¡Salve Correa y Ecuador ! Cuatro lecciones

por Atilio A. Boron para El Correo
 
La aplastante victoria de Rafael Correa, con un porcentaje de votos y una diferencia entre él y su más inmediato contendiente que ya hubieran querido tener Obama, Hollande y Rajoy, deja algunas lecciones que es bueno recapitular.

Primero, y lo más obvio, la ratificación del mandato popular para seguir por el camino trazado pero, como dijo Correa en su conferencia de prensa, avanzando más rápida y profundamente. Sabe el reelecto presidente que los próximos cuatro años serán cruciales para asegurar la irreversibilidad de las reformas que, al cabo de diez años de gestión, habrán concluido con la refundación de un Ecuador mejor, más justo y más sustentable. En la conferencia de prensa ya aludida dijo textualmente : « O cambiamos ahora al país o no lo cambiamos más ». El proyecto de crear un orden social basado en el socialismo del sumak kawsay, el « buen vivir » de nuestros pueblos originarios, exige actuar con rapidez y determinación. Pero esto también lo saben la derecha vernácula y el imperialismo, y por eso se puede predecir que van a redoblar sus esfuerzos para evitar la consolidación del proceso de la « Revolución Ciudadana ».

Segunda lección : que si un gobierno obedece al mandato popular y produce políticas públicas que benefician a las grandes mayorías nacionales –que al fin y al cabo de eso se trata la democracia–, la lealtad del electorado puede darse por segura. La manipulación de las oligarquías mediáticas, la conspiración de las clases dominantes y las estratagemas del imperialismo se estrellan contra el muro de la fidelidad popular.

Tercero, y como corolario de lo anterior, el aplastante triunfo de Correa demuestra que la conformista tesis tan común en el pensamiento político convencional, a saber : que « el poder desgasta », sólo es válida en democracia cuando el poder se ejerce en beneficio de las minorías adineradas o cuando los procesos de transformación social pierden espesor, titubean y terminan por detenerse. Cuando en cambio se gobierna teniendo a la vista el bienestar de las víctimas del sistema, pasa lo que ocurrió ayer en Ecuador : si en la presidencial de 2009 Correa ganó en la primera vuelta con el 51 por ciento de los votos, ayer lo hizo, con el recuento existente al momento de escribir esta nota (un 25 por ciento de los votos escrutados), con el 57 por ciento. En lugar de « desgaste », consolidación y acrecentamiento del poder residencial.

Cuarto y último : con esta elección se supera la parálisis decisional generada por una Asamblea Nacional que se opuso con intransigencia a algunas de las más importantes iniciativas propuestas por Correa. Si bien hay pocas cifras disponibles al respecto, no caben dudas de que Alianza País tendrá la mayoría absoluta de los asambleístas y con chances de alcanzar una representación parlamentaria que le permita contar con una mayoría calificada de dos tercios.

Conclusión : los tiempos han cambiado. La ratificación plebiscitaria de un presidente que precipitó un formidable proceso de cambios sociales y económicos dentro del Ecuador, que protagoniza la integración latinoamericana, que incorporó su país al ALBA, que puso fin a la presencia estadounidense en la base de Manta, que realizó una ejemplar auditoría de la deuda externa reduciendo significativamente su monto, que le otorga asilo a Julian Assange y que retira al Ecuador del Ciadi, no es algo que se vea todos los días.

¡Felicitaciones Rafael Correa, salud Ecuador !

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has been re-elected for a third term with more than 55% of the vote

As of right now, President Correa has been reelected with 56.72% of the vote.  Great news!

Julian Assange - Christmas 2012 - Ecuador embassy in London

The Americas against the Anglosphere

Excellent news! According to SkyNews,

The Organisation of American States (OAS) has called a meeting of foreign ministers for August 24 to discuss the stand-off sparked when Ecuador granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Twenty-three countries voted on Friday for the resolution proposed by Ecuador to convene the meeting at its Washington headquarters to discuss Quito's stand-off with Britain over Assange. The US, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago voted no.

The vote was taken at emergency talks to discuss the Assange case (...) The US envoy to the OAS, Carmen Lomellin, said a meeting of its foreign ministers 'would be unhelpful and harmful to the OAS's reputation as an institution'.

Furthermore, Lenta.ru reports that Ecuador is also calling for an extraordinary meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to discuss the Assange case.

It seems that the Anglosphere is now isolated from, and on a collision course with, the rest of the Americas.

Good!

(I can't believe that even Colombia voted against the USA... amazing, no?) 

Ecuador grants asylum to Assange - FULL SPEECH by FM Ricardo Patino

Commentary: Even though I had little doubt that Ecuador would grant asylum to Assange, it was really heart-warming for me to listen to the absolutely beautiful statement of Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, in particular after learning of the mind-boggling arrogance of the Brits who dared to cross a line very few, if any, governments ever dared cross: threaten to violate the sovereignty of an embassy (the only other example I can think of is the USAF bombing the PRC embassy in Belgrade - which everybody forgot, of course).

