Today's Stories

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Futher Into the Afghan Abyss

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

March 27-29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Fall Guy

Arno J. Mayer
Too Big to Fail?

Michael Hudson
How the Scam Works

José Pertierra
Gesture for Gesture: How to Free the Cuban Five

Andy Worthington
A Letter to Obama From a Guantánamo Uighur

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Hog Wallow

Winslow T. Wheeler
What Does an F-22 Cost?

Souad N. Al-Azzawi
Iraq: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves

Dave Lindorff
A Financial History Lesson

Ian Masters
The Zombie Presidency

Barbara Rose Johnston
Water Culture Wars

Jami Tarn
Smearing Tristan Anderson

Diane Farsetta
The Nuclear Industry Targets Wisconsin

David Ker Thomson Against Democracy

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu and the Future of the Peace Process

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Shiites' One-Word Demand

Wajahat Ali
Writer as Fighter: the Genius of Ishmael Reed

Nick Egnatz
Whatever Happened to the Fierce Urgency of Now?

Gregory A. Burris
The Insolents Abroad: a Defense of Iceland

Missy Beattie
This Land

Stephen Martin
The Broken Stone of Corporatism

Charles R. Larson
Obama, Smoking and Me

David Yearsley
How They Built Bach's Face (Is the Bard Next?)

Ben Sonnenberg
Won't You Please Get Thee Behind Me? Buñuel's Simon of the Desert

Kim Nicolini
The Mafia Without Moralizing: Garrone's Gomorrah

Lorenzo Wolff
Pat Boone Syndrome

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Paulann Petersen

Website of the Weekend
Ann Coulter: a Portrait by Ben Tripp

March 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis?

Sharon Smith
Another Blow to Labor ... from the Democrats

Neve Gordon
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Shame

Patrick Madden
Why the Geithner Plan Will Fail

Gareth Porter
The Big Con on Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Why Do We Need a Health Insurance Industry?

Hannah Safran
The Israeli Resistance: "Ready to be Traitors"

Keith Newell
Will the Cellphone Please Take the Stand?

Todd Chretien
Behind the Green Collar

Nelson P. Valdés
When It Comes to Cuba and the Media Anything Goes

Website of the Day
G20 Meltdown

March 25, 2009

Robin Blackburn
Media Revolution or Mirage?

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

David Rosen
Sexting: a First Amendment Challenge for Obama

Jonathan Cook
Turkey's Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers

Dean Baker
Billions More for Failed Banks

Ron Jacobs
Karzai on a String

Russell Mokhiber
Corporate Liberals vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Slice and Dice on Card Check

Dave Lindorff
Geithner's Power Grab

Sarah Knopp
LA Teacher's Sit-In Over Layoffs

Website of the Day
How to Create an Animal Rights "Terrorist"

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

April 1, 2009

Colombian Peace Community Celebrates Anniversary

12 Años de Soledad?

By BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ

On March 23, 1997, the peace community of San José de Apartadó was founded in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia. A response to several decades of regional armed conflict, repeated displacement of the population, and—finally—two massacres carried out in 1996 and 1997 by Colombian paramilitaries, the peace community formally renounced violence as  a means of resolving disputes and declared its neutrality in the midst of war. Unaware of the community’s impending 12-year anniversary, I arrived to its core village of San Josesito on March 20, 2009, following a multiday hitchhiking journey with my friends Amelia and Amanda.

Having failed to procure a roadmap of Colombia, we had set out from Bogotá armed with a few pertinent facts gleaned from Forrest Hylton’s book Evil Hour in Colombia, such as that San José was located in the region of Urabá near the Panamanian border; additional details were accumulated along the way:TRUCK DRIVER WHO PICKED US UP NEAR MEDELL?N AFTER WE CONVINCED HIM THAT IT WAS POSSIBLE TO FIT 3 EXTRA PASSENGERS AND 10 EXTRA PIECES OF LUGGAGE INTO THE CAB OF HIS VEHICLE (statement accompanied by ominous sidelong glances): San José boom boom. FARC boom boom.

