Colombia finds remains of 760 paramilitary victims (Bush pal Uribe-supporting deathsquads)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: AFP

Colombia finds remains of 760 paramilitary victims

Bogotá, Colombia
19 June 2007 06:33

Colombian officials have found the remains of 760 victims killed by right-wing paramilitary groups, and have leads on another 4 000 bodies, a state prosecutor said, according to news reports on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Luis Gonzalez, who heads a task force that works with demobilised paramilitaries, told the daily El Pais newspaper that the bodies, buried in mass graves, were found with the help of information supplied by former paramilitary leaders.

The leads have helped authorities identify 250 of the bodies recovered so far, many of whom are believed to be victims of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia.

The group, which goes by the Spanish acronym AUC, is the largest of several private armies organised in the 1980s -- ostensibly to protect landholders from leftist guerrillas -- and consolidates several local and regional paramilitary organisations.




Read more: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=311818&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/

---

Percentage of Human Rights Violations
in Colombia and Group Responsibility

[movonne]

1. Being a bush buddy is no surprise...that just the kind hi likes...

[gorbal]

2. Imagine if they helped slaughter hundreds of people in the US,

Would we be happy if our government said, "Okay so surrender and tell us where the bodies are and we'll give you a pass"

[Peace Patriot]

3. So far, the victims have turned out to be union organizers, small peasant farmers,

political leftists, advocates for the poor, and non-political bystanders, and I expect that this current horrendous haul of the dead will be similarly constituted. I doubt that any of them will turn out to be armed guerrillas, and, even if they were, a) do leftist guerrillas not have some cause to be so passionately angry as to take up arms, in Colombia? and b) why kill people anonymously, and throw them into mass graves, if what you are doing is right? why have none been arrested and "brought to justice"?

The evidence is that Colombian rightwing paramilitaries, private mercenaries, the official state military, and the U.S. military have used "war on drugs" funding to suppress and brutalize people for their legitimate aspirations to justice, fairness and rightful, lawful democratic government. Democracy is succeeding in nearby countries--Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Nicaragua, with big social movements also in Paraguay and Peru (likely to win future elections). Not so in Colombia, a bastion of repression and injustice, and Bush's favorite place to send our money (aside from Dick Cheney's retirement fund). And we know that these rightwing paramilitaries are operating on the borders with Venezuela and Ecuador, trying to stir up trouble, and that official pesticide spraying in these areas is causing great harm. (The object of the pesticide spraying is not to eradicate cocaine--since the paramilitaries are major drug traffickers--but rather to drive out the small coca leaf growers and food producers (coca leafs for traditional local use), so the drug lords can move in, and, after them, the corporate biofuel (monoculture) producers.)

Look at the dramatic rise of rightwing death squad activity (the paramilitaries), which parallels Bush (our taxpayer) funding of armaments and other military equipment/training to the Uribe government, which has been closely tied to the paramilitaries. And I wonder about this segment called "Private Security Forces." We have had rumors of Blackwater or Blackwater-type mercenary activity in Colombia, and use of South American mercenaries in Iraq.

The stench of corruption, lawlessness and pure evil stretches all the way from Washington DC into the jungles and farm lands and villages of Colombia. And it seems like our party leaders (most of them) will no more disavow gangsterism and murder in Colombia than they will in Iraq. All done in our name.

As with the investigations here, in our Congress, investigation of these crimes is occurring in Colombia, in their case as the result of a "truth and demobilization" process. But in both cases, impunity for serious crimes is leading to more crimes. Take a look at the chart again. Human rights violations continue, but the perpetrators shift from the paramilitaries to the state police and military (and leftist guerrilla violations shrink to nothing). This was as of 2004, and there is little reason to believe that human rights violations and murders have ceased, or that who is doing them has changed. The fascists are doing most of the killing, whether official or not official. And the government that has tolerated all of this crime, and that acquired massive U.S. funding to foster it, and as a reward, is still in power.

