Today's Stories

May 3 / 4, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

April 30, 2008

William P. O'Connor
The Day I Lost My Innocence

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Did the Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

Tariq Ali
Storming Heaven: 1968 Revisited

John Ross
Bad Jazz in NOLA: Three NAFTA Leaders Sit It for the Last Time

Glen Ford
Pop Goes the Race-Neutral Campaign!

Joshua Frank
Election Season Piffle: Thinking Outside the Voting Booth

Ashley Smith
Iraq After Basra

Robert Weissman
Medical R&D That Works in the Developing World

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Shroud of Secrecy

Website of the Day
Richard Nixon, April 30, 1970

April 29, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Military Option

Roedad Khan
Why Gen. Musharraf Must Go

Chris Floyd
The Torture Election

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Dave Lindorff
Invasion of the Pumpheads

Mats Svensson
Mental Barriers in Palestine

Peter Morici
Will the Fed Broaden Its Focus?

Mike Ferner
Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

John Weisheit
Towing Icebergs to San Pedro

Amit Srivastava
China Olympics, Tibet Crackdown, Coke Profits

Website of the Day
Tom Friedman Gets Creamed

April 28, 2008

JoAnn Wypijewski
On Queen's Boulevard, the Night Sean Bell's Killers Got Off

Mike Whitney
Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch: But Will It Topple Obama?

Iris Keltz
The Fruiting Fig Tree: Memories of East Jerusalem

Steve Niva
The New Walls of Baghdad: the Israeli Model Surges Toward Iraq

David Macaray
CAFTA's Bloodtrails

John Ross
"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Stephen Lendman
The Politics of Green Scare

Malou Innocent
On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Want to Learn the Ins-and-Outs of the Slumping Economy? Just Ask Ashley ...

William Kaufman
Michael Moore's Embrace of Obama: a Polemic Devoid of Politics

Website of the Day
Get Your Fix

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Ralph Nader
A World of Hunger

Peter Camejo
A Crying Shame: the Wages of Left Capitulation

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

David Yearsley
Nero, Frederick the Great, Nixon ... They All Did It Better Than Clinton

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Ron Jacobs
Walking the Lonely Road

Robert Fantina
Bush v. Carter: Let History Judge

Missy Comley Beattie
Introducing President McCain

Linn Cohen-Cole
The Criminalization of Raw Milk: a Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Khaiyat, Lair, and Kowit

Website of the Weekend
Justice for Sean Bell

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

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Letting Down Afro-Colombians

The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

As the debate over the U.S.-Colombian free trade deal heats up in Washington, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has grown concerned.  On the Hill, the deal faces an uncertain future.  Many Democrats have opposed the initiative because Colombia’s labor and human rights record continues to remain atrocious.  Currently, the agreement is in a state of legislative limbo as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to postpone consideration of the deal.

In order to ram through his free trade agreement, Uribe must win over key African American legislators in Washington.  In the unfolding debate over free trade, the Congressional Black Caucus could play a key role.  Founded more than 30 years ago, the group of legislators seeks to achieve greater equity for people of African descent through domestic and international programs and services.  What’s at stake with the Colombia trade deal, and why have African American legislators showed an interest in the issue?

Afro-Colombian Communities Displaced by War

Colombia is a country with the hemisphere’s third largest population of Afro-descendants, one million more than Haiti’s approximately 8 million predominantly African descendants.  While Afro-Colombians make up more than 25  per cent of Colombia's population, they are disproportionately affected by the ongoing violence in the Andean nation.

Indeed, approximately 40  per cent of Colombia's 3.8 million internally displaced persons are of African descent.  Whether they are caught in the crossfire or specifically targeted, Afro-Colombians are frequently forced to abandon their communities and ancestral lands. 

Alba María Cuestas Arias, a displaced Afro-Colombian and board member of AFRODES (or the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians), has said that displacement is used as a weapon of war.  “Towns are destroyed, lives are destroyed,” she remarked.  “The social fabric is also destroyed. People are forced to leave that which they have been constructing for years and years.”