These sentiments were reiterated for the duration of our mountainous 13-hour ride to the city of Apartadó, located approximately half an hour from the peace community. Upon reaching the city, the truck driver attempted to hand us off to the local police force, who he claimed would escort us the rest of the way to our destination as a precautionary measure against “FARC boom boom.” Given estimates that the FARC had carried out merely 24 of the 184 extrajudicial killings that had taken place in the peace community since its founding, we opted for the jeep service to San Josesito as a more suitable remedy to the situation. Suitable remedies devised by Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez meanwhile consisted of:

1. the installation of a police station in the village of San José following the massacre and dismemberment of 8 citizens of the peace community by the Colombian army in conjunction with the paramilitaries. Victims of the February 21, 2005 massacre had included 3 children and Luis Eduardo Guerra Guerra, who despite his two last names was a prominent leader of the community.

2. fumigation of Colombian campesinos in order to combat cocaine addiction in the United States and Europe.

As a result of the inauguration of the San José police station, which violated the peace community’s refusal to live among armed actors, the majority of the village’s inhabitants voluntarily displaced themselves a kilometer down the road to a farm called La Holandita, where they erected the new village of San Josesito. After half an hour of skidding through mud in a jeep, Amelia, Amanda, and I were deposited at the entrance to San Josesito, where the jeep’s driver assured us that road conditions would soon improve in accordance with international exploitation of local coal mines.

A sign by the gate outlined the founding principles of the peace community, such as that its members would not tolerate injusticia or impunidad, that they would not provide information to any armed faction, and that they would participate in trabajos comunitarios. We slid through the gate in the mud and were promptly beckoned into the first residence on the right by a disabled teenage girl named Kely seated on the patio. Kely spent several minutes creating songs out of our respective names before we were delivered into the hands of Jesús Emilio, a member of the community’s Consejo Interno.

A man of slight stature, Jesús Emilio confirmed upcoming improvements in road conditions, and added wood, water, oil, uranium, and gold to the list of regionally exploitable materials. As an afterthought he added portions of the campesino population as well, who had fallen prey to the notion that road improvement was for their own benefit. After briefly debating what to do with Amelia, Amanda, and me—as we did not belong to an NGO and had not sent a letter announcing our arrival—Jesús Emilio led us down a path through a scattering of pigs and chickens to a wooden house with a multicolored flag bearing the Italian word for peace. Inside the house were two Italians belonging to a project called Operazione Colomba, which in Spanish had been altered to Palomas de Paz given inauspicious local associations with the word operation.

Along with a handful of other international groups that served as acompañantes to the peace community’s various hamlets, the Italians’ purpose in San José was to deter harassment by the army, the paramilitaries, and the guerrillas. To the untrained eye, deterrence strategies appeared to consist of cooking pasta and swinging in hammocks in the common area of the international house, as the acompañantes were prohibited from engaging in any sort of politically motivated activity such as helping the villagers build health care facilities. Deterrence took on new forms when the Italians announced they would be leaving town that afternoon for several days and that the hammocks would be ceded to Amelia, Amanda, and me.

One of the Italians warned us that the international pantry was not stocked with popcorn and peanut butter, which she presumed to be our primary sources of sustenance based on previous shared quarters with American peace activists in Hebron. Her stint in Colombia had thus far acquainted her with additional errors of the American diet, such as funding of paramilitary activity by banana companies, and with the view that it was much easier to determine who the enemy was in Palestine.

Lack of enemy clarity in Colombia had recently been illustrated in a conversation with a Palestinian clothing store proprietor named Fawaz in Bogotá, who had:

1. invited Amelia and me into his office for coffee and an unending series of photos on the computer of his house in Ramallah from different angles and in varying meteorological conditions.

2. announced that the internal Colombian diaspora was entirely the fault of the FARC, despite Israeli training of Colombian paramilitaries.