Does anybody remember that even the Iranian revolutionary government did not dare to openly say that it had seized the US embassy in Tehran, but that it hid behind a student movement instead? Yes, I know, this was a *very* thin fig-leaf for a regime which right in the wake of the Islamic revolution was rather over the top in most of its actions at the time. But even that regime did not have the arrogance to openly declare that it had violated one of the most basic rules of civilized behavior: one does not directly violate the diplomatic immunity of an official embassy.

Do you remember the Hungarian Roman Catholic Cardinal József Mindszenty sought refuge in the US Embassy in Budapest where he lived for FIFTEEN YEARS and yet neither the Hungarian Communists nor the Soviets dared to seize him?

Wikipedia has an interesting article entitled List of people who took refuge in a diplomatic mission with a list of individuals who took refuge in diplomatic missions. Do you know how many of these were seized by force inside these embassies? Zero!

And yet the British government does not mind showing less shame than the Iranian revolutionary regime or less restraint than the Hungarian or Soviet Communists.

This also goes to show that the Brits have learned nothing since the Malvinas War.  By bulling Ecuador with such arrogance the Brits have just shown again how they are fundamentally unable to understand the cultures and people of Latin America.

The most pathetic of this all is, of course, that the British "poodle" only dares to bark because of the high patronage of Uncle Sam, whose orders both the UK and Sweden are slavishly obeying.

There is a big opportunity in all this, however.  Should these British threats materialize in one fashion or another (storming the embassy, cutting off utilities, etc.) this would strongly polarize the Latin American continent which would be highly beneficial as only a few Latin American countries - like Colombia - are really and openly US colonies, and polarization of the continent would very much isolate them.

One more thought: does anybody out there still seriously believe that Assange is a US agent or that Wikileaks is an Israeli operation?

The Saker

DemocracyNow! reports about the events in Ecuador

COUP IN ECUADOR

EDITOR’S NOTE

Follow @Evagolinger on Twitter for up to the minute updates on the Ecuador situation

A third coup d’etat is underway against a nation member of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), a Latin American bloc of nations that opposes US hegemony in the region and has created new mechanisms for trade and integration based on principles of solidarity and independence from imperial powers.

In 2002, a coup d’etat by opposition forces backed by Washington briefly ousted Hugo Chavez from power in Venezuela. The coup was defeated by the people of Venezuela during a popular uprising rejecting the attempt to destroy democracy. Chavez returned to power two days later. Since then, Venezuela has suffered numerous destabilization attempts, economic sabotages, psychological warfare – both nationally and internationally – electoral intervention, assassination attempts against President Chavez, and a vicious international campaign to portray Venezuela as a dictatorship. This past weekend, opposition forces, funded and supported by US agencies, regained key seats in the nation’s legislature; a platform from where they can intensify their efforts to provoke regime change.

In June 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a coup d’etat backed by the Obama Administration and promoted by military and right wing forces in Honduras. Since then, Honduras has never recovered its democracy. Zelaya remains in exile.

Now, Ecuador is victim of a coup against President Rafael Correa, an outspoken, solid revolutionary who ousted the US military base from his nation last year and has taken a firm stance against the US capitalist economic model imposed in his nation years ago. Security forces have risen up against his government, backed by political organizations funded by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

An emergency meeting has been convened by ALBA and UNASUR nations in Argentina late Thursday night. President Correa’s life was in danger Thursday, as he remained sequestered by coup forces.

Another coup against ALBA attempts to impede Latin American liberation and integration, but the people remain defiant, with dignity.

URGENT: COUP UNDERWAY IN ECUADOR

Eva Golinger reports:

Coup Attempt in Ecuador
2pm EST

A coup attempt is underway against the government of President Rafael Correa. On Thursday morning, groups of police forces rebelled and took over key strategic sites in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. President Correa immediately went to the military base occupied by the police leading the protest to work out a solution to the situation. The police protesting claimed a new law passed on Wednesday regarding public officials would reduce their benefits.

Nonetheless, President Correa affirmed that his government has actually doubled police wages over the past four years. The law would not cut benefits but rather restructure them.

The law was used as an excuse to justify the police protest. But other forces are behind the chaos, attempting to provoke a coup led by former president Lucio Guitierrez, who was impeached by popular revolt in Ecuador in 2005.

“This is a coup attempt led by Lucio Guitierrez”, denounced Correa on Thursday afternoon via telephone. Correa was attacked by the police forces with tear gas. "Kill me if you need to. There will be other Correa's", said the President, addressing the police rebellion. He was hospitalized shortly after at a military hospital, which has now been taking over by coup forces. As of 1pm Thursday, police forces were attempting to access his hospital room to possibly assassinate him.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño called on supporters to go to the hospital to defend Correa and prevent his assassination. Military forces took over an air base in Quito to prevent air transit and took over nearby streets to prevent Correa's supporters from mobilizing towards the hospital. Other security forces took over the parliament, preventing legislators from accessing the state institution and causing severe chaos and violence.

Thousands of supporters filled Quito’s streets, gathering around the presidential palace, backing Correa and rejecting the coup attempt.

At 2pm EST, the Ecuadorian government declared an emergency state.

Countries throughout the region expressed support for Correa and condemned the destabilization. The Organization of American States in Washington called an emergency meeting at 2:30pm EST. ALBA nations and UNASUR are also convening.