Aerial spraying of coca leaf, backed by the Bogotá government and Washington, has posed another thorny problem for Afro-Colombians.  “Plan Colombia,” started in 1999 under Bill Clinton, was launched to stop cocaine production by supplying the Colombian government with helicopters and other aircraft to spray fields.  Unfortunately, the U.S., which gave $2.5 billion of aid through the program, only hastened the displacement of Afro-Colombian peoples.

The reason is clear to see: coca fumigation has destroyed many of the food crops traditionally grown by Afro-Colombians.

Fighting for Their Ancestral Lands

Nevertheless, Afro-Colombians have achieved some notable victories in recent years, including passage of the so-called Law 70.  Enacted in 1993, the measure validates Afro-Colombians’ right to their historical territories.  Under the law, communities must be consulted and must first give their approval prior to any new projects planned on their land.

Having a law on the books however is one thing and enforcing it is another.

According to Nicole Lee, Executive Director of TransAfrica Forum, the Colombian government “has used every ploy to cheat Afro-Colombians out of their traditional titled territories” since the passage of Law 70.  Fundamentally, Afro-Colombians’ lands are valuable, and powerful people want to get their hands on the prime real estate.

Marino Córdoba is the founder of AFRODES.  He played a critical role in the struggle to secure Colombia’s progressive Law 70 granting land rights to Afro-Colombian communities. After surviving many attempts on his life, Córdoba was forced into exile in the United States.  He says that the Colombian government and its right wing paramilitary allies have targeted Afro-Colombian leaders in the Chocó region who have been pressing for land rights.  By allowing the attacks to continue, President Uribe and his wealthy backers pave the way for the entry of oil palm plantations, logging operations and mining projects on Afro-Colombian lands.          

Afro-Colombians and the Palm Oil Curse

Palm oil, which has been a social and environmental disaster world-wide, is now affecting Afro-Colombian communities for the worse.  Producing palm oil takes a high toll on the environment as it involves clearing and draining the rainforest which in turn sends huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Moreover, oil palm plantations also require large amount of toxic fertilizer which pollutes local streams and wildlife. 

Formerly used just for cooking, palm oil is now a major source of bio-fuel.  Today, Colombia is the largest palm oil producer in the Americas, and 35 per cent of its product is exported as fuel.  Fedepalma, the palm oil owners’ association, plans to expand production to a million hectares (about 3,861 square miles).  Palm oil production stands to benefit only a handful of planters in Cali and Medellín while Afro-Colombians are displaced from their land.

One of the major forces helping to spur the palm oil boom in Colombia is none other than the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has allocated money to resettle right wing paramilitaries.  According to journalist David Bacon, the paramilitaries are frequently resettled on Afro-Colombian lands.  Writing in the magazine Dollars and Sense, Bacon adds that paramilitaries often wind up being employed by the oil palm companies which seek to displace Afro-Colombians. 

Another important player in the unfolding oil palm imbroglio has been the Uribe government.  Indeed, the authorities have passed new Forestry and Rural Development Laws and amended the Mining Law so as to extinguish the rights of Afro-Colombians and further empower palm oil, logging and other companies which have relied upon the paramilitaries to enforce their will.
 
The new laws dealing with forests, water and other natural resources, passed at the behest of conservative parties in the Colombian Congress and USAID, declare that such resources must be commercially exploited.  Unfortunately, if a community doesn’t exploit the resources it can lose title to the land.

The Colombian President, who has nothing but contempt for Afro-Colombians and their culture, envisions a bleak future for blacks in which the latter become junior partners to the oil palm companies, maintaining and harvesting the trees and turning over the product to the companies for refining.
  
What’s more, Uribe wants to turn over more land for monoculture.  During Fedepalma’s 2006 congress, Uribe went so far as to remark to the growers’ organization that he would “lock up the businessmen…with our Afro-Colombian compatriots, and not let them out of the office until they've reached an agreement on the use of these lands."

Incensed by the Colombian leader’s attitude, Afro-Colombian representatives wrote Uribe that, “it [the President’s plan] would bring with it great environmental, social and cultural harm."  Afro-Colombians argue that encouraging monoculture on the Pacific coast, which is full of rich mangrove forest, could lead to the depletion of one of the most bio-diverse regions on the planet.  

