A few days ago I blogged about the end of the oil worker’s strike in Colombia, and how they won an agreement preventing the privatization at some cost to the workers. The pattern after a successful strike or demonstration in Colombia is very predictable: workers, especially union leaders, start getting picked off and assassinated by paramilitaries. That began yesterday with the murder of Fabio Burbano at his home, yesterday night, according to a communique from USO. He was a part-time worker and a union activist.
The State Department Doesn’t Know Where Castano Is
Gonzalo Gallegos, spokesman for the US State Dept. for the Western Hemisphere, said about Castano: “We have not been in contact with that individual. We don’t know where he is, and we don’t know where the information came from.”
The information he’s referring to is the information that Castano was smuggled — by Americans — out of Colombia and into Israel, via Panama. An official denial from the State Department and an official denial from the Israeli Ambassador in Colombia are enough to make a person really suspect that Castano is in Israel.
Continue reading “The State Department Doesn’t Know Where Castano Is”
Colombia’s ELN, Mexico, and the Government
Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group, the ELN (Ejercito de la Liberacion Nacional, or Army of National Liberation) is talking to the government and to the Mexican government about a possible peace negotiation with the Mexican government as guarantor.
If you are wondering how the Mexican governnment, which deploys pretty much the exact same techniques (a US-funded and trained military, paramilitary killers to commit massacres and assassinations to create a refugee problem and destroy the popular base of a guerrilla movement) if on a smaller scale, is supposed to guarantee a peace between Colombian guerrillas and the government, you are not alone.
A little bit about the ELN. The stereotypes about ELN, which have a grain of truth, are: that it at its founding it was more inspired by the Cuban revolution (whereas the FARC is much more a Colombian-based group that organized for self-defense against landowners, private armies, and state violence); that it is more interested in dialogue with the social movements (it tried to spur a major dialogue effort that included social movements years ago); and that it is militarily smaller and weaker than the FARC. Given Uribe’s hard-line stance against the guerrillas, it seems hard to imagine that he would accept a ‘peace’ that isn’t essentially a surrender. Given the history of Colombian guerrillas putting down their arms to get slaughtered, it is hard to imagine the ELN would go for such. So I’m not sure where these dialogues can go.
Carlos Castano not in Israel?
Israel’s ambassador to Colombia, Yair Recanati, said that Castano that the embassy hadn’t heard a word from him about him going to Israel, according to an interview with RCN Television (Colombia’s big television network). This doesn’t exactly mean that he’s not in Israel, although the ‘diplomatic sources’ who told AFP that he was in Israel (from which the Ha’aretz and El Tiempo stories drew) were never named. It seems that those looking for a definitive location for this paramilitary warlord are destined for disappointment… for now…
Carlos Castano in Israel
Colombia’s El Tiempo and Israel’s Haaretz are reporting that Carlos Castano, the head of Colombia’s paramilitaries, the drug trafficker, the mass murderer, has been smuggled into Israel after ‘disappearing’ about a month ago.
This does wonders for Israel’s ‘anti-terror’ posture, since Castano is a mega-terrorist. But then, when you kill thousands (that’s not an exaggeration) of helpless people over a period of many years, that’s called ‘counter-terror’ isn’t it? Maybe Castano, Sharon, Bush, and Uribe can all get together for a televised terrorist group hug.
Actually that Castano ended up in Israel shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. His autobiography, ‘Mi Confesion’, has nothing but praise for Israel and the country is where he says he learned what he knows about how to fight ‘terrorism’: he apparently took courses there on ‘anti-terror techniques’.
Two books if you’re ready to give up
If you’re ready to give up, these two books will not help you — they might push you over the edge, actually. Still, I recommend them.
Aristide goes to South Africa
Just got Aristide’s statement in the mail. He’s leaving Jamaica to go to South Africa. It’s actually a nice statement. Read it, read between the lines. And know that the battle for Haiti’s future isn’t over yet.
Statement by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
May 30, 2004
Kingston, Jamaica
As my family and I prepare to leave Jamaica for South Africa, I once again thank Prime Minister Patterson, the people of Jamaica and the entire Caribbean family for hosting us during this very special time. We extend this heartfelt appreciation on behalf of the Haitian refugees as well. For them too it’s a special time.
When have we ever seen a democratically elected president leave his rightful place against his will as it happened on February 29, 2004? It’s a special time. When did we ever see powerful hands set fire to a house then prevent the people inside from leaving? It’s a special time.
Since February 29, 2004, the level of suffering has dramatically increased in Haiti. While on one side thousands are being killed for supporting their elected government, on the other side, more than 2,000 people lost their lives because of the ecological disaster that we all recently witnessed. We stand in solidarity with the residents of Mapou, Font Verette, Jimani, and with all Haitians and Dominicans directly affected. We express our profound condolences to all those who lost a mother, father, husband, wife, child, relative or friend in this tragedy. Again, a special thanks to the Jamaican government and to all those who have answered the humanitarian call of these victims.
Claro, me siento en profunda communión con mis Hermanos y Hermanas de laRepública Dominicana. De nuevo, un abrazo fraternal a todas las víctimas mientras buscamos como seguir expresando esa solidaridad, dado que Haiti y la República Dominicana son dos alas del mismo pájaro.
As we prepare this return to the mother continent, we thank President Mbeki, the people of South Africa, the Member Nations of the Organization of African Union. After two visits to South Africa, it will now be our temporary home until we are back in Haiti. Of course the Haitian situation must be normalized; peace must be restored through democratic order. The solidarity shared by South Africa, CARICOM and the Organization of African Union to promote peace and democracy in Haiti crystallizes the world-wide African unity that will continue to flourish.