Ecuador is a member of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) and a close ally of Venezuela. Last June, Honduras, a prior ALBA member, was victim of a coup d'etat that forced President Manuel Zelaya from power. The coup was backed by Washington. In 2002, Venezuela was also subject to a Washington-backed coup d'etat that briefly ousted President Chavez from power. He was returned to office within 48 hours after millions of Venezuelans protested and defeated the US-backed coup leaders.

Ecuador is the newest victim of destabilization in South America.

USAID channels millions annually into political groups against Correa that could be behind the coup attempt.

Freedom Rider: Hugo Chavez and the Obama/Clinton Twins

(Many thanks to Cem for this submission. Original article here - the Saker)

by BAR Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley

With Republican candidate John McCain singing "bomb, bomb Iran", muttering about keeping troops in Iraq another hundred years, and offering US military solutions to the world's every problem, voters might reasonably expect Democratic candidates to offer sane and sensible alternatives to the aggressive foreign policies of the Bush regime. But both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seem poised to continue the Bush regime's support of death squads and narco-kleptocracy in Columbia. Neither Democrat complains when Columbia's US trained and equipped army conducts murderous cross-border forays into Ecuador, or masses on the Venezuelan border. When it comes to foreign policy in South America, this year's Democrats offer little, if any "change".

Freedom Rider: Hugo Chavez and the Obama/Clinton Twins
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

If the next president is a Democrat, there will be no change in direction from Bush regime foreign policy. Violations of international law will continue. Outright lies will be told to the international community and to the media, and the damage done by the Bush regime will not be undone.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have confirmed it. They are both on record in support of Bush administration policy that encouraged one South American country to attack another. They are on record in support of an assassination plot that brought three nations to the brink of war.

Recent news media headlines, “Venezuela masses troops on Colombian border” would lead one to believe that the crisis involving Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador was the result of wrong doing on the part of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The media rarely reveal that the president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, violated international law by first bombing and then sending troops into neighboring Ecuador on March 1st.

“Clinton and Obama are on record in support of an assassination plot that brought three nations to the brink of war.”

FARC, a Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces for Colombia, is a guerrilla movement that has been engaged in battle against the Colombian government since the 1960s. Raul Reyes was the FARC international spokesman in the midst of negotiations for a prisoner exchange and release of hostages held by FARC and Colombia. Those negotiations took place with the full knowledge of the Colombian government and were close to being successfully concluded.

Hugo Chavez was at the center of the negotiations and worked with France, Spain, Switzerland and the International Red Cross on the prisoner release. The previous week four Colombians had been released by FARC and were given a grand welcome in Caracas, Venezuela. Reyes was too successful, and Uribe and Bush decided that he had to go.

With the help of the American military, Reyes’ satellite phone calls to Hugo Chavez were tracked and his location was pinpointed. On March 1^st, Raul Reyes and 17 other FARC members were killed as they slept, first in a bombing attack and then execution style by Colombian troops. After the attack, the Colombian military took Reyes’ body and displayed it for the international media, a violation of the Geneva Conventions and of any standard of ethics.

Three envoys sent by French president Nicolas Sarkozy were scheduled to meet with Reyes on the day he was killed. Two days before the killings, Sarkozy said he was prepared to go to Colombia to free one of the hostages personally, French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. His so-called American friends put him in his place and let him know he would not be allowed into Uncle Sam’s back yard without permission. If Sarkozy thought he was a Bush friend, he may want to rethink that assessment.

“Raul Reyes and 17 other FARC members were killed as they slept, first in a bombing attack and then execution style by Colombian troops on Ecuadoran soil.”

While the Bush administration was fanning flames in South America and insulting allies, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama jumped on the imperialist bandwagon. Neither of them criticized a government sponsored assassination, the violation of a nation’s sovereignty, or the sabotage of a humanitarian effort. Both parroted Bush administration lies about Hugo Chavez.

Hillary Clinton read straight from Bush talking points. “Rather than criticizing Colombia's actions in combating terrorist groups in the border regions, Venezuela and Ecuador should work with their neighbor to ensure that their territories no longer serve as safe havens for terrorist groups. After reviewing this situation, I am hopeful that the government of Ecuador will determine that its interests lie in closer cooperation with Colombia on this issue. Hugo Chavez must call a halt to this provocative action. As President, I will work with our partners in the region and the OAS to support democracy, promote an end to conflict, and to press Chavez to change course.”

“Neither Clinton nor Obama criticized a government sponsored assassination, the violation of a nation’s sovereignty, or the sabotage of a humanitarian effort.”

According to Hillary, Ecuador should just shut up and allow Colombia to kill within its borders. Only Chavez’s actions in defense of his nation are deemed provocative by the woman who says she alone can be trusted during international emergencies. In addition, she didn’t reveal that Raul Reyes was the FARC contact for officials in her husband’s administration. If she truly reviewed the situation and came up with this statement, her claims to be the best commander-in-chief are laughable at best.

The Obama statement is equally disturbing. "The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The recent targeted killing of a senior FARC leader must not be used as a pretense to ratchet up tensions or to threaten the stability of the region. The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have a responsibility to ensure that events not spiral out of control, and to peacefully address any disputes through active diplomacy with the help of international actors."

