Via Colombia's Caracol Radio website, a rare (for Caracol) moment of honesty about what Alvaro Uribe's paramilitary minions are really up to:
Paramilitary groups have reached a level of degradation so high that in some cases, they filmed the tortures and murders of victims they claim to be guerrilla collaborators.
Caracol Radio heas learned of a video that arrived a few days ago in the Inspector General's office, in which a member of the AUC is seen torturing a campesino, whose hands he severs with evident brutality.
The events apparently occured along a path in the municipality of Aguachica, Cesar. The paramilitary torturer can be seen maltreating his victim verbally in a constant manner, and the victim appears to have suffered a wound to his face.
Translation mine.
Here's the video in question (scroll to bottom of post). Warning: Not for the faint of heart.
So, the Lipstick Pig Woman got out her presidential kneepads for a certain Paraguayan ex-bishop. Only, sadly (or rather, happily--for him!), Fernando Lugo told her to keep 'em and her lipstick to herself:
Paraguay President Fernando Lugo, while attending both the United Nations General Assembly meetings and the Clinton Global Initiative, shared with friends over dinner some of the other meetings he had been having in New York.
He met this head of state. . .and that head of state. . .and so on. . .
. . .but then the room went silent and then broke into subdued laughter when he confided that he was approached about meeting with GOP Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
President Lugo turned the meeting down.
Ha, ha...suck on THAT, Paliness. You may be able to suck up to Dubya's coke dealer Numero Uno for some ersatz foreign policy experience, but that's about it. The rest of Latin America has no desire to be trotted out to showcase your nonexistent talent and experience.
And even worse, he still doesn't connect all this to Alvaro Uribe, let alone Washington. The most he'll say is that the paras were "often working closely with army units". Under whose command, Juan? Spit it out. Oh come on, spit it...
Oh, fuck it. He says it's the Colombian government exhuming the bodies. I guess that somehow makes them heroes now. As if all the language about the Uribe administration being "feted from Washington to Paris for its recent success against Marxist guerrillas" weren't enough to give Forero's true sympathies away.
Possums, don't hold your breath waiting for Juan to connect any dots here. You might end up dead for real.
Meanwhile, Hugh Bronstein of Reuters gets a little closer to it, but he too shrinks away from naming Uribe's real, much deeper connections to the drug/parapolitics scandal. At most, all he'll mention is Uribe's creepy-ass cousin. He has yet to peruse Virginia Vallejo's book, I see.
Oh, and Bronstein sticks in a "Bogota-based analyst" taking dig at Venezuela there, too, claiming it has "problems with drug-trafficking and kidnapping". Damn right it does--it sits right next to Colombia. And since the border's not sealed and Chavecito would only take flak from Washington if he tried to control it, well...I think you can connect the dots, yes?
Strange things dead paramilitaries write...and stranger things they reveal. From Aporrea, a little note that will make you believe that there IS life after death, especially for crime and scandal in Colombia:
The ex-colonel of Colombian police, Danilo Gonzalez, who was assassinated in 2004, ordered the murder of former presidential candidaate Alvaro Gomez Hurtado, and the kidnapping of Venezuelan businessman Richard Boulton.
This, according to a letter from the late paramilitary chief Carlos Castaño, which was revealed today.
The letter from Castaño, also killed four years ago, and published by the weekly magazine Semana, also accuses Colonel Gonzalez of planning the kidnap of architect Juan Carlos Gaviria, brother of the former Colombian president and ex-secretary of the Organization of American States, Cesar Gaviria.
Hebert Veloza, formerly known as "HH", in the hands of the Colombian authorities.
From Aporrea, a shocking revelation by a Colombian paramilitary leader, one that will surely put "El Doptor Varito" in an awkward position (as if he could get any more pretzel-like):
Ex-paramilitary chief Hebert Veloza, alias "HH", admitted that he and his men committed more than 3000 killings between 1994 and 2003. Veloza confirmed in an interview given to the daily El Espectador that there were ties between certain politicians, members of the Colombian military, and police with the AUC paramilitaries. He also said that with his extradition to the US, "the victims will go on not knowing the truth."
The man formerly known as "HH" recognized that in the massacres his organization committed, "more innocent than guilty people died, but that's war."
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has called the Colombian Defense Minister 'a warmonger', urging President Alvaro Uribe to dismiss him.
Two days after the two leaders met and agreed on improving their diplomatic relations, Chavez criticized Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, saying that his remarks were 'shooting up' the process of progress made in mending Venezuelan-Colombian relations.
Chavez says if Santos was his defense minister, "I would have dismissed him by now'', AP reported.
