In the jubilation around the sensational release of Ingrid Betancourt and the other hostages from the FARC guerillas in Colombia, it's easy to ignore Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba. But with her reddened brown eyes bubbling with tears she tries to contain, Cordoba provides a unique view into the effects of U.S. military policy in Latin America. But it's not clear if either John McCain fresh from his Colombia tour or Barack Obama are listening.
During one of several public events she participated in during her visit to New York, Cordoba, an outspoken critic of the administration of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, did not, unlike Senator McCain, laud the effects of U.S. military aid to her country. "The (U.S.) aid is being given to a corrupt democracy, a democracy that governs through fear and terror," said Cordoba, a former president of both the Colombian Human Rights Commission and Congress. She was herself kidnapped by 12 heavily-armed paramilitary operatives as she left a medical clinic in 2004. "The (Colombian) government uses the money and arms from Plan Colombia (PC) not just to combat drug traffickers," she said, adding, "It's also used to silence those of us who speak out against the government. They try to silence us by kidnapping, disappearing and even killing many of us."
In a hemisphere that, with increasing frequency, rejects Washington's free-trade and drug war policies, Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama would do well to listen to denunciations by Cordoba and other critics of U.S.-backed governments like those of Colombia and Mexico, where McCain just voiced his support for that country's equivalent of the drug war, Plan Merida, also known as "Plan Mexico."
Candidates McCain and Obama's failure to denounce the exponential increase in atrocities committed by the governments of Colombia's Uribe and of Mexico's Felipe Calderon may signal that neither will be the "change" candidate when it comes to U.S. policy in Latin America. For example, though McCain did discuss human rights during his meeting with Uribe, he did so in soft tones that lacked the stridency and urgency heard with regard to other human rights abuses discussed on the "straight talk express," where the candidate regularly references his imprisonment and torture. For his part though, he opposes the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia (FTA). Senator Obama has been generally supportive of Plan Colombia, a policy that has yielded little to inspire "hope" in the hemisphere.
In the past seven years, the more than $700 million that Colombia, which has one of the worst human rights records in the Americas, receives in mostly military aid each year under PC, has done little to deter drug flows and lots to foment fear and terror. According to the Washington Office on Latin America, at least 28 trade unionists have been killed so far this year in Colombia, making it the country with the world's highest rate of killings of trade unionists and increases in extra judicial executions. Four million Colombians have been internally displaced since the commencement of PC, and most of the four million Colombians living outside their country migrated during that period also.
In a letter sent to McCain earlier this week, Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, reminded the Senator that "more than 60 members of President Álvaro Uribe's coalition in the Colombian Congress -- representing approximately 20 percent of the Congress -- are under investigation for rigging elections or collaborating with paramilitaries, considered terrorists by the United States." Neither candidate has raised the alarm on the atrocities of the Uribe government.
As he toured Mexico, McCain said nothing about the fact that U.S. military aid under Plan Merida contributed to the record 468 civilians that were killed in Mexico because of drug wars between the government and cartels in the month of June. That month saw 509 civilians killed in Iraq. Neither McCain nor Obama --both of whom support Plan Mexico -- discuss publicly how our southern neighbor, a country with no previous history of the militarization seen in the rest of the hemisphere, has witnessed what some are calling "Colombianization": 25,000 troops and police deployed throughout the country; illegal detentions and unlawful searches; corruption linked from local officials to the highest levels of government; increased internal displacement and migration out of conflicted areas.
Ninety-six members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to the governor of the State of Mexico and the country's Attorney General calling for an investigation into the case of 26 female detainees who were physically, sexually and psychologically abused in San Salvador Atenco. In the first five months of this year there were 300 human rights claims - double the rate from the previous year, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. And as McCain toured Mexico, he acted as if he was blind to the most recent scandal in the country: revelations of a "training" video showing police officers in the city of Leon forcing a fellow officer to crawl through vomit and injecting carbonated water into the nose of another. An instructor identified by Mexican officials as the employee of a U.S. security firm yells out commands in English.
Should they continue to support deadly military policies, hiding under cover of anti-drug policy, McCain and Obama threaten to continue policies that increase migration flows and repression against civilians, something no candidate who is about being a "maverick" or a "change" agent should be silent about.
Follow Roberto Lovato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robvato
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxrhWTZoBP8
http://www.narconews.com/Issue53/article3110.html
The fact that McCain and Obama have so far "failed to denounce" the Columbian president says absolutely nothing about whether each is the candidate of change in this election. That's silly.
American drug use fuels the world's drug trade. The solution is simple. De-criminalize all these illegal drugs. Quickly, the drug cartels will shrivel. Afghan farmers will cease growing the stuff on any large scale.