Also, as with the Bush Junta's many crimes, crime on this scale requires structural change and reform. You may want to get at the truth, with some sort of "truth and reconciliation" process, but you cannot let the political and social and government conditions continue that allowed such major crime and corruption to occur. If you do, you are asking for a repeat. This is what is so insane about our Democratic Party leadership right now--and why we cannot help but suspect them of collusion. They are letting Bush, Cheney, Rove and others (the absconded Rumsfeld) get away with crimes--some of them quite heinous, such as torture, and the current bloodbath in Baghdad, and several that are treasonous--that would have gotten any previous administration impeached ten times over.

Colombia badly needs a peaceful, leftist (majorityist), democratic revolution, such as has occurred in other South American countries. Why aren't our Democratic leaders calling for this? Why are they repeating Bush "talking points" about South America? Why aren't they calling for serious government reform, and transparent elections, here and in Colombia?

[killbotfactory]

8. No, no, no...

They are all EVIL COMMIE TERRORISTS! It's a good thing our tax dollars are helping support those brave freedom fighters in their war against DRUG TERROR.

:sarcasm:

Why aren't our government representatives calling for government reform or transparent elections or the freedom to not be slaughtered for political activism? Because ultimately they don't care about any of that. When they condemn human rights abuses, they are about as sincere as the Devil condemning liars.

[eridani]

4. So, where are the Chavez backers on this thread?

Surely they can point to a similar number of murders attributed to the evil dictator Hugo.

[ellisonz]

5. Done.

Venezuela

Human rights violations by the police continue to be reported, including unlawful killings of criminal suspects. Most of these cases are not investigated and the alleged perpetrators are not brought to justice. According to statistics published by the Public Prosecutor's Office in July 2005, more than 6,100 people were killed by police in 5,500 incidents, between 2000 and mid-2005. Of the nearly 6,000 police officers implicated, only 517 have been charged and less than 250 are under arrest. Local human rights organizations have warned of a pattern of killings, possible "disappearances" and kidnappings in six states (Anzoategui, Capital District, Falcón, Miranda, Portuguesa and Yaracay). Victims of human rights violations, and their relatives, are reported to have been threatened and intimidated by the police.

Human rights defenders continue to face harassment and intimidation. There were concerns over the safety of members of the human rights organization COFAVIC (Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de los Sucesos de Febrero-Marzo de 1989), after their police protection was withdrawn in March 2005. COFAVIC has publicly criticized the authorities for not bringing to justice the perpetrators of human rights violations committed during confrontations in 1989 between the opposition, the police and the military. In November 2002, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had ordered Venezuela to protect members of COFAVIC after they suffered threats and acts of intimidation.

http://www.amnesty.org/un_hrc/hrc2006/venezuela.html

Impunity, intimidation and harassment
Human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances perpetrated by members of the security forces remained unpunished.
• In July the bodies of eight people, including two children, were found on a ranch in the villages of La Victoria and El Nula in Alto Apure region, on the border with Colombia. Their hands were tied and they had been shot and their bodies burned. Witness accounts and initial evidence obtained by the police indicated that several members of the military had been involved in the killings. Despite this, only one member of the military was charged and tried for this crime. Human rights organizations alleged that this was part of a wider pattern of human rights violations by the same military unit against rural communities in Apure state.
• Melquiades Villaroel was threatened in February after a judge sentenced five police officers to 25 years' imprisonment for the killing of her son Rafael Moreno Villaroel and two others, including a child, in El Tigre, Anzoátegui state, in March 2001.
• There were concerns for the safety of the Mendoza family in Araure, Portuguesa state, following a shooting at their house in March. The Mendoza family had taken part in the trial of 11 police officers accused of the killing of seven people, including three members of their family.

-----

Human rights defenders
Human rights defenders continued to be threatened and intimidated. In May the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reiterated its concern at threats and other open hostility towards human rights defenders by government officials who publicly referred to human rights defenders as "coup plotters" and agents of instability.
• In April, María del Rosario Guerrero and her husband, Adolfo Martínez Barrios, were victims of an attempted assassination in Guárico state. They had been the subject of a campaign of defamation and intimidation since 2001, apparently linked to María del Rosario Guerrero's allegations of human rights violations by the police in Guárico state. By the end of the year, María del Rosario Guerrero was receiving protection, following a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
• In September, the Public Ministry recommended the dismissal of the case and closure of the investigation into the threats and acts of intimidation against members of the human rights organization COFAVIC (Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de los sucesos de Febrero-Marzo de 1989). A court ruling on the recommendation was pending at the end of the year. Staff from COFAVIC feared for their safety as the dismissal of this case might mean the withdrawal of police protection.