3. reasoned that at least Colombian desplazados were accepted as being Colombian and not harnessed with citizenship of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Jesús Emilio proposed a correlation between enemy clarity and levels of US military aid, and suggested that Israeli training had included not only techniques for inserting sharp objects under fingernails but also concepts such as the utility of ubiquitous application of the term “terrorist.” Recalling the high incidence of road networks in Israel that were not intended for use by the native population, Jesús Emilio departed for a meeting in Apartadó.

Prior to departing themselves, the Italians showed us around the village, which included a few schoolrooms decorated with slogans like “Los niños no queremos ser víctimas,” a library, a billiard hall, a dining facility, a kiosco for assemblies and dances, a monument consisting of rocks painted with the names of the community’s martyrs, and a variety of trenches crisscrossing the property into which Amanda periodically fell. Area crops included cacao, corn, and miniature bananas that were shipped to the US in plastic bags marked “Baby.”

The first person to interrupt our test of the hammocks that evening was Jesús Emilio’s 80-year-old mother, who provided us with a detailed account of her personal desplazamiento, most of which was inaudible due to the presence of a loudspeaker blaring music from a nearby tree and the arrival of a herd of children who displaced us from our hammocks by popping balloons. We were able to gather from hand gestures, however, that Jesús Emilio’s mother had previously lived at a higher altitude.

Our next visitor was María Brígida, a woman with two grey braids who was one of the founders of the peace community and whose 15-year-old daughter Eliseña had perished in a massacre by the Colombian army in December of 2005. Seated in a plastic chair intently sewing green beads onto a cellular phone carrying case, María Brígida rejected the notion of financial compensation for the loss of her daughter on the grounds that Eliseña had not been an arepa (typical Colombian bread product) and stipulated that the only suitable remedy for such a situation was la memoria, without which history was destined to repeat itself. This philosophy was promptly validated when a 3-year-old boy flew out of the hammock several consecutive times before María Brígida put a stop to the cycle by untying one end; as for other García Márquez-inspired themes aside from repetition of history and massacres on banana farms, it rained until the morning of the anniversary.

Amelia, Amanda, and I made an effort to emerge in the downpour in order to visit such sites as the fábrica de cacao, a community initiative across the street from the entrance to San Josesito, where we consumed unprocessed remnants of cacao nuts. The member of San José’s Consejo Interno who had been tasked with escorting us to the fábrica assured us that he had plenty of experience with pillagers of crops and livestock, and admitted that the FARC showed a greater tendency toward reimbursement for devoured or destroyed items than did other armed formations.

On the morning of Monday, March 23, the loudspeaker in the tree alternately blared music and a request for community members to gather in the kiosco. About 100 people eventually complied with the request, including Jesús Emilio, who was dressed in a green Ronaldinho soccer jersey and was of the opinion that more than 100 people would have complied had citizens in the remote corners of the peace community not had to stay home to protect their houses from the army. A white sheet hanging in the front of the room had been decorated with pictures of flowers and a list of things the peace community had peacefully resisted in the past 12 years, such as masacres, desplazamientos forzados, bloqueos económicos, and violación de mujeres.

The meeting in the kiosco consisted of a few speeches by community leaders, two minutes of silence in commemoration the community’s martyrs, and a discussion of whether or not a bathroom feature should be incorporated into one of San Josesito’s new facilities. In his speech, Jesús Emilio lamented the fact that certain victims of the estado paramilitar were now aiding in its legitimization, by accepting:

1. handouts from the government.

2. the extradition of Colombian war criminals to the United States , where they were downgraded to narcotraffickers.

(Other contemporary forms of legitimization included Uribe’s Ley de Justicia y Paz of 2005, which disguised exoneration of the paramilitary model as demobilization and national reconciliation.)
Following the debate over the bathroom, it was announced that we would all be engaging in a peaceful march up the road to San José de Apartadó, former core of the peace community, where we would visit the cemetery in which the 8 victims of the February 21 massacre were interred. Looking up from her work on the green beaded cellular phone case, María Brígida affirmed that “la memoria es la esencia de un pueblo,” and that it could not be displaced by the erection of a subestación de la policía overlooking the San José cemetery. She expressed remorse, however, that the peace community’s anniversary was now celebrated only once a year, whereas during the year of its founding it had been celebrated repeatedly.

