Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalColombian army colonel charged with complicity in massacre
Colombian army colonel charged with complicity in massacre
Mar 6, 2014 posted by Charlane Robinson
A Unit of the Prosecutor’s Office at Cali’s High Court has made an indictment against a Colombian army Colonel for his alleged involvement in the murder of 24 people, local media reported on Thursday.
The High Court reopened the investigation of Jorge Alberto Amor Paez, former commander of the Palace Battalion — which was posted in the municipality of Buga in the southern Colombia state of Valle del Cauca — for his alleged involvement in the massacre of 24 local people by the AUC right-wing paramilitary group in 2001.
The investigation by the Prosecutor General’s office alleges that the Colonel bypassed protection procedures and surveillance of his jurisdiction, allowing the infiltration of 30 heavily armed paramilitary members into the nearby townships of La Habana and Alaska, who then conducted the massacre of 24 local people.
On 10 October 2001, the former commander allegedly knowingly failed to act upon information provided to the battalion, which allowed the entry of the armed AUC into townships and committing the murders.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/24-people-slaughtered-watch-army-colonel/
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U.S.- trained Colombian Military Intelligence Officer Complicit in Massacre of Peasants: Report
May 27, 2009 ·
The warrent was issued by the specialized human rights prosecutor in the city of Calí, Juan Carlos Oliveros Corrales and confirmed Lieutenant Colonel (Jorge Alberto) Amor Páez’s participation in the massacre of 24 peasant farmers.
Some background: on October 10, 2001, members belonging to right-wing paramilitary group the Calima Bloc arrived in the rural community of Tres Esquinas, selected eight unarmed people from the community and proceeded to murder them.
They then went to the communities of Alaska and La Habana, which are located within the municipality of Buga, department of Valle de Cauca, ordered men, women and children from their homes and forced them to go to an area near the Alaska Agricultural and Livestock School.
The paramilitary members ordered the men and children to form a line and minutes later began to shoot them indiscriminately. There were 16 victims, among them several children.
He is clearly a senior official figure.
Uribe himself has faced numerous allegations of close ties to paramilitary groups. In 2007 former US Vice President Al Gore cancelled his participation in a pro-environment event Uribe was to attend in Miami due to the continuing allegations against the controversial Colombian president.
More:
http://jamblichus.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/u-s-trained-colombian-military-intelligence-officer-arrested-over-paramilitary-massacre-of-peasants/
300 complaints over fraud in Colombia’s upcoming congress election
300 complaints over fraud in Colombia’s upcoming congress election
Mar 5, 2014 posted by Camilo Mejia Giraldo
Colombian NGO Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) said Tuesday it has received more than 300 complaints on electoral crimes and irregularities occurring in the country over the past 5 months. A total of 316 reports were submitted by Colombians from October 17 last year to March 3 through the “Pilas con el Voto” program, which allows people to highlight crimes and irregularities such as vote buying, registration fraud, and political extortion.
~snip~
Political extortion
The reports of “Political Intervention”, which climbed from 17 in January to 54 in February, refer to political or public entities that pressure their employees to support a particular party or candidate. MOE judicial adviser Daniela Sierra told Colombia Reports that “this kind of pressure by the employer can be applied by threatening employees and other contractors with employment termination.”
Vote Buying
In a similar fashion, reports of “Voter Corruption” rose from 11 in January to 51 in February and detailed specific vote buying schemes that ranged from $15 to $100 per vote in a number of states throughout the country.
In the municipality of Soledad in the northern state of Atlantico, there were reports that $75 were being offered for each vote for an undisclosed candidate.
Reports also stated that in the adjacent state of Bolivar voters were also being offered around $75 per vote, 50% of which would be paid when voters would register and the other 50% when the vote was verified.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/electoral-observer-receives-300-complaints-since-october/
8 Colombia soldiers arrested in deepening ‘false positives’ scandal
8 Colombia soldiers arrested in deepening ‘false positives’ scandal
Mar 5, 2014 posted by Mimi Yagoub
~snip~
Eight Colombian military personnel were arrested Wednesday for the alleged extrajudicial killing of two civilians, in what is the latest episode in the ongoing “false positives” saga. The killings took place in 2006, the height of a notorious military practice in which soldiers murdered civilians and disguised their bodies as rebel combatants in exchange for bonuses and paid vacations.
