Uribe’s has no proof of Santos drug money claim, admits lawyer

Uribe’s has no proof of Santos drug money claim, admits lawyer
May 20, 2014 posted by Daniel E Freeman



The lawyer for Alvaro Uribe claims the former President never actually had proof of his allegations that there were links between $2 million in drug money and President Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s national media reported on Tuesday.

After refusing to testify regarding allegations to Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office three times, the former President and Senator-elect Uribe is now playing with words.

Less than two weeks ago, the founder of the Democratic Center (Centro Democratico – CD) party jumped on a media frenzy surrounding President Santos’ now former campaign manager Juan Jose (JJ) Rendon.

The Venezuelan political strategist was forced to resign after El Espectador newspaper revealed that Rendon had received $12 million from drug traffickers after negotiating a deal with them to allegedly end parts of the drug trade.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/uribe-proof-santos-drug-money/

We were ordered to spy on Santos: Key witness in Zuluaga wiretapping case

We were ordered to spy on Santos: Key witness in Zuluaga wiretapping case
May 20, 2014 posted by Alexandra Jolly

An ex-campaign worker for presidential candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga who filmed his former boss being briefed on allegedly illegally gained information claimed on Monday that he had been hired as part of a “cyber attack” team against President Juan Manuel Santos.

Spanish-national Rafael Revert worked with incarcerated hacker Andres Sepulveda as part of a team in Zuluaga’s campaign which was given “the task of leading a cyber attack on Santos,” Colombia’s incumbent president who is running for reelection, he told Blu Radio.

Sepulveda was arrested after agents from the Prosecutor General’s technical investigation team (CTI) raided an apartment in the capital Bogota, where they discovered surveillance equipment allegedly used to intercept electronic communications about ongoing peace negotiations with rebel group FARC as well as information on Zuluaga’s primary opponent in the election race.

According to Revert, he was contacted by the Zuluaga campaign who needed a computer security expert. After several Skype conversations, a financial settlement was made through David Zuluaga, the son of the candidate, leading Revert to fly to Colombia and begin work.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/the-man-behind-the-zuluaga-wiretapping-video/

Ex-US officials urge easing Cuba embargo

Source: Deutsche Welle

Ex-US officials urge easing Cuba embargo

A group of former high-ranking US officials has called on President Obama to loosen the decades-old embargo on Cuba, saying more travel to the Communist-led island could promote economic activity there.

19.05.2014

The US should loosen its embargo on Cuba to facilitate independent economic activity on the Communist-led island, an unprecedented number of former US officials and business executives wrote on Monday in an open letter to President Barack Obama.

The 44 signatories, which included former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and retired Admiral James Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, urged Obama to seize a "window of opportunity" opened by reforms underway in Cuba that restrict state control over some economic sectors and permit entrepreneurs to found small businesses.

The letter was the latest sign that a growing number of Americans support a change in policy with regards to Cuba, but it stopped short of calling for actual legislation.

The punitive sanctions and embargo imposed on Cuba were passed by Congress five decades ago, but the letter specified a number of steps Obama could take that are within the executive authority and do not require Congressional approval.

Read more: http://www.dw.de/ex-us-officials-urge-easing-cuba-embargo/a-17646787?maca=en-rss-en-bus-2091-rdf

Using the Cold War: The Truman Administration’s Response to the Bolivian National Revolution

Using the Cold War: The Truman Administration’s Response to the Bolivian National Revolution
Written by Benjamin Dangl
Monday, 06 May 2013 10:54

Author’s note: At a May Day speech this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that his government would be expelling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) out of the country for seeking to undermine the leftist policies and agenda of the Morales government. As I wrote in an investigative article on this topic in 2008 for The Progressive Magazine, the US government has for years been attempting to oppose the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), the political party of Morales, and weaken Bolivia’s leftist social movements.

Washington is no stranger to interfering in leftist and nationalist politics in the Andean nation. As the following paper, originally published in the University of Vermont History Review in 2012, outlines, the Harry Truman administration worked against the progressive policies, self-determination and grassroots base of Bolivia’s transformative National Revolution in 1952. This history's legacy lives on; Washington’s power is woven into the fabric of Bolivian politics, from the dreams and nightmares of the National Revolution, into the MAS era of today.

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At the beginning of the Cold War, Bolivian miners and peasants took to the streets in what would become one of the most transformative and symbolically-rich political events of the twentieth century for the Andean nation. Bolivia’s National Revolution in 1952 initiated shockwaves that are still felt among the country’s impoverished and indigenous majority. From land reform and the nationalization of the tin mines, to expanding access to voting, education and healthcare, the changes and promises wrought by the National Revolution were historically unprecedented for Bolivia.