We'll save billions, some of which can be diverted to rehabilitation that stands a change.
And end a lot of corruption. There's the rub, of course. So many American law enforcement and political people are bought off, and treasure their payoffs. That's why the military refused to do drug interdiction.
And of course, the "intelligence community" would like to preserve a source of cash that Congress needn't approve or know about.
Any politician who opposes de-criminalization ought to be suspected of and investigated for drug payoff. The press can have a field day with this.
In an unpublished post, I criticized McCain and Lieberman, yes, both were down there, hand in hand, traveling Mexico and Colombia only to pick up indirect "campaign donations" from governements and corporations. Rpublicans are vociferous on the "Free-Trade" issue.
Mexico does not want to renogotiate NAFTA. Renegotiating would actually help working American families and make it more difficult for corporations to run south and open shop, and shamelessly, creating in the process, "the giant sucking sound."
Mexico with the tacit support of US agri-companies, wants it's poor and huddled masses, to go north in search of work, even if it mean doing it illegally. Two primary reasons: Mexico gets "rid" of a huge population that is generally under-educated and underemployed.
The second reason is that illegal immigrants in the US send billions of dollars in "economic aid" remmitance to families back home through Western Union and other proto-banking methods. These billions "prop" the economy and inject much needed dollars into the economy. But, these dollars do not solve the poltical and economic reasons why the majority of Mexicans and Latin America continue to swill in poverty.
The Republicans and their Mexican counter-cronies know that changes in the status quo would mean losses to multinationals in the form of cheap and compliant labor. Keep Mexicans employed in US corporations in Mexico or have them work illegally in meat packing companies, in agricultural and agri-labor positions---illegally in the US.
So for openers, these immigrants are a plus for us.
Whatever flaws NAFTA has, nothing short of global catastrophe will stop globalization. So we need to stop whining about "giant sucking sounds" and focus on education and especially re-education here. Rather than pouring a trillion dollars into a senseless and illegal war, for example.
When multinationals open factories in poor countries, they add needed money and help to build domestic industries. Lots of small companies spring up to serve the big firms. So there's an upside to this "exploitation." Downsides are also numerous -- exporting pollution, suppression of labor rights, chid labor, for example.
But global trade 's benefits can be exploited and we can encourage these countries to fix their problems.
Back to Mexico's bad leadership. The government disastrously owns and operates the oil industry. The result is a lack of investment that's dooming their oil fields, and things will get worse when this source of revenue thins out.
The Mexicans need to figure this out, and without our meddling.
Enough said - tyr integrity and ethics - it works.
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"at least 28 trade unionists have been killed so far this year in Colombia,"
" Four million Colombians have been internally displaced since the commencement of PC"
And, of course, the not-so-subtle insinuaion that Uribe ordered Piedad Cordoba's Kidnapping.
Lovato, this is a country sunk in an ideological wa. Right-wing paramilitary terrosists have killed and will kill trade unioniss because that is what they do, they kill. The fact that Uribe is in power and also adheres to an idelogy tha is right-of center does not in any way imply that Plan Colombia or the Colombian Government have had any part in their acions, and to insinuate so is ignorant at best and intentionally disingenuous at worst. Just like with your sympathy with the FARC, whose methods may be less brutal but their results much moe so, you have proven an inabilit or unwillingness to see wha's obvious to just about everyone else. Please consider that it just might be possible that somewhere a group of criminals that coincidentialy adhere to a right-wing agenda might not be linked to an international far-right conspiracy.
http://the3lb.com/2008/01/14/plan-colombia-by-noam-chomsky/
It is PUBLIC FACT that the Uribe administration supports the military excursions to assassinate those peasants who won't give up their lands. Isn't private ownership of property the basic tenant of capitalism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia
http://www.spike.com/video/plan-colombia/2677564
Very bad.
We need Rambo.
:-)
US-Media has censored out all CONGRESSIONAL these will be the only Candidates pledging to bring back the America of Constitutional-Gov of Law. This is true because, only a (NEW) Congress, cleaned of Upper-Hierarchy will fight to remove this "Pork/Perk/PAC/Payola" that sell out American citizens to Fascists now in control of the government.
The American citizen must drain the Congressional-Swamp, electing in upper-level all new Congressional-representatives that wil serve the PEOPLE. So despite Corp-Media censoring OUT Congressional-Candidates, concentrate and find these people that will remove the criminals now in power. America in global affairs and advancing calamities will not escape disaster's coming, but at least we can start and perhaps rebuild on sound principles.
Are candidates now required to conduct everything in full view of the public, the media and the pundits? Is it just possible that both candidates have an awareness and an agenda for every possible issue that we can conceive, but prudence requires that they not expose it?