-----

Attacks against journalists
Threats and attacks against journalists continued.
• The Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States expressed concern about the killing in April of Jorge Aguirre, a photographer for the newspaper El Mundo. He was reportedly shot dead at a demonstration in Caracas protesting against high levels of crime and insecurity, following the kidnapping and killing of three students. A former police officer was charged with the shooting. At the end of the year he was awaiting trial.
• In August, Jesús Flores Rojas, Co-ordinator of the newspaper Región in El Tigre, Anzoátegui state, who had exposed corruption by local civil servants, was shot eight times in the head while he was parking his car in front of his house. The men allegedly responsible for the shooting were reportedly shot and killed by police. Three police officers were reportedly detained, accused of involvement in the killing of Jesús Flores Rojas. At the end of the year it was not known whether the Public Ministry had pressed charges.

http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/Venezuela

And keep in mind this is what we know about. Hugo's land reform is producing severe violence in the countryside, and if Zimbabwe and China can be used as examples, famine is a real possibility.

[eridani]

6. Do you even have a clue about the food riots that are being commemorated by these groups?

If you did, you'd get the clue that it is Chavez supporters who are being killed. Those food riots were one of the main reasons he got elected in the first place.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1209

On February 27, 1989, Perez increased the price of gasoline and the cost of public transportation. Following an IMF model to garner foreign investment, his austerity policies hit the poorest people hardest. But Perez apparently did not expect Venezuelans to respond to "economic shock" programs with spontaneous protests, which erupted throughout the country. In some areas, rioters torched shops and set up roadblocks.

When the police went on strike, the government lost control. Perez called for a state of emergency. The soldiers fired into crowds. By March 4, the government claimed that 257 lay dead. Some non-governmental sources estimated the death toll at over 2000. Thousands were wounded.

Perez, who called himself a socialist, first imposed draconian measures on the poor and then had them shot when they objected. The Caracazo as the event became known, not only destroyed Venezuela's aura of stability but put an end to the political system that had replaced the ousted military dictator Perez Jimenez in 1958.

Also, calling a summary of police killings the same thing as organized death squads is bullshit. Cops in Venezuela are notorious for running corrupt local fiefdoms--failure (so far) to change that on the part of Chavez isn't the same thing either.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1942

There aren't even any comparable statistics on police killings available here, some of which certainly fall into the human rights violation category, where others obviously don't. There is no Venezuelan direct equivalent of our War on Some Drugs.

http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2004/ds04.n351.html

[ellisonz]

9. Yes. Besides the point...just another Mugabe/Peron.

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."

New Yorker (Sept. 12, 1970) (1970).

"When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood.... Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of “happiness” ... has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions."

On Revolution, ch. 6 (1963).

"There is all the difference in the world between the criminal’s avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient’s taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will."

“Civil Disobedience,” Crises of the Republic (1972).

"It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been “spoiled” by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction."

The Origins of Totalitarianism, ch. 10, Harcourt (1951).

"Historically speaking, the most obvious and most decisive distinction between the American and the French Revolutions was that the historical inheritance of the American Revolution was “limited monarchy” and that of the French Revolution an absolutism which apparently reached far back into the first centuries of our era and the last centuries of the Roman Empire. Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him."

“Foundation 1: Constitutio Libertatis,” On Revolution, Macmillan (1963).

"No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny."

On Revolution, introduction (1963).

"The fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."

Eichmann in Jerusalem, ch. 15 (1963).

:nopity:

[Judi Lynn]

10. Surely you don't believe anyone would imagine a senior fellow from the Annenberg Institute

would be considered a great authority. My God. My late mother used to mention Walter Annenberg with considerable disgust and scorn so many years ago, and rightfully so. They've been right-wing extremists forever. Ugly, conspicuous ones. Many of us know that.

I heard of their deranged, wildly warped right-wing sickness from previous generations. Sad that Americans can get this bent.