In 2013, a report by the Prosecutor General’s Office stated that of the 4,373 people implicated in extrajudicial killings, 1,948 had been charged, while 230 mostly low-ranking military personnel had been sentenced to prison.
False positives
The practice of disguising the execution of civilians by security forces as combat kills is a phenomenon that reached its peak in Colombia during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe, which lasted from 2002 to 2010.
During Uribe’s two terms as Colombian president, the number of extrajudicial killings by the Armed Forces rose 154%, according to a 2013 report by the Universities of Sabana and Externado. The rate increased from 0.11 per 100,000 inhabitants between 1990 and 1999 to 0.28 between 2000 and 2009. It was revealed that it was common for soldiers to kill civilians, dress them as guerrilla fighters and present their bodies as combat kills, reportedly in return for bonuses and paid vacations.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/8-colombia-soldiers-arrested-unending-false-positives-scandal/
Blessing in Disguise: Ukraine May Be the Last Straw–if It Doesn’t Kill Us All
Blessing in Disguise: Ukraine May Be the Last Straw–if It Doesn’t Kill Us All
Could the rest of the world finally be tiring of endless US wars?
by Daniel Patrick Welch / March 3rd, 2014
Waterloo. Stalingrad. Egomaniacal imperialists think they can conquer the world. But they can’t–at least not forever. So maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. Well, not *all* wrong, but from too dark a place. Until now it has been tempting to see the US and its imperial death merchants as being on a roll, a sort of superhuman circus performer who can somehow juggle chainsaws without cutting his own balls off. Look at them go! Full Spectrum Dominance Death Star firing on all cylinders–we can overthrow governments in Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine at the same time, without breaking a sweat. After all, we didn’t see them sweat much when they took out Guatemala, Chile, Iran, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Libya, Congo, Dominican Republic… well, you get the picture. Instead of feeling meek and overwhelmed, it may be instructive to see them failing and flailing on all three current fronts. The schoolyard bully may be running out of punches. In the same way those speaking in public are advised to calm their nerves by imagining their audience naked, maybe it would behoove us to think of empire not as an invincible machine, like Skynet, but rather more like Pinky and the Brain, a devious but hapless duo whose exploits are doomed to fail: Same thing we do every night, Pinky–try to take over the WORLD!
This is not to underplay the massive forces arrayed against humanity, nor the insane willingness of the women and men with their itchy fingers on the trigger to rain death upon the peoples of the world as casually as if they were ordering a sandwich. And perhaps it would be wiser to wait on this assessment. At this writing rumors are flying that NATO and its US overlords are planning a desperate, Blackwater-like attack on Donetsk, to provoke the Russians into a wider war, an insane and needless escalation. They are capable of anything. But no matter what happens in the next days or weeks, the writing is on the wall.
I mean look at them flail, beating their chests, nostrils flaring, teeth bared, yet with perfectly coiffed hair hiding perfectly empty rhetoric and even emptier threats. Despite how scary these men are, and notwithstanding the horror they are capable of unleashing, it is a very good thing that their hypocrisy and their true agenda are laid bare. To the people outside the bubble of the west, they look for all the world like the lunatic zealots they are, bent on world domination with only the most thinly disguised motives. Increasingly, it is to be hoped, those of us inside the bubble who have been speaking out will be seen to have been telling the truth, canaries in a coal mine, as it were.