Santos a warmonger? No shit. I have him on record as blaming the Mexican students who were killed in the FARC camp, on Santos's orders. I also have an interesting e-mail he got from a go-between ferrying State Dept. orders from the gringos to Bogota, which I daresay is mighty incriminating.
As usual, Chavecito is bang-on. And he looks so sweet telling the terrible truth here, at the bottom of the page. That man can smile while saying the darndest things!
Correa to Colombia: No diplomatic relations for you!
(Sacrilege! Of course this guy is nowhere near as cute as El Ecuadorable, and certainly nowhere near as nice. But he fits in with the general theme, so chill.)
Is Rafecito playing Soup Nazi now, or is there more to this than initially meets the eye? A little something from Aporrea, translated by Your Humble And Obedient:
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, ratified on Saturday that he would not re-establish relations with Colombia, as long as "there is no decent government to work with."
Clara Rojas, who was freed along with Consuelo Gonzalez by the FARC guerrillas on January 10 following negotiations brokered by Chavecito and Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, has been viciously slandered by her fellow ex-captive Ingrid Betancourt, and feels compelled to set the record straight:
Clara Rojas would not vote for former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt if the presidential elections in Colombia were to take place today, according to an interview given yesterday to the RCN channel.
"As they say over there, if the elections were held today, I would not vote for Ingrid," said Rojas, without ruling out that in future she might change her mind.
Okay. Now we know who's NOT in the know about current events in South America:
"Venezuela and Colombia today open a new epoch in our relations," Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told reporters after a meeting with his Colombian counterpart Álvaro Uribe in Caracas July 11. "I want to make clear that the intention exists to relaunch and fortify relations between Venezuela and Colombia, because these brother nations are destined to be united." (ABN, July 11) Construction of a rail link through Colombia giving Venezuela access to the Pacific is said to have been discussed in the meeting. Uribe told a recent Colombian cabinet meeting, "President Chávez has offered to make this railway. We are ready to it." (El Tiempo, July 12)
Uh, weren't these guys on the brink of war a few weeks ago?
Uh, no. Those tanks were sent to the border to keep Colombia's civil war from spilling over the brink, like it did in Ecuador. It wasn't a war footing, it was plain old self-defence. Catch a clue, dude, and quit doing the dog.
What did I say earlier on about Chavecito being instrumental in the Colombian hostage negotiations? Looks like at least one former hostage is anxious to see the man who helped free him be brought back on board:
Colombian politician Luis Eladio Perez, liberated in February by the FARC guerrillas, asked of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe that he consider the possibility of re-establishing the mediation of his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, according to an interview published this Friday.
"I call publicly on Uribe that he reconsider the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, as mediator," announced the ex-congressman, who spent nearly seven years in the hands of the FARC, in an interview published by the daily newspaper El Espectador.
Took her awhile, and some of us were wondering what the fuck was up when she praised his highly dubious "rescue mission" (which some of us suspect was either a ransom or, I believe, an attempt at bribery.) But she has finally taken him to task, albeit a bit too mildly, and the Beeb has her on audio. Go listen.
And why not? Ingrid Betancourt is finally free, albeit under very sniffy circumstances. But since the objective of all his work was peace in Colombia and a release of all hostages, not scoring political points, and since she's safe, he can still say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. After all, it was his success in freeing others, such as Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, that helped spark this happy reunion between Ingrid and her family. And it was his words to the FARC that sparked this major release, as subsequent news will show (and I'll blog it if the lamestream media goes on failing to report!)
And who struck it, albeit inadvertently? The CBC. They interviewed a group of new immigrants (there's a special citizenship ceremony for some of them on Canada Day), and who did they interview? Some twit from Venezuela who claims he came here because of "political instability" back home.
Talk about desecrating the day. Can we please leave the political bullshit out of it and just interview someone who came from a REALLY unstable place next time, CBC? Like, oh, I dunno, COLOMBIA?
Looks like the Colombia problem is heating up on more fronts than one. Here's what's going on in Correa-land:
Colombian rebels in northern Ecuador are an old problem that previous governments failed to confront, Ecuador's defense minister told The Associated Press, announcing additions to a growing arsenal aimed at securing the Andean nation's borders.
Defense Minister Javier Ponce said in an interview that the government is buying six Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles and new radar so it can get a better handle on its borders, especially the troubled frontier with Colombia.
The acquisitions are in addition to 24 Super Tucano warplanes announced in May.
He said he does not consider Colombia a national security threat, though the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that dominates the northern border zone — and the illegal drug trade that fuels its insurgency — are a danger.
"We are not able to impede the establishment of guerrilla camps or drug labs, but to the degree that we have been dismantling a series of labs and camps we are establishing a certain capacity to prevent this from getting out of control," Ponce told the AP on Tuesday evening.
