|
from 10 november 2002 blue vol II, #56 |
|
|
Keys to US and Global Lies Three Addictions, Three Lies... Three Keys 
by Marcel Idels
The Muddy Crossroads: Globalization Showdown in Colombia
Half of the world's problems are caused by US addictions to oil and a kaleidoscope of drugs The US is the largest consumer of oil and its economy is so fragile and oil-dependent that it relies on a dangerous militarism to maintain reliable supplies. Consumption of fossil fuels to support US-type lifestyles is the underlying cause of global warming, ozone depletion, polar ice cap melt and mass specie die-off.
The US spends half of the world's defense budget, perhaps three-quarters of the whole budget if private security costs are included. And the US sells half the world's weapons.
The three main sectors of global trade serve the US addictions and are self-reinforcing.
US "Drugs", US "Guns" and a US needy for oil. - Jason Marti: Andes Libre [2]
This situation cannot continue on much longer... and then what?
"Not much longer," will be too late for millions of poor people in Palestine, Iraq, Colombia...
Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia are forging the three keys to South America... Big ripples are forthcoming from the South.
Large US corporations and the IMF - working with the South American upper class - have perpetuated crisis all over the South, an economic war against the people and the environment. The brutality of the elite and the constant string of US military interventions have mocked democracy and assured that this region maintains the highest income disparity of any region in the world.[3] It also has some of the worst distribution of land ownership. Colombia has had negative land reform for 20 years.[4]
Grassroots uprisings in Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia have altered the political map of Latin America. Greater changes are coming from Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. A liberatory momentum is building that will accomplish what surely seemed a miracle only two years ago -concessions from the rich and a radical reorientation of social and economic priorities. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is a moribund concept - a dead oil-choked sitting duck - whose main legacy will be that it panicked South Americans so much that it forced them toward integration and identity. [5]
The failure of neo-liberalism and the IMF's privatization mistakes have created a backlash in the streets against these policies and a growing uncertainty among political parties and policy makers. Polls show that the whole US concept of liberal democracy is fast becoming a discredited path for Latin Americans. [6] Traditional political parties are crumbling and governments throughout the region fear a popular mobilization and uprisings. A serious change in attitudes among the poor and the newly poor ex-middle class is in the air and making demands for more jobs, better wages and "out with all the bums called politicians and bureaucrats!" [7]
"Yankee go home" also echoes resoundingly off the tin pans of the cacerolazos and the defiance of the Cortes de Ruta (road blockades). [8]
Smoke rises from the burning tires of unemployed hands with nothing left to lose.
The US ignores the crisis in Argentina and schemes over Brazil. One thing for certain, the US and its business and energy interests will not roll over or go home. No. They will fight and one region in particular will bear the brunt of US frustration, desperation and violence: the Northern Andes and the coal, gas and oil fields of Colombia and Venezuela. [9] The US has a War Monger President, 2000 troops and mercenaries inside Colombia, and another 5-10,000 personnel near its borders engaged in surveillance, planning and training for the "War of Greater Colombia." [10]
How Will Peace Ever Come To Colombia?
The full spectrum of neo-liberal (WTO Free Trade) assaults, is devastating the most biologically important large country in the world: Colombia. [11] Larger than California and Texas combined, - twice as big as France - and most of its 44 million people are worried about their financial future and their personal security. It's the most beautiful and also one of the worst places on Earth to live - if you are poor... or a bird specie. In the wild rural areas, small towns and urban slums, 30 million Colombians are suffering declining income, security and life expectancy. [12] Six-hundred bird species are also threatened or endangered.
The impacts on Colombian ecosystems are a tragedy that the whole world should take responsibility for. The UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention has shown that "Deforestation caused by coca and opium cultivation is close to 340,000 hectares. Each hectare of coca costs four hectares of Amazon forest... When vegetation is cut on slopes, the water supply downstream is affected, in addition to a loss of some 120-230 tons of topsoil per hectare. Pollution of water sources results from herbicides and fertilizers applied to the drug crops, and from solvents and chemicals used in drug refinement... 20 million liters of ethyl ether, acetone, ammonia, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid are discharged from laboratories into the tributaries that feed the Amazon and the Orinoco rivers... endangering 350 Andean floral species, 210 animal species, 600 bird species, 170 reptile species, 100 amphibians, and 600 fish species in the Amazon and Orinoco alone." [13]
The dangerous and untested herbicides in Monsanto's Round-Up Ultra are raining down on these same fragile impacted ecosystems - compliments of the generosity of Americans, US State Department's Air Wing and its ex-CIA mercenaries at DynCorp and EAST Inc. [14] These additional chemicals of the drug war are just for show, as they have had no effect on reducing drug production or imports to the US drug market. The spraying and the phony drug war have caused real harm to thousands of people. Animals have died and peasant food crops have been repeatedly sprayed driving the poor to move to the cities or grow more coca. [15] The US Environmental Protection Agency now admits that components in the spray mix are toxic and cause severe eye irritation.
This is a "War Against the Earth" that is killing the lungs (Amazon), the oceans (Blood of the Earth) and the resilience of all Life (Biodiversity) - it is a war that will never end until we expire or learn very different ways of consuming and sharing. [16]
How Many Wars Does it Take to Confuse the Public and Grab Up the Oil?
