Eyes getting a little old. Why do you keep dwelling on it?
But thanks for the info on ColUSmbia. I'm glad to see that US drug money--pro-drugs, anti-drugs, what does it matter?--has raised the "per capita" income, and that ColUSmbia is "moving towards" universal health coverage. But will that coverage help the thousands of peasants who have been poisoned by US-pesticide manufacturers in the murderous US "war on drugs", or those tortured and killed for being leftists, or for supporting indigenous rights?
Bush's Dirty War
Colombia's peasant farmers are being driven off their land.
And we are helping.
by George Monbiot
(--Monbiot describes the Bush Junta's plans for aiding US arms dealers back in 2001, then...)
"Welcome as these incipient crises are, however, the war industry also requires immediate conflict. So the US has been seeking opportunities all over the world. None has so far proved as fruitful as its support for a scheme devised by the government of Colombia.
"The purpose of Plan Colombia, according to President Andres Pastrana, is to help eliminate the production of drugs, generate employment, boost trade and bring peace to a country which has been mauled by civil war for more than 50 years. The Clinton and Bush administrations have generously supplied this worthy scheme with $1.3bn, promising the American people that the money will be spent to assist the war on drugs. Eighty-four per cent of the funding will take the form of military aid.
"To control drugs, the US insists, first it must control the country. To this end, it has supplied 104 combat helicopters and trained three Colombian army battalions. But the army is not exactly the instrument of peace that Mr Pastrana has claimed. As Amnesty International has recorded: "Colombian army personnel, trained by US special forces, have been implicated... in serious human rights violations, including the massacre of civilians."
"The army works alongside Colombia's ultra-right paramilitaries, who are responsible for the assassination of thousands of trades union and peasant leaders and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. As one of Colombia's official human rights ombudsmen has noted: 'The paramilitary phenomenon... is the spearhead of Plan Colombia: to create territorial control and to control the civilian population. This is a terror tactic.' The US, with the help of the Colombian government, is waging yet another dirty war in Latin America.
"Far from eliminating drugs production, this war will only make it worse. Plan Colombia funds the aerial spraying of coca and opium fields with Roundup, the broad-spectrum herbicide patented by Monsanto. Roundup destroys almost everything it touches, wiping out legal crops alongside illegal ones, poisoning rivers, shattering one of the most fragile and biodiverse forest ecosystems on Earth, precipitating both acute and chronic human diseases. It is the Agent Orange of America's new Vietnam. (Agent Orange, interestingly, was also a Monsanto product.) Now the US administration wants to take this ecocide a step further, by spraying the jungle with a genetically engineered fungus which produces deadly toxins.
"When their livelihood has been destroyed, the peasant farmers and indigenous people have no means of survival but to flee further into the jungle and start growing drugs. Since the aerial spraying program began, the area devoted to drugs cultivation in Colombia has tripled.
"But Plan Colombia is not a war against drugs: it is a war against people. Its ultimate purpose, as several international observers have pointed out, is to eliminate both leftwing guerrillas and grassroots democratic movements, in order to facilitate the seizure of the country's most valuable land." (MORE)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0522-03.htm-----
Amnesty International URGENT ACTION APPEAL (2002)
"Amnesty International is seriously concerned for the safety of the peasant community of 'La Galleta' farm worked by members of the political party Corriente de Renovacion Socialista (CRS), Socialist Renovation Movement in Montebello Municipality, Antioquia Department, following an increasing number of attacks by army-backed paramilitaries. These attacks have resulted in the killing of 11 peasants from the community in recent months.
"On 1 March, an army-backed paramilitary group reportedly raided houses close to 'La Galleta' and abducted five peasants from the community. Two days later, the bodies of the five peasants were found. Marks on their bodies indicated that they had been tortured.
