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Today's
Stories
April 5 / 6,
2008
Ramzy Baroud
There
are No Checkpoints in Heaven
April 4, 2008
Dave Lindorff
The
Night I Heard King Had Been Shot
Greg Moses
Missing
King
Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine
Alison Weir
Funding
Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel
David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War
Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream
Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?
Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte
Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines
Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran
Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn
Website of
the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression
Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained:
The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia
Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America
Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy
David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood
Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
Website of
the Day
The
True Face of Da Vinci?
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
|
Weekend
Edition
Apri1 5 / 6, 2008
Colombia Kills
Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing
La
Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush
By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
The parents of the murdered students
pushed their way through the crowded aisles of Benito Juarez
International Airport each clutching urns that contained the
ashes of their dead children, slaughtered while they slept March
1 in an Ecuadoran guerrilla jungle camp of the long-lived Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) by the Colombian air force along
with 18 fighters and an Ecuadoran citizen. The 23 dead were
the first known victims in Latin America of the Bush doctrine
of preventative war against suspected terrorists.
On hand to receive the grieving
parents of Fernando Franco, Juan Gonzalez del Castillo, and Veronica
Velazquez with flowers and paper doves of peace were dozens of
their fellow students in the Philosophy & Letters Faculty
of the National Autonomous University (UNAM) led by the director
of that school. A fourth student killed in the bombing, Soren
Ulises Aviles attended the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN.)
Lucia Morett, also a UNAM student, survived the attack along
with two Colombian women but was gravely wounded by shrapnel
and remains in a Quito hospital.
Later, their UNAM classmates
carried the ashes of the martyred students from faculty to faculty
on the huge campus in the south of the city, saluting them with
the traditional cry of "Presente!" with which the Latin
American left honors its fallen. The Philosophy & Letters
faculty is the most left-leaning of all the UNAM schools, boasting
such graduates as Subcomandante Marcos.
Lucia, Juan, Veronica, and
Fernando were post-graduate candidates in Latin American Studies
at Philosophy & Letters and formed the Simon Bolivar Cathedra,
a leftish movie club. They flew to Quito in mid-February, according
to the faculty director Ambrosio Velazquez, to do field research
in the contemporary Latin American social dynamic, meeting with
leaders of Ecuador's very active  indigenous
movement, political analysts, and environmentalists. From February
25 through the 27th, the students, along with Soren Aviles, participated
in a Bolivarian conference convened at Quito University and the
Ecuadoran capital's House of Culture.
The next day, the five flew
into the Amazon to Lago Agrio ("Bitter Lake") to survey
the havoc wrought by Big Oil during decades of careless drilling
in the jungle. In truth, Ecuador had been bombed by U.S. proxies
before the March 1 attack - Texaco so destroyed Secumbios canton
that abandoned villages sometimes blow sky high when a farmer's
machete strikes a spark and whole Indian tribes have simply vanished
from the face of the earth.
But the students had another
item on their agenda - a trip to the FARC camp at Angostura,
two kilometers inside Ecuador in Secumbios to interview the guerrilla's
second-in-command Raul Reyes about the prospects for peace in
the 40-year war between the FARC and the Colombian oligarchy.
Reyes was the key rebel negotiator in the recent release of seven
of the 50 hostages that the guerrilla continues to hold. The
humanitarian gesture was stage-managed by Venezuelan president
Hugo Chavez and was an acute embarrassment to both the White
House and its Colombian surrogate Alvaro Uribe.
According to Lucia's parents,
the five students had arrived in the camp only four hours before
the attack. They were sleeping when Colombian planes - possibly
Israeli-built Kfirs - dropped ten 500-pound Paveway bombs on
the hideout. The Paveway bombs were identical to those deployed
by the U.S. during Operation Desert Storm, according to Ecuadoran
Air Force experts who retrieved bomb parts from the scene of
the massacre.
To compound this egregious
violation of Ecuador's sovereignty, Colombian troops then crossed
the border to snatch the body of Raul Reyes (not his real name)
and his supposed second, the troubadour-guerrillero "Julian
Conrado." The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has
reportedly offered a $7 million USD reward for the capture of
"Reyes" and "Conrado" dead or alive.
The Mexican students were collateral
damage in a targeted assassination of the sort so popular with
the Israeli Defense Force. The Colombian military has a lengthy
history of consorting with the IDF and indeed, according to the
Mexican daily La Jornada, a retired Israeli Air Force general,
Israel Ziv, was visiting Bogotá at the time of the attack.