"There ought to be a rule that countries are not allowed to fight more than two wars at a time, it's just 'too-much'-so-confusing!" There are wars and rumors of war across the globe. George Bush uses the pretext of fighting a War on Terrorism to rearrange governments and alliances in the oil supply regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. Without secure supplies in the Western Hemisphere (Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia) the US is constrained from pursuing all-out war in the East. There are many wars over-lapping around and within Colombia and its neighboring states. Drug crop fumigation wars to drive peasants off the land; IMF and trade wars to discipline poor workers and control economies for corporate investment; and military and clandestine wars to support friends of the US and eliminate any possibility of opposition. [17] The rewards for the US are large and the motive is greed and energy need. A treasure-trove of oil, coal, natural gas and minerals lies beneath the verdant Colombian landscape - much of it in the wild territories where the leftist guerrillas are strongest. [18] A war for natural resources hidden by smoke-screens of deception. War for guns, drugs and Oil-control against dignity, survival and National-Control Three lies hide US war crimes in Colombia:
The global truth is that Colombia is not remotely democratic.
To generalize this rule out to the rest of Latin America the moral would be:
The urge for real democracy or some kind of popular/grassroots democracy is strengthening even as faith in the actually existing governments is disappearing all over South America. The WTO, FTAA and other US proposals are subtle lies that work to hide the deeper crimes. The US economic policies and the pursuit of endless growth and a world of corporate profit utopia are the deeper crimes that must be confronted and adjudicated.
George Bush has a slightly elitist view of the meaning and extent of Democracy - in fact his view is similar to that of the Latin American elite who see all unionists, peace advocates, and human rights groups as subversives and terrorists. [41]
As long as the US is allowed to interfere with smaller countries the idea of democracy is moot and impossible.
A joke with no punchline. And a dirty blank ballot card.
Phony Drug Wars and Fighting "Terrorists" with Terrorists
Lie number two is the myth that the US is fighting a War on Drugs or a war against drug lords and kingpins.
The forces benefiting from US aid have a very long history of involvement with death squads and major drug traffickers.
Capturing Hidden Alliances and US Influence: Managing Drug Infested Waters
In the 1980s the CIA encouraged the Medellin Cartel and then it helped the Colombian government to decimate the cartel in the early 1990s. The US arranged a quieter business procedure for the drug trade with remnants of the Cali cartel and independent traffickers - overseen by the death squads - whose best name would have been The Narco-Paramilitary Scouts of the Colombian Armed Forces.
The Cali Cartel is the most successful model of a third world transnational corporation according to the UN-DCCP. [42] It reached the plateau of its consolidated economic power around 1993. Colombia was a nice place for the elite at this time, despite a high murder rate and kidnappings - the costs of business. The guerrillas were a minor nuisance, but shut out of political power they could be dealt with, used or steadily eliminated. [43]
Along with the numerous political assassinations of leftist organizers and political candidates, from 1987-1994, factional warfare and urban shoot-outs increased among the drug cartels and the paramilitaries. Cartel members and people caught in the middle were killed all over the world. From journalists in New York to narco-middlemen in Miami and competitor traffickers in Puerto Rico, this gang war cast a wide net inside and outside of Colombia. From 1983 to 1991 more than fifty Colombian judges were killed. [44]
Amid the increasing turmoil of Colombian society (1985-1994), the leftist political parties of the UP (FARC-EP and the Communist Party of Colombia) and the Alianza Democratica (the M-19 guerrillas and others) began to attract voters. Faith in democracy had somehow not yet died in Colombia and many activists came forward in campaigns of peace and hope. The corruption in the Colombian government was a factor in this political renewal, as were the peasants whose desperation and anger grew as corporations and the new narco-bourgeoisie drove them off their lands - a recurring process for 55 years. Flush with drug money the new class formation of the narco-bourgeoisie bought up millions of acres of farmland. The land was often left idle or turned to cattle which require fewer peasants. [45]
The collapse of textile commerce in Medellin and other regions (1980-1985) aided the move into drug dealing in Colombia as did the collapse of coffee prices since 1998. Combined with AUC's right wing paramilitary terror, collapsing commodity prices assisted the de-population of rural areas. [46]
The heroic efforts of UP candidates and other young politicians during 1989-1994 is a testament to nonviolent effort - just like the thousands of other poor Colombians who have stepped forward each year trying to organize, educate or defend their communities. Thousands were assassinated, some went into exile and many headed up into the mountains - literally or figuratively (went into hiding). Such a time of hiding and exodus is once again the specter haunting the Left and the Colombia of 2002. [47]
President Uribe's friends cast dark shadows.
