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August 22, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Taking
Down McKinney
August 21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The Return
of Mani
Romi Mahajan
Bhopal
on $40 a Day
Jerre Skog
Bush and
Europe:
Fun, Profit & Betrayal
Tom Crumpacker
The
Politics of the Cuba Embargo
August 20, 2002
Michael Neumann
The American
Left
and Palestine
William Blum
Chemical
Weapons, Iraq and the US: What the Times Left Out of the Story
Ralph Nader
The Politics
of Bankruptcy
Robert Fisk
The Two
Deaths of Abu Nidal
Philip Farruggio
Junk
School Nation
Edward Said
Disunity
and Factionalism
Kathleen Christison
Israeli
Tilt: the NYT
and Palestine
August 19, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Advance
Draft of Bush's 9/11 Anniversary Speech
Gavin Keeney
Auteur-Driven
Vehicles
Kurt Nimmo
Son of
COINTELPRO
David Krieger
Peace
Declarations from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 14 / 18, 2002
Susan Davis
Played
Out: a Journey to Central City, Colorado
CounterPunch Staff
Our Favorite
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Jeffrey St. Clair
Usonian
Utopia's:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Working Class Housing and the FBI
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon and the Iron Wall
Uri Avnery
A Phone
Call from Hell
Wendy Brinker
Racism
is Alive and Well in the South Carolina Death House
Hamit Dardagan
The
Unbearable Lightness of Bombing
Ahmad Faruqui
The Legacy
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Philip Farruggio
Leading
by Example
Anthony Gancarski
Union
Jackass: Richard Perle's UK Charm Offensive
Jeff Halper
Fortress
Israel: the Message of the Bulldozer
Robert Jensen
Our Failures
are Borne by the Palestinians
Gary Leupp
An Open
Letter to Bruce Springsteen about Bush's War on Terrorism
Dave Marsh
Sing a
Simple Song
Rashmi Mayur
To Johannesburg
in Search of Hope
Steve Perry
Another Fine Mess:
Martha Stewart and Paul Wellstone
Anis Shivani
What's
Next...Concentration Camps?
Edward Said
Punishment
by Detail
Jeff Taylor
Paul Wellstone's
Legacy
August 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
At the al--Qaeda
Cemetery
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporate
Crime Time
Andrew Cockburn
Bono
Betrays Ireland
August 12, 2002
Messier / Dreier
The IDF
in Nablus:
Shooting at Kites;
Bulldozing Schools
Brian J. Foley
No Iraqi
Surprise: Look Now
at the Dangers of War
Fran Shor
Psychic
and Political Numbing
in Preparations for War
August 10/11, 2002
Bruce Jackson
Buffalo
in Black and White
Robert Fisk
US Bombs
Still Killing Civilians
Lawrence McGuire
How Does
Christianity Work?
Ralph Nader
The Quest
for the
Fuel Efficient Car
Frank Fugate
The Arabs
I Know
Jan Oberg
Visit Iraq
Jill Drier
Dodging
Bullets in Nablus
Walt Brasch
The Bush
2 Legacy...So Far
Poetry
M. Shahid Alam
Death by
Sanctions
Anthony Gancarski
Coin of the Realm
David Krieger
Einstein's
Regret
August 9, 2002
Robert Fisk
Gul Agha:
the UN's Warlord of the Year
Nelson P. Valdés
An Open
Letter to Bush
on Cuba Policy
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporate
Crime:
More Shareholder Power
Not the Solution
Ansar Ahmed
The Waning
of the
Pax Americana
Alexander Cockburn
War,
the Military and the Hunt for the "Violence Gene"
August 8, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Iraq:
The Final Storm?
Dave Marsh
Now Ain't
the Time
for Your Tears
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Tries to Hide Role in Venezuela Coup
Anthony Gancarski
AIPAC,
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Families
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Karzai's
Bodyguard
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August
22, 2002
Mano
Firme, Corazon Pequeno:
Uribe Takes Hardline in Colombia
with Bush's Blessing
by Sean Donahue
BOGOTA,
COLOMBIA. The streets were strangely
empty in Bogota after the mortars went off on inauguration day.
Soldiers, police, beggars, and vendors remained on the streets,
but anyone who had the choice stayed locked up inside. The eerie
silence was punctuated by the sound of army helicopters and U.S.
fighter jets flying low over the city.