It is true that FARC has been fighting the Colombian government for four decades, but that is not the whole story. After a cease fire in 1984, FARC formed a political party and won seats in Colombia’s parliament. After participating in the democratic process, more than 4,000 FARC members and other activists were assassinated in 1985. FARC rationally concluded that coming above ground was not a prescription for change in their country. (*link alternet)

“Hillary Clinton read straight from Bush talking points. Obama gave Colombia the right to invade a neighboring as long as they claim to fight terrorism.”

Not only is his historical knowledge wanting, but Obama’s blithe acknowledgement of a “targeted killing” is disgraceful. So too is his assertion that it really isn’t that big a deal, and the wronged nation, Ecuador, should just try to get along with the provocateurs. He too gives Colombia the right to invade a neighboring country in clear violation of international law as long as they claim to fight terrorism. As for “international actors,” they were working to insure peace in the region before they were given a very public smack down by the United States.

The Obama/Clinton statements about the South American crisis are pretty much like their statements on every other foreign policy issue. They differ very little from one another or from the Bush administration. If they don’t speak out now against an unpopular lame duck, why should they work to undo his policies? The sad truth is that they neither one of them will. Bush style diplomacy will still win the day in the November elections. Fortunately Hugo Chavez will also be in office. There will be at least one leader willing to speak truth to American power.

Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?

By James J. Brittan (from Counterpunch via Informationclearinghouse)

While virtually every country in Central and South America, including the Caribbean, has waged in on the debate of the Colombian state conducting an illegal military campaign within Ecuadorian sovereign territory, resulting in the deaths of various high ranking officials in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP), the United States have remained virtually silent. Such silence from the US is quite perplexing consdiering the administrations of Ronald Regan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have wielded a twenty-two year old assault on this insurgency movement.

The United States have deemed the FARC-EP to be, what it considers, a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Therefore, would one not expect, during the so-called ‘war on terror,’ some attention from Washington - other than a few sentences by state officials - following the deaths of both Comandante Raúl Reyes and Comandante Iván Ríos within less than six days of each other; two of the seven highest-ranking members of the organization (lest we forget the hourly visual barrage of images related to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 or his execution in 2006). The following makes a case that the United States’ silence has far more to do with a plausible connection to the deaths of Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos rather than simple disinterest.

The Case of Comandante Raúl Reyes (Murdered March 1, 2008)

It has become general knowledge that shortly after midnight on March 1, 2008, the President of Colombia Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderón, and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos sanctioned an illegal air and ground assault against the 48th Front of the FARC-EP, which resulted in the death of Comandante Raúl Reyes, one of the members of the insurgency’s Secretariat of the Central High Command, Julian Conrado, a member of the Central High Command (and the insurgency’s most recognized cultural icon through his work as a revolutionary folk-musician), and twenty other members of the FARC-EP.

Hours after the assault had taken place Defense Minister Santos reiterated that Colombian forces began the operation with an air assault followed by a group of Colombian soldiers engaging in a ground combat against members of the FARC-EP Front. Santos expressed that recently obtained intelligence information related to a satellite phone used by Comandante Reyes enabled the Colombian military to pin-point the location of the encampment, subsequently enabling the campaign to take place.

During meetings of the OAS, state officials and representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru condemned the assault. Unsurprisingly, one of the only backers of the illegal military incursion was the US. Nevertheless, President George W. Bush and J. Robert Manzanares, the United States’ representative during the OAS meetings, had very little to say about the greatest achievement ever realized by the United States’ principal ally in Latin America’s forty-four year old civil war with the FARC-EP.

When asked if the Uribe and Santos administration had informed Washington preceding the transgression on Ecuadorian soil, Tom Casey, a spokesman for the US State Department, hesitantly stated “No, I’m not aware that we found out about this other than after the fact”. Less than assuring complete impartiality, Colombia’s Chief of Police, General Oscar Naranjo declared that “I can say for sure that the operation was autonomous”. As General Naranjo continued his press conference he did however reveal that the United States had, in fact, been involved in operations connected to the Colombian military assault in Ecuador, albeit indirectly,.

General Naranjo asserted that no external forces were involved in the FARC-EP-targeted attack but he did offer that “it is no secret that … a very strong alliance with federal agencies of the US” exists between the Colombian military. Shortly following this statement, a high ranking official within the Colombian Defense Ministry leaked that the United States had been involved in the March 1, 2008 operation. In actuality, the US, through satellite intelligence gathering over southern Colombia and Northern Ecuador, had been able to retrieve signals from the FARC-EP’s 48th Front and handed over the identification of the satellite telephone being used by the insurgency to intelligence sectors of the Colombian police. The informant went on to add that it was only then that Colombian officials were able to process the data, thereby enabling the Colombian state to decipherer the exact location of Comandante Reyes. The informant’s account of the satellite phone effectively mirrors that made during Defense Minister Santos’ first press conference. The leaked information demonstrated that the US was, at the very least, indirectly involved in the actions of March 1, 2008. That was until March 7, 2008.