Consider the Sources
excerpted from the book
Unreliable Sources
a guide to detecting bias in news media
by Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon

~snip~
Annenberg's thugs
Another press magnate who favored the McCarthy witch-hunts was Walter Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and, later, TV Guide. Young Walter had inherited a formidable media empire from his father, Moe, who began his newspaper career as circulation manager of the Hearst daily in Chicago during the bloody news wars of the early l900s. With a gang of street toughs on his payroll, Moe made sure Hearst's product got maximum distribution. Trucks delivering competing papers were wrecked and 30 newsboys were murdered, but Annenberg's hoodlums escaped arrest.

Resorting to similar goon squad tactics while working for Hearst's New York Daily Mirror, Moe solicited the services of fledgling gangsters, including Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. "I used to think of the Mirror as my kind of paper," Luciano fondly reminisced. "I always thought of Annenberg as my kind of guy." With the Mob's muscle at his disposal, Annenberg started to acquire his own newspapers, eventually amassing what Fortune magazine called the largest annual income in the U.S. When Annenberg went to jail for tax evasion in the 1930s, his son, Walter, took over the family business.

Described by Philadelphia attorney Harry Sawyer as "the greatest institutional force for evil" in the city of brotherly love, Walter Annenberg did not hesitate to throw his weight around the editorial room. He maintained a blacklist of people and organizations he didn't like (including Ralph Nader and the American Civil Liberties Union) and ordered that their names never be mentioned in Philadelphia Inquirer news stories. Annenberg also reportedly gave Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia's brash right-wing mayor in the late 1960s and 1970s, veto power over certain stories. And he used his paper to attack a gubernatorial candidate who opposed plans that would have boosted the profits of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but Annenberg did not inform his readers that he was the railroad's biggest stockholder.
(snip)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Norman_Solomon/Consider_Sources_USNS.html

[Judi Lynn]

13. The poster to whom I addressed the Annenberg information posted

remarks about Hugo Chavez by someone named "Marc Cooper," whom he identified as working as a senior fellow with the Annenberg Institute for Justice and whatever.....

It appears he removed that material. This post will explain the one immediately above it. Note to anyone who doesn't know who the Annenbergs were, they are NOT Democrats, and people working at the Annenberg Institute may not be the ultimate authorities for people seeking honest information.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Just located information on Marc Cooper, for anyone who may have seen that post,

read the remarks by Marc Cooper (of whom I had not ever heard prior to the post wherein his remarks have been removed, within the last hour) and wondered about them.

Well, I've got that covered with this quick google search:

Marc Cooper's "Progressive" Rhetoric

by Gilles d'Aymery

(Swans - February 13, 2006) Some time ago in the prehistorical age of December 2005, a new on-line publication, Truthdig, another bona fide card holder of the much atrophied "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party, published a piece by one of its directors, journalist Marc Cooper. Truthdig boasts that it is "drilling beneath the headlines" with the help of experts -- pwog experts, that is -- and doesn't leave any stones unturned, lies undeciphered, and truth untold. Mr. Cooper wrote an article, called a dig on Truthdig, on Venezuela and her president, -- "The Big Blowup Over Venezuela" (please, do not go and read it just yet) in which he peddles the US State department line against Hugo Chávez. (1) The rant is then followed by a long discussion on the Truthdig forum, which I'll visit to show Mr. Cooper's biases and his use of gutter rhetoric to dismiss his critics. But first, let's dispense with the article.

In 4,000-plus digging words, Mr. Cooper goes about the examination of whether Mr. Chávez is a genuine leader walking the socialist path for the betterment of the Venezuelan people or a populist authoritarian who's consolidating his power on the model of the dictator, Fidel Castro, or Juan Peron. Being the ultimate liberal that he is, Mr. Cooper's exercise follows the well-established balancing act to which the US media has accustomed us. Having a preconceived outlook in line with the powers that be in Washington DC, think tanks, and honeyed political salons, he proceeds to present and review both sides of the argument. In journalistic parlance, it's known as a balanced opinion in the mold of NPR or PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He looks at the evidence, cites "experts," details the pros and cons of the argument, and, through many platitudes, leads the reader to the predictable outcome.

