Colombia: 'Carbon credit' scheme a cover for land grab

[Peace Patriot]

2. A typical 'free trade for the rich" scheme: murder of the peasants; land grab.

When the creeps on TV extol the glories of "the marketplace," they never tell you what "free trade" is really all about. It's about murder and theft and the rich then trading what has been bloodily stolen--whether land or resources or some other valuable commodity--among themselves. In truth, there is no such thing as "free trade," because it starts with and ends with monopolies and is always--always--premised on violence.

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More of the article:

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"In February last year, Argos’ commercial monocrop plantation was approved for the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon trading scheme. This means it can sell carbon credits to industrialised countries trying to meet Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets.

"The company says the plantation will capture 37,000 tones of CO2 a year for 25 years – worth about $12.5 million in the current carbon market. It also plans to use another teak plantation in the nearby municipalities of El Carmen and Ovejas for the CDM.

"Argos claims the teak plantation is helping fight climate change and contributing to the sustainable development of a conflict scarred region, but the project has proved controversial.

"Survivors from the paramilitary era and land restitution campaigners claim the plantation and its CDM status is not only an attempt to cash in on the lucrative carbon credits market, but also legitimise a mass land grab that followed paramilitary violence, and prevent land restitution to a displaced population.

"The municipalities of San Onofre, El Carmen and Ovejas are in the Caribbean region Montes de Maria. A heavy guerilla presence in the area led to the creation of AUC bloc, the “Heroes of Montes de Maria” in 1997. The paramilitaries soon gained complete social and economic control of the region by murdering, torturing and displacing local farmers with the support of local state security forces.

"Between 1995 and 2005, 54 massacres were reported in the three municipalities of San Onofre, Ovejas and El Carmen and, says government agency Accion Social, 117,097 people have been displaced there since the paramilitaries first arrived.

"The AUC era ended with demobilisation in 2005. However, in 2008 El Espectacor reported a new invasion, of “strange personalities” in bulletproof Hummers.*

A land grab ensued, in which desperate, indebted or frightened people were pressured into selling property. Abandoned land was snapped up by speculators.

Next came big business. What had previously been an area of smallholder and subsistence farming rapidly became dominated by large-scale agro-industrial enterprises ― dairy, timber, African palm and teak.

As the land became more concentrated in fewer hands, the landscape of Montes de Maria began to change. Most of Montes de Maria is now owned by just a handful of large businesses, among them Argos, which owns an estimated 12,500 hectares." --from the OP

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3500-colombia-carbon-credit-scheme-a-cover-for-land-grab

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Given Obama's flip-flop on "free trade for the rich" between Colombia and the U.S., and Diebold's packing of Congress with far rightwing shills to endorse it, these bloodstained products--"dairy, timber, African palm and teak"--will soon be sold here, in the U.S.

The article goes on to chronicle the stories of individual small farmers who were terrorized by paramilitary and state forces. For instance:

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"Juan Carlos’ family owned land close to the El Palmar ranch, headquarters of the infamous local AUC leader known as “Cadena” and site of a mass grave containing 72 tortured and mutilated bodies.

“'We had to sell the land because we were in an unbearable situation,' he said, 'Our lives were in danger.'” --from the OP

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*This paragraph marks the transition of the old paramilitary murderers and thugs to the new ones under the Alvaro Uribe (Bush Jr pal) regime. Uribe ran Colombia as a criminal network, with, in my opinion, the biggest beneficiaries being the big, protected drug lords. He was given the resources of the U.S. "war on drugs," by the Bushwhacks, to consolidate the cocaine trade and better direct its trillion+ dollar revenue stream to certain beneficiaries (U.S. banksters, the Bush Cartel, the CIA). A SECONDARY goal was to benefit to entities like Argos (and also U.S. corps like Monsanto, Drummond Coal, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Chiquita and others). Additional goals included benefiting U.S. war profiteers (such as Dyncorp and Blackwater), supporting fascist elements in Colombia, and proceeding with a war on Venezuela, including sending the AUC's successors (the Black Eagles) into Venezuela to destabilize that country and topple its leftist government.

It is very important to understand that murder and mayhem are the first premises of "free trade." "Free trade" is NOT some sort of benign exchange of goods in a free and open market. This kind of trade--the kind promoted by U.S. corporate rulers and falsely named "free"--benefits only the rich few and is based on KILLING PEOPLE and threatening and terrorizing them, to gain control of valuable commodities--whether land, or natural resources, or infrastructure, or tax supported government projects--and to seize the levers of power to enable gross profiteering, for instance, by eliminating labor unions and labor protections.

In addition to murdering peasants and driving them from the land, Uribe's thugs, in the Colombian military and its paramilitaries, ALSO murdered thousands of trade unionists and other advocates of the poor, with Uribe running an illegal spying operation--aided by the Bush Junta--that was drawing up "hit lists" of labor and peasant leaders for assassination, as well as spying on judges and prosecutors for smears and blackmail purposes (and in order to anticipate their actions, to protect Uribe's criminal network).

But the FIRST impact of driving peasants from the land, in Colombia, is to allow the big drug lords to move in. The AUC, the Black Eagles and Uribe were supported by the COCAINE TRADE. Peasant farmers may grow a few coca leaf plants for local use (an Indigenous medicine herb) or to sell, to augment poverty incomes, in addition to growing food crops. These small operations had to be shut down and the land "freed" for the really big criminal operations. The U.S. "war on drugs" ($7 BILLION+ in military aid alone) was used, FIRST, to drive FIVE MILLION PEASANTS from their lands, by poisoning their crops and by mass murder.

LEGAL trade--of the "free trade" variety--THEN comes in, and constitutes the SECOND criminal enterprise, though it doesn't have that name. It now owns the government and writes the laws--and, whatever the rich and powerful want to do, they do. Thus, Argos.

Step One: Murder and mayhem in a reversed "war on drugs" (actually a war FOR drugs). Step Two: "free trade."