On Friday, Ecuador’s Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval announced that after further investigation of the area targeted during the March 1 attack it was revealed that the site had been bombarded with at least five bombs (‘Smart Bombs’). All five detonations were within a 50-meter diameter during a nocturnal attack, a virtually impossible achievement when concerning the military capabilities and resources of the Colombian Air and Armed Forces. Sandoval claimed that the arms used during the incursion can only be deployed through the use of aircraft which have the capacity to fly at a considerable height and velocity, weaponry that is again not found within the Colombian Air Force. The only Air Force in the region with such an arsenal is the United States.

While the US and the Colombian governments claim that the United States were not involved in the attack that resulted in the death of Comandante Raúl Reyes, it is quite likely that the United States played more than an informal role in the aggression.

The Case of Comandante Iván Ríos (Murdered March 4, 2008 or March 7th, 2008)

On the afternoon of March 7, 2008, the country of Colombia was once again the witness of an interruption by Defense Minister Santos taking precedence on both television and radio. Similar to his announcement made six days earlier, Santos announced that a member of the FARC-EP’s Secretariat had been killed. To the great surprise of many, the Defense Minister claimed that Comandante Iván Ríos had been killed by another member of the FARC-EP named Rojas (in association with two other combatants associated with the insurgency) on March 4, 2008.

The Defense Minister proceeded to tell the press that after those deemed responsible had killed Comandante Ríos they severed his right hand in order to prove to Colombian officials that the youngest member of the Secretariat was dead. It was then stated that the three insurgents took the severed limb, along with Comandante Ríos’ laptop and identification and handed them over to members of the Colombian Army and the Colombian Attorney General Office’s Technical Investigation Body (Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, CTI). During a brief press conference related to this incident, Defense Minister Santos said that the Colombian army had launched an operation designed to capture Comandante Ríos on February 17, 2008 after (again) receiving intelligence that he was located in a mountainous region in the Department of Caldas. Unlike the March 1, 2008 press conference, however, Santos did not entertain any questions or reveal any additional information other than that listed above and that Comandante Iván Ríos had been officially pronounced dead.

Confusion immediately began to envelop the events presented by Defense Minister Santos. The reason for the uncertainty was that previous to the ‘official’ pronouncement ofe Comandante’s Ríos death another state official within the Prosecutors Office of Colombia had given a different account concerning the death of the FARC-EP leader.

An anonymous official had prematurely contacted the press and reported that Comandante Ríos had been killed on March 7, 2008 during an attack carried out by a unit of the Colombian Army in conjunction with members of the CTI in Aguadas, just outside the Samaná Municipality within the department of Caldas. This again mirrors events as revealed in the case of Comandante Reyes death; intelligence provided to state officials, upper level official presenting sanitized sanctioned accounts explaining the deaths of the FARC-EP’s high command, and lower-level officials disseminating alternative accounts of the actual on goings during said transgressions.

Another strange complexity related to Comandante Ríos’ death is simply, where is Rojas? One would think that the state would put forth details concerning who Comandante Ríos’ murderer was, what his social background or personal identification is, how the killing occurred, what has happened to Rojas, etc. Interestingly, however, nothing related to the above queries concerning Rojas were released.

If Comandante Ríos was, in fact, murdered by Rojas, such events surrounding the death are quite perplexing due to the actual structure and formation of the FARC-EP. It is difficult to understand how one FARC-EP combatant let alone three were capable of breaking rank and violently reacting against not only a highly-ranked officer but a leader within the FARC-EP’s Secretariat. Each Comandante associated with the Secretariat has a cadre of more than a dozen immediate personnel which are not only responsible for the Comandante’s protection but oversee the on goings of the guerrilla camp in which the leader is situated. From first-hand experience, all meetings and interactions with the Comandante are coordinated each day and formally scheduled. Prior to each meeting, the party invited must wait and ask for approval to enter the Comandante’s barracks. Once approval has been arranged it is only then that a member is escorted into the Comandante’s quarters by at least one other armed guard. How is it then that not only one but three armed FARC-EP combatants were able to violently enter into Comandante’s Ríos’ barracks directly in front of an entire FARC-EP Front, which includes two FARC-EP Companies and two FARC-EP Guerrilla Squads which contain, on average, at least twelve combatants per squad?

For any researcher, academic, environmentalist, or journalist who has spent any significant deal of time within FARC-EP-controlled territory since 2002, the Defense Minister’s ‘official’ account of ‘Rojas’ and two other so-called FARC-EP combatants being solely responsible for the murder of Comandante Ríos is highly problematic. The discussion of Comandante Ríos’ limb being removed by a FARC-EP member is greatly out of character to any informed analyst of the Colombian civil war. There has not been one confirmed case of any FARC-EP combatant in its forty-four years of existence of employing such tactics; however, such a tactic has been systemically employed by paramilitaries, privately funded ‘security forces’, and right-wing civilian vigilantly groups dating back to the 1940s and increasingly carried out over the past decade.

Plausible Paramilitary Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos

Over the past two years the Uribe and Santos administration have increasing promoted the story that Colombian paramilitarism has come to and end with the demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC) throughout 2003-2006. Such proclamations are in direct contradiction to existing evidence, eye-witness reports, and escalating violence targeted at civilians critical of the Colombian state and political-economic structure. More accurately the AUC has decentralized its actions and activities through various small-scale organizations rather than that experienced between 1997 and 2006 where a single umbrella organization consolidated leading paramilitary organizations into one dominant structure.

