Official: Colombia to arrest ex-lawmaker (bribes to re-elect Bush ally)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Official: Colombia to arrest ex-lawmaker
By CARLOS GONZALEZ – 1 hour ago

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia's Supreme Court ordered the arrest of an ex-congresswoman who says she reversed her position on a vote years ago in return for political favors from associates of President Alvaro Uribe, a government official said.

The official in the chief prosecutor's office spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make the disclosure. Judicial police employed by the prosecutor's office execute the Supreme Court's arrest warrants.

Leading Colombian paper El Tiempo and several other news outlets also reported that an arrest warrant was issued for former lawmaker Yidis Medina.

In an interview broadcast last weekend but recorded nearly four years ago, Medina said she switched her vote on a bill that ultimately allowed Uribe to run for re-election in 2006. She was the swing vote on the measure, which passed 18 to 16.

She said Uribe called her afterward to thank her and to confirm that "what was agreed upon would be done."

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5goIddYDyi_9i4kRDkyKVddprvsQAD909C90O0

[Judi Lynn]

1. John Pilger's remarks, posted by DU'er "magbana" in Latin America forum today:

Latin America: the attack on democracy
John Pilger

Published 24 April 2008

John Pilger argues that an unreported war is being waged by the US to restore power to the privileged classes at the expense of the poor

~snip~

Under "Plan Colombia", more than $6bn in arms, planes, special forces, mercenaries and logistics have been showered on some of the most murderous people on earth: the inheritors of Pinochet's Chile and the other juntas that terrorised Latin America for a generation, their various gestapos trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia. "We not only taught them how to torture," a former American trainer told me, "we taught them how to kill, murder, eliminate." That remains true of Colombia, where government-inspired mass terror has been documented by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and many others. In a study of 31,656 extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances between 1996 and 2006, the Colombian Commission of Jurists found that 46 per cent had been murdered by right-wing death squads and 14 per cent by Farc guerrillas. The para militaries were responsible for most of the three million victims of internal displacement. This misery is a product of Plan Colombia's pseudo "war on drugs", whose real purpose has been to eliminate the Farc. To that goal has now been added a war of attrition on the new popular democracies, especially Venezuela.

US special forces "advise" the Colombian military to cross the border into Venezuela and murder and kidnap its citizens and infiltrate paramilitaries, and so test the loyalty of the Venezuelan armed forces. The model is the CIA-run Contra campaign in Honduras in the 1980s that brought down the reformist government in Nicaragua. The defeat of the Farc is now seen as a prelude to an all-out attack on Venezuela if the Vene zuelan elite - reinvigorated by its narrow referendum victory last year - broadens its base in state and local government elections in November.

America's man and Colombia's Pinochet is President Álvaro Uribe. In 1991, a declassified report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency revealed the then Senator Uribe as having "worked for the Medellín Cartel" as a "close personal friend" of the cartel's drugs baron, Pablo Escobar. To date, 62 of his political allies have been investigated for close collaboration with paramilitaries. A feature of his rule has been the fate of journalists who have illuminated his shadows. Last year, four leading journalists received death threats after criticising Uribe. Since 2002, at least 31 journalists have been assassinated in Colombia. Uribe's other habit is smearing trade unions and human rights workers as "collaborators with the Farc". This marks them. Colombia's death squads, wrote Jenny Pearce, author of the acclaimed Under the Eagle: US Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean (1982), "are increasingly active, confident that the president has been so successful in rallying the country against the Farc that little attention will shift to their atrocities".

Also to be found at this link: http://www.newstatesman.com/200804240026

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you haven't heard about this, I hope you'll find interesting. We've seen proof of this loathesome viciousness already several years ago, when small articles mentioning the across the border raids started surfacing.

[Solly Mack]

2. Thank you, btw!

K&R


I don't usually comment but I do keep up and I much appreciate these threads!

[arcos]

3. Drip, drip, drip...

This so seems like the Bush administration when everyone thought it would eventually go down.
Hopefully, unlike Bush, Uribe will not get to finish his term.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Chavez puts terms limits to A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE! Uribe sneaks it thru with BRIBES.

Who is the "dictator"?

Now we know WHY the Bushites demonized Chavez for wanting to do what FDR did for four terms--stay in office AT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE--and why they accused him of wanting to a "dictator" because he proposed it FOR A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE.

...cuz their little worm Uribe was bribing, bullying and kneecapping legislators behind the scenes to do the same thing--only ILLEGALLY, by committing CRIMES.

And now we know who's running Colombia's P.R.--Karl Rove--or is it that Bushite fascists all think alike, like the scumbags they are: If you're committing a crime, get out ahead of it in the news reports and ACCUSE SOMEONE ELSE of the same crime, as cover for your own--Either to create the impression that "everybody does it," or to give the Associated Pukes something to write about that is NOT your crimes.

And of course BRIBING officials to get yourself another term is okay with the Bush Junta, but putting it to a vote of the people is tyranny!