Public support for the National Revolution was fed by many Bolivians’ dissatisfaction with working conditions in the fields and mines of the nation and the country's widespread social and economic inequalities. A testimony from Bolivian miner Domitila Barrios de Chungara conveys the perception of injustice that was common among Bolivian workers at the time of the revolution: “Why should we allow a few to benefit from all of Bolivia’s resources while we go on forever working like animals, without having higher aspirations, without being able to provide a better future for our children? Why shouldn’t we aspire to better things when our country is rich thanks to our sacrifice?”[1] Barrios de Chungara’s complaints illustrate the rage felt by many poor Bolivians, a rage which gave expression to the demands of the revolution. Yet, in the months and years following the uprising, many of the National Revolution’s promises remained unrealized. A string of military dictatorships, corrupt presidents, racism and vast inequality in the country contributed to these challenges. But a look at Washington’s response to the revolution in 1952 points to some other roadblocks to development and social change.

This essay explores the ways in which President Harry Truman’s administration undermined the historic nationalist changes that took place during the National Revolution in Bolivia. In the US fight against communism in the Cold War, the decisions of leading Truman administration foreign policy officials working on Latin America were consistently informed by US commercial interests. Such US policy fought against nations who challenged those commercial interests in their own countries by way of the state-led expropriation of private businesses, industry and land. Diplomatic cable exchanges between government officials and diplomats in Washington and La Paz detail how the Truman administration worked against the self-determination of Bolivia’s National Revolution. Of specific interest here is the extent to which the Truman administration, following Bolivia’s nationalization of tin mines, pressured Bolivian officials into reimbursing the private businessmen who were the former owners of the government-expropriated mines, a move that was against the popular sentiment of the grassroots base of the Bolivian revolutionary government.

Considering the roots of the Truman administration’s foreign policy in the wake of World War II, and the development of the Truman Doctrine, the administration’s response to the National Revolution took place at an important juncture in US-Latin American relations. In the years following Bolivia’s revolution, Washington notoriously helped orchestrate bloody coups against leaders with nationalist leanings elsewhere in the region. The way in which Washington dealt with this earlier threat to US hegemony in the Andes sheds important light on the machinations of US foreign policy in Latin America in the early Cold War.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4275-using-the-cold-war-the-truman-administrations-response-to-the-bolivian-national-revolution

Geosecurity 101: Washington and Moscow's Military Bases in Latin America

Geosecurity 101: Washington and Moscow's Military Bases in Latin America
Monday, 19 May 2014 10:38
By W. Alejandro Sanchez, Council on Hemispheric Affairs | Report

In spite of ongoing tensions in Ukraine, which have seriously soured relations between Russia and the U.S. & Europe, Moscow has not altogether forgotten the Western Hemisphere. A case in point is the recent visit by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov to four Latin American nations in April (Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua and Peru).

While Lavrov’s trip did not end in any particularly major deals between Moscow and his Latin American hosts, the visit came months after declarations by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that the Russian armed forces require some form of overseas military facilities.[1] Regarding Latin America, the countries mentioned by Minister Shoigu in late February which could hypothetically host a Russian military facility included Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Shoigu’s statement sparked a flurry of debate in the U.S. and Latin America regarding whether Russia’s military ambitions and expansion of its sphere of influence in recent years could be considered as the resumption of the Cold War.

The declarations of the Russian defense minister, as well as the status of the current U.S. military presence in the Americas, can best be discussed in an accurate context of Western Hemispheric geopolitical and geosecurity realities. This could provide some insightful perspectives and likely scenarios of how the military component of global powers that have a presence in Latin America and the Caribbean may evolve in the near future.

US Bases in the Western Hemisphere

Previous COHA military research papers have examined various aspects of U.S. military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean, but a brief recapitulation is always useful.[2] Washington’s current bases in the Western Hemisphere (outside of the U.S. and its affiliated territories) include:

• Joint Task Force Bravo – Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras.[3] Currently, American military personnel carry out medical operations to Hondurans as well as assisting that country when natural disasters occur. For some time, it has been rumored that the Honduran government would like to take over the facility in order to convert the landing strip into a commercial airport, and the U.S. personnel would likely open a new base along the Caribbean coast of the country (COHA discussed this possibility in a November 2006 report).[4] Nevertheless, these speculations have yet to become a reality.
  
  
• Comalapa – El Salvador. The naval base was opened in 2000 after the U.S. military left Panama in 1999 and the Pentagon needed a new forward operating location for maritime patrol, reducing transit times and increasing on-station effectiveness to support multi-national counter illicit missions. According to its website, Cooperative Security Location (CSL) Comalapa has a staff of 25 permanently assigned military personnel and 40 civilian contractors. The staff stationed in Comalapa have the mission of providing 24/7 critical logistics, security and infrastructure support to all forward deployed U.S. aviation units participating in counter-illicit trafficking operations. A recent example of humanitarian operations carried out by the military personnel at Comalapa occurred in April, when U.S. sailors stationed in that facility raised more than $1,100 for an Easter meal and Easter egg hunt for a local children’s home.

A Crossroads for Socialism: Cuba in Transition (Introduction)

A Crossroads for Socialism: Cuba in Transition (Introduction)
Nicholas Partyka I Geopolitics I Analysis I April 24th, 2014

The following is Part One of a multi-part project entitled, "A Crossroads for Socialism: Cuba in Transition." This series of analyses, observations, and dispatches of Cuba focuses on the country's unprecedented, post-Fidel transition. With a heavy reliance on macroeconomic, geopolitical, and foreign policy analysis, Hampton contributor Nicholas Partyka seeks to pinpoint the nuanced economic, political, and social changes that are occurring on the island nation, and how these changes are impacting everyday Cubans.

Given the coverage (or maybe, more correctly, the lack thereof) of Cuba in the US media today one might be forgiven for offering the following as mildly shocking news to some readers; the Cuban revolution has not been defeated, and it is not over. Cuba garners little attention in the US media, and has for some time been something of an off-the-radar topic in US foreign policy discussion; save perhaps a few perfunctory lines in a party platform every four years. The times when Cuba does grab attention are either in the role of foil for US espionage, aka "development" efforts (see the recent ZunZuneo case), or as "a rouge state run by a power-mad tyrant" (see the case of the North Korean-owned and bound ship loaded with Cuban ex-Soviet weaponry and sugar). In light of this context, it seems like Cuba today is mainly forgotten by the American public, hostage to a few extremists in congress, and an easy target for politicians scoring political points. The public might have this misconception that the Cuban revolution has failed, and that its transformative project has run its course; and most would likely believe that it has little to show for itself after fifty plus years. However, let me assure you at the outset: The Cuban revolution has neither been defeated, nor is its work over. The series of analyses and dispatches in this forthcoming project will elaborate on what I mean by this.

Along these lines, let me give an important disclaimer before getting into anything substantive. This will not be a travel blog where I present an image of the "stereotypical Cuba" - of the Cuba you think you know, and are comfortable with. I am going to pass over, save these few lines, in silence the tropical splendor of Cuba. I'm not going to spend time talking about how Havana is full of old American cars from the 1950s. First of all, I don't care at all about cars, and as I'm not a baby boomer, I don't get nostalgic about them. Second, there is a very good reason why these cars are still on the road - the Cubans have had little choice but to keep them running. This series will not be about beaches, restaurants, and cool little places to hear and dance to lively Cuban music.

I should add to my disclaimer that I do not know everything about Cuba. I don't even speak Spanish terribly well. What I present here are my impressions, analysis and insight based on my experiences in Cuba and with the Cuban people, as well as my studies of its history, economy, and society. I would not be comfortable calling or presenting myself as a Cuba expert. Nonetheless, the serious attention I've given to the study of Cuba's political and economic history - as well as my personal experiences from within the country - provides a good enough reason to be allowed serious consideration.

At this point, I should say something about who I am so that the reader can have some context for the views and analysis I give, and also to give the reader some insight into the basis of the claims and arguments I will advance. I am a PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at University at Albany SUNY. I am finishing up my dissertation on the political consequences of capitalist work organization. My specialty in philosophy is political-economy. I have studied (for more than twelve years at the graduate and undergraduate level) economic and political institutions and their interactions, both contemporarily as well as historically, in the US and many other countries. Related to this work, but not officially, I have been a life-long student and avid reader of history, with special interest in geo-politics and US foreign policy.

More:
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/cuba-project-introduction.html#.U3lx02cU_mI

Bagua Massacre – A Test for Justice in Peru

Bagua Massacre – A Test for Justice in Peru
By Milagros Salazar

LIMA, May 16 2014 (IPS) - The trial of 52 indigenous people that just got underway for a 2009 massacre near the city of Bagua in northwest Peru will test the judicial system’s independence and ability to impart justice.

The oral phase of the trial opened Wednesday May 14 in a court in Bagua in the northern region of Amazonas. The next hearing will be held May 26.

The defendants are indigenous leaders and residents involved one way or another in the Jun. 5, 2009 clash between security forces and protesters that left 34 people dead – 24 police officers and 10 civilians – and around 200 injured.

Indigenous people in that Amazon region had blocked a highway near Bagua for two months, demanding the repeal of decrees passed by the government of Alan García (2006-2011) that opened up native territories in the rainforest to oil, mining and logging companies, violating rights guaranteed in the constitution.