Incidentally, Colombia and Ecuador are still not talking to each other over the illegal bombing of a FARC camp on Ecuadorian turf this past March 1. But hey, at least Manta will soon be a thing of the past, at least as far as gringo incursion forces go.
And here's a cool factoid: Minister Ponce is also a poet! A few satirical verses excoriating El Narco would therefore be in order, yes?
Oh, surely not because it's only El Narco and not Chavecito calling for this rather unusual measure...
Colombia's president on Thursday called for a referendum to decide if new presidential elections should be held in the wake of a court decision that is questioning the legitimacy of his 2006 re-election.
President Alvaro Uribe said he will ask the country's congress to approve the referendum.
Uribe's demand came after the Supreme Court called Thursday for the re-evaluation of the congressional act that changed the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a second term. The Supreme Court questioned the act after a former representative was found guilty of having changed her vote in 2004 to support the president's bid for re-election.
Yidis Medina, who was sentenced to 47 months, claimed senior members of the government offered her supporters jobs in exchange for her key vote. Uribe's administration has denied the charges.
But of course, he IS looking to change the constitution and run. Even his own defence minister, the most likely successor, is being blocked by El Narco, who wants to hang onto power, it seems, for life.
The ghost of Pablo Escobar must be rolling around the bowels of hell, laughing his ass off.
Nothing's going right for the president of Colombia, it seems. First he's flopping miserably in his efforts to wipe out the FARC (who are much more likely to listen to his arch-rival Chavecito than they are to give a rat's ass what he says). Now he's flopping miserably on another front as well:
Colombian peasants devoted 27 percent more land to growing coca last year, the United Nations reported Wednesday, calling the increase "a surprise and a shock" given intense efforts to eradicate cocaine's raw ingredient.
Estimated cocaine production, however, increased only slightly in Colombia and other Andean nations — to about 994 metric tons in 2007 from 984 metric tons the year before, according to the U.N. — as cultivation shifted to smaller, less-productive plots in more remote locations.
The net increase in coca farmland came despite "record" U.S.-backed eradication efforts that disrupted the growing cycle, said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, the chief of Colombia's police.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. Alvaro, really! All that Yanqui dinero and all that help from the Empire, and now this?
Methinks you need an impeachment, not another term.
Rafael Correa added his voice to that of Hugo Chavez and called on the FARC to lay down their arms.
"What future is there for guerrillas combatting a democratic government, who have no popular support in the 21st century?" asked the Ecuadorian president.
Forrest Hylton on the "surprising" FARC remarks of Chavez
Pepe Escobar interviews the Latin America expert and author:
He's bang-on about everything except one point: He insists Venezuela has become a "transshipment point" for Colombian cocaine since Chavez stopped collaborating with the DEA. Actually, Venezuela became such a point long before Chavez was elected--it goes back as far as the drug wars of the 1980s, whereas Chavez was elected in '99. Venezuelan seizures of drug shipments are way up since Chavez booted the DEA, and one can only conclude that the DEA was actually complicit with Colombia and its right-wing paramilitaries in menacing Venezuela.
Which means Chavez was really onto something when he said that the FARC (who have used cocaine trafficking as a source of income) have become a convenient excuse for Washington to crank up the war machine. Take away one more excuse, and that cranking becomes a lot harder to do.
Ecuador announced on Friday that it would not be joining the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which its ally, Venezuela, is promoting, but indicated that it would accompany this mechanism and would contribute to other processes of integration such as the Organization of Latin American States.
Translation mine. There's more, but I'm being lazy.
So Ecuador's not in the ALBA yet, but apparently in agreement with the basic idea, and will be following along if not outright joining. Figure that one out, my head hurts.
Yeah, I'm kinda sad. But not as sad as I would be if this Colombian plot against Fine-ass Dude had succeeded.
'Bout time someone did! And who better than a Latin America scholar, who knows how important it is to work with all the facts, the accurate facts, and not just whatever bullshit is convenient to the State Dept., Big Bidness, Big Oil, etc.?
Unfortunately, the AP's bad reporting isn't limited to its Caracas bureau; I've seen it hit Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador with the Stoopid Stick, too. Surely that's not a coincidence, since all three of them are friendly with Chavecito's Venezuela. Why they haven't also beaten up on Chile, Brazil and Argentina, I don't know; all three of their leaders have lent support to Chavecito, too, though they're a bit shy about signing on to the ALBA. (Hmmm, maybe that last is why--it gives the Usual Suspects the false impression that they might still be amenable to neoliberalism, like Colombia and Peru, but have only been playing coy so far.)
I'd write a letter too, and maybe someday I will, but right now I'll just stick to grousing on this blog. And to the AP, I'll let Johnny Cash's finger do the talking:
The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, directed a message to the new chief of the FARC, Alfonso Cano, on Sunday, in which he called for the unconditional liberation of all the group's hostages. Then he assured that in Latin America, "the age of guerrilla wars is history."
