Hosted by Justin Podur
I was on CFUV (Victoria University, BC, Canada) campus radio on Chris Cook’s excellent “Gorilla Radio” show. Though I haven’t been able to access it, Chris sent me a link to an audioblog, perhaps you can listen, here.
And the other show I was on was Chicago’s community radio station, WNUR 89.3, and a show called “This is Hell”. I don’t think the archive for the Feb 2 show is up yet, but the show’s site is here, and you can get it on mp3 here.
I’ve had some community radio and other media response to my article on Colombia’s civil war and Venezuela’s foreign policy. Uribe has seized on this moment to try to capitalize on the unpopularity of FARC and its kidnapping, leaving the minor matters of paramilitarism, state terror, massacres, murders of activists, displacement, and the handover of the economy to multinationals off the table. The UK Colombia Solidarity Campaign sent this bulletin around about the march, worth sharing here.
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A Humanitarian Agreement is Urgently Needed to Respect Life and Dignity
Continue reading “From the UK Colombia Solidarity Campaign – on tomorrow’s march against FARC”
[First published Jan 24/08. Updated Jan 29/08.]
Continue reading “Colombia’s war and Venezuela’s foreign policy”
[Published on ZNet: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16296. Updated Jan 29/08.)
This morning I was interviewed by Jeff Monaghan of the Ottawa community radio station, CKCU. I enjoyed being on the air to talk about Colombia and help build for an event on Thursday where my friend Manuel Rozental will speak. Jeff was kind enough to post the interview online. Listen here if you like…
So the other day the President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe Velez, killed the humanitarian accord negotiations that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, was trying to negotiate. You can read earlier entries in this blog for the details – some of FARC’s kidnapped prisoners in exchange for many of the guerrilla prisoners of the Colombian state, and a demilitarized zone. It would have been a start, but you can see from my previous blog entries that I was very doubtful that it would happen. Well, it didn’t, and Uribe decided to kill it in a very filthy way.
This time I’m not talking about Musharraf, but about Uribe, Colombia’s president. Some of the best analysis in English on Colombia comes from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), and this piece on Uribe’s recent bizarre accusations against Colombia’s Supreme Court is one such.
The ‘senior FARC official’ in Venezuela, Rodrigo Granda, said that the FARC would be providing ‘proof of life’ on its kidnapped prisoners, including Ingrid Betancourt, the green presidential candidate who was kidnapped many years ago, to the Venezuelan (and therefore Colombian) governments. He also said that FARC’s supreme commander, Manuel Marulanda, is interested in meeting Chavez to discuss the possibility that Venezuela could mediate more profound negotiations between the Colombian government and FARC, but awaits guarantees from the Colombian regime.
Chavez’s public statement is that FARC’s minimum conditions for a humanitarian accord, which would trade 45 FARC kidnapped prisoners for 500 government guerrilla prisoners, are the withdrawal of government troops from two provinces, Pradera and Florida. Without this withdrawal, no humanitarian accord.
By way of evaluation, I repeat that it seems very unlikely that this will succeed, and even if it does, it won’t really change the political or military balance at all. It could potentially benefit FARC politically and Chavez regionally, two reasons the Uribe/Bush/paramilitary regime are likely to reject it. Still, it is a genuinely humanitarian issue and deserves support, and those participating in it deserve respect for doing so.
Chavez announced that some negotiators for the Colombian guerrilla group FARC are in Venezuela.
Continue reading “Venezuela’s attempts to negotiate a humanitarian accord in Colombia”
My friend Simone Bruno followed up his article on the Colombian elections (blogged about last time) with a roundup. Who he thinks won?
Continue reading “Roundup of Colombian local elections (part 2)”