Climax and US Control
In 1989, neither Escobar and the narcos nor Uribe Velez and Morales (the politicians) could control the popular presidential candidate, Luis Galan - who championed extradition of drug lords to the US. Escobar killed Galan and allowed a terrified Gavaria to win the Presidency. Twice Escobar failed to kill him, including the bombing of an airliner that killed all 110 passengers. Gavaria had been Galan's campaign manager and the head of Galan's security detail on the day of his assassination in Soacha, near Bogota. Hmmm... a Liberal Party hack who couldn't unify Colombia, so he sold out the future of his country into US control. [48]
When Escobar turned on Fidel Castano's friends in the Moncada and the Galeano families, in 1992, Fidel and his younger brother Carlos switched their allegiance from the Medellin cartel to the Cali cartel - as the CIA had already planned. They formed the death squad Los Pepes in 1992 from the paramilitary armies of the Galleano and Moncada factions that had left the Medellin cartel and joined the alliance with Cali. Members and former members of the Armed Forces, the National Police and the death squad MAS were also involved. So were US Special Forces and Delta Force who both trained and worked with the death squads. [49] The best snipers in the world, Delta Force...
Los Pepes killed hundreds of Escobar's relatives and associates as well as M-19/Allianza Democratica people like presidential candidate Carlos Pizzaro. Many political and human rights organizers and some conservatives who wouldn't go along with the new plan were summarily executed.
Due to the obvious drug connections of President Samper (1994-1998) and the sometimes fickle international outrage over government human rights abuse, the US cut off most of its direct funding to Colombia at this time. Uncle Sam laid low waiting for the smoke to clear. George Bush and the CIA kept poking around talking to old friends, shuffling a fair amount of covert and military aid to their budding allies, and looking for a new arrangement among the shifting formations of the military-elite-multiple middle class interests that hold the balance of power in Colombia. [50] The importance of these different alliances and elite groupings would come to light with the rise of Carlos Castano and Uribe Velez and Uribe's 2002 election victory. [51]
Endgame? Or Fifty-Six More Years of Civil War
The first big shift had come in 1991. A series of meetings took place - kind of a Mafia Don's conference. The CIA laid out the new plan - Create a Drug War as cover for a low-key "drug business-as-usual" hidden trafficking regime. In return, the US would start channeling money to the Police and Military to eliminate the guerrillas who were growing in numbers and resources as their contacts grew and their sophistication at kidnapping and corporate shake-downs improved. [52]
The "mainstreamers" (industrialists, large export farms, and medium sized businesses not influenced by the narcotics trade) were not sure about supporting this US and Death Squad option, but they were divided, fearful and had no real choice left but to go along.
With the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993, the Castano brothers began to unify the paramilitaries while working closer with drug traffickers and the Colombian armed forces. Older brother Fidel Castano, a major narcotics player, was reported killed by guerrillas in 1994, but new information suggests he changed his identity and still lives. Carlos often leans on his poor-boy story that the guerrillas killed his father and brother. After 1994 Carlos grew increasingly brutal and proud of it as he often did radio interviews explaining why he killed so-and-so and his family.
By 1997, US influence was the dominant force shaping the future of Colombia. The CIA plan for death squad and military attacks on guerrilla sympathizers was in full swing. This is the plan that continues today. A grand coalition of part of Cali (Valle de Cauca et. al.) and Uribe representing Medellin and Antioquia with Castano the link between them all and the Commander of most of the paramilitary forces. Half of the Army is in on the deal and most of the rest stay quiet. But enough of the armed forces are neutral and offer some measure of protection to the few remaining reformers - as a bargaining chip- or an Ace or at least a Jack up their sleaze - or sleeve.
Take your pick.
Castano's stature expanded rapidly as he forged political alliances with the oligarchy, gathered military power to his cause and basked in the gory glory as an icon of the far right. Soon he re-wrote the rules and moved strongly into control of half the drug trade by 1998. He was busy with all of this effort but still found time to massacre tens-of-thousands of people - using military, CIA and his own intelligence to identify guerrilla areas and their sympathizers. [53]
SUMMARY of Lies #1 and #2: Lies to Hide Beneath
"The greasy ethics of Bill Clinton and "The Bushies" are the Oil-Slimed Evil that crawled out from under the Rock of Ages with the first oil well."
Lie #1: The US is not defending a democracy in Colombia, instead the US and European recognition of the legitimacy of the Colombian government is an affront to humanity and a perversion of the potential of real democracy.
Lie #2: The US is not fighting a drug war or terrorism in Colombia. According to the US State Department and DEA reports, the right wing paramilitaries are the biggest terrorist threat in the Western Hemisphere and synonymous with the largest drug syndicates as well. The US is clearly aiding these terrorist and the AUC drug enterprises - not attacking them.
The Key to these two lies is that the US and its corporations can never be trusted and they believe that they can act with impunity - The Expanded Monroe Doctrine - in Latin America. This truth is sinking in as evident in the recent Brazilian and Bolivian elections and at the August, Quito Summit where most South American leaders rejected the US-backed FTAA. [54] The refusal of the US and IMF to assist Argentina and soon other countries in the region shows the people that the US only cares about strategically important places. Many countries will apparently be abandoned financially during this current crisis if they don't do what the US tells them to do, like more privatization and the signing of immunity clauses exempting US troops from war crimes and the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. [55]
In one of the best articles on Z Magazine's website, Doug Stoke's Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia [56] sums up US motives, strategy and tactics:
"In 1997, James Milford, the former Deputy Administrator with Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), stated that Carlos Castano, the chief of the paramilitary AUC is a "major cocaine trafficker in his own right: and has close links to the North Valle de Cauca drug syndicate which is "among the most powerful drug trafficking groups in Colombia."
