he s now the minister of development industry of commerce in brazil. so you have this and the signal from socie
afghanistan. the discussion hosted by the stemson center in washington, d.c. included analysts like stuart bolin, inspector general for iraq reconstruction and his recent report arguing that a the u.s. does not have a well executed plan to implement and oversee the reconstruction efforts. defense department and u.n. officials also participated in the discussion. this is an hour and a half. good morning everyone. i am ellen laipson and i m delighted to welcome you to the stimson center for this muggy of this conversation about war and peace new tools for messy transition. we are gathering at the time that we can see the end of both the iraq and afghanistan engagement, and this event in a way is pivoted around the offer by the special inspector general for the iraqi reconstruction to present some of the findings for the final report so the special inspector general office created in 2004 is now completing its work so it is a moment of reflection and looking back at what are s