"It's time for the FARC to release everyone they're holding in the mountains," Chavez demanded of Cano, adding at the same time that "it would be a great gesture, a change from nothing."
According to the president, the situation in which Latin America and the United States now find themselves "appears to be creating favorable conditions for a peace process in Colombia", for which the release of all hostages "would be the first step" toward success.
This is too juicy to pass up. Aporrea.org, the Venezuelan news/opinion site I enjoy most, has uncovered some skulduggery published at an opposition forum called Noticiero Digital. It's an e-mail from Alfredo Rangel, the director of the "Security and Democracy Foundation" in Colombia. According to Aporrea, "this organism is a facade for the intelligence community of the US in that country." The e-mail is to Juan Manuel Santos, the defence minister of Colombia.
Someone please tell the Burschen at Der Spiegel that their story was kaputt long before it came out. They're recycling a piece of pure horseshit under the laughable title of "The Colombian Connection: How Hugo Chavez Courted FARC":
They called him "Angel." He was the highest-ranking outside contact for the Colombian guerilla organization FARC. More and more details are now emerging that demonstrate the close relationship between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the jungle terrorists.
He already had a photo of himself posing with Vietnamese general and revolutionary hero Vo Nguyen Giap, and he also planned to suggest to Cuban leader Fidel Castro that he don his combat uniform once again for a joint photo, "Angel" told FARC commander Ivan Marquez. All that was missing in his collection, he said, was a photo with "J.E."
"Angel" was FARC's code name for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and "J.E." was Manuel Marulanda, a.k.a. "Tirofijo" ("Sure Shot"), the legendary leader of Latin America's oldest guerilla organization.
What a shame. Such a provocative lede, and already we know it's all wrong. How? Oh, here. Let Greg Palast school you on how not to read shit into an e-mail:
President Chavez has repeatedly denied that Venezuela provided any kind of material support to the FARC and that the only contacts his government has had with the FARC was to facilitate the release of hostages held by the FARC. In early 2008 Chavez managed to convince the FARC to release six out of 45 of its high profile hostages.
Two weeks ago, Interior Minister Rodriguez Chacín said he had met personally with FARC leaders during the negotiations of hostage releases which Colombia invited Venezuela to help mediate last August. Rodriguez Chacín assured that the "only contacts" President Chávez had with the FARC were at the request of the Colombian government for the sake of the peace process.
There. So, what's this about a need to "clarify" something? It's been clear for, oh, like FOREVER.
On the other hand, it looks to me like HRW has some clearing-up of its own to do:
I know, they're supposed to be a serious human-rights organization, but it's kind of hard to take seriously an organization that gets used so often to promote the State Dept.'s war plans over actual human rights (such as the fundamental right not to be killed by Washington's allies, for example). And every so often, they betray their true nature with hysterical press releases that might as well have been written by Andres Oppenheimer or Simon Romero. They'd be great comic fodder, if only people learned to take them the right way--namely, with a truckload of salt on top and a whoopie cushion underneath.
The part of this particular one that makes me laugh loudest is this nifty juxtaposition right here:
Laptop computers have become treasure troves of evidence for Colombian investigators probing crimes committed by far-right militias and leftist rebels.
So many Colombians were dismayed to learn that prison authorities didn't immediately secure laptops and cell phones belonging to most of the 14 paramilitary warlords who were yanked from cells on May 12 and extradited to the United States to stand trial for drug trafficking.
The mishandled evidence has become a national scandal, and the prisons director only made matters worse when he told Colombia's leading newspaper that he had no way of preventing the warlords from continuing to lead criminal networks from their cells.
Oh, I know. I know! How about bombing the fuck out of paramilitary encampments on the Venezuelan side of the border, where Manuel Rosales (the imperial stooge with whom Chavecito mopped the floor in the last presidential election) is said to be harboring them? Then, I'm sure, we can put to rest once and for all the question of whether there is actually such a thing as a bomb-proof laptop (which the whore media won't ask).
And of course, we could also clean up a LOT of right-wing paramilitary narcoterrorist scum that way.
Oh, I know. I KNOW. It's a modest proposal, but it will never happen. And we all know why.
Against the editorial lines from Colombia and Venezuela that claim there is a "close" relationship between the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, and the FARC rebels of Colombia, Cordoba confirmed that neither she, nor the Venezuelan leader had known of the death of the historic leader of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda Velez.
"My attention has often been drawn to how they say here that we (Cordoba and Chavez) are the mouthpieces of the FARC, but neither Chavez nor I knew that Marulanda had died...until the last, he did things his own way, he died a natural death," the senator said.