Milford went on to say "there is little to indicate the insurgent groups [guerrillas] are trafficking in cocaine themselves, either by producing cocaine... and selling it to Mexican syndicates, or by establishing their own distribution networks in the US."
Donnie Marshall, the current DEA Administrator, stated in 2001 before the subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, that "the FARC controls certain areas of Colombia and the FARC in those regions generate revenue by "taxing" local drug related activities." He states categorically that "at present, there is no corroborated information that the FARC is involved directly in the shipment of drugs from Colombia... [but] the right-wing paramilitary groups raise funds through extortion, or by protecting cocaine laboratory operations in northern and central Colombia. The Carlos Castano organization, and possibly other paramilitary groups appears to be directly involved in processing cocaine. At least one of these paramilitary groups appears to be involved in exporting cocaine from Colombia."
US Senator Joe Biden delivered a similar report to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. [57]
The narco-guerrilla myth serves a useful propaganda pretext for US interventionism. By associating the rebels with drugs, the US obscures the role that the drug-funded paramilitaries play in its dirty war against Colombia's civil society. The role of the US in Colombia's paramilitary terror against the civilian population is made all the more stark considering the fact that US military advisers traveled to Colombia in 1991 to re-shape Colombian military intelligence networks [sometimes referred to as the Secret Military Plan of the "Killer Networks"]. [58]
This restructuring was supposedly designed to aid the Colombian military in counter-narcotics efforts. Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of the order. Nowhere within the Order is any mention made of drugs. Instead the secret reorganization focused solely on combating what was called "escalating terrorism by armed subversion". The re-organization solidified linkages between the Colombian military and narco-paramilitary networks that in effect further consolidated a "secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder". Once the re-organization was complete, "written material was to be removed" with "open contacts and interaction with military installations" to be avoided by paramilitaries. [59]
Stan Goff, a former US Special Forces trainer in Colombia [supports these facts and] says "narcotics was a flimsy cover story for beefing up the capacity of armed forces who had lost the confidence of the population through years of abuse". [60]
The US then has clearly participated in strengthening the ties between the leading terrorists in Colombia, the Colombian military and their paramilitary allies, who are responsible for over 80 percent of all human rights abuses committed in Colombia today [as much as 95 percent of all political-criminal murders]. [61]
These same paramilitaries, as stated by the US's own agencies, are among the biggest drug traffickers in Colombia today [indeed the biggest in the world]. In effect, US military aid is going directly to the major terrorist networks throughout Colombia, who traffic cocaine into US markets to fund their activities, and which the US has been instrumental in helping make more effective in creating what Human Rights Watch termed a "sophisticated mechanism...that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it".
The narco-guerrilla and counter-terrorist pretexts serves as a useful PR mechanism for conflating US "official enemies" with drugs and terrorism. Underlying these myths is the reality that the Colombian state and its privatised arm, the paramilitaries, combined with overt US support, continues to lead directly to the death and disappearances of thousands of Colombian civilians. The US terror war against Colombian civil society fits a consistent pattern within US policy throughout Latin America, which has led directly to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians. [62]
In prosecuting the war the US and Colombian elites rely on both coercive and consensual means. For the US and international audiences there are vast PR propaganda campaigns to manage perceptions.
In Colombia however it is a very different story where to get off you knees and stand on your feet is a risky business which all too often leads to a bullet made in the US.
The AUC held town meetings in many rural areas before each of the recent elections and reminded everyone that if the right-wing candidate lost the village would be slaughtered. Uribe avoided a run-off election by only 4 percentage points. [63]
Lie Number Three: The FARC-EP and ELN are Violent Terrorists and Major Drug Traffickers
"Bill Clinton's Determination of Waiver of Certification, August 22, 2000 showed the world that the US had never been serious about human rights in Colombia. So too, the Certification of Human Rights "improvements" in January 2001 that would have surprised even George Orwell. George W. Bush continues what his father started as CIA director and then formalized as President in 1991: support for Colombian Narco-Death Squads - also called right-wing paramilitaries. These are the people who use chain saws and stone clubs to decapitate and slaughter thousands of civilians in hundreds of massacres each year for the past 12 years." [64]
"And when one does seek answers from the Colombian elite they are told a bright shining lie. They are not told of the weakness of the state, instead they are told tales of a "tolerance for violence" and a nation of "rule breakers." When in reality the oligarchy has been conducting a dirty war against the poor for decades and this is why Colombia is a violent nation". Author Bert Ruiz, February 18, 2002. [65]
The Secret Weapon of the Colombian Elite - The CIA-Trained-and-Protected Right-Wing Paramilitary Death Squads -Terrorists against "terrorists"
"AUC is responsible for the majority of the following atrocities: the forced displacement of more than two million Colombians from their homes and land; massacres that have taken the lives of thousands of peasants over the past few years (there were more than 400 massacres in 2000 alone); the assassination of more than 3,800 union leaders over the past 15 years without a single culprit ever being convicted. While the paramilitaries are the principal perpetrators of these human rights abuses, many of them have been committed with the collaboration, and sometimes direct participation, of the U.S.-backed Colombian military.