The actions related to Comandante Ríos’ murder are symbolic of those carried out by Colombia’s many far-right paramilitary groups. However, if it was to get out to the general international public that paramilitarism has, in reality, continued within Colombia there could be awkward political and economic consequences.

The Colombian state cannot afford to have a paramilitary group claim responsibility for the murder of Comandante Ríos. This would, once again, demonstrate to the state has either failed in its political capacity to demobilize the paramilitary, or more accurately, that the state has been complicit in covering up the actions of Colombian paramilitarism which are rampant throughout the Colombian countryside.

Rather than supporting the claim that ‘FARC-EP combatants’ committed the assault and subsequent amputation of Comandante Ríos’ hand it is more likely that what transpired was a tactic which has been widely utilized by the paramilitaries over the past several years. Countless researchers and journalists have exposed how reactionary forces dress up in fatigues, making themselves appear to be FARC-EP combatants. Paramilitaries have regularly presented themselves as members of the FARC-EP so as to commit atrocities against civilians in the hopes of creating false condemnations aimed at the insurgency.

Plausible US Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos

The Bush administration has had great difficulty in getting a new Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia passed. Internal congressional protests by sectors of the Democratic Party have opposed the legislation, due to allegations and proven atrocities committed by the paramilitaries, crimes that the Colombian state has allowed to go unpunished. Many of these politicians argue that the Colombian state and the US government and military have failed to quell the illicit drug-trade or decrease the FARC-EP’s strength throughout the Colombian countryside even though billions of US dollars have been spent. Therefore, if the Bush administration was able to claim even the slightest victory over the FARC-EP than they could argue that their counter-insurgency funding has been successful and that a new FTA should be supported in Congress.

There is a distinct possibility that the United States may have been involved in the actions leading up to Comandante Ríos’ death. US Special Forces and Marines have been illegally engaged in counter-insurgency campaigns within the country of Colombia for years. Even though the legal number of US troops cannot exceed 800 state forces (and 600 private forces), thousands have been operating in campaigns against the FARC-EP. For example, Peter Gorman published that as far back as 2002 roughly 1,100 US counter-insurgent troops were on “orders to eliminate all high officers of the FARC”. This does not even highlight what possible actions private US-based contradicted counter-insurgent forces may be carrying out.

There is a two-fold psychological effect inculcated by propaganda related to the deaths of Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos, which is being disseminated through the centralized media, primarily El Tiempo.

1) Systemically exposing sectors of Colombia’s general public to photographs of the bullet ridden and mutilated corpse of Reyes on an hourly basis or the ‘cooler’ containing Ríos’ severed limbs is a tool utilized to intimidate and to deter sympathizers with the insurgency, political activists, and state opponents within Colombia from criticizing the state’s political dominance and promotion of far-right economic policies.

2) Telling the world that Comandante Ríos’ was murdered by his own comrades is a tactic employed to decrease external solidarity from sectors of the international community, who may now falsely believe the argument that the largest and most powerful Marxist-Leninist revolutionary social movement in Latin America is loosing ground, power, and influence in the Colombian countryside. At the same time, such accusations are internally disseminated in the hopes of destabilizing the FARC-EP itself. Claiming the rank-and-file have abandoned the leadership and that the movement is collapsing is a strategy to destabilize the insurgency’s many Squads, Companies, Columns, and Fronts.

James J. Brittain is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada and the co-founder of the Atlantic Canada-Colombia Research Group. He can be reached at james.brittain@acadiau.ca .

Venezuela and Ecuador Resolve Differences with Colombia at Regional Summit

March 8th 2008, by James Suggett for Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, March 8, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com) - During the 20th Presidential Summit of the Río Group, held Friday in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the Ecuadorian, Colombian, and Venezuelan heads of state reached an agreement that effectively cooled off the diplomatic crisis, which had raged across Latin America last week following air and land attacks by Colombian armed forces last Saturday on encampments of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) inside Ecuadorian territory.

The declaration endorsed by the 19 member countries of the Río Group, which was created in 1986 to be a political forum for Latin American heads of state, included a rejection of the violation of Ecuadorian territorial sovereignty and an endorsement of the resolution of the Organization of American States (OAS), which had denounced Colombia's attack on Thursday. Moreover, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe issued a formal apology to the Ecuadorian government and people and took full responsibility for the attacks.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa had made clear throughout the week that mere diplomatic apologies would not suffice for the resolution of this conflict, so the Río Group declaration also sealed the commitment of President Uribe to "not repeat" the acts that provoked the conflict, and of all member states to respect national sovereignty and uphold peaceful coexistence in the region.

In return, President Correa agreed to receive the documentation that the Uribe administration claimed incriminated Correa for having an inappropriate relationship with the FARC.

During the summit, Uribe read the documents, which were allegedly salvaged from the wreckage of the attacks in a computer that belonged to Raúl Reyes, the FARC second in command who was killed in the assault. Correa responded by asserting that his hands "are not stained with blood" and he rejected the idea that the Ecuadorian government had "collaborated with the FARC".

However, Correa had made clear on Thursday that his government had been in contact with the FARC in order to negotiate the liberation of 12 hostages, including the French ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt whose release is a top priority of French President Nicolás Sarkozy. French Foreign Relations Minister Bernard Kouchner confirmed that his government was aware of Correa's negotiations with the FARC.