Several of the decrees were repealed.

But the bloody incident made headlines around the world.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/05/bagua-massacre-test-justice-peru/

Venezuela: Terrorist campaign backed by US, corporate media

Venezuela: Terrorist campaign backed by US, corporate media
Saturday, May 17, 2014
By Steve Ellner

The private media and important actors both at home and abroad, including Washington, have downplayed, and in some cases completely ignored, the terrorist actions perpetrated against the Venezuelan government over the past three months.

Among the latest examples that have gone underreported abroad is the assassination in late April of Eliezer Otaiza, a historic leader of the Chavista movement and president of the Caracas city council.

Another is a series of reports issued by interior secretary Miguel Rodriguez Torres that establish connections between terrorist actions and sectors of the Venezuelan opposition. The reports have includeda wealth of documents — including videos, emails, phone call registries, and phone call recordings.

The opening remarks of Robert Menendez, chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in hearings to study proposed sanctions against Venezuela shows how the charges of opposition-promoted terrorism get brushed aside.

More:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56485

Federal Judge Deals Major Blow to 'Years-Long Effort to Oppress Gitmo Prisoners'

Published on Saturday, May 17, 2014 by Common Dreams

Federal Judge Deals Major Blow to 'Years-Long Effort to Oppress Gitmo Prisoners'

Federal District Court judge orders halt to force-feeding, Forcible Cell Extraction of prisoner; orders video evidence must be kept.

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

In a decision welcomed as "a major crack in Guantanamo's years-long effort to oppress prisoners," a federal judge on Friday ordered the United States to halt the force-feeding and "Forcible Cell Extractions" of a prisoner at the notorious offshore prison.

The order from District Court Judge Gladys Kessler also requires the U.S. to preserve videotapes of the FCEs and force-feedings of the inmate, Abu Wa'el Dhiab.

Forcible Cell Extractions or FCEs refer to when a team of guards forcibly remove from his cell a prisoner who refuses to submit to the torturous process of force-feeding.

According to Reprieve, a UK-based rights group that represents 15 Guantanamo prisoners, including Dhiab, the 42-year old Syrian was arrested in 2002 in Pakistani, where he and his family were living, and was turned over the the United States.

He has spent over a decade languishing at the prison, was never charged and was cleared for release in 2009. He is depressed and wheelchair-bound, the group says.

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/17

Capitalism and Its Mexican Genocide

Weekend Edition May 16-18, 2014
Economic War

Capitalism and Its Mexican Genocide
by MATEO PIMENTEL

Capitalism accumulates wealth and profits the capitalists, whether under the aegis of formal, or informal economy. In fact, we currently witness the bloody clash between the two as they further excavate the arroyo between them in the processing Mexican drug wars. Yet, this warring south of San Diego, California, south of Tucson, Arizona, south of Las Cruces, Nuevo México, and south of El Paso, Texas is not the ugliest byproduct of the capitalist clash in question. Simply put, the Mexican drug war and its death tolls amount to genocide.

As a matter of proceeding, the proponents and thieves of the formal economy rely on their fascist hammer of military force to eliminate the rogue, illicit drug-trading competition; it plagues potential profits. Still, they do not seek the demise of illicit drug trade for any virtuous reasons. They only wage lawful writ and military might against these drug lords, who happen to run their own, informal multinationals, precisely because they, the ruling bandidos, do not unilaterally benefit from the informal, narcotic taproot of profitability. They see it as a scourge. In fact, this attempt to eradicate illegal drug trade is virtual admission that the informal economy’s illicit products/services are highly inimitable, or extremely hard to out-compete. And fascism will not stand the competition, even if it means masquerading genocide as nothing more than war.

Despite the clash of economic forces that has lead to this genocide, the ensuing tear in Mexico’s social fabric still functions to profit those who grow richer from upped production and sales in both market places. Furthermore, there is little-to-no comparable spillage over to the US side of the border! But the reason for this is self-evident: American consumption drives both economies. Sadly enough, the misfortunate collateral in the war between formal economic fascists, and the informal economy’s drug oligopoly, is the wanton destruction of Mexico, the terrorizing of its people, and the unnecessary loss of life – totaling some 120,000 after Calderon’s reign ended in 2012 (and nearly 30,000 disappearances in 2013 alone).

No more should die in this bloody tug-of-war for profits. We need to pursue the condemnation of this genocide. Moreover, revealing it for what it is is a first step in that direction. So, connecting the death toll and the murderous proclivities of capitalist forces with the elements of genocide is absolutely essential. Consider the literature espoused by the Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG). Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) defines genocide as,

“…acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”