Translation mine.
Did you get that? Neither Cordoba nor Chavez knew that Marulanda had died until after the fact. They had to read about it in the morning papers, same as everybody else. Some "close relations"! I would think that if Chavez had known Marulanda wasn't well, and he really was that close to him, he would have had him flown to Cuba for treatment, no?
This should lay to rest all the media drivel about Chavez financing and arming the FARC, too. Until someone (and not someone pointing to the Magic Laptop, either) can locate the whereabouts of a big chunk of money that disappeared from Venezuela and appeared in Colombia (a large arms cache, ditto), I think it's safe to say that this latest media campaign against the left, like ol' "Sure-Shot" Marulanda himself, has begun to push up the proverbial daisies.
Never-before-seen footage from the actual finding of Raul Reyes' computer! Indisputable evidence linking Chavecito to the FARC! Exclusive to Globoterror, the 24-hour crapaganda channel! Absolutely (and I do mean absolutely) unedited!
It defies the laws of physics, if I'm not mistaken. But shhhh, don't tell that to the AP:
Venezuela on Saturday accused 60 Colombian soldiers of illegally entering its territory, as tensions over Venezuela's alleged effort to aid Colombian guerrillas swirl.
Well, at least they got the "alleged" part right. It's an allegation, it's only an allegation, and in the end, an allegation is all it will ever turn out to be. But I'm still trying to visualize a tension swirling, and all I get is a headache. Definitely a bad trip. This is much easier:
Well, there goes another piece of Chavecito libel. And who better to blow it all to shit than "a battle-hardened, one-eyed female commander" of the FARC?
Nelly Avila Moreno, better known as "Karina," denied her bloody reputation during a news conference. She said she surrendered because she was encircled, had a bounty on her head and was spooked by the recent murder of a fellow rebel leader by one of his bodyguards.
[...]
In response to a reporter's question, Avila said she had no knowledge of Chavez arming or funding the FARC.
Asked what the Venezuelan president means to the rebels, she simply said: "We admire Chavez for the way he is."
I guess that explains his success as a hostage negotiator, too. Go figure! No $250 million (or $300 mil, depending who you ask. The crapaganda whores are still unable to keep this one straight.) No guns. No nothing.
Why, the next thing you know, the Three Magic Laptops From Outer Space will be conclusively proven fraudulent, too. Fire up the corn popper, this latest mediatic war on Venezuela should be fun to watch as it falls apart.
PS: It gets better. In Aporrea's version, in Spanish, "Karina" also denies that the FARC had anything to do with Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador. That was another bogus accusation that's been floating around out there, and now it's busted, too.
Opposition senator Gustavo Petro called for an investigation today into the 48,055 archives of FARC "#2" man Raul Reyes, killed on March 1 in a military incursion into an illegal guerrilla encampment in Ecuador.
Petro, a member of the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) party, declared that he had proof that the archives alleged to be from Reyes' computer were "opened, created and modified by the police between March 1 and 3."
The legislator said that this alteration of computer archives had been established by Interpol.
One thing about that Old Grey Lady...she's one helluva madam. Yes, folks, the NY Times is pimping for Alvaro Uribe again. And look: there's one of her working girls now, out on the corner...
Tension between Colombia and Venezuela increased Sunday after Colombia's defense minister rejected an accusation by Venezuela's government that 60 Colombian troops had illegally entered a border region of Venezuela known to be a redoubt for Colombian guerrilla groups.
Yes, folks, that's the incomparable Simon Romero again, parading around in his miniskirt and high heels. Give that man a hand for his prowess at handjobbery!
Now, pay close attention, kiddies. Auntie Bina, a true lady despite her natural red hair and her plebeian origins, is about to teach you something about the difference between journalistic credibility and mere prostitution.
The story is about pathetic, mush-mouthed Manuel Rosales, the guy who got maybe a third of the vote in the last Venezuelan election despite heavy financial support and cheerleading from Gringolandia. But as you can see, that ain't him. That's another US puppet altogether.
Still, it's not an honest mistake, but a definite Freudian slip. Aporrea reports that Rosales is awfully chummy with El Narco. According to journalist Jose Vicente Rangel, formerly Chavecito's VP, Rosales recently attended the Festival de Vallenato in the paramilitary-controlled region of Valledupar, Colombia, and was seen leaving with El Narco.
What do you suppose they were up to? Just kinky sex, or something much more nefarious?
BTW, very nice of the AP not to report what's really going on in the Venezuelan opposition. They are in fact leaderless and very much at sea. They don't even need Chavecito to make them loco; they just are.