Wherever we are, always united, we will continue to promote peace. This, more than ever , is what the world needs today. We must all work for peace, not war. We must all work for a better life in a world where four-fifths of the population consumes only one-fifth of the world’s resources. And we must all work for the full respect of this democratic principle: one person one vote. Peace is linked to freedom. May the spirit of our 200 years of independence guide us in this special time.
Thank-you.
It’s the new world water, and every drop counts
A reader sent me this article in the New Scientist. It is about a neglected aspect of the US/Israel war on the Palestinian population: the fact that it is a water war. I don’t have the statistics with me (Vandana Shiva cites a few of them in her book, Water Wars), but Israeli per capita water use is vast compared to Palestinians. Israeli agriculturalists are allowed to dig wells several times deeper than Palestinians. Gaza is always short of drinking water and every time it is besieged the Israelis essentially use the denial of water as a weapon. And, most tellingly, the Apartheid Wall‘s path follows the West Bank aquifer very closely.
The New Scientist article reports on a ‘plan’ for desalination plants to supply the Palestinian territories with water, while the Israelis freely use the Palestinian aquifer for their own water needs, as they are doing now.
This may come as a surprise to readers, but the US and Israeli officials agree that the plan is a good one, while experts, scientists, and Palestinians all agree that it is a bad one — all strictly from a technical point of view, of course. The immorality of a campaign of ethnic cleansing as part of a wholesale water theft (or is the water theft part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing?) doesn’t really come up in the article.
(thanks to the reader who sent me the article. points to any reader who can identify the song and the artist from which the title of this blog entry was taken and email it to me).
Repercussions of the ‘bloodbath/massacre’ in Saudi Arabia
First, I’m very pleased to note that it seems Tim Wise is blogging again, as well as UTS.
Today’s hypocrisy. Looking at the headlines of various newspapers today I saw news of a ‘massacre’ and a ‘bloodbath’ in Saudi Arabia by Al Qaeda. It was a brutal hostage-taking operation that was done, and certainly it was both a massacre and a bloodbath. I didn’t notice these media outlets calling what Israel did in Rafah a ‘bloodbath’ or what the US is doing in Najaf right now a ‘massacre’.
An interesting article in the Independent speculates about the possible implications for the world economy if the Saudi regime gets into real trouble. The Saudi regime is a real anomaly in the world. It is the definition of an imperial gas station: virtually created to be that. One book on the topic, quite old, is ‘Arabia Without Sultans’, I think by Halliday, and another one called ‘A House Built on Sand’. There’s a novel called ‘Cities of Salt’ that is a classic, by an author who was exiled for writing it and actually passed on recently. Both books are hard to get your hands on, but well worth it. Since neither are recent though, it’s important to note that Saudi Arabia is the swing producer that has the power to make sure world oil markets go the way the US wants them to go. It can bust any quota. No other country comes close in terms of sheer endowment of oil, and that’s why it’s so firmly under the thumb of the US. Some believe that the Iraq invasion was to try to give the US some extra leverage over the Saudis by gaining direct control over another major producer. There’s more…
But oil consumption has increased so much and so continuously that even Saudi Arabia can’t keep up, and if the Iraqi resistance keeps on keeping Iraqi oil from flowing (pipelines are very difficult to defend — all the brutality of the US/Colombian paramilitary regime can’t defend the pipelines from being blown up in that country) then there won’t be capacity enough to keep prices down. Rahul Mahajan blogged a little about this recently.
There is a lot of conservation literature (some of it rather poor science, like Rifkin’s ‘Hydrogen Economy’, which somehow neglects to emphasize that while hydrogen might be a good way to store energy, you have to generate electricity from some other source to create hydrogen; but some of it better than that, like Amory Lovins’s work on ‘soft energy paths’ in the 1970s) that could be brought to bear to avert the numerous catastrophic possibilities of the path we’re on (one is simply running out of oil so that people freeze in the dark; another is climate change). But that would take some rather serious political changes.
Colombia: Cali building occupation ends
A couple days ago I blogged about the heroic union SINTRAEMCALI’s attempts to stop the creeping privatization of the public utilities company in the city of Cali, Colombia. I noted that it was a high-risk maneuver, and they made a risk assessment yesterday after the National government responded with overwhelming repression and decided to call off the occupation. The assessment of the situation by Nathan Eisenstadt of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign in the UK is mixed:
The agreement is more of a short term pacifier to facilitate further negotiations with a commitment to reviewing the Government’s recent restructuring proposal and a continuing dialogue including public consultation regarding its implications. It’s not a full victory for either side and accordingly can be viewed as victory for both. On the part of the Government the CAM Tower is no longer occupied by the workers so victory could be claimed, but before the occupation occurred eviction was (obviously) not the Government’s goal. On the part of workers the issues surrounding the new proposal and its implications have been brought to the fore, negotiations opened and the people mobilized.
This is by no means the end, the threat of privatisation, increased tariffs, and removal of subsidies to impoverished sectors remains very real. What has been achieved is to show that in spite of his dogmatic stance and unremitting anti democratic tactics that the people are still ready to resist the President´s onslaught and present viable alternatives. Something that defined this battle from the last was the lack of build up, that few knew the implications of a rapidly imposed proposal with sufficient time for word to spread. Times change and effective methods one year, with one government, do not necessarily work in same way with the next. There remains much work to be done and this was the first step in a new process rather than the last in an established one…
When I hear about these struggles I wonder what it would take for movements in North America to have that kind of hard-headed strategy, that kind of sense of how to intervene in a principled and effective way, that kind of understanding of the forces at play. Circumstances in Colombia are incomparably more difficult than in North America. Repression in Colombia is in a completely different world from anything North American unionists (or any other activists) face. Why does it seem that they are able to accomplish so much more?