Democrat to revisit Colombia trade pact on trip

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Democrat to revisit Colombia trade pact on trip
By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON | Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:51pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior Democratic lawmaker opposed to a free trade agreement with Colombia headed to that country on Wednesday to see what progress has been made on labor concerns related to the pact.

Representative Sander Levin's "purpose is essentially a fact-finding mission to observe first-hand conditions relevant to the Colombia FTA," a spokeswoman for the lawmaker said.

"It will provide an update on those conditions on the ground today in comparison with those he observed during a similar trip 21 months ago," she added.

Levin until recently was chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade agreements.

He has opposed action on the agreement on the grounds that Colombia needs to do more to strengthen its labor laws to stop violence against labor union members and to aggressively prosecute past crimes.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70B6GQ20110112?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=401

[Peace Patriot]

1. Well, the ground has been prepared, for U.S. "free trade for the rich," with

the corpses of thousands of trade unionists, peasant farmers, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political leftists, and youngsters lured by the U.S.-funded military, with offers of jobs, murdered and their bodies dressed up like FARC guerrillas--literally prepared, fertilized with their flesh, watered with their blood. This must make the ghouls in this Puke/Dieobld Congress feel quite happy--so much profit to made, so many corporate sponsors to pay off, so many war profiteers to drink toasts with.

I'm sorry. I know we're supposed to "tone down our rhetoric" now, but I am not exaggerating. This is the truth of the matter. And I am not advocating or encouraging violence. I totally oppose violence. But I think we need to describe evil accurately and not with an airbrush. This is what $7 BILLION of our tax dollars in military aid to Colombia has BOUGHT--the decapitation of labor and leftist community leadership, and state terror against peasant farmers--5 MILLION of whom have been brutally displaced from their small farms and driven into urban squalor, to become the slave labor force for U.S. multinational corporations. All of this is not new, in U.S. policy, but I don't think that it has ever been so demonic.

It is not over, either. Opponents of Colombia's fascist government continue to be slaughtered--by the U.S.-funded military and by its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads. Anyone who raises their voice for the poor majority and anyone who opposes this blood-drenched 'free trade' pact is vulnerable to "extrajudicial execution." It's still happening in Colombia, and it has been happening in Honduras since the U.S.-supported coup d'etat, also in the interest of "free trade for the rich."

One wonders, too, how the protected cocaine lords--and the CIA/Bush Cartel and other big criminal projects--are going to operate in this more open-border situation. The corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" has had many purposes but one of them, I'm pretty sure, is to corner the cocaine trade and direct its profits into the pockets of the super-rich.

This is altogether such a horrible U.S. policy--"free trade for the rich," expensive cocaine and death for the masses--that I don't think it's possible to exaggerate it, nor to exaggerate the utter nefariousness of those who have set it up, stolen our tax dollars to pay for it and now intend to enrich themselves even further, at the expense of Colombia's vast poor majority and at our expense. I wouldn't harm them, though, I have to say, in the current climate. I would just disempower them and maybe put them to work, on a mandatory basis, in some charitable enterprise. That's my idea of dealing with the oligarchs. They need to pay for their crimes in some way that is helpful--that provides lessons for all and that gives them a chance to redeem themselves. I don't much believe in prisons--but I do believe in consequences, in justice, in democracy and in creating a decent and safe society for everyone.