Let's put it this way: Mr. Cooper's verdict is closer to Mr. Rumsfeld (the Hitler analogy) and Carlos Fuentes ("Chávez is a demagogue, a tropical Mussolini") than to William Loren Katz (see "The Meaning of Hugo Chávez") or Harry Belafonte. Unbelievably, the entire dig makes no reference to the racial element of the struggle taking place in Venezuela; but Cooper cannot even fathom, or entertain the possibility, that the actions undertaken by the Chávez administration are a direct response to the positions (and actions) taken by the US government in alliance with the white elite and corporate interests. That Mr. Chávez is working hard on the consolidation of his power, which he has earned repetitively at the polls, is undeniable. It should be viewed and analyzed in light of the efforts to destabilize his administration and ultimately overthrow him. Strangely, one is left with the sentiment that the very significant threats posed to President Chávez, resulting in his legitimate defensive moves, are recurringly being ignored by pwogs, but they all the same brandish these defensive reactions as proof of the authoritarian nature of the Venezuelan regime. Perhaps Mr. Cooper would prefer a repeat of the 1973 Chilean experience that saw the killing of Salvador Allende and the advent of 17 years of darkness and fascist repression -- just another sacrificial lamb to allow these refined liberals, from the comfort of their sinecure, to shed a few crocodile tears and shout "Neither Pinochet nor Chávez" (or anybody who does not espouse their great conception of a social democracy based on free-market neo-liberalism -- e.g., Castro, Milosevic, et al.). Please excuse this little rhetorical snippet. Enough said.

Rhetoric, however, seems to be a forte of Mr. Cooper as the ensuing discussion on the forum proves abundantly -- a discussion much worthier of reading than the article itself. On the one hand, because it demonstrates Cooper's preconception and bias against Hugo Chávez in the first place, hence invalidating the contention that his presentation is "fair and balanced"; and on the other hand, it illustrates how he deals with his critics through demeaning comments, ad hominem attacks, name calling, innuendoes, guilt by association -- the whole panoply of intellectually-challenged, score-card holder, members of the great American tradition of sold-out leftists and whoring columnists (I apologize to the second oldest profession, purveyor of much relief to human nature.) To make my point, I'll highlight three individuals who got the brunt of Cooper's dissing repertoire: Louis Proyect, (2) Justin Delacour, and Camila Piñeiro Harnecker.
(snip/...)

http://www.swans.com/library/art12/ga204.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The poster wrote that Marc Cooper had been, at one time, a translator for Salvador Allende. I believe he may have felt this would inform us that his creditials as a "progressive" were impeccable, so what he was saying about Hugo Chavez would be absolutely unbiased.

Just located remarks on Marc Cooper concerning his smearing a writer, Naomi Klein, who's very well recognized, and respected:

Marc Cooper's McCarthy-Era Attack on Naomi Klein
by Al Giordano
Sun Aug 29, 2004 at 10:49:26 PM PDT
(Commentary appears with links and opportunity to comment at http://bigleftoutside.com )
I don't tread easily or eagerly into the Iraq quagmire - the battlefield upon which Nation contributing editor Marc Cooper's indefensible attack this week against another Nation writer, Naomi Klein, via his weblog, takes place (links and cites appear below) - but maybe by looking in from outside of that conflict I can offer some fresh wind context demonstrating just how low Cooper has sunk into a quicksand of his own making.

Cooper, prior to his attack on Klein, was already up to his neck in his own mierda due to a series of missteps, writing about faraway places from Caracas to Cancún, imposing his First World lens on events in other lands, getting the facts woefully wrong, and revealing an increasingly opportunistic, knowingly false, softheaded analysis of events outside of the United States.

In fact, that imposed ignorance by some North Americans regarding events in the rest of the world was a major theme of Klein's own Nation column this week, the one that provoked the erratic accusations by Cooper.