If that were not bad enough, Afro-Colombians suffer from some of the worst socio-economic conditions in the country: an estimated 86  per cent of people of African descent lack access to basic public services such as sewers and running water. Most white and mestizo communities have such services. 

The Colombian health care system isn’t all that great, having suffered from budget cuts to fund Uribe’s counterinsurgency war.  Still, it manages to cover 40 per cent of white Colombians.  Meanwhile, only 10 per cent of Afro Colombians receive health services, while a pathetically low 3 per cent of black workers receive social security benefits. 

Consider the statistics on illiteracy: whites 14 per cent, blacks 45 per cent. 

About 120 of every 1000 Afro-Colombian infants die in their first year, compared to 20 white babies.  At the other end of life, Afro-Colombians live to only 54 years of age on average while whites live to 70 years.

Only 38 per cent of Afro-Colombians attend high school, compared to 66 per cent of non-Black Colombians.  Just 2 per cent of Afro-Colombians go to university.

Non-black Colombians earn $1,500 a year on average.  Afro-Colombian families take in only $500.  Meanwhile, 76 per cent of Afro-Colombians live in conditions of extreme poverty. 

Brutal Past to a Brutal Present

That level of poverty is particularly jarring in light of the fact that Afro-Colombians often live in areas of rich natural wealth.  A case in point is Chocó, the department with the largest Afro-Colombian population in the country.  The area is one of the most neglected in the country and, disgracefully, receives the lowest per capita government investment in health, education and infrastructure of any department in Colombia.

"They [government authorities] see Black people as objects that have no value," declared Juan de Dios García, an Afro-Colombian community organizer. "Therefore sacrificing us, even to the extent of a holocaust, doesn't matter. That's the kind of racism to which we're subjected. We believe all acts against a people's culture should be considered crimes against human rights, because there is no human life without culture."

Sadly, such conditions are nothing new for Afro-Colombians who have long faced institutionalized racism and discrimination.  Confronted with a declining native population and labor shortages in the 16th century, the Spaniards imported African slaves to Colombia and forced them to work in sugar plantations, cattle ranches and gold mines. 

Fleeing the harsh conditions, many slaves managed to escape.  Later, they settled along the Pacific coast in Chocó and formed their own towns or palenques.  There, the slaves were able to live out the rest of their lives as cimarrones or freemen.  Slavery was not abolished into well into the Republican period in 1851.

Today it is the Chocó, rich in natural resources and home to many of these ex-slaves, which is at the heart of the debate over the free trade agreement with the United States.  Chocó, a cocaine-producing area sandwiched between Panama to the north (a common destination for smugglers) and Valle del Cauca province to the south (home to Colombia's toughest drug cartel) is prime real estate for palm oil planters.
 
Encircled by an increasingly nefarious web of palm oil interests and Uribe government officials, Afro-Colombian leaders have traveled to Washington, D.C. in an effort to sway lawmakers to vote against the proposed U.S.-Colombian free trade deal which, they say, will expand palm oil production on their lands. 

Speaking recently at New York University, Córdoba decried the underlying economic and political agenda of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement.  One part of the initiative, he said, calls for more mega-agricultural projects along Colombia's Pacific coast.  Under the deal, Colombia would supply the world with bio-fuels produced from large scale cultivation of palm oil, sugar cane, and corn.

Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

In line with his feverish desire to promote foreign investment, Uribe has been pushing hard for a free trade deal in Washington.  Though the Colombian government has already received billions of dollars in military assistance and economic development from the United States, it’s clearly not enough: the Uribe regime wants more and is hiring Washington lobbyists and power brokers to push for its free trade agreement.

Collectively, the Colombian government has paid more than $1 million to firms that have negotiated or lobbied on behalf of the deal.  Recently, it was disclosed that Mark Penn, an advisor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, was employed by the Colombian government to help win passage of the trade agreement in Congress.

Husband Bill was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is ostensibly a development group tasked with bringing investment to Colombia and educating world leaders about the country's business opportunities.

Even as Uribe’s sleazy PR handlers in Washington join forces with U.S. corporations like Caterpillar, WalMart and Citigroup in an effort to secure a trade agreement, the Colombian government has been doing its utmost to railroad Afro-Colombians at home. 