Colombian journalist and former TV anchorwoman Virginia Vallejo, now living in Miami, has written an explosive tell-all book about her lengthy affair with drug lord Pablo Escobar, titled Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar. Here, in an interview with a Brazilian TV reporter, she reveals Escobar's corrupting connections with a man you may recognize today. He used to be the mayor of Medellin, the cocaine capital of Colombia and the murder capital of the world. Later, he was the governor of the state of Antioquia. Today, Alvaro Uribe is the president of the land.
Video in Spanish and Portuguese.
Escobar's thugs murdered at least three presidential candidates who refused to take his drug money, including the liberal, Luis Carlos Galan. His saying was "Plata o plomo"--silver or lead. Bucks or bullets--those were your choices if you crossed paths with him. If you didn't take his money and do him favors, you were a dead man. He later crossed over into outright terrorism--exchanging bullets for bombs. Virginia Vallejo, fearing for her life, broke off all relations with Escobar and fled to Miami, where she sought and received federal protection.
And Alvaro Uribe, who is the US's "ally" in the "War on Drugs" today, was far from being the enemy of this feared and powerful drug lord. On the contrary, they were very buddy-buddy--to the point where Escobar lent him a helicopter after the death of his father (at the hands of the FARC, his pet hate today--whom Uribe, ironically, accuses of being "narco-terrorists", with nary a peep about his own considerable past in narco-terrorism.) Uribe, in his gubernatorial capacity of okaying aviation licences in his state, handed them out like Halloween candy to Escobar's lackeys. Guess what use they were put to. And all this while the crack-cocaine epidemic in the US raged at its height, and the War on Drugs made no progress. Gee, is it any wonder?
And Escobar's thugs were not the only ones who enjoyed impunity under Uribe. The right-wing paramilitaries, whom the drug lords and large landowners alike employed to terrorize whole communities and suppress the left, also benefited from Uribe's official string-pulling and lever-pushing.
Isn't Uribe a fine one to call the FARC "narco-terrorists", when some of his closest friends and allies...would fit that description even better?
A few random thoughts about laptops, Interpol and Colombia
(Translation: "Uribe attempts to deflect attention from himself by attacking Chavez...'And we pulled this red rabbit out of the computer. Chavez sent it to the FARC!' As Anibal Nazoa said, 'In Plan Colombia, you can see from a mile away that the gringos think we're all fools!'" Meanwhile, the computer's mouse wisely decides to skedaddle.)
There's been a lot of fuss in the media lately about some computers which allegedly survived a bombing raid on March 1 in Ecuador. Here is a random sampling of what's been running through my head concerning the kerfuffle:
Calderon to Uribe: Don't be dissin', don't be hatin'
While all the whore media are all busy screaming about Chavecito's diplomatic and democratic deficits, they're suspiciously silent about the much larger ones of a certain Colombian parapresident. Fortunately, kiddies, you've got me...and I've got Aporrea:
Mexican president Felipe Calderon rejected the statements of his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, to the effect that the Mexican students who died and were injured in the bombing of Raul Reyes' encampment, were accomplices of the FARC.
"It seems to me that the prudent thing to do is not to label or prejudge in one way or another the characteristics or the activities of these young people," Calderon said, according to the website of El Universal.
The Mexican leader said that "we all have our own hypotheses, but the suffering of the parents and the memory of their children deserve the benefit of the doubt until these investigations are completed."
Translation mine. Link added.
That giant slapping sound you just heard was pimp Calderon letting psycho bitch Uribe know where things really stand.
The Government of Nicaragua offered protection to the Mexican, Lucia Morett, who survived the massacre that Colombia perpetrated March 1, in Ecuadorian territory.
This was announced by the Latin American Association for Human Rights (ALDHU), which informed that Morett, who received treatment for injuries sustained during the bombing in a military hospital in Quito, left for Managua on Wednesday. She was received there by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega.
"The Government of Nicaragua has offered protection and aid to this victim of the massacre of March 1, in addition to that offered by Ecuador. Lucia Morett will arrive in Mexico next week," said ALDHU secretary-general Juan de Dios Parra, of Chile.
Parra added that Morett, who was the only Mexican survivor of the attack, travelled to the Nicaraguan capital in the company of her parents and functionaries of ALDHU, a non-governmental organization with headquarters in Quito.
In the military incursion, which Quito maintains ruptured diplomatic relations with Colombia, four Mexican university students were killed, along with FARC guerrilla chief Raul Reyes and an Ecuadorian citizen.
Translation mine.
Kudos to Daniel Ortega. Typically, you can count on a Sandinista to do the decent thing.
Yep, Alvaro Uribe really IS a lawless, psychopathic little thug. Get a load of his latest bons mots:
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday that he doesn't regret ordering a cross-border raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador, despite the death of four Mexican students there.