"On 17 March, another peasant from the community was reportedly killed. During July, there were further attacks against the community. On 15 July four peasants were reportedly massacred. The most recent victim, Hector de Jesus Ayala, whose family has been displaced from 'La Galleta' because of death threats against them, was reportedly taken from his home on 16 July and the following day his body was found, showing signs of torture. Previous requests for protection measures for Hector de Jesus Ayala had reportedly been ignored, despite the fact that he was an important witness in legal proceedings involving members the of the armed forces.
http://colhrnet.igc.org/newitems/july02/aiuract.724.htm------
COLOMBIA: PEASANT ACTIVISTS ASSASSINATED (2004)
"On March 27, relatives found the bodies of Colombian campesinos Javier Alexander Cubillos, Wilder Cubillos and Heriberto Delgado at the morgue in Fusagasuga, Cundinamarca department. The army had apparently taken their bodies there, claiming they were guerrillas killed in combat. The three men were Communist Party activists from the community of San Juan de Sumapaz, in the federal district of Bogota, just north of Fusagasuga. They had been missing since March 18, when they went to the community of La Hoya del Nevado to inspect some of their family's livestock. Several days later, the media published reports that three guerrillas had been killed in combat in the area. The Neighborhood Association of San Juan de Sumapaz and the Union of Agricultural Workers insist that the three men were not guerrillas and did not die in combat, but were murdered by the Colombian army. (Red de Defensores no Institucionalizados, March 30)
"A coalition of community groups and trade unions in the region released a public statement saying that the three men were well-known political and campesino activists in the region who were leading members of both their trade union, the National United Agricultural Union Federation (FENSUAGRO), and the local branch of the Colombian Communist Party."
http://ww4report.com/colombiapeasantsassassinated----
(coming here soon)
The Disappeared Mayor
by Justin Podur
August 29, 2004
"The weapon of detention is used ruthlessly against them as well. In January of this year, 8 people from Toribio were arrested and shipped off abysmal conditions in prison to the department's capital, Popayan, without a shred of evidence or due process, on the charge of 'insurgency'. According to Colombia's anti-terrorist laws, these people, now in jail in Popayan, the capital of Cauca, have no rights to face their accuser; no rights to see the evidence against them; no rights to a jury trial. Instead, their fate will be decided by the state prosecutor's office, in private. The families of the detained collected 3,000 signatures in the community of people who swore that these eight individuals had nothing to do with the insurgency. Against this, the prosecutor general had the testimony of someone in a ski mask... (MORE)
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=&ItemID=6122------
Zmag.org: Featured Articles (2006)
Leech: Drummond in Colombia
Sep 30,2006
In early August 2006, while driving on the highway that links the northern Colombian cities of Bucaramanga and Santa Marta, a uniformed officer with a sidearm signaled for us to pull over to the side of the road. The officer was speaking into a walkie-talkie as he approached our vehicle and I noticed the words “private security” emblazoned on his uniform and a name badge hanging from his breast pocket identifying him as an employee of the Drummond Company. (MORE)
Private Eye: BP Colombia
Jul 20,2006
BP has secretly settled the case being brought by more than 50 destitute Colombian farmers rendered homeless by construction of a major oil pipeline through their land (Eye 1142). The claim switched to the UK from Colombia after one of the farmers, Jhon Morales, was killed by gunmen and their lawyer, Marta Hinestroza, was threatened, her name finding its way on to a paramilitary hit list. (MORE)
Podur: Colombia May 15
May 17,2006
Colombia's peasant, indigenous, and union organizations called for a major mobilization on May 15, 2006. With elections on May 28, 2006, the organizations sought to demonstrate their opposition to the Colombian regime's Free Trade Agreement with the United States, its civil war, its relationship with the paramilitaries, and its proposed constitutional changes. (MORE)
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Colombia/colombiatop.cfm---------
Bacchus39, when you say I "don't like" Colombia's president, you misstate my position, and make it sound like an ordinary political matter. It's not that I "don't like" Uribe, it's that I loathe Uribe for being a tool of Bush Junta death, torture, oppression and exploitation.
And you know damn well that I don't "hate" Colombia, any more than I "hate" the United States in my loathing of the Bush regime.
That is exactly the sort of demagogic statement that Bushites use in the face of any and all criticism. 'You don't like George Bush, you must hate America."
How can you be defending this murderous, corrupt, corporate-controlled, Bush-ass-kissing, ColUSmbian regime?
But, hey, I must be wrong because I can't seem to spell it right.