Bogota that afternoon felt like a city
under siege--and it was hard to tell which side was responsible--the
leftist guerillas with their mortar attacks, or the new government
with its heavy handed show of military force throughout a capital
city that has been spared the worst of this country's forty year
civil war, but threatens to become a new battleground as the
war escalates. President Alvaro Uribe Velez had campaigned on
the slogan "Mano Firme, Coraznon Grande," The firm
hand clearly had its grip in Bogota, the big heart was nowhere
to be found.
Legalizing
Repression
That same morning, in Barrancabermeja,
an oil refining city on the Magdelana River north of Bogota,
an activist with the Organizacion Femina Popular, a brave and
dedicated group of women working for peace, sustainable development,
and women's rights in a city completely under the control of
right wing paramilitaries, told our delegation of human rights
activists from the U.S., that with the inauguration of President
Uribe, "We expect to see the realization of a totalitarian
model blessed by the U.S."
In the days that have followed, Uribe
has moved quickly to expand state power and escalate the war
against the Marxist guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) and the Army of National Liberation (ELN.)
The guerillas have fought for four decades against the Colombian
military and illegal right wing paramilitaries aligned with the
government.
On his first day in office, Uribe announced
a pilot project to recruit 600 "civilian informants"
for the military in the northern department of Cesar. If the
program is successful, Uribe hopes to recruit one million such
informants nationwide.
The program has chilling echoes of the
East German secret police's network of citizen spies and President
Bush's proposed TIPS program, which would have recruited one
out of every twenty-four people in the U.S. to spy on their neighbors.
(The U.S. TIPS program was scuttled when federal employees refused
to participate.)
The reality of Uribe's program may be
even more frightening. He told reporters that he wouldn't rule
out arming the informants: "Initially, (they) will not have
guns because people will kill them to take the weapons, but the
defense minister and the high commanders will study under what
circumstances the use of arms could be authorized," he said.
Uribe oversaw a similar program when he was governor of the Antioquia
department. The CONVIVIR armed civilian patrols Uribe's gubernatorial
administration created ended up working closely with the outlawed
right wing paramilitaries that are responsible for many of the
worst atrocities in Colombia. Human rights groups fear that arming
volunteer civilian informants could be a way of legitimizing
and legalizing paramilitary groups. They also point out that
the program will dangerously blur the line between civilians
and combatants in a war where all sides already commit gross
violations of international humanitarian law, targeting civilians
that are suspected of collaborating with their opponents. Indeed
Irish journalist, Ana Carrigan reports that, partially in response
to the civilian informants program:
"The FARC is planning the next stage
of their strategy to impose an alternative local government,
based on the formation of "revolutionary civilian councils"_which
would function under the direction of community leaders, forced
to carry out FARC "laws' at gunpoint."
Fernando Londono, Uribe's Justice and
Interior Minister, has suggested that the new government will
push for a constitutional amendment that would reestablish some
of the provisions of the dreaded Security Statute that stripped
citizens of their civil liberties and enabled the military to
murder, torture, and disappear dissidents with impunity in the
late 1970's. Recently, when a reporter asked Londono which rights
Colombians should be prepared to sacrifice for greater security,
he replied "All of them. There are no absolute rights."
The following Monday, Uribe declared
a "State of Internal Commotion," giving his administration
emergency power to establish a $800 million emergency war tax
and to suspend some of the freedoms guaranteed in Colombia's
1991 constitution. The Washington Post reports that:
"The decree, which will last from
three to nine months, allows the government to impose extended
curfews and prevent access to areas without prior court approval;
restrict information reported by the news media; commandeer land,
equipment and professional expertise from private citizens; and
suspend elected officials contributing to public unrest."
It also allows the President to authorize
the military to conduct searches and make arrests without judicial
warrants.
Visiting U.S. Undersecretary of State
Marc Grossman endorsed the moves, saying "Colombians have
sacrificed a lot over the years, but Uribe is calling on them
to sacrifice more to protect their democracy. We support this
call,"
The decree in essence gives the government
new legal tools to silence dissent in the name of fighting terrorism..
Barrancabermeja:
The Face Of Things To Come?
There are those who believe that Barrancabermeja
under paramilitary control offers a rough image of the Colombia
President Uribe would like to create through his strengthened
national security state. The paramilitaries are right wing militias,
funded by wealthy landowners, cocaine traffickers, and multinational
corporations, that have carried out a "dirty war" of
massacres and political assassinations against Colombian dissidents
for decades. While they are officially outlawed, they operate
in close cooperation with the military.