But for the rest of the world, the jig is up. No one with any sense buys the newest color revolution scheme, and they need not be swayed by timeworn, photoshopped images of people power. From this moment on there will be no daylight whatsoever between Russia and China on issues of any strategic importance, with the others in the BRICS coalition and across the Global South glad for this protection. Their very survival is at stake, and they know it. In response to US and EU threats to impose financial punishment on Russia, China has indicated that, it may need to call in U.S. debt obligations, and from now on may require gold instead of the Fed’s “debt tenders” or worthless dollars based on nothing but trust and the US government’s own say-so. Other reports seem to suggest that China has convinced Turkey not to allow NATO ships through the Bosphorous. Sometimes what a bully needs is just to be punched in the face–hard–once and for all, before the rest of his terrified victims gang up and close in for the kill.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/03/blessing-in-disguise-ukraine-may-be-the-last-straw-if-it-doesnt-kill-us-all/
In Venezuela the poor celebrate and the rich protest. Why?
In Venezuela the poor celebrate and the rich protest. Why?
By Arturo Rosales writes from Caracas. Axis of Logic
Tuesday, Mar 4, 2014
The Colombian novelist William Ospina observed that throughout the world the rich celebrate and the poor protest. On the other hand, in the “strange country” called Venezuela, the poor celebrate and the rich protest. Why?
The traditionally privileged sectors of Venezuelan society have tried to rise up against those who have won democratic elections – in fourteen years the Bolivarians have triumphed in 18 out of 19 electoral processes and the opposition has either refused to accept the results or accept them begrudgingly except for one national referendum they won in December 2007 and isolated victories in local and regional elections.
In the December 8th municipal elections the Bolivarians won 76% of mayoralties (256 out of 337 – 240 by candidates on the ticket of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela PSUV) and for this reason it has not been a surprise that recent disturbances by paid agent provocateurs have been concentrated in 18 municipalities controlled by opposition mayors and dominated by the middle classes. The disturbances have been declining from 18 foci to 8 and now 6 municipalities after the “uprising” started on February 12th.
The disturbances have been localized and the idea that this has been a “popular uprising” by the Venezuelan people against the Maduro government is just media fantasy, manipulation or outright lies by the international media. This media represents the interests of the bourgeoisie desperate to regain power in Venezuela and control the biggest oil reserves on the planet so as to sell them off to the highest bidder – probably the US multinationals - at a knock-down price.
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_66441.shtml
Venezuela is not Ukraine
Venezuela is not Ukraine
Venezuela's struggle is widely misrepresented in western media. This is a classic conflict between right and left, rich and poor
Mark Weisbrot
theguardian.com, Tuesday 4 March 2014 11.45 EST
The current protests in Venezuela are reminiscent of another historical moment when street protests were used by right-wing politicians as part of an attempt to overthrow the elected government. From December of 2002 through February 2003, there was strike of mostly white-collar workers at the national oil industry, along with some business owners. The US media made it look like most of the country was on strike against the government, when, in fact, it was less than one percent of the labor force.
The spread of cell phone videos and social media in the past decade has made it more difficult to misrepresent things that can be easily captured on camera. But Venezuela is still grossly distorted in the major media. The New York Times had to run a correction last week for an article that began with a statement about "The only television station that regularly broadcast voices critical of the government …" As it turns out, all of the private TV stations "regularly broadcast voices critical of the government". And private media has more than 90% of the TV-viewing audience in Venezuela. A study by the Carter Center of the presidential election campaign period last April showed a 57 to 34% advantage in TV coverage for President Maduro over challenger Henrique Capriles in the April election, but that advantage is greatly reduced or eliminated when audience shares are taken into account.
Although there are abuses of power and problems with the rule of law in Venezuela – as there are throughout the hemisphere – it is far from the authoritarian state that most consumers of western media are led to believe. Opposition leaders currently aim to topple the democratically elected government – their stated goal – by portraying it as a repressive dictatorship that is cracking down on peaceful protest. This is a standard "regime change" strategy, which often includes violent demonstrations in order to provoke state violence.