"While there are plans to use some U.S. funds to create a special security unit to target paramilitary leaders, according to Amnesty International it is nothing more than 'cynical window dressing'. The human rights group claims that the Colombian military already knows where the paramilitaries are located, 'The sites of paramilitary bases are frequently known to the security forces and are often located in the immediate vicinity of military bases' and that 'military units continue to carry out operations in coordination with paramilitaries'.
"Instead of protecting the millions of impoverished Colombians who are victims of right-wing terrorism, the Bush administration is focusing on potential kidnapping victims (mostly upper and middle class citizens targeted by the guerrillas because of their wealth and their support for the existing political and economic system), police officers stationed in rural towns targeted by the rebels, and protecting the risky foreign business investments of a U.S. corporation by defending the Caño Limon oil pipeline." - Gary M. Leech , July 29, 2002, Colombia Report [66]
Yeah, But The Guerrillas Kill People Too!
Compared to the history of violence in Colombia, which was very briefly surveyed above, and the fact that the guerrillas commit less than 10 percent of human rights violations - some say less than 2 percent - it is ludicrous and dishonest to say that the out- numbered and out-gunned left wing guerrillas are excessively violent.
The guerrillas tried politics many times and were always slaughtered. They tried peace negotiations, but the government is always trumped by the elite and the narco-controlled Armed Forces and the negotiations never get to any substantive or economic issues - in reality these are only stalling tactics as both sides pretend to discuss proper negotiating procedures - while they prepare for war. The guerrillas held many public and semi-public forums, they cooperated with UN drug control programs and many say that the FARC DMZ or Safe Haven was the safest and least fearful place in Colombia during its existence because the paramilitaries stayed on the outskirts and the FARC tried hard to be friendly, courteous and benign rulers. [67]
The FARC have increased in strength from about 14,000 fighters in 1999 to 20,000 in 2002. A third of the FARC soldiers are women and many are well trained and battle-tested. The FARC's ally, the ELN, have about 8,000 fighters and they have fought fiercely against the paramilitary invasions of northeastern Colombia that began in 1999. Rural and urban supporters of the guerrillas have suffered terribly these last two years.
Klaus Nyholm, the Director of the UN's drug control agency in Colombia, the UNDCP, stated that "The guerrillas are something different than the traffickers... in some areas they are not involved in [drugs] at all. And in other they actively tell the farmers not to grow coca." In the rebels former Demilitarized Zone Nyholm stated that "drug cultivation has not increased or decreased" once the "FARC took control". He says the FARC were cooperating with a $6 million UN project to replace coca crops with legal alternative development. [Lie # Three] [68]
Are the guerrillas terrorists?
In most of the regions where the guerrillas are in control they are not violent to civilians or poor people. They have even been accused of being timid and not using enough violence to fight the paramilitaries and to defend villages when they are being massacred by the right-wing forces. But most of the times that the guerrillas have gone after the paramilitaries, the Colombian Armed Forces and their bombers and US choppers come to the rescue of the death squads. [69]
Lie Number Three - Do Three Lies Equal Imperial Truth?
The missions of the FARC-EP and the paramilitaries are almost opposite. The AUC seek out their enemies: anyone not accepting of their poverty or anyone who seeks to build a democratic civil society. The AUC and their friends in the many police agencies and army units follow a tried and true formula: they surround areas where there might be poor people friendly to or tolerant of the young guerrillas who travel in the area. The military erects check-points to keep observers out of the area. Government and AUC spies produce lists of likely victims then the AUC calls a town meeting that turns into a Fiesta of Death as dozens of people are tortured and killed in public. This scene has been gruesomely repeated hundreds of times in Colombia during the last 10 years. [70]
The number of massacres attributed to the left-wing guerrillas is only a handful compared to the Colombian Army and the Narco-paramilitaries.[71]
When not killing innocent people the right wing paramilitaries moonlight as guards for large businesses and cocaine laboratories. The paramilitaries recruit barely-educated poverty stricken people. These young recruits don't understand or embrace right-wing ideology and free market economics - no, many of the AUC's recruits join because "they offer high wages, sophisticated weaponry and a measure of power for unemployed youth. In Medellin, many of these gang members were previously employed as hit men for the drug cartels [or they were guerrilla sympathizers]. Working for paramilitary groups, these gangs have been able to extend their territorial control in poor neighborhoods [72]
"The Paramilitaries and their criminal gangs pay 380,000 pesos (approximately US $160) a month, when the best these kids can hope for is 100,000 pesos a month for 10 hours a day of running errands or doing manual labor. Right now, they are training them and using them for intelligence gathering, but the real war hasn't started yet" - Urban activist in Bogota, February 25, 2002. [73]
Against this Darkness and the rivers that flow colored rich with blood, the FARC and ELN have opposed missions. They travel quietly and strike paramilitary bases, checkpoints and the barracks of the militarized police forces. The guerrillas rarely harm anyone poor unless they are sure that they have collaborated with the death squads. In many of the regions where guerrillas are active there are few non battle-related human rights violations committed by them other than kidnapping the wealthy. [74]
The FARC fight for a new Colombia that will confiscate most of the elites' ill-gotten wealth and millions of acres of stolen lands to redistribute them to the poor. The AUC fight for the status quo and a free market Colombia. The guerrillas and many people all over Latin America believe that the US needs to clean up its own nation's act - "Treat the Drug Addicts, reduce US crime and better educate US kids." [75] The FARC have discouraged some coca growers and they call for much more commitment by wealthy drug-abusing countries to spend billions on crop substitution programs so that poor farmers in the South don't have to grow drugs in order to survive. [76] The low prices of global commodities and other farm products, thanks to neo-liberalism leaves the peasants of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru few options other than migration, coca growing or joining an armed group. [77]
- So much is interconnected...and the "Lies of the Empire" keep most people in the US and Europe from grasping even a limited view of reality.