Barrancabermeja is a unique place. This
working class city has a strong history of union activism--it
was here that the oil workers' union, USO forced the Colombian
government to form the state oil company, ECOPETROL, in the early
part of the century, in order to insure that some of Colombia's
oil wealth would stay in the country rather than being stripped
completely by foreign companies.. Barranca (as its residents
call it) was long a stronghold for the ELN guerillas, until the
military drove them out of the city in "Operacion Feliz
Navidad" in December, 2000. With the guerillas gone, the
paramilitaries seized control and began assassinating their perceived
opponents in the labor unions, the OFP, and peace and human rights
groups in order to show that they now had absolute power. They
also imposed a strict social code, and began a campaign of "social
cleansing" killing gays, lesbians, bisexuals, drug addicts,
prostitutes, women with tattoos, men with dreadlocks, and anyone
else who didn't fit their vision of what Barrancabermeja should
be. In their first year of control, the paramilitaries killed
an average of three to five people in Barranca every day. These
killings were carried out with complete impunity in a city that
boasts a large military and police presence. Paramilitary roadblocks
are routinely set-up within plain sight of military roadblocks
on the roads and rivers outside the city. This year, killings
are down--having established a reignof terror, the paramilitaries
only have to kill an average of one person per week in Barranca
to maintain the credibility of their threats.
Officials from the city's Chamber of
Commerce officially condemn the paramilitaries, but note that
the city is more peaceful now. The guerillas and the military
used to fight pitched battles in the streets. But the military
and the paramilitaries don't fight with each other at all, and
the guerillas are gone now. They also noted that unions have
become "more reasonable" in recent years.
The weakening of the unions has meant
increased poverty for the people of the region. In the past,
USO was strong enough to ensure that ECOPETROL would keep 50%
of the profits made from any oil contract with a foreign company.
But in recent years, USO has had to fight hard to keep even 30%
of the profits from most oil deals in Colombia, with most foreign
corporations taking 90% of the profits from their joint projects
with ECOPETROL.
Activists from the regional human rights
group, CREDHOS, had told us that the government is experimenting
now with subjecting dissidents to prosecuting and imprisoning
dissidents on false charges, because it creates less international
outrage than having paramilitaries carry out political assassinations
(which certainly continue at a horrific rate.) Last October,
police arrested six leaders of the oil worker's union, USO, and
charged them with rebellion. The workers remain under house arrest.
Legal repression seems to go hand in
hand with political assassinations--representing that state's
way of maintaining the order the paramilitaries have established.
Amnesty International wrote in a report on the arrest of the
oil workers that:
"These latest detentions occurred
in the context of a work stoppage at ECOPETROL (the state run
oil company) to demand that the national government provide guarantees
for union activity, which is being impeded by the continuous
threats of killings and persecution by paramilitary groups. The
Colombian government has not only failed to take action against
the paramilitaries who continue bleeding the Colombian social
movement, but also now the judicial authorities have charged
these [union] leaders with activities outside the law, seeking
to de facto criminalize the rights of association and of protest
of Colombian citizens."
Strong words from a cautious and moderate
organization like Amnesty.
The attempt to criminalize dissent became
even clearer during our meeting with Col. Andres Rodriguez Fernandez,
a former human rights instructor at the infamous U.S. Army School
of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia, who now commands
Special Energy and Infrastructure Protection Battalion Number
7 of the Colombian army based in Barrancabermeja He insinuated
that the USO had been heavily infiltrated by guerillas, and showed
us slides of alleged acts of terrorism union workers had carried
out against the ECOPETROL factory (minor sabotage of gates and
fences that took place during a strike.) He told us that the
human rights groups in the area are "people coming in from
some place or another to issue press releases and denunciations."
He suggested that the FARC was behind these groups--that it sought
to have officers removed from duty by having the Attorney General
bring them up on false charges of human rights abuses. In Colombia,
labeling activists as guerilla sympathizers is commonly understood
as a way of telling the paramilitaries that the activists in
question are legitimate targets for assassination. The Colonel
repeatedly lumped his opponents together under the common category
of "terrorists"--clearly understanding that if he wanted
U.S. military aid for his battalion, he needed to convince people
in the U.S. that his work was part of the war on terrorism. Col.
Rodriguez's attitude toward human rights groups raises disturbing
questions about what exactly the U.S. military is teaching Latin
American soldiers in its human rights courses at the School of
the Americas (which was recently renamed the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation.)
