Colombian Rebels Give Hostage Handover Coordinates

[Judi Lynn]

Colombian Rebels Give Hostage Handover Coordinates
By Patrick Markey
March 11, 2010

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's FARC guerrillas have issued coordinates for the release of two soldiers held in rebel camps deep in the jungles, a leftist senator involved in mediation efforts said on Thursday.

Pablo Emilio Moncayo, held hostage for a dozen years, and Josue Daniel Calvo are now closer to freedom after their handover became mired in wrangling between the rebels and President Alvaro Uribe's hard-line government.

"We have in our possession the coordinates, that means the location for the people who are going to be handed over in a unilateral manner by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia," said Senator Piedad Cordoba, who previously has brokered the release of hostages.

Cordoba did not say when they would be freed, but said there would be two handovers. Calvo, kidnapped last year and now ill, would be released first.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=10076690

[Peace Patriot]

1. This Rotters article is full of lies, disinformation and black holes where information should be.

In fact, it is one of the most Orwellian articles I've ever read. The corpo-fascist 'news' (propaganda) technique of asserting government lies--in this case the lies of the utterly criminal, narco-thug, death squad-connected government of Colombia--as if they had been proven, as if they were the objective truth, is very much in evidence.

1. Lying description of the Uribe government

"Pablo Emilio Moncayo, held hostage for a dozen years, and Josue Daniel Calvo are now closer to freedom after their handover became mired in wrangling between the rebels and President Alvaro Uribe's hard-line government."--Rotters

Yeah, that's one way to describe the government of Alvaro Uribe--and that's how this murderous little shit would want to be described. "Hard-line." But what Rotters doesn't tell you is that "hard-line" means the slaughter of thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, community organizers, political leftists, peasant farmer leaders and others, in the bloody political "cleansing" of huge swaths of Colombia, such as occurred in La Macarena, Colombia, recently, where a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies has been discovered, with grave dates (but no names) from 2005 through 2009, and whom local people say are the bodies of 'disappeared' relatives and community members who were political or community activists. Rotters doesn't tell you this, doesn't even hint at it. Yet some sixty of Uribe's closest political associates--including family members--are under investigation, indicted or in jail for their ties to rightwing death squads and drug trafficking! One of the people in jail is the legislator whom Uribe bribed to get his second term.

Rotters' phrase, "President Alvaro Uribe's hard-line government"--leaving all of this out--is a form of lying. The phrase is also a black hole where information should be. It is propagandistic in the extreme.


2. Unsupported negative description of the FARC guerrillas

"Once a powerful force that kidnapped and bombed at will, it has been driven back into remote mountains and jungles by Colombia's U.S.-backed military campaign. Rebels are now deeply engaged in cocaine trafficking and have very little support among Colombians."--Rotters

All of these statements are the Uribe government view, and thus should never, ever, ever be asserted as the truth without independent investigation and verification, and without at least providing quotes and attribution. Who is saying these things? It is in the Colombian government's interest to sell these notions to the U.S., which has larded the Colombian military with $7 BILLION for exterminating leftists.

Further, assertions such as the FARC having "very little support among Colombians" maybe should be addressed to the 2,000 dead bodies in La Macarena and other mass graves? Or to the 4 MILLION displaced peasant farmers in Colombia whose regions have been politically and murderously purged? How do you poll the dead or the terrorized? How does Rotters know that the FARC "have very little support among Colombians"? They get it from Uribe! But they don't tell you that.


3. Mindboggling Uribe propaganda, asserted by Rotters

"Colombians go to the polls on Sunday for legislative elections and again in May for a presidential vote to decide who succeeds Uribe after two terms highlighted by his drive against rebels and cocaine traffickers."--Rotters

Good God! Uribe is a "cocaine trafficker"! He got his start as the "go-to guy" for the Medellin Cartel (then graduated to becoming to "go-to guy" for the Bush Cartel). The Uribe government is filthy with drug trafficking and close ties to rightwing death squads. To describe his government as "his drive against the rebels and cocaine traffickers" is Orwellian propaganda, straight from Uribe!

This is upside down, inside out "Alice in Wonderland" writing. It is NOT journalism.

Uribe, his political cabal, his death squads and his military have murdered thousands of innocent people--people merely advocating for human rights and the poor, people objecting to their children, farm animals and food crops and themselves being sprayed with Monsanto's toxic pesticides from U.S. taxpayer-funded planes, people objecting to the narco-thug government, people trying to form labor unions, and even people doing nothing at all--innocent boys recruited for jobs, then murdered and dressed up like FARC guerrillas, to up Colombia's "body count," to impress U.S. senators!

"...his drive against rebels and cocaine traffickers" is kind of like the Bush Junta's "drive" against "terrorists" by slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq, in the first weeks of bombing alone, to steal their oil, and randomly arresting and torturing thousands of prisoners--and letting Osama bin Laden escape at Tora-Bora. It is a crock of bloody horse shit.

Rotters is the advocate for--the P.R. firm for--the propagandist for--these horrors.

[protocol rv]

2. Relax

Uribe was democratically elected.

By the way, where do you think the FARC gets their money? I've always heard it was the drug trade and kidnappings. In Western Venezuela, individual citizens are sometimes kidnapped and taken to Colombia, sold to the FARC to be kept as hostages and ransomed. Or do you deny this?

[Bacchus39]

3. what evidence do you have that the FARC has popular support in Colombia?

I've noticed lately you've done alot of critiquing of media articles that don't fit your point of view. I'd suggest sticking with Venanalysis, Prensa Latina, Telesur