A cruel reality, where the demand for drugs in the rich nation's funds the right wing death squads in poor nations - not quite the way George Bush's expensive Drug War commercial advertisements tell it. Even worse, no one makes an advertisement or hardly a whimper about how US drug policy supports the governments that support the death squads and drug traffickers. So much is dis-connected.
Summary of Lie #3: The Wrong Wars Against the Wrong People
As the US State Department, the DEA, the Treasury Department and the UN have all proven, if you exclude the taxes collected from the small coca farmers who happen to grow coca where the guerrillas happen to reside, then the FARC-EP and the ELN are hardly involved in the drug trade at all. All of these agencies and many Colombian reformers have concluded that drug money corruption is rife throughout Colombian society and its government. [78] Also beyond question is that the AUC and the government armed forces that assist it are the largest drug dealers and human rights violators in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Since the US funds these criminals it is also responsible and subject to war crimes charges.
One might designate some guerrilla tactics as terrorist in a broad sense. But even the gas cylinder bombings of the guerrillas are not meant to kill or terrorize the common people - unlike the broad terror of the paramilitaries. The guerrillas only seek to demoralize the paramilitaries and instill terror in a small percentage of Colombians: the allies of the elite who infest the government, military and some businesses. These are the real terrorists. [79]
TV adds to educate US citizens and even CIA planted articles in magazines and scripts. The White House manufactures its own mind-altering drugs: grandiose lies sweetened with naivete and poisoned with murder and blood on your hands.
These are the "Common lies" of the US, but the elite of Wall Street also have deeper secrets and darker lies yet buried, like disappeared land mines, disappeared but not forgotten... and endless nightmares...dollars crumbling.
Wishing Against those Bright Shinning Lies and A Thousand Points of Bush's Deceit
"Quite frankly. I think it is my responsibility to state here and now that there is a 'bright shinning lie' in Colombia. And the truth is that the Colombian Armed Forces have entered a sinister relationship with the paramilitary death squads and have orchestrated a slaughterhouse mentality to rid the nation of guerrillas...
"Anyone who doubts this should read the U.S. State Department's Colombian human rights report, Human Rights Watch Americas report on Colombia, and Amnesty International's documentation of paramilitary wrongdoing in Colombia. Additionally, Colombian journalist Maria Jimena Duzán, in her book Death Beat, provides an authoritative and compelling account of a critical period in Colombia's history when she describes how the cocaine cartels spawned the paramilitary death squads and how they executed her sister. As one critic proclaimed about Duzán's book, 'You need body armor to read it'.
"The truth behind the bright shining lie can no longer be kept secret. The Colombian Armed Forces do have links with the bad guys. They let paramilitaries pass through checkpoints unmolested and provide them with intelligence and supplies to combat the common enemy: the guerrillas. This is the root of Colombia's cancer.
"Americans should not misinterpret the intentions of the death squads; they are killing machines.
"Even the New York Times reported that the paramilitary death squads are responsible for 80 percent of the violence in Colombia. The horror has reached such levels that an average of 39 Colombians now flee the countryside every hour. All told, 341,925 Colombians were displaced in 2001." - Bert Ruiz [80]
The US is supporting narco-terrorist forces to destroy Colombian democracy.
Tucked into Uncle Sam's Deep Pockets: The Colombian Rap Sheet - A Mile Wide and a Dollar Short
Colombia has sent more troops to train at the SOA than any other Latin American country, with chilling results. The 1993 human rights report State Terrorism in Colombia cites 247 Colombian officers for human rights violations. One half of those cited were SOA graduates. Some were even featured as SOA guest speakers or instructors or included in the "Hall of Fame" after their involvement in crimes. [81] Ten years later, many of these US-trained criminals are still serving in the Colombian government or leading death squad campaigns.