Uribe told Mexico's Televisa network that the students were seen in a video with the guerrillas, indicating they were in league with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
"They were not doing humanitarian work. They were not hostages. So why were they there?" Uribe said. "They were there as accomplices of this activity. They were there as agents of terrorism."
Seems like only yesterday they were announcing that France was getting involved in getting Ingrid Betancourt back from the FARC. (All right, it was the day before yesterday. But still.)
Well, at least we know Ingrid is not in imminent danger of dying. But she's still a prisoner, and still probably despondent as hell--especially if she knows about this latest turn of events.
Too bad El Narco has been sabotaging Chavecito's efforts and killing Raul Reyes, or maybe Ingrid would be free now instead.
Not Venezuela, apparently. They kicked 'em out a while back, and now we're seeing a number of dramatic results. Like, oh, say, this:
Combat helicopters and F-16 fighter jets opened fire at a clandestine airstrip in Venezuela's remote southern plains on Friday as part of a government counter-drug effort.
Smoke rose from the bombed airstrip as helicopters hovered above the savannah.
Army Gen. Jesus Gonzalez told state television that so far this year, the military has demolished 67 airstrips used by drug traffickers to smuggle cocaine from neighboring Colombia to the United States and Europe. Another 90 are to be destroyed next week.
"We are carrying out this operation to reaffirm the conviction and commitment of our military in the fight against the drug problem," Gonzalez said.
Well, shoot, that's nothing. Ever wonder what role the DEA plays, not in fighting drug trafficking, but promoting it? They've a ways to go before they catch up with the CIA, which has been at it for as long as it's been...well, the CIA--but trust me, they're in like Flynn in Colombia.
Well, here's one in the eye for El Narcopresidente Uribe. Looks like what Chavecito and the FARC have both been insisting on all along, may just finally come true after all!
Colombia has offered to suspend the sentences of jailed guerrillas if rebels first free hostages including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.
Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said late Thursday that the liberation of some captives could jump-start the process of exchanging guerrillas for dozens of hostages, including three U.S. defense contractors.
"It is enough that Ingrid Betancourt be immediately freed for us to consider this humanitarian exchange is moving forward, and to begin delivering the benefits of suspended sentences to (jailed) members of the guerrilla group," Restrepo told reporters.
In return for the hostages' release, rebels would have to promise not to return to the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been fighting for decades to topple the government.
The Colombian defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, justified at a press conference on Friday the killings of four Mexican students during the attack by Colombia on Ecuadorian territory.
The minister assured that these young people "were no little angels", and attempted to link them to the FARC guerrillas in order to defend the murders.
And they've committed two hacks. One on the website of a certain Ecuadorable president:
The official website of the Presidency of Ecuador (www.presidencia.gov.ec) was blocked today for the second time by a hacker who left it out of service.
The info-pirate left a message, "Don't mess with Colombia", and blocked all access to infromation on the portal, which remained disabled for several hours until, around 2 p.m. local time (7 p.m. GMT), it came back online but with error messages.
Colombia: Even deeper in it than originally thought
And if you have to ask what "it" is, here's a hint: It's brown, it steams, it smells bad, and you don't want it all over the bottom of your shoe. Unfortunately, that's exactly where Alvaro Uribe is wearing it right now, in light of the following:
One of the three female FARC guerrillas wounded in the Colombian military operation in Ecuadorian territory last Saturday said today that there had been two bombings against the clandestine encampment in the border region of Angostura.
Chavecito vs. Alvaro the Arrogant...the Cage Match. At least, that's how the Crapagandisti of the Lamestream Media are playing the latest Venezuela/Colombia dispute (over Ecuador, no less).
Just for shits 'n' giggles, here are some of their contradictory headlines, as grouped by subject matter:
So this is what John Perkins warned Rafael Correa about...
...and of course, it would have to be Colombia, deciding to repeat not-so-ancient history and once more, conduct a raid on foreign soil without having the common decency to identify that soil's government about its intentions ahead of time.
Although it's undeniable that most of those who marched this past Monday in Bogota and other Colombian cities were ordinary people demonstrating their indignation or rejection of the FARC, groups of skinheads or neo-Nazis also took advantage of the day to march against the irregular army, as you can see in this video of the march, taken by the daily El Tiempo de Colombia newspaper and available on their YouTube channel.
The far-right youths shouted slogans against communism, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and the FARC.
"No to communism! No more Chavez, no more FARC" can be heard in the YouTube video. So can shouts of "Uribe, friend, we're with you till the end", this in spite of the fact that the demonstration was supposedly convened by independent youth, without political banners, via the Internet.
Translation mine. Here's the video:
The Nazis appear at about the 2:20 mark.