We set off from San Josesito on foot, accompanied by a man with a guitar on the back of a motorcycle. Nearing the entrance to San José we came across a billboard encouraging further legitimization of Jesús Emilio´s estado paramilitar, by advertising the preparation of 900 hectares of land for cacao cultivation by 300 displaced families who were choosing to reverse their desplazamiento. Other notable landmarks aside from the billboard and the police station on the hill included an extensive patch of mud, in which my borrowed pair of mud boots and I became stuck while village women charged around me in heeled sandals.

We reached the cemetery and formed a circle around the grave of the February 21 victims, monitored from above by a variety of men in uniform, one of whom snapped a photograph of the group exerting its right to la memoria. While María Brígida brought Luis Eduardo Guerra—the assassinated community leader—up to date on the goings-on in the community, a young man named Arley trained his video camera on the picture taker above.

Arley was in his early twenties with braces and held a range of functions in the peace community, such as manager of the loudspeaker in the tree and the community’s video archives. Once it was established that the latest installment of video footage would consist of men in uniform turning their backs to Arley’s camera and one of them lowering his pants, we proceeded from the cemetery to the center of town, where Arley confronted a young helmeted soldier regarding the events of the past 10 minutes. The issue appeared to be not so much the lowering of pants as the military´s version of la memoria, which Arley defined as loading digital storage cards with photographic target suggestions and passing them along to paramilitaries. The confrontation went as follows:

1. Helmeted soldier denies existence of alleged photo of group.

2. Arley demands that camera in question be produced.

3. International acompañantes stand diligently by.

4. Helmeted soldier produces camera but claims that camera batteries have been demobilized.

5. Arley produces his own batteries and the photo is erased.

When Amelia, Amanda, and I spoke with Arley the following day in his makeshift media center in San Josesito, he explained that the army suffered no dearth of creativity when it came to inventing excuses, and that they continued to claim that the February 21 massacre had been perpetrated by the FARC despite individual military and paramilitary confessions to the contrary. According to Arley, the only reason this particular massacre was being investigated in the first place—when some 750 other accusations of human rights violations levied against the army by the peace community over the past 12 years were not—was that the US Congress had in a rare judicious moment suspended a portion of its military aid to Colombia in the wake of the massacre. Other judicious moments on the part of the American government had included threats to withhold loan guarantees but not direct aid from Israel following rampant construction of settlements on occupied Palestinian land; Colombian judiciousness meanwhile continued with the extradition to the US of a top paramilitary commander involved in the February 21 massacre before he had time to adequately describe the crime.

Arley regretted that major Colombian news outlets had been eager to entertain the idea that Luis Eduardo Guerra had been a member of the FARC and had been murdered by the guerrilla organization while trying to desert. He maintained, however, that the peace community’s isolation by the media did not indicate that it had been condemned to 12 years of solitude, and drew our attention to an anniversary posting to that effect on the community’s website. The posting asserted that the past dozen years had instead been “doce años de memoria, de vida, de resistencia civil y dignidad.”

Solitude appeared as a more realistic prospect that night when the power went out in San Josesito and the loudspeaker in the tree was replaced by the sounds of explosions in the hills. We sought out María Brígida to verify that la memoria would override the possibility of being wiped out by the wind and deemed undeserving of a second opportunity on earth; María Brígida smiled and continued sewing green beads onto the cellular phone case, a response which satisfied us until Arley pointed out that it was more likely to be wiped out by helicopter gunship.

Belén Fernández is currently completing a book entitled Coffee with Hezbollah, which chronicles the 2-month hitchhiking journey through Lebanon that she and Amelia Opaliska conducted in the aftermath of the July 2006 war. She can be reached at belengarciabernal@gmail.com

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