Cooper's attack on Klein went beyond civil critique. He called her a "friend" and "apologist" for an Iraqi religious fundamentalist, offering a seamless imitation of the red-baiting that characterized Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-commie crusades of the 1950s. What an opportunist prick! I'll deal with Cooper in a moment, but first a few thoughts about the context, and a look at what Klein actually said, as opposed to Cooper's dishonest distortion of it...
(snip/...)

http://al-giordano.dailykos.com/

[Judi Lynn]

17. Adding, at absolutely no cost to the reader, a photo of Marc Cooper.

"Marc Cooper remembers Chile’s nightmare of civilian death, imprisonment, and exile.
photo: Bonnie Spolin"

At this site, Marc Cooper is called a "veteran redbaiter:" http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

[ellisonz]

20. Wasn't worth it.

I think he's a totalitarian from the left and frankly I found the hit piece on Marc Cooper so I just though it would be better to give y'all a snow job. I'll post it again. But here's your counter-argument: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1643

See I did it for you...and without all the drama of you attacking a university professor simply because he has a different take on something that you probably don't have first hand knowledge of either. Of course Delacour doesn't appear to have more life expierence in regards to Venezuela or L.A. than Marc Cooper and if he did it was a propaganda tour. I left the gist of my comment in my subject line so no need to throw a sourcing/deception fit. Dear God, is it possible that a journalist/scholar's perspective can be seperated from that of the need creators of the foundation? That's like saying anyone who went to Yale is tainted because of Skull and Bones. Not very logical, and in regards to some of the above posters time always tells in regards to totalitarian dictators.

Meet the new master, same as the old master...

;)

[eridani]

11. Not sure what this has to do with Chavez

Maybe you think that 10% growth per year, just about all of which is in the private sector, is a bad thing, perhaps?

[eridani]

18. But not another Uribe?

Where are the mass graves of people who have been cut apart with chainsaws in Venezuela?

[Judi Lynn]

19. If they DO find any people in mass graves there it will undoubtedly be Colombian death squad

members imported to lay waste to suspected "lefists" there, just the way things were headed when an informant tipped off the Venezuelan government to the fact Cuban-Venezuelan right-winger Roberto Alonso, next door neighbor of media mogul, and _Bush the Elder's fishing buddy, Gustavo Cisneros, was hosting a small armed mob of them on his ranch near Caracas. They testified to the fact they had been hired to come across the border and participate in actions determined by their Venezuelan employers.



Colombian paramilitaries rounded up at Alonso's ranch

US$20 million offered to Colombian paramilitaries to "work" in Venezuela

Ultimas Noticias reporters Tamoa Calzadilla and Jorge Chavez write: At a payments center in Medellin (Colombia), it was well-known that paramilitaries who received payment there for protection rackets, extortion, and contraband were offering US$20 million to take a group of mercenaries to Venezuela to accomplish various illegal operations.

A witness who asked that his identity be concealed told the Colombian authorities about the incident, and the information was given to Ultimas Noticias by Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro (PDI).

According to the witness, a group of 400 men were to be organized to go to Venezuela to assassinate for money. The Colombian Senator suspects that the group captured in Venezuela last Sunday could be the same as the group recruited by the paramilitaries, most of them reservists in the army, as has been officially verified.

But, that is not the only reason to believe this is true. Petro commented that in Colombia, information that could be key in the investigations being conducted in Venezuela hasn’t been made public yet. “Two months ago, telephone conversations of paramilitaries stationed in that region (the North of Santander), in which the irregulars speak of transporting male combatants to Venezuela to be kept for a while, in captivity,” were recorded by the order of a judge who was investigating a prosecutor in Cucuta.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21201

[killbotfactory]

7. Yeah, big landowners don't like peasants "stealing" "their" land

Whether they use it or not.

[Judi Lynn]

12. You may recall the story of the LAST mass grave uncovered, only in May.....

Mass graves found in southern ColombiaArticle from: Agence France-PresseFont size: Decrease Increase Email article: Email Print article: Print From correspondents in Bogota

May 06, 2007 03:45am
INVESTIGATORS have uncovered mass graves containing the bodies of more than 100 people believed to be victims of right-wing militias in southern Colombia.

Judicial authorities and police found the graves in the southern district of Putumayo near the borders of Ecuador and Peru, Interior Minister Carlos Holguin told the Caracol radio station, saying he was "horrified'' at the find.