Mind-boggling, Alice in Wonderland, BushWorld.

[Judi Lynn]

8. You've nailed a truth people should spend some time considering.

Why IS it the corporate media have screeched themselves hoarse over the referendum, well announced and discussed, yet have done everything in their power to make sure this information on Uribe stays BURIED just the way they like it?

It doesn't seem to affect them here that Uribe targets journalists in his countries, calls them out, labels them as FARC lovers publicly right before the death threats start, and some of them get slaughtered or simply flee for all they're worth, leaving all the other journalists who hope to stay in their own home country to SELF-CENSOR, which they readily admit, just to live from day to day.

[bemildred]

5. Scandal reaches into inner circle

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Sen. Jorge Enrique Gomez replaced a jailed senator, who had replaced a senator who resigned under criminal investigation, who had replaced a jailed senator. But the evangelical preacher's lack of legislative experience hardly matters — Congress doesn't do much these days anyway.

Ten percent of Colombia's 268 federal lawmakers are behind bars and another 10 percent, including the Senate's president, are under investigation. And with the arrest of a cousin this week, the scandal has grown uncomfortably close to President Alvaro Uribe, Washington's closest ally in Latin America.

The scandal revolves around allegations that illegal right-wing paramilitaries helped pro-Uribe lawmakers and governors get elected as they rid much of Colombia of left-wing guerrilla bands. In some cases, the politicians are accused of plotting killings with warlords.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5731946.html

[AlphaCentauri]

6. Yidis will be accused of been a FARC sympathizer

Based on this allegations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVPhOwHqSng

[bluesmail]

7. K&R for *'s inability to keep this hushed up.

[Peace Patriot]

9. Yup, we've got to rememer that there are people within Colombia and throughout

Latin America who are working hard--at the risk of their lives--to get the truth out, expose Uribe and isolate the Colombian fascists. I've been rather amazed by our 'Democratic' Congress' steely spine on the Colombian "free trade" deal. It's just about the only positive thing they've done (which is why they have an approval rating worse than Bush's!). But it's mainly because PEOPLE RISKED THEIR LIVES to get information to the pro-labor Congress members--amazingly courageous union leaders, prosecutors, judges, human rights workers and journalists in Colombia, and elsewhere. It's also a credit to the consciences of people who have turned away from death squad activity--such as the whistleblower who fled to Canada and who is now being stalked by a Colombian death squad (--recently in the news, that a contract has been put out on him).

These are the REASONS that Bush and cabal can't keep it hushed up--courageous people who have risked everything to expose it.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Clinton friend adds his two cents: US movie boss urges approval of free trade pact with Colombia

US movie boss urges approval of free trade pact with Colombia
The Associated Press
Published: April 28, 2008

WASHINGTON: Hollywood's top lobbyist called Monday for the U.S. Congress to pass a Colombia free trade agreement that has been held up by Democrats, calling trade the "lifeblood" of the movie business.

Motion Picture Association of America head Dan Glickman, a former Democratic congressman and Agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration, told a National Press Club audience that 60 percent of Hollywood's box office and home video receipts come from overseas.

"There is a limit to what U.S. consumers can buy," Glickman said.

"I worry that the process to approve trade agreements has become entirely too political in this country," he said. "The alternative in my judgment is slower economic growth and giving up the ball to other countries that are more than happy to supplant us politically and economically as well, and I think that's a big mistake for us if America wants to engage the world in the future."

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/28/america/NA-GEN-US-Movie-Lobbyist.php



Glickman

Glickman says screw the grieving families of all those HUNDREDS of murdered union workers. What a prince.

Guy needs to pick up a book once in a while, if it's not too much trouble.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Trade deal with Colombia bad for workers

Last Updated: 5:25 am | Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Trade deal with Colombia bad for workers
BY DOUGLAS E. SIZEMORE

We are in a recession, and all signs indicate things will continue to deteriorate. So what does President Bush insist upon? A "free trade agreement" with a country well-known for widespread human rights and workers' rights abuses.

Forget that the Bush trade agenda contributed to a trade deficit of $712 billion in 2007. Forget the loss of 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs during the Bush presidency. Forget that we are falling behind in advanced technology products, autos, even aerospace.

However, the Colombia free trade agreement is about more than the failed policies of the past. The issue is murder; cold-blooded murder of 39 trade unionists in Colombia last year, and 17 already this year. The killings are often brutal, meant to intimidate every citizen.

These murders are happening because workers are speaking up for economic freedom. They are pursuing decent wages and benefits to overcome the constant poverty that faces 55 percent of Colombia's people.

Aside from the ghastly violence, reports from respected international organizations such as the U.N. International Labor Organization show that the laws of Colombia fall far short of core workers' rights, considered a minimum set of rights to be guaranteed by all countries regardless of level of development. The Colombian government has systematically failed to enforce even those laws.

More:
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080429/EDIT02/804290315/1090