Correa claimed that Uribe knew that the Betancourt's liberation was being arranged for this month and accused the Colombian president of deliberately obstructing the humanitarian process by going ahead with the attacks on the previous Saturday.

The Ecuadorian president proposed to the Río Group Friday the creation of an "international force that controls the border that Colombia does not know how to control with its militarist policies."

Uribe remained staunchly opposed to any such international group that would presumably be involved in the Colombia-based conflict, including the idea supported by several presidents, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, of forming a multi-state negotiating group to bring forth a humanitarian accord between the Colombian government and the FARC.

Also in the Summit's final declaration was a commitment among those involved in the recent conflict to maintain the lines of communication open.

While Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega called the Colombian assault on FARC encampments "state terrorism," he nonetheless retracted his termination of diplomatic relations with the Colombian government, proclaiming that "the agreements reached permit Nicaragua to backtrack in its rupture of relations with Colombia."

Ecuador's President Correa, however, said that the restoration of diplomatic relations with Colombia "will take a little time," because "it will be very difficult to restore trust," and added that he would "coordinate with Venezuela and make a timeline" and try to repair the relationship quickly.

President Chávez, who in the past week had railed against Uribe, called for heads of state at the Summit to "reflect, keep a cool head, because if we continue, this will continue heating up."

Chavez argued that Uribe's defense of the violation of Ecuador's soveriengty represented nothing less than a "vindication" of the principle that terrorism may be fought anywhere in the world, regardless of the affected country's sovereignty. This is the same principle that led to the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Responding to the Colombian government's charge that the FARC computer's supposedly proved Chavez's support for the FARC, Chavez related two anecdotes of how a former president of Colombia, Ernesto Samper, and a former president of Ecuador, Hugo Banzer, both eventually apologized to him for having launched similar accusations against him at different points in his life.

Chavez reiterated that there is no military solution to the conflict in Colombia, declaring his desire to "move closer to the path of peace, [and] distance ourselves from the path of war," adding that Ecuador and Venezuela so far have "done everything possible".

"We have reached the time to detain this whirlpool in which we could end up repenting, and not only ourselves but our peoples, children and communities, for who knows how much time," Chávez advised the group, while reiterating that the Venezuelan government has not collaborated with the FARC.

Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Trancoso praised the positive interventions of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, whose call for "frank dialogue" to reduce tensions at the summit was echoed by Uribe and several others. He also thanked Argentine President Cristina de Kirchner, Panamanian President Martín Torrijos, and President Chávez, who, he said, "behaved like a true pacifist."

Morales Trancoso hailed the outcome of the Río Group as the autonomous achievement of a more united Latin America. "We have to remember that the Río Group is the only political forum that we Latin Americans have, [and] without the influence of anybody we have come to an agreement and resolved this big problem."

Following the heated debates that took place over the 10-hour day, President Correa announced that "through dialogue, we were able to overcome a very grave conflict." Nonetheless, the Ecuadorian president maintained a stern demeanor upon shaking hands with Uribe at the end of the summit.

"The problem is not solved with an embrace," Correa commented after making amends with Uribe, urging the Colombian President to "accept international mediation to resolve the problem of the FARC."

Along with his call for peaceful dialogue, Chávez announced that he had received proof of life of 6 FARC hostages, and Venezuelan Minister of Justice and the Interior Ramón Rodríguez Chacín confirmed that the total proofs of life had been increased to 10 just before Chávez's departure for Santo Domingo. It remains unclear when these hostages might be released, and whether they will be released unilaterally or in exchange for insurgents currently imprisoned.

On the same day, news reports accompanied by photographs allegedly recovered from the scene of last Saturday's bombardment revealed that a group of Chilean Communist Party members had visited the FARC encampment where Raúl Reyes was killed in his pajamas by Colombian forces last Saturday.

41 year-old Manuel Olate commented that the camp was "pretty simple" and meant to provide a safe space, outside of Colombia, to "receive people who worked for humanitarian exchange," as 25 year-old Valeska López put it. "It had wooden beds and a classroom. There was nothing that one could say was a camp for military actions," Olate recounted.

Aside from the declaration about the conflict with Colombia, the Río Group also ratified Haiti as the 20th member of the Río Group.

$300 Million From Chavez to FARC: a fake

Here’s the written evidence… and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador

Note: Saturday, Bobby Kennedy hosts Greg Palast on “Ring of Fire” on Air America Radio. Sunday, catch Palast with Amy Goodman on WABC Television (New York), hosted by Gil Noble, Channel 7 at 1 pm(est).

Friday, March 7, 2008 for TomPaine.com/Ourfuture.org
By Greg Palast

Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.

What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)

I read them. While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez is this:

“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line: “To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

As to the 300, I must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.

To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious “Angel” is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.

Well, so what? This is what.

Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. And George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.

Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe’s ranch. Uribe’s associates have been called before the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.

In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality. Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations, however, he knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe.

Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I’ve ever encountered.

Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border – no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil – Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia’s own, corrupt military.

For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, I will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, “a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.” (Watch an excerpt of my interview with Correa here.)

Amateur Hour in Blue

We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?

I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.