Public prosecutor Mario Iguaran said there were Ecuadorans among the 105 dead in the series of 65 graves.
A source in the prosecutor's office earlier told AFP that most of those found were local peasants.

He said the discovery was made possible by a law on the demobilisation of paramilitary fighters in the country, allowing for lighter sentences in return for confessions and compensation for victims, even over the worst crimes.

Right-wing paramilitary groups, organised as private armies in the 1980s to protect properties from leftist guerrillas, are accused of numerous massacres of civilians suspected of leftist sympathies.
(snip/...)

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,21680553-5012753,00.html

[IndianaGreen]

15. Some of those paramilitaries were trained in US thanks to Bill Clinton

Big Dog's legacy includes Plan Colombia and keeping the School for Assassins open at Fort Benning.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Sad, bitter legacy. Did you ever hear the stats on how very few wealthy Colombians

own almost all of the land there? It's a real feudal state, for sure, isn't it?

Same war, but during the Cold War, American blowhards referred to the peasants being shoved around by the oligarchy's military as "commies," and when that became outmoded, and overused, and started losing its original scary impact, they started calling them drug dealers, and then sometimes the very frightening "terrorists."

"Terrorists," in my view, are the ones who take chain saws to villages and saw up the people and their children and their old parents and dump them all in mass graves. You probably saw that one paramilitary (death squad member) has testified recently that they used to grab a bunch of peasants, and keep them locked in a room, taking them out singly to use as practice dummies to the new recruits who sawed them up ALIVE.

Now THAT's a "terrorist," in my view.

[Judi Lynn]

21. Congressional Democrats have the guts to do something Republicans couldn't, wouldn't:

Keep the Freeze On Colombia
Stephen Heidt | June 20, 2007

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

In April, the Democratic-controlled Congress froze $55.2 million in military assistance earmarked for Colombia. At issue were linkages between the Andean nation’s military and a paramilitary group on the State Department’s terrorist list. The administration response has largely been to marshal the troops and espouse the benefits of Plan Colombia, the vehicle that delivers U.S. assistance to Colombia.

The congressional debate is not about the dubious merits of Plan Colombia and its counter-narcotics focus. Congress froze military aid because it sees the current scandal as evidence that Colombia cannot meet the legally required human rights conditions of the U.S. government.
(snip)

Plan Colombia’s Failures

~snip~
.......Consider Charles’s claim that UN and U.S. estimates show poppy cultivation down by 58% and coca by 50%. Unfortunately, the State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 2007 shows that both of those numbers were temporary declines measured during the mid-years of Plan Colombia. Even more damning, the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy just issued a report showing that for a second straight year, coca cultivation in Colombia has risen. This evidence clearly shows that coca cultivation has returned to pre-Plan Colombia levels and U.S.-led eradication efforts are failing.
(snip)

Charles also parrots the “official” statistics reporting significant declines in violent crime and kidnappings as evidence that Plan Colombia is working. While there is no doubt that the urban environment in Colombia’s major cities is much better than it was in 2000, the director of Colombia’s Federal Statistics Office resigned in 2004 because President Uribe blocked the release of a study showing an upsurge in violent crime. Also, the Colombian government developed new standards for classifying “kidnappings” that require specific evidence of abduction. As it is, about half of all kidnappings are not reported. Even with these standards, Bogotá, the capital city, has seen a 400% increase in the rate of kidnappings in 2007. Given that the travel advisory for Colombia on the U.S. State Department’s own website warns of a high risk of kidnapping, the U.S. government doesn’t exactly have a lot of confidence in the official statistics issued from the Colombian government.
(snip)http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4316

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

22. That graph is quite damning. What's the source? -nt

[Judi Lynn]

23. Here you go, Commie Pinko Dirtbag:

Human Rights and the Colombian Government:
An analysis of state-based atrocities toward non-combatants
James J. Brittain

http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Brittain40.htm#r6

[Judi Lynn]

24. Colombian Rights Activist Says Paramilitary Units a Danger to Country

Monday, June 25, 2007
Colombian Rights Activist Says Paramilitary Units a Danger to Country

By Ashley Matthews - Activist Ivan Cepeda told a Capitol Hill audience that Colombia needs to demobilize paramilitary forces for the country gain stability.

