Exclusive: McCain Flies to Ukraine as Protests Rage
Source: The Daily Beast
By Josh Rogin December 13th 2013 4:06 PM
As pro-euro protests continue to rock Kiev, the senator is flying there to show support—the highest-ranking American official yet do so.
Sen. John McCain will become the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Ukraine since government violence against street protestors engulfed its capital last week. He will express support and solidarity with the protests.
“Senator McCain is traveling to Ukraine to meet with government officials, opposition leaders and civil society at this critical time as Ukrainians work to determine their future,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers confirmed to The Daily Beast.
McCain leaves for Kiev tonight and will be there Saturday and Sunday. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, is joining the trip Sunday. He is coordinating the trip with the State Department.
“It is appalling that Ukrainian authorities have chosen to use violence and oppression against peaceful demonstrators in Maidan Square in Kiev. Such despicable conduct violates the most basic universal rights—especially the freedom to speak and associate—that are owed to all people,” McCain said in a statement Dec. 11. “If Ukraine's government thinks that brute force and the politics of fear can see it through the current crisis, it is woefully mistaken. More and more Ukrainians are showing that they are no longer afraid. Those brave men and women should know that they are not alone. Their friends across the world stand in solidarity with them.”
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Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/13/exclusive-mccain-flies-to-ukraine-as-protests-rage.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
thanks, but no thanks.
if the protesters are protesting right-wing regimes, like Alvaro Uribe's Colombia, or his successor, Juan Manuel Santos.
[center]
With Alvaro Uribe.
With Juan Manuel Santos.[/center]
Oct 2, 2013
Trial begins for official charged with murder of Jaime Garzon
posted by Peter Bolton
In Colombia the Mask has Slipped
first published in the Morning Star 12/11/2013
MARIELA KOHON says despite an international charm offensive the Manuel Santos regime is continuing to persecute peaceful protesters and violently repress trade unionists and activists
The progressive mask of Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos administration has been torn away by recent events.
On August 25 Huber Ballesteros, a renowned trade union leader, member of the Colombian TUC executive and a leading organiser of the Patriotic March opposition movement was arrested the day before he was due to pick up his visa to travel to address Britain’s TUC conference as a guest of Justice for Colombia.
He joins some 7,000 political prisoners held in horrendous conditions in Colombian prisons, a living example of the way that the Colombian state represses critical views.
More:
http://www.latinamericaconference.org.uk/in-colombia-the-mask-has-slipped/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Or, how many governments do you know to have ever been involved in assassinating a political comedian?
What about ONE, Colombia?
Oct 2, 2013
Trial begins for official charged with murder of Jaime Garzon
posted by Peter Bolton
The murder
Garzon, 39 at the time of his death, was shot five times while traveling to work at a Bogota radio station on August 13, 1999, and died instantly. Two assassins pulled up next to his vehicle on a motorcycle as he was stopped at a traffic light and fired at near-point blank range.
Narvaez denies any involvement in the killing, claiming to have only learned of it through the media. He said: “I deny it outright, I have complete naivety about this fact.”
Narvaez has asserted that the allegations have been fabricated by the AUC in retaliation for a dispute between him and three AUC members. He said that versions of a story linking him to a meeting with Castaño have inconsistencies and stated, “I was not there with Castaño, I did not instigate Castaño to kill Jaime Garzon.
There have been various speculations around the motive for the slaying due to Garzon’s political activities and it has long been suspected that Colombia’s security forces were involved.
The Jaime Garzon cables
A US State Department cable that was declassified in 2011 contains evidence implicating security personal and was used by the Jose Alvear Restrepo lawyers collective and the Commission of Colombian Jurists to request a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
According to The National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, DC, “the [State Department] cable backs up the testimony of former AUC paramilitary leaders who have also linked top military officials to the Garzon murder.”
Widely-read Colombian columnist Francisco Santos said of Garzon’s death: “In this case there is no doubt. The extreme right-wing of the military killed Jaime Garzon.” Former Defense Minister Rafael Pardo appeared to back up Santos’ remarks by publicly announcing that he had witnessed Garzon complaining to then-defense minister Rodrigo Lloreda that a general in the army had mounted a defamation campaign against him as a guerrilla sympathizer. Pardo said that Garzon was being harassed by senior military offices.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/trial-begins-colombia-official-charged-murder-jaime-garzon/
[center]
(Public memorial to honor his recurring act of himself
portraying a shoe shine worker who shined the shoes
of various important Colombian dignitaries.
Another statue marks his grave)
The car Garzon was driving when assassinated.
Wrapped himself in the flag.[/center]
Information published in 2011, before they had exposed new material on the murder:
Who Killed Jaime Garzón?
Document Points to Military/Paramilitary Nexus in Murder of Popular Colombian Comedian
Garzón Had Been "Deeply Troubled" by Meeting with Senior Army Officer
Ongoing Impunity in 12-year-old Case Spurs Inter-American Commission Complaint
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 360
Posted - September 29, 2011
Washington, D.C., September 29, 2011 - Twelve years after the assassination of beloved Colombian journalist and political satirist Jaime Garzón, a newly-declassified State Department cable, published on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org), supports longstanding allegations that Colombian military officials ordered the killing. Written just days after the murder, the cable from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia says that Garzón “had been killed by paramilitaries in league with ‘loose cannon’ active or retired members of the security forces.”
One of Colombia's most popular television personalities, Garzón was also a high-profile advocate for government talks with leftist rebel groups when he was gunned down on August 13, 1999. Carlos Castaño, top leader of an illegal right-wing militia known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was convicted in absentia of masterminding the plot in 2001 but was never brought to justice and is now presumed dead. Castaño remains the only individual ever sentenced in the case, though the involvement of Colombian security forces has long been suspected.
The document published today is among key evidence cited by lawyers representing Garzón's family who are seeking to hold the Colombian state responsible for his murder. Last month, human rights attorneys from the Colectivo de Abogados “José Alvear Restrepo” and the Comisión Colombiana de Juristas jointly requested a hearing on the Garzón case before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR).
Of particular interest in the newly-declassified cable is the revelation that retired general Rito Alejo del Río Rojas may have lied in a 2001 declaration before Colombian prosecutors when he denied that he had ever met Garzón. Quite the contrary, the embassy report says that Del Río “upbraided” Garzón when the two met to discuss his efforts to restart peace negotiations with the ELN guerrilla group. The embassy’s confidential source said that Garzón "came away from the meeting very troubled by the depths of the anger that Del Río vented."
More:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB360/
Why didn't John McCain consider protesting what has been happening in Colombia all these long, long years? Why didn't he consider pinching off some of the load of the billions of US taxpayers' dollars which Washington has been heaping upon the Colombian government?
then I assume it's alright for foreign leaders/office holders to come to this country and support our protesters? And why don't we see John McCain down on the protest lines here in this country? Where was he the gazillion times the riot police committed police brutality on our peaceful protesters? McCain's family has no control over him. He's a lunatic.
His constituents keep voting him in, so we just have to put up with his repetitive ass-holery. 