The next morning, an activist from the
OFP explained to us what the "war on terrorism" Col.
Rodriguez speaks of means to social justice activists in Barranca:
"This idea of terrorism is very
dangerous. In the past Communism was seen as the great demon.
Later, drug trafficking became that demon to justify violence
and intervention and to destroy entire worlds and peoples. Today
terrorism is being used to justify killing people who think differently.
Some of our best men and women are being assassinated because
they think differently.
"So right now the government strategy
around terrorism is being built around eliminating anyone who
thinks differently, to make us uniform in our ideas and lives.
As leaders we are blacklisted and criminalized. Those of us who
do think differently will be labeled as terrorists and rounded
up and arrested."
The Looming
Economic Crisis
The violence in Colombia obscures another
looming and related problem: Colombia is on the verge of an economic
crisis.
The leader of one of the country's major
unions told our delegation that Colombia is $48 billion in debt
to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and is
in danger of defaulting on its loans. Colombia may soon face
a financial collapse on the level of the recent collapses in
Argentina and Uruguay.
Uribe's answer to the economic crisis
is a kind of economic shock therapy that will force accelerated
development on a country that has been devastated by decades
of war and displacement.
He wants to privatize and sell off public
services and utilities--a move that will lead to massive layoffs
in a country already dealing with double digit unemployment.
He wants to promote massive energy projects
such as new oil fields, new coal mines, and new hydro-electric
dams. These projects will bring an infusion of foreign capital
into the country, but most of the profits will go to the multinational
corporations that take the initial financial risk. Worse yet,
they will force people off their land, adding to the existing
humanitarian crisis in a country that already has over 2 million
internal refugees, and increasing the concentration of land ownership
in a country where the 5000 largest landowners own 48%of the
land.
He wants large-scale commercial agriculture
to replace small-scale subsistence farming. But growing cash
crops for export has failed Colombia in the past--crashes in
wheat prices and coffee prices devastated the Colombian economy
in the 1980's and 1990's. Now business leaders, like the members
of Barrancabermeja's Chamber of Commerce are touting the African
Palm as the source of Colombia's economic salvation. Large food
conglomerates like Nabisco, General Foods, and Unilever are buying
up palm oil as a cheap base ingredient for junk food products.
But as one economist pointed out to us, these corporations and
the international lenders they are closely related to are encouraging
poor countries around the world to increase their palm oil production.
Soon the market will be flooded and prices will crash again.
The only Colombian crops that reliably
fetch a good price are coca and opium poppies.
To make matters worse, in order to fund
his military build up, Uribe will be forced to either cut back
on social services or borrow more money from international lenders.
All of this points to increased poverty
and increased social unrest in a country where over half the
population already lives on less then $2 a day.
Its hard to imagine things getting worse
in Colombia than they already are, but Uribe's political, economic,
and military policies could combine to push Colombia over the
edge into an absolute bloodbath. One Jesuit priest, himself a
pacifist, told us:
"The majority of the people in Colombia
now understand that war is not the solution to any problem. We
don't like the FARC war. We don't like the ELN war. We don't
like the paramilitary war. But if you start again introducing
arms, introducing again the state of siege, if you eliminate
the rights people got in the 1991 Constitution . . . If you do
this people will feel they are attacked. Our people are a very
noble people. If you attack them they will say someone has to
take up arms again."
Uribe is depending on more weapons, funding,
and military training from the United States to give his government
the military strength to impose its political and economic will
on the United States. These policies will only plunge the country
deeper into war. As one OFP activist told us:
"The conflict in Colombia arose
out of social inequalities, and as this war intensifies, we are
losing our rights, and seeing our lives become more uniform.
This war can't end through fighting it can only end through structural
changes in our society."
Echoing her sentiments, a labor leader
told us that Colombians want to be free to build a country "the
size of their hearts and the shape of their dreams." War,
violence, and repression stand in their way. We in the U.S. need
to work to end U.S. military aid to Colombia, to get our government
and the repressive forces it supports to step out of the way
and allow the Colombian people to take control of their own country,
their own economy, their own lives.
Sean Donahue
is Co-Director of New Hampshire Peace Action. He recently returned
from a trip to Bogota and Barrancabermeja with a delegation organized
by School of the Americas and Witness for Peace.
He can be reached at wrldhealer@yahoo.com.
Today's Features
Alexander Cockburn
Taking
Down Cynthia McKinney
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