~snip~
"Today, we're going to talk about pre-existing situations, which we believe shows that Uribe is not making a strong argument," Cepeda said. "We will present these situations to show a lack of improvement to members of Congress here."
(snip)

Cepeda said evidence links government officials to the ongoing violence.

"Colombia is living in a serious political conflict right now, a serious political situation, which in the media has become known as the 'para-political' scandal," he said. "This crisis has unfolded because the Supreme Court of Colombia has begun investigations that are showing that there are connections between paramilitary leaders and politicians."

This connection is making it hard to trust demobilization statistics, Cepeda said. According to the International Crisis Group, more than 80 paramilitary groups operate in different regions of the country with up to 9,000 combatants.

Cepeda said this would make the number of active paramilitary groups the same as when Uribe assumed the presidency.
(snip/...)

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/23682/

[Judi Lynn]

25. A start on the road back to sanity from Plan Colombia

June 26, 2007, 1:57AM
A start on the road back to sanity from Plan Colombia

By FROMA HARROP
Providence Journal

How to make enemies, squander billions and accomplish nothing: That's a U.S. program called Plan Colombia. Its central idea is to slow the flow of cocaine into the nostrils of American night-clubbers by poisoning crops in the Andes.

Five billion wasted dollars later, cocaine surges cheaper and purer into our cities and suburbs. Since 2000, Plan Colombia has sprayed an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island. Meanwhile, Colombia's coca acreage rose 9 percent last year.

Indigenous peoples have been growing coca in the Andes for the last 2,000 years, give or take a few centuries. These farmers are not keen on having their culture destroyed as they're dragged into our War-on-Drugs lunacy. You can imagine.

So why do we do it? Here's a hint: Almost half of the $630 million in military aid to Colombia last year was scooped up by U.S. defense contractors. There's money in the madness.

Democrats have started on the road to sanity, though not quite getting there. Now the majority in Congress, they pushed through a House spending bill that lops the share of Colombian aid money going to military (mostly drug-eradication) programs to 65 percent of the total, down from 80 percent. Spending less on a dumb program makes it less dumb, one supposes.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4919339.html

[Judi Lynn]

26. Does anyone know if the Bush administration held up this man's visa, to prevent his testimony?

He was supposed to testify today, IF they didn't block his arrival here:

June 26, 2007 11:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time
News From USW: Former Colombian Army Officer, USW Lawyer to Testify Before Congress on Murder of Trade Unionists
--(BUSINESS WIRE)--News From USW:

Media Advisory
-- Photo & interview opportunities --

WHO: Edwin Guzman, former sergeant, National Army, Republic of
Colombia, Francisco Ramirez Cuellar, author of "The Profits
of Extermination, How U.S. Corporate Power is Destroying
Colombia," and Daniel Kovalik, Associate General Counsel,
United Steelworkers, who has since 2001 investigated the
slayings in Colombia of three trade unionists employed by
the U.S.-based Drummond Co., Inc.

WHAT: A joint hearing entitled, "Protection and Money: U.S.
Companies, Their Employees, and Violence in Colombia," to be
conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on
Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on International Organizations,
Human Rights, and Oversight, and the Subcommittee on the
Western Hemisphere, and the Committee on Education and Labor's
Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and
the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections.

WHEN: Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 10 a.m.

WHERE: Rayburn House Office Building; Room 2172
Independence Avenue SW and South Capitol Street
Washington, DC

WHY: The hearing is intended to enlighten committee members and the
American people about "allegations of ties between U.S.
companies and illegal armed groups" in Colombia, according to
the invitations to testify. This, in turn, may affect the
willingness of Congress to act on the so-called free trade
agreement the Bush Administration has proposed with Colombia.
Edwin Guzman, whose testimony led to the suspension of a
Colombian army colonel, was invited to speak at Thursday's
hearing about Drummond's relationship to the military,
paramilitary and murders of trade unionists in Colombia.
Currently in hiding in an undisclosed location outside
Colombia, Mr. Guzman will not be able to testify, however,
unless the State Department provides him with a visa.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070626005965&newsLang=en