The latest official numbers have eight confirmed deaths of opposition protesters, but no evidence that these were a result of efforts by the government to crush dissent. At least two pro-government people have also been killed, and two people on motorcycles were killed (one beheaded) by wires allegedly set up by protesters. Eleven of the 55 people currently detained for alleged crimes during protests are security officers.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/04/venezuela-protests-not-ukraine-class-sturggle
Does It Matter That the Venezuelan Opposition Is Funded by the US?
Does It Matter That the Venezuelan Opposition Is Funded by the US?
By Ray Downs
In the summer of 2007, the vehemently pro–Hugo Chávez journalist and lawyer Eva Golinger got on Venezuelan state TV and, with the help of a flow chart hand-drawn on flimsy poster board, called out several fellow journalists who had allegedly accepted US funding to help bring down the country's famously left-wing, anti-American president.
“These journalists are destabalising agents,” Golinger said, and explained that that they had participated in programs paid for by the US that were designed to promote a pro-American agenda, the goal of which was to create anti-socialist sentiment in Venezuela.
The accusation didn't cause the kind of uproar Golinger was hoping for. The journalists were briefly investigated by a government committee, but that prompted an immediate public outcry – in fact, many Chavistas rejected such McCarthy-like tactics, claiming they made them look bad.
The incident did cause the US Embassy in Caracas some concern, however. In a cable released by Wikileaks titled “IV Participants and USAID Partners Outed, Again” that describes Golinger's TV appearance and the aftermath, an embassy official wrote that people were becoming wary of getting involved with any enterprise funded by the US. “It is particularly hard to persuade Chávez supporters to participate in a program they perceived as potentially career-ending,” the official wrote. In other words, though Golinger embarrassed herself with her shit-stirring, the US was really trying to bring down Chávez by funneling money to his opponents.
~snip~
Interestingly, it's illegal for a US political party or candidate to accept funding from any “foreign national,” which includes individuals, corporations and governments. Venezuela passed a similar law in 2010, but this is easily circumvented by channeling the money through NGOs.
More:
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/does-the-uss-funding-of-the-venezuelan-opposition-matter
Support the Venezuelan Protesters?
Weekend Edition Feb 28-Mar 02, 2014
Be Careful
Support the Venezuelan Protesters?
by ALAN MACLEOD
In recent days, angry anti-government protests have erupted in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. If we are to believe some influential Venezuelan bloggers, the government is sending teams of motorbike-riding death-squads roaming around rich neighbourhoods looking for people to kill. Social media is awash with pictures of children, apparently having been beaten to within an inch of their life by government thugs. This, the New York Times eagerly reports, is making Secretary of State John Kerry “increasingly concerned.” Surely this must be the beginning of a democratic uprising against an authoritarian dictator?
~snip~
But what on Earth has the White House got to do with all this? And why are so many respected international bodies talking about imperialism? You would be forgiven for not knowing, as no New York Times or Washington Post article has revealed the fact that Washington has been funding and training the heads of these protests for at least 12 years. Indeed, the US government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to overthrow the Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorean governments.
Those leading the protests, Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, are not students, but two of the wealthiest people in South America; Machado is a personal friend of George W. Bush. She was also involved in the last three opposition attempts to overthrow the government: in 2002, 2002-2003 and 2004. In 2002, with the financial, technical and political help of the US government, she and her co-conspirators kidnapped President Hugo Chavez and installed Pedro Carmona as President. He immediately suspended the constitution, sacked all politicians, sacked all judges in the country, suspended human rights, gave himself power to rule by decree, and even changed the name of the country. They were only stopped by a massive revolt, some 25-50 times the size of the current protests, of ordinary, poor Venezuelan citizens.
Prominent among the current protesters are students from Caracas’ elite, fee-paying universities, who wish for change in the country. And yet Venezuela has changed enormously since Hugo Chavez’s election in 1998. Poverty was reduced by 50%, extreme poverty by 72%. The bottom 40% of Venezuela’s population have seen their slice of the economic pie expand by nearly half and those in the economic percentile 40-70 have also seen their incomes rise.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/28/support-the-venezuelan-protesters/
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