In a press bulletin issued
March 14, the FARC pointed a finger at the U.S. South Command
(SOUTHCOM) operating out of Quarry Heights Panama as having organized
thed assassinations. According to published reports, Reyes was
pinpointed by U.S. satellite interception of a phone conversation
between the guerrilla leader and Venezuelan president Chavez.
The logistics of the raid appear to have been coordinated by
U.S. military personnel at the Manta Ecuador drug war base that
President Rafael Correa has pledged to shut down when the Yanquis'
lease runs out in 2009.
Since the U.S. declared its
war on terror, the Bushites have insisted that there are no borders
in their global crusade. Recent U.S. targeted assassinations
in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, sometimes using unmanned drones,
have written the Bush doctrine in blood. The New York Times
(March 9) noted the "remarkable similarity" between
the U.S. killing of a top al-Qaeda operator in Pakistan and the
massacre in Ecuador.
The bombing of the Angostura
camp fits into the strategic framework of Plan Colombia, the
$6 billion anti-narco, anti-FARC boondoggle perpetuated since
1999 by the Clinton and Bush administrations. Now Washington
is cloning the franchise with Plan Mexico AKA the Merida Initiative,
a $1.4 billion buck investment in repressive Mexican security
forces, soon to kick in.
Unlike Correa or Chavez and
Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega who broke diplomatic relations with
Colombia for a day, Mexico's dubiously elected president Felipe
Calderon, an Uribe-Bush ally, is silent about the attack that
resulted in the death of four of his young citizens and the maiming
of another. Indeed, the Mexican federal prosecutor's office
has sought to interview the hospitalized Morett to determine
whether her group of revolutionary tourists had received arms
and explosives training during their four houses with the guerrilla.
The Calderon administration's
spin on Colombia's bombing of Ecuador was encapsulated in the
initial Foreign Relations Secretariat's press bulletin following
the identification of the Mexican victims: "(the Mexican
government) is preoccupied by the involvement of Mexican citizens
with terrorists."
The FARC has long been listed
on the White House terrorist roster although Venezuela's Chavez
prefers to deal with them as belligerents in a civil war.
The Bush terror war attack
appears to have cancelled further hostage releases and prisoner
exchanges with the Uribe government, which holds hundreds of
FARC militants, and may have doomed once-upon-a-time presidential
candidate Isabel Betancourt, a French citizen, who is said to
be seriously ill with hepatitis.
The Colombian incursion blew
up big in Venezuela where Comandante Chavez saw Uribe's unilateral
aggression as an "act of war", broke off diplomatic
relations, sealed the border with Colombia, and sent ten tank
brigades to enforce the closure. The border was reopened ten
days later and a peace concert headlined by the Colombian pop
idol Juanes drew tens of thousands to the Simon Bolivar International
Bridge in Cucuta.
As the crisis boiled over,
the Group of Rio, an all-Latin American aggregation that excludes
the U.S., met in Santo Domingo March 7. During an acrimonious
interchange between presidents, Uribe sought to justify the raid
as an act of self-defense against terrorists and drug gangs after
Correa accused Colombia of criminal aggression. An uneasy deal
was finally brokered by Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim
who convinced the battling presidents that the summit presented
a rare opportunity for Latin America to settle its own affairs
without Washington's intervention. Although Chavez, Uribe, and
Correa exchanged tepid handshakes, the matter was by no means
settled when they left Santo Domingo.
The U.S. got its chance to
intervene ten days later at an emergency session of the Organization
of American States in Washington. The OAS is popularly known
as the "Ministry of Colonies" throughout Latin America.
The OAS was installed by the
United States in 1948 as a bulwark against Communism. Its founding
meeting took place in Bogotá, Colombia during widespread
rioting following the assassination of the leftist Jorge Eliezar
Gaitan, a conflagration that sparked a half century of "La
Violencia" between conservatives and liberals of which the
FARC is a lineal descendent.
The U.S. argued the appropriateness
of the Bush Doctrine at the March 17 conclave. Washington's position
was defended by John Negroponte, Bush's former intelligence czar
and now number two at the State Department who has a dark history
in Latin America. Negroponte, known as the "Pro-Consul"
for his funding of the Contras during the counter-insurgency
in Nicaragua, sought to persuade the Latinos that Colombia had
a right to self defense (a la Israel) and that the March 1 bombing
had been a perfectly legal preventative strike against a "criminal
drug gang and terrorists." But outside of Salvador's stooge
president Tony Saca, no one seemed to buy Tio Sam's line. Mexican
foreign secretary Patricia Espinosa remained studiously close-mouthed
during the debate.
