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Recent
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July
2, 2003
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
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Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
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Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
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Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
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CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
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David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
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26, 2003
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Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
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Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
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Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
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June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
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Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
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Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
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June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
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Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
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Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
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Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
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A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
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The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
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WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
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Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
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The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
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Maria
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Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
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Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
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Russell
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Grannies and Baby Bells
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
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Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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July
2, 2003
A Nationwide Assault
on All Fronts
Uribe's Onslaught
in Colombia
By JUSTIN PODUR
At the end of May, the 'Rio Group' of Latin American
countries discussed how to handle Colombia's civil war. Colombia's
president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, was seeking a declaration from
the group that asked Kofi Annan to give the FARC-- the main Colombian
guerrilla group-an ultimatum. The ultimatum was that the FARC
come to the negotiating table, or else. Or else what, wasn't
specified. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela registered his
dissent with the ultimatum. He said such a declaration could
only have the effect of preparing the way for a multilateral
intervention in Colombia. Uribe said whether an ultimatum was
given or not, the future of Latin America was in fighting terrorism
and the drug trade.
Uribe then proceeded to preside over
a month of extraordinary violence of all kinds, at every stage
making decisions to escalate that violence.
One of the first decisions was to change
the terribly inadequate system in place since 1998 for protecting
unionists. Thousands of unionists have been killed by paramilitary
violence over the course of Colombia's war. This year alone 35
activists have been killed. In 2002 the number was over 150.
In the scheme Uribe decided to replace, unionists were allowed
to have bodyguards. In the new plan, the bodyguards are to be
appointed by the government. Given that the strength of the paramilitary
comes from its connections to the army and police, having the
government appoint bodyguards for unionists is like letting the
fox guard the henhouse.
Whatever the current state of protection
for unionists, the system certainly failed two weeks after Uribe's
announcement when on June 16, Luis H. Rolon from the Union of
Lottery Vendors was killed in Cucuta, Morelly Guillen of the
health worker's union was killed in Tame, and on June 17, Orlando
Fernandez of the public sector union in Valledupar was killed.
Another inventive program for punishing
unionists developed by Uribe's government is the "Program
of Improvement and Competencies". In this program, unionists
are sent into isolation to 'work' with a 'tutor'. The tutor assigns
them work, evaluates them weekly, and prohibits them from returning
to their work site.
After testing the 'privatization by bombing'
strategy in May (http://www.en-camino.org/may202003podur.htm),
Uribe's government escalated the liquidation of state enterprises
massively. On June 14 (days before three unionists were killed)
the government announced the privatization of TELECOM, Colombia's
phone network. The union estimates job losses of 10,000. A UK-Colombia
Solidarity Campaign Communique provides background for the TELECOM
liquidation:
'Decisive pressure came from Washington.
As Miguel Caro CUT's Director for the public sector points out:
"the US has insisted as a condition for including Colombia
in the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations that one-sided
'shared risk' contracts signed with US companies be implemented".
'The misnamed 'shared-risk' contracts
were of course nothing of the sort, merely a mechanism for foreign
multinationals to rip off the state sector. Back in 1993 TELECOM
signed contracts with six multinationals to provide 2 million
telephone lines. They put 1.8 million lines in place, but only
1.15 million were sold. While the investment came from state
funds, the 'shared risk' meant that the multinationals were guaranteed
an income irrespective of the number of lines sold. NORTEL and
the other companies demanded a US $2 billion contract settlement.
The previous Colombian government offered $600 million, but this
was not enough for NORTEL who lobbied the US Congress to block
any general trade and investment agreements until its demands
are met. Uribe has accepted, hence the liquidation and sell off
which, according to Miguel Caro "shows once again the submission
of the Colombian government to the dictates of US imperialist
power".'
But TELECOM was just the beginning. Also
slated for privatization are-among hundreds of others-- Social
Security, and ECOPETROL, the national oil company. ECOPETROL
was created in 1948, itself the outcome of a struggle by workers.