Hey Alvaro, is the enemy of your "enemy" your friend? Better find some other friends, then.
And hey! So much for the common complaint from the Venezuelan right that Chavez's supporters are Nazis. Turns out, the Nazis hate him, in both Colombia AND Venezuela--they all think he's a commie. Go figure!
Colombia's Farc rebels have said they will release three hostages captured over six years ago, for health reasons.
The Farc told local media that it would free the hostages in return for mediation efforts made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The group released two high profile hostages earlier in January in a deal that Mr Chavez helped to broker.
The hostages to be released were named as former lawmakers Luis Eladio Perez, Gloria Polanco and Orlando Beltran.
No handover date was given.
In a statement, the Farc repeated their desire to exchange hostages for jailed rebels.
Such an exchange has been blocked over a Farc demand that the government demilitarise a large area in southern Colombia to enable a handover.
...and another black eye for the gringos' "good guy" Alvaro the para-narco-politician.
I really don't know why Dubya and Harpo want free trade agreements with that little putz; no one else does.
On the other hand, Chavecito's fair-trade pacts, such as ALBA and Petrocaribe, keep getting more signatories. And his hostage-release efforts, funnily enough, just keep bearing fruit. Shit, he's even combatting drug trafficking from Colombia through Venezuela at an unprecedented rate--one surmises it's a good thing he kicked out the DEA.
You'd think, eventually, that someone high up in Colombia would get the hint. Well, maybe they might--but they'll have to get rid of Alvaro first.
From the man who wrote Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which among other things treats of his own experiences in Ecuador, a warning to the current president of that country: Watch your back! The jackals are circling!
Of course, we all know that it's not Colombia that's irked. Colombia is just relieved and grateful that two hostages are safe. It's Alvaro Uribe and his paramilitary pals who find it irksome. And they're not so much irked about Chavecito's less-than-unkind words about the FARC, I'm sure, as they are about Operation Emmanuel finally meeting success.
What REALLY botched Operation Emmanuel the first time
No, it wasn't the supposed ineptitude and buffoonishness of Hugo Chavez. It was something nasty and treacherous that could only have come from one place, and here's the confirmation from Aporrea:
In an exclusive interview with Radio W in Colombia, the former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, rescued in a humanitarian operation by the government of Venezuela, confirmed that intense military bombardments by the Colombian armed forces were what prevented her being freed last December, when President Hugo Chavez originally set Operation Emmanuel in motion.
The ex-parliamentarian of Huila Department related that her liberation, along with that of Clara Rojas, began 20 days ago, just after the FARC announced to President Chavez that the two women would be handed over to the Venezuelan government.
"Those 20 days, ever since the operation to free us began, we were walking through the jungle constantly. They were 20 difficult days; also, because we could feel the bombardments and the military presence very close by, we were very nervous," said the ex-congresswoman.
This statement appears to confirm the communique the FARC sent to the Venezuelan president on December 31, in which they announced the suspension of the operation due to the intense military activities on the part of the Colombian government. This placed Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in a difficult position when he claimed, on that same day, that there were no military operations in the zone, as proof that his government was doing all it could to guarantee the success of Operation Emmanuel. At that time, president Uribe argued that the FARC had not handed over the hostages because they didn't have the boy Emmanuel.
But now there is proof, coming from the same two women, that there was intense bombardment going on which prevented their being freed sooner.
Well, no...actually, they're more like pathetic, and have been ever since poor, mad old Uncle Miltie kicked the bucket (many years past his due date, if you ask me). So you'll have to pardon me if I smile with a kind of pitying scorn at people who spew drivel like this:
Colombia's diplomatic spat with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela may help President Alvaro Uribe build support in the U.S. Congress for a free-trade accord, Citigroup Inc. economists said.
Colombia could help securing passage of the agreement by casting it as a way to limit Chavez's regional influence, economists Franz Hamann and Luisa Charry wrote in an e-mailed report today.
"The sharper dividing line between the two countries can serve as a warning signal of the potential costs of not supporting economic freedom in the region," Bogota-based Hamman and Charry said.
Looks like the president of Marching Powder Land has some serious splainin' to do. Like, for example, how his effort to sabotage Chavecito and Piedad Cordoba in their efforts to broker peace and a release of FARC hostages...ended up showing that they had succeeded anyhow:
Colombia announced today that authorities arrested three people presumed to belong to urban militias of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Bogotá late Thursday, who were found in possession of five videos and seven letters and a digital memory card with photographs demonstrating proof of life of five civilian and eleven military hostages held by the FARC, including French Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt and three US defense contractors. The videos and other documents showing proof of life were addressed to Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The son of Ingrid Betancourt, Lorenzo Betancourt, said the proof that his mother is alive is thanks to the mediation of P