According to AFRODES, the Colombian government did not consult with Afro-Colombian communities when it was negotiating the free trade deal with the U.S.  As a result, the Uribe regime fundamentally undermined Law 70. 

In a slick PR move, Uribe has created the so-called Commission for the Advancement of Afro-Colombian people which, according to Córdoba, undermines communities’ ability to advance their own development strategies.  “President George Bush…and the vast array of lobbying firms hired by the Uribe government are now trying to tout this outrageous Commission as evidence that Afro- Colombian concerns are being addressed as they push to pass the FTA [free trade agreement],” declares Córdoba.
 
The commission, he adds, is stacked with Uribe supporters and is designed to feign “consultation” with Afro-Colombian communities so as to give the illusion of participatory democracy.
        
Pushing Afro-Colombians towards “Economic and Cultural Extinction”

Unfortunately, Afro-Colombians don’t have an army of public relations firms at their disposal to make their case, and the U.S. media has all but ignored the free trade agreement as a story, save to briefly mention the Mark Penn scandal in the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary.

If the U.S. press investigated, however, it would find a whole host of problems associated with the deal.

Take, for example, the issue of agriculture.

Afro-Colombians are particularly concerned because, they say, the agreement stands to protect the rights of corporations while adversely affecting local agriculture.  Initially, they claim, the deal could force 80,000 families off the land but this could be only the tip of the iceberg: in Mexico, 1.3 million farmers have been displaced as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

According to Nicole Lee, Executive Director of TransAfrica Forum, the agreement would “legalize the appropriation of constitutionally-protected collective territories by the government and corporate interests, furthering displacement, poverty and discrimination faced by these marginalized communities.”

In late 2006 a host of local Afro-Colombian groups wrote the U.S. Congress expressing their concerns.  “The people in our communities are mostly subsistence…farmers,” they wrote.  “They depend on access to land in order to produce the food necessary for their own survival, as well as to sell to local markets in order to procure the currency necessary to buy food, medicine, clothing, and school supplies for their children.”  What Afro-Colombian farmers most needed was increased access to credit and technical assistance, improved transportation and land use policies, and fairer prices for commodities.

Unfortunately, the letter added, the free trade agreement did not offer a single one of these development alternatives for local communities.  “To the contrary, the deal would increase unfair competition for our local markets. Our families will have to compete with heavily subsidized agricultural products from the United States, pushing us toward economic and cultural extinction.”        
        
Congressional Black Caucus: Failing to Protect Afro-Colombians Through H. Res. 618

Given the appalling human rights situation facing Afro-Colombian peoples, you would think that the Congressional Black Caucus would organize a solidly anti-Uribe bloc.  Bizarrely, however, African American legislators have failed to provide a united front.

Take, for example, black legislators and their record on House Resolution 618.  Congressman Donald Payne, a Democratic African American legislator from New Jersey, has introduced the measure urging the United States and Colombia to take steps to respect the cultural, territorial, and human rights of Afro-Colombian communities.

H.Res. 618 calls on the Colombian government to end racial discrimination and protect Afro-Colombians’ constitutionally guaranteed lands.  The resolution encourages the U.S. and Colombian governments to consult with Afro-Colombians when developing policies which stand to affect their communities. 

The measure is currently in the first stage of the legislative process and is being considered by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Co-sponsors of the bill include prominent African American lawmakers such as John Conyers, Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Barbara Lee.  But, out of 38 African American members in the House, a whopping 13 refused to become co-sponsors of H.Res 618.

What does this say about the leadership abilities of veteran legislators such as John Conyers?

Even more disgracefully, Charlie Rangel, Democrat of New York and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, refused to sign on to the legislation.  In fact, African Americans from New York have been particularly derelict.  Yvette Clarke, who represents one of the most liberal districts in the state comprising Park Slope, Brooklyn, also failed to support the legislation.

Rangel and Clarke were joined by Gregory Meeks of Southeast Queens.  Meeks in particular has become a huge thorn in the side of anti-Uribe activists in Colombia and the United States (for more on the peculiar case of Rep. Meeks, see below).