It has assets of more than $8 billion and brings in revenues
of $2 billion annually. The oil worker's union, USO, is one of
the most combative and organized unions in Colombia and also
one of the hardest-hit. ECOPETROL's installations have been militarized
in advance of the privatization.
The war against the indigenous, afro-Colombians,
and peasants in the countryside continued as well. On June 8,
in Riosucio, Caldas, 4 indigenous activists were murdered and
4 others severely wounded in a paramilitary attack. Like most
paramilitary massacres, this one had been preceded by death threats
well in advance, followed by pleas to the government for protection.
The government offered, as help, a cellular phone and help with
transportation, before the massacre came.
In the Afro-Colombian community of Zabaletas,
Buenaventura, paramilitaries killed 5 people on June 14. The
PCN (Black People's Process), reported that this was one of many
massacres in their communities-waves of massacres occurred in
1996, 2000, and 2001. The intent, then as now, was the get people
to flee, to 'clear' the territory for the development of natural
resources and megaprojects.
It amounts to a country-wide, violent
assault on every front.
And at every point, Colombians are resisting,
heroically. On June 19th, some 600,000 state sector workers went
on strike to stop the privatizations. They marched in Bogota
and in Barrancabermeja (where ECOPETROL has its installations),
where government security forces broke up demonstrations with
water cannons and tear gas. The fate of tens of thousands of
workers, of Colombia's public infrastructure, could be decided
by the outcome of this strike. In the UK-Colombia Solidarity
Campaign's words, "It will take enormous pressure from within
and without to halt the march of fascism in Colombia. The CUT
Human Rights Department has called for solidarity, highlighting
the need for mobilisation of protest internationally and physical
accompaniment in Colombia."
On July 22, 2003, a boycott against Coca
Cola will begin. SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian Food and Drinks
Workers Union, has better reason reason than most to want such
a boycott. Eight of its members have been assassinated by paramilitaries
financed by Coca Cola bottling companies. Hundreds of their workers
have been sacked and detained, even kidnapped, tortured, and
disappeared, as part of the dirty war in Colombia that kills
members of the social opposition so that multinational corporations
can make profits.
SINALTRAINAL tried a legal route, with
help from the United Steelworkers Union. The judge ruled that
Coca Cola's bottlers have a case to answer, but Coca Cola decided
not to play. The demands are for reparations, a change in policy,
and a commitment to respect the human rights of workers and the
population. In a public tribunal against impunity, SINALTRAINAL
found Coca Cola guilty of violating human rights of its workers;
benefiting from attacks on unionists in Colombia, Guatemala,
Peru, Brazil, the US, Venezuela, Palestine, Turkey, Iran and
elsewhere; contamination of water sources by pollution from bottling
plants; racial discrimination; the irrational use of water in
the world and robbery of water from communities in India; support
for the Venezuelan oligarchy. The boycott is to last, in its
initial phrase, for one year. It "does not solely consist
of not consuming the products of the transnational corporation
Coca Cola, but is also a permanent and sustained campaign of
denouncement, organization, and struggle against the policies
of the company."
Uribe ended the month with a 53-page
document outlining his new strategy. It's called 'democratic
security', and it speaks for itself. It is part of the US's wider,
accelerating project of plundering the resources and the public
sectors of every country in the world by terror, warfare, and
capitalist globalization.
Years ago, the Zapatistas in Mexico also
faced a President who was outlining a 'new strategy' against
them. They commented that it was not new, nor was it a strategy,
just the same stupid pounding that assumes that a people who
have resisted for five hundred years will suddenly forget how.
Colombians are not going to forget how.
But will they have to face the onslaught alone?
Justin Podur
maintains ZNet's Colombia
Watch pages (. He can be reached at justin.podur@utoronto.ca
Weekend Edition
Features
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
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