The AUC was listed by the US as a terrorist organization in October 2001. [82]
Few consequences have attached to the AUC's listing as a terrorist group. A few months after being listed as a terrorist organization by the US and in order to coincide with their new "legitimacy" under their friend Uribe's rule, Castano and Mancuso "officially" dissolved the nominally 5-year-old military organization of 12,000 killers (AUC) and announced straight-faced that the three remaining paramilitary blocks would no longer be involved in the narcotics trade. Some former AUC units were castigated and "thrown out" for drug dealing and supposedly unauthorized kidnappings. This renunciation of the narcotics trade is a splendid bit of George Orwell, George Bush and Colombian author Garcia Marquez blended together. Nice try Carlos. Read his popular book, My Confessions, where he admits to multiple mass murders, assassinations of presidential candidates and that "70 percent of AUC funding comes from drugs." [83]
This isn't just a PR ploy and if Castano survives the next few months, he may even wipe-out or turn over to the police a number of his least loyal narcotraficante amigos. After all, Castano is pruning himself for peace talks this winter - and he really wants to smile his killer's countenance at the guerrillas across the flat Mesa de Negocios y La Paz - the negotiating table where he will not only represent the President and Armed Forces of Colombia but also the drug traffickers and a ruthless army of more than 8,000 death squad members - sounds tribal and explosive - just like Afghanistan - only with a few good-guys and much trickier lies mixed in.
ACCU, the Self Defense Forces of Aruba and Cordoba, is Castano's main and oldest paramilitary group. The ACCU has doubled in size in the last 5 years to about 10,000 fighters and the rest of Castano's AUC loyalists in the South and East have another 2,000 irregular foot soldiers. ACCU like AUC is supported by ranchers, the narco-bourgeoisie landed gentry, drug related businesses, cigarette smugglers, arms dealers and many military officers and their extended families. They have been able to recruit by paying high wages even to very young recruits. Wages of over $300 a month are paid to many paras. These mercenary wages are paid for through drug trafficking profits and from the quasi-extorted donations that AUC demands of many large businesses and wealthy individuals. [84] A power struggle in the AUC could unleash violent reprisals against the government and urban society unlike anything since Pablo Escobar's war of 1988-1994.
Will George W. Bush put a price on Castano's head or Mancuso's head, like he has done to guerrilla leaders? A handful of AUC leaders have killed ten times as many people as the guerrillas, so the price on Castano's head or carcass ought to be at least $50 million. [85]
When Americas' Delinquents Become Corporate or Government Madmen (and Deranged Women) the World Better Run for Cover!
Commerce, war and espionage have always involved crimes. Some of these are petty crimes or "only" crimes of ethics and usually the crimes affect only a limited number of people. In Vietnam the US broke this rule and about half of the war casualties could be considered war crimes - at least two million innocent victims perished as the US destabilized the whole region.
Like many a criminal that crosses the line from thievery to murder, the US has never turned back from its rampaging crime wave. Guatemala, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Indonesia, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Israel/Palestine, Iran/Iraq and Colombia - the serial - dare we say "ritual" - killing of innocents mounts yearly and now monthly. And now the US is de-stabilizing another whole region: the Northern Andes and half of South America.
This extensive criminal record is why the US is so desperate to avoid the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is why the US has resorted to blackmail and intimidation of many poor countries, the European Community, the UN Security Council - indeed, the whole world. A dangerous hostage-type situation has developed wherein the US has to keep upping the "threat-level" and the lies that it tells the world and its own people in order to cover up other lies and to keep from being dragged into a hostile courtroom where it can't effectively use its guns and media to fix the situation. The US is stalling and delaying the inevitable judgment day.
Europe, in a version of "good-cop bad-cop" supports the ICC and has begun to stand up to US intransigence and to US blackmail over the ICC.
Or maybe like the non-Death Squad military faction in Colombia, the European Community values an Ace-Up-Its-Sleaze too. [86] Europe must be politely considering the real possibility that the US is about to go Postal-Global-Postal and out-of-control. Bush-of-Arabia, chasing camels and peasants with twenty- million-dollar helicopters.
The US and Extreme Immorality: Violence is Never Justified When Alternatives are Readily at Hand
The US is wealthy and powerful, so it always has options even if it often stumbles into a morass when it tries something novel. The US could pay the Colombian elite to back off the drug trade for a few years and take out a few of those traffickers and paras who don't obey. Then after the public relations bonanza and enough additional US military aid is appropriated to decimate the guerrillas, the drug trade would be slowly reestablished by the usual suspects - business as usual is never far away. The problem with this is that the drug trade and drug war would spill across the borders.
The US could make the Colombians really go after the AUC and the big drug traffickers - like tomorrow morning they could take out half the drug dealers and their laboratories and assets. They know where they live and work because the Armed Forces and government investigators are often the friends of the paras. Likewise, they are often friendly or tolerant of the paras' paymasters: the major North Coast and confederated drug traffickers. This would also reduce revenues to the guerrillas by disrupting trade and by making sales harder for peasant growers who the FARC tax.
A serious plan would have to include more money for treatments, education, crop substitution and drug legalization as called for by Mexico's Fox, Bolivia's Morales, many US conservatives and hundreds of civil society groups worldwide. [87]
No one is betting that the US will choose a rational or least violent path toward its objective of controlled, reliable access to cheap fossil fuels and other commodities. War crimes and crimes against the environment will accelerate until US citizens wake up to the custom-made oily sheep's wool that is pulled down so tight over their eyes and ears. Until they overcome the blinding brilliant light of the Lie that the US fights a moral drug war and not a war supporting drug dealers and terrorists.