When you add up the overall scorecard of Congressional Black Caucus members on Colombia for 2007, the results are even more dismal.  Last year, legislators faced a number of important legislative decisions concerning the Andean nation. 

For example, they had the option of signing on to a letter calling for more U.S. aid for rural development in Colombia and a strengthening of the nation’s judicial system.

Another important measure, introduced by Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, called on the U.S. to increase aid to the internally displaced in Colombia and to help refugees rebuild their lives successfully. 

Legislators also had the option of signing on to a letter addressed to Uribe, expressing concern over a series of politically-motivated break-ins targeting human rights and peace organizations.  The letter urged the president to condemn such attacks and publicly express support for the work of human rights organizations.

So, how did the Congressional Black Caucus fare on the three key measures?  I have compiled the shameful result, below:

Bishop, 0-3
Brown, 0-3
Butterfield, 0-3
Cleaver 0-3
Clay, 3-3
Clarke, 1-3
Clyburn, 0-3
Conyers, 1-3
Cummings, 1-3
Danny Davis, 1-3
Artur Davis, 0-3
Ellison, 1-3
Fattah, 3-3
Green, 0-3
Hastings, 1-3
Jackson-Lee, 2-3
Jackson, 0-3
Jefferson, 0-3
Johnson, Eddie-Bernice, 1-3
Johnson, Hank 0-3
Kilpatrick, 1-3
Lewis, 1-3
Meek, 0-3
Meeks, 0-3
Moore, 2-3
Norton, 0-3
Payne, 1-3
Rangel, 0-3
Richardson, 0-3
Rush, 3-3
Robert Scott, 0-3
David Scott, 1-3
Thompson, 0-3
Towns, 0-3
Tubbs Jones, 0-3
Waters, 2-3
Watson, 1-3
Watt, 0-3
Wynn, 0-3

As we may see, with the rare exception of such legislators as Clay, Fattah, and Rush most African American legislators are undistinguished when it comes to Colombia.  Meanwhile, an astounding number, 21, have failed to show any backbone whatsoever when it comes to reining in Uribe.

Uribe’s Booster on Capitol Hill: Congressman Gregory Meeks

If these votes are not bad enough, it is clear that some African American legislators would vote for a free trade agreement if it ever came up for a vote.   One such politician is Representative Gregory Meeks, whose boosterism of the Uribe regime is so bizarre as to be perverse. 

Meeks, who has traveled to Colombia to meet with Uribe personally, is a member of the Clintons’ Democratic Leadership Council.  Currently, the New York legislator is seeking to broker a compromise between House Democrats and the Bush Administration that could allow for congressional consideration of the free trade agreement. 

"I would like to see a situation where we give [Colombian President Álvaro Uribe] a list of parameters of the things that we need to see, and give [Colombia] an opportunity to accomplish them," Meeks said in an interview.  He suggested that there needs to be more of an effort in Colombia to prosecute individuals who have victimized labor leaders. 

Meeks said he was confident Uribe would do his utmost to meet those conditions, even as evidence mounts of the government’s ties to right wing paramilitary death squads who assassinate labor leaders.   Colombia's Supreme Court has even ordered the arrest of fourteen members of congress on suspicion of collaboration with death squads; thirteen of the legislators back Uribe.  The president's former intelligence chief is also facing charges of passing information to the paramilitaries to help them target and kill opponents.

Recently, Uribe's cousin, a Senator, was forced to resign in an effort to avoid a Supreme Court inquiry into whether he had ties to the paramilitaries. Mario Uribe was a key ally of the President.  So far, Álvaro Uribe has not been directly implicated, but the President has been accused of letting paramilitary groups use his family's farms to kill opponents during the 1990s. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy cut off $55 million in military aid to Colombia over the allegations.

It’s bad enough when the Bush White House and its Republican allies in Congress seek to prop up the paramilitary government of Álvaro Uribe and try to secure a free trade deal.  On the other hand, at least the Republican right is consistent in its philosophy.  Not so with the Congressional Black Caucus, a hypocritical body which prides itself on displaying solidarity with Africans of the Diaspora but which does nothing to rein in a racist regime which is doing its utmost to eliminate Afro-Colombians and their culture.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave Macmillan, April 2008).