In the end, the argument before
the OAS was reduced to whether the organization should "condemn"
or "reject" the Colombian bombing of Ecuador. The rejectionists
won out. Despite the toning down of the final document, the
fact that Washington did not get its way with its "Ministry
of Colonies" was hailed as a victory in Latin America.
But the conflict was not dead
yet and blew up all over again with the revelation that an Ecuadoran
citizen had been killed in the cross-border invasion. "It
is unacceptable that an Ecuadoran citizen can be killed by foreign
soldiers on Ecuadoran soil," an enraged Correa told the
press. The fact that the Colombian government covered up the
death of Franklin Aizcalla, a Quito mechanic whom Uribe's police
described as the lover of the guerrillera "Esperanza",
rubbed salt into the wound. In an apparent scam to reap the
DEA reward, Aizcalla's body had been spirited out of Ecuador
by Colombian troops and passed off as that of "Julian Conrado",
the Vallenato virtuoso and guerrillero who performed for former
president Andres Pastrana during the 1999 peace talks in Caguan.
The "Conrado" deception
was not the only dirty trick that Uribe played on Correa. In
classic CIA m.o., a fuzzy photograph was planted on the front
page of El Tiempo, Colombia's top daily, purportedly depicting
a meeting between "Raul Reyes" and "Gustavo Larrea",
Ecuador's Security minister - "Larrea" as it turned
out was really Patricio Etchegaray, secretary of the Argentinean
Communist Party who had interviewed the FARC Comandante some
months earlier.
The photograph was allegedly
lifted from Reyes' laptop, which had magically survived a bombing
attack that shattered and pulverized human beings. El Tiempo
is owned and operated by the Santos family, three members of
which hold high level posts in Uribe's government. Juan Manuel
Santos is the nation's defense chief.
Other information supposedly
located on the magical hard drive was said to implicate Chavez
in financing the FARC to the tune of $300 million USD and U.S.
experts were soon in Bogotá reviewing the "evidence"
in anticipation of listing Chavez as a sponsor of terrorism -
Bush has pushed to add Venezuela to his new shopworn Axis of
Evil (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria.)
The lame duck U.S. president
is banking on the Colombian crisis to force congressional approbation
of a bi-lateral free trade pact with Bogotá but the Democrats
are reluctant to vote up the project in an electoral year.
Here in Mexico, despite a moment
of silence to honor the dead students during a meeting of tens
of thousands in the Zocalo plaza March 25 and similar minutes
of silence in both houses of the Congress, Calderon's own silence
remains deafening. Colombian police efforts to extradite Morret
from Ecuador for questioning are stymied by the hostilities between
Correa and Uribe. But should Morret return to Mexico, she runs
the risk of being shipped to Colombia by her own government and
Lucia's parents indicate she will apply for political asylum
in Ecuador.
Colombia has refused to pay
compensation to the families of the dead and wounded students
insisting the bombing was "a legitimate action." The
parents, for their part, insist they are not interested in compensation
and only want the Calderon government to condemn the illegal
attack.
The killing of the students
has unleashed a savage media campaign against the UNAM, which
right-wingers have always blasted as "a cradle for radicals."
The putsch has been fueled by former leftist Jorge Castaneda's
allegations that a FARC sleeper cell led by a Cuban-born engineer,
Dagoberto Diaz, operates out of the university.
The FARC in fact had offices
in Mexico City for years before former president Vicente Fox,
in one of his first diplomatic blunders, shut it down in 2000
- Castaneda was then his foreign minister. The clampdown was
lamented by Pastrana who approved of the office as a point of
contact between the Colombian government and the guerrilla.
FARC-bashing is a popular pastime for Mexico's yellow press.
Rumors buzzed back in 2001 that the Colombian rebels were out
to snatch Rudolph Giuliani when he came to Mexico City on a crime-busting
swindle.
But UNAM rector Jose Narro
and Philosophy & Letters director Velazquez see an ulterior
motive in the media barrage against the UNAM - the privatization
of public education, a pet project for Mexico's rightists.
Defending the UNAM, the oldest
and largest in Latin America, at a meeting of the University
Council this past Friday (March 28), Narro lamented "that
we have to open this session with a moment of silence to honor
the memory of our dead students. We will never accept the lies
and infamies of those who would do harm to our university. The
UNAM is a diverse and public university and it will remain that
way so long as I am the rector."
John Ross is in Mexico City. He can be reached
at johnross@igc.org
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