The US will continue to encourage Uribe to lead Colombia down a path of wider war and perpetual suffering - unless of course a small percentage of the Colombian poor join the FARC and ELN. One percent of Colombia's population equals 440,000 people - and that is a lot of guerrillas. Currently the combined FARC-EP and ELN forces only total some 28,000 soldiers. [88]
Rain or Shine or CIA Interference: The Drug-Mail Must Go On
But none of this is news. Most people knew that the Drug War never made any sense as far back as 1990. In 1991 the New Internationalist magazine ran a story
"The needle and the damage done"
"Persecuting peasant drug growers in Latin America and addicts in Western inner cities is wrong in principle and a failure in practice. David Ransom tells the story behind the international war on cocaine and heroin, at a time when the US finds its own cities besieged by drug-related violence.
"Well, has the Drug War worked - the ruined lives and 100s of billion that we have all wasted or shipped off to evil deeds - has this sacrifice been worth it? Has it worked? Is the US today any closer to being a 'drug-free society'? Has an anti-drugs enforcement budget that now exceeds $20 billion a year paid off? No. There are at least four million drug addicts in the US - more than the total number in the rest of the industrialized world put together. Consumption has not fallen significantly since the war was declared, nor has demand declined. Illicit drugs are no harder to find than they were - and worldwide production is actually increasing
"It would be easier to view all this with equanimity from a distance but for the enormous influence the US exercises worldwide. Signing up for the war has become an essential qualification for international friendship with America.
"Yet over and over again the huge US intelligence network overseas has been involved with arms dealing and drug running to produce a foul-smelling mixture of political, social and economic intrigue thought to favor US foreign interests. Without it the drug-trafficking business could not possibly have developed so fast.
"What is missing is a constructive, humane public response to the causes of the drugs havoc as well as the havoc drugs cause. That means funding more help and less harassment, and peaceful measures that work, rather than warlike ones that do not work. The Dutch have given us a clue to what is possible, and we should be grateful to them for that
"In the meantime the war on drugs goes on. It has to be condemned for what it is - cruel and perverse. Cruel because it persecutes powerless people in the Third World who grow drug crops to survive and the vulnerable people in the rich world who use drugs; perverse because it creates and feeds its own enemies. That war has now become a political convenience. The rich world has, you might say, become hooked on it." [89]
- This was written in 1991 and is unfortunately truer today and more so tomorrow.
"My brother Pablo said he felt like Robin Hood" - Roberto "El Osito" Escobar speaking from prison in Colombia. [90]
"Colombia needs a better 'Robin Hood'... Someone has to slay the image and the hidden motives of the Dragon - Mr. George W. Bush." - Jason Marti [91]
Keys for Paths Without Lies
A key to the future erupted from the ballot boxes of Brazil in October, 2002. When Cardoso hands over the presidency to Lula da Silva, it will be the first time in forty years that an elected president of Brazil transfers the government to the president-elect of another party. Brazilians have struggled to regain democracy ever since the US-supported military coup of 1964. These strong and diverse people have proven George F. Will and G.W. Bush wrong and make them eat Crow - stuffed with spoiled Yucca. George Will recently used a slur at Brazil to attack Arab countries: "Brazil", according to the latest jest, "is the country of the future and always will be." [92]
Brazil is a key to Latin America because it represents almost half the economy of the region - an economy bigger than that of Russia. Brazil is a key because it has the worst distribution of income and the most inequality of any country on Earth. Brazil is a key because of the Amazon and other biologically diverse and crucial habitats that along with Colombia make up the lungs and Noah's Arc of this planet.
Brazil is a key because a new grass-roots-Left has taken power there forever. A radical excitement streams across the borders to lead and inspire a radical model for the rest of Latin America and the world. Brazil is key because of all the military bases and listening posts that the US maintains there, and the close relationship between some Brazilian military and the US. [93]
Venezuela is a key because it borders Colombia and is one of the largest exporters of oil in the world. It is key because of Hugo Chavez and the masses of poor people who will fight to defend his ideas and his ideals of equity and regional integration. [94]
Colombia is a key because the world cannot allow the lies and crimes of the US to prevail. Colombia is where the line must be drawn between the paths of fascism or participatory democratic governance. If the US wins in Colombia or Venezuela then both countries are doomed. [95]
Bolivarno a la "Dilemma" Grande!
Fear, hope and a weary determination refuse to die in Colombia. The world is changing all around Colombia and change is often discomforting and full of confusion. But look up people. The confusion that we all feel is not randomly falling from the sky - and its not (just) the sky falling - or the ozone layer anyway. No, the hubris and debris that fills the air and our consciousness - maybe even our conscience - is also composed of the suspended shards and tatters of Emperor-wanna-be Uncle Sam's wardrobe.
These elegant fragments of nothingness are sifting slowly down to where the people whom the empire has so long abused, will finally grasp their nature and liberate their nations from subservience to imperialism and the Colombian and other Latin American elite.
|
|||
|
BLUE is looking for short fiction, extracts of novels, poetry, lyrics,
polemics, opinions, eyewitness accounts, news, features, information and arts
in any form relating to eco cultural- social- spiritual issues, events and
activites (creative and political). Send to Newsdesk. |