It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”

(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”

McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.

But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.”

It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.

Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right.

******************
Watch Greg Palast’s reports from Venezuela and Ecuador for BBC Television Newsnight and Democracy Now! Compiled on the DVD, “The Assassination of Hugo Chavez.”

http://www.GregPalast.com

Washington’s role in the current conflict between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador

by Cory Fischer-Hoffman

Monday, 03 March 2008, Caracas, Venezuela -- On Saturday March 1st Colombia's Air Force carried out a military operation in Ecuador, violating the sovereignty of its western neighbor nation. The bombing resulted in at least 17 deaths. One of the people reported to be among the victims is Raúl Reyes, commander and spokesperson for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). This attack is the continuation and escalation of an on-going war in Colombia that has persisted for 40 years due to US military funding and training of Armed Forces in Colombia. The United States has a long history of intervention in Latin America, ranging from military occupations, to financial support for the overthrow of democratically elected presidents to economic sabotage to military trainings of state and private death squads. In Colombia, the United States has taken particular interest in the oil, land, water, and agricultural resources as well as the ports and profitable cocaine trade, and more recently Colombia's strategic location in relation to Venezuela and Ecuador. The United States supported and funded a coup attempt in April 2002 in Venezuela, temporarily taking democratically elected President Hugo Chávez out of power. While Venezuela has continued to sell oil to the United States, Chávez has taken a pro-sovereignty stance, demanding that the United States not intervene in their national politics. The Bush Administration has made a series of aggressive statements towards Venezuela, working to support the political opposition that launched the coup attempt and is now engaged in tactics of economic sabotage with the aims of destabilizing the Venezuelan economy. In addition to rich natural resources, Venezuela is offering an alternative to the US-led neo-liberal development model by proposing a "Socialism of the 21st Century." The Unites States government uses its military power, technology, and wealth to threaten and to impose its culture, politics, and economies on other nations. When those nations resist, they are branded as terrorists, enemies or communists. Since September 11, 2001 the US government has used "the war on terrorism" to advance their aims of acquiring more oil, land and resources. With the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan rising every day, and a complicit media, which is forbidden by law to show the coffins of US soldiers who were killed in Iraq, the US people have become desensitized to the death of those labeled as terrorists. The US is employing its classic logic; that in the hunt for "terrorists" there are no rules. They have imposed this onto Colombians for many years, fueling an internal civil war, and providing the military funding and training necessary to target the FARC, the ELN, and to terrorize the Colombian people. Colombia's civil war plays a destabilizing force within the entire region and with the recent attack of Ecuador, that process has been escalated rapidly. It is important to emphasize that Colombia has violated Ecuador's national sovereignty and has for all intents and purposes brought its war to Ecuador. In response Ecuador has withdrawn its ambassador from Colombia and Venezuela has sent tanks to the border. While bombing another sovereign nation is standard behavior for the US government, this military operation is unprecedented and marks a calculated escalation of tensions within the region. Each discontent expressed by the US government towards the Chávez Administration is armed with the threat of invasion. While many people that I know in the US simply roll their eyes at another nauseating comment from Bush; here, they prepare for invasion. Even within the anti-war movement, many people could not fathom the US being involved in further military operations, as the Armed Forces are currently over-stretched in their wars and occupations in the Middle East. For some time now, many analysts have suggested that US interventionism in Venezuela would come by means of Colombia; a state that has been led by pro-US regimes to protect US interests for resources. This seemed like a practical way for the US to play a destabilizing role without having to send US Forces, but instead send US trained Colombian Forces; both state and private paramilitary. Chávez has also faced the bind of a huge, mostly unguarded western border with Colombia, in which the FARC, the Armed Forces, and paramilitaries have crossed into Venezuela, bringing their internal conflict to Venezuela's door. Chávez has condemned the violence in Colombia, and its pouring onto Venezuelan soil. Based on Colombia's attack of Ecuador, Chávez has sent tanks to protect its border with Colombia. Let us not forget that in the United States there are troops at the US-Mexico border, and not because the United States is responding to a military attack, but because the US government and media has attempted to equate immigration with terrorism. While the US projects its "war on terror" towards the immigration community within its borders, it extends the war throughout the world, in an attempt to justify its military actions for more land, resources, and power. With the recent tensions that Exxon-Mobile has created in Venezuela, by claiming rights to an inflated amount of funds from Venezuela's state oil company and furthermore, initiating various international lawsuits, resulting in the freezing of $300 million of PDVSA's assets, US-Venezuelan relations have become even more tense. This action taken by US company Exxon-Mobile is a further escalation against Venezuela; representing not only the militaristic but the economic tactics used in an effort to discredit and destabilize Venezuela. Now, while Colombia has attacked Ecuador, provoking a collapse in diplomatic relations and placing the region at risk of a war, the headlines in the United States read: "Chávez sends forces to Colombia's border." This is a calculated attempt to create the image of Venezuela as the aggressor in the conflict, when the clear aggressor is the United States, who trains and funds the Colombian Army, not only in counter-insurgency and terror but now as an imperialist army, who has violated the sovereignty of its neighbor nation and created grave tensions within the region. The US government cannot pretend to be an objective observer in this conflict.

Source: Upside Down World