Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Crime of Extinction
Colombia, the US and US corporations found guilty of fomenting genocide and crimes against humanity. The Permanent People's Tribunal, an independent investigative body that works in conjunction with the UN and the International Criminal Court, concluded that the militarisation of indigenous territories in Colombia is leading to the extinction of 28 tribes. Specifically cited in the PPT decision is Plan Colombia, the US-financed aspect of the now 64-year-old civil war.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Plan Colombia
I've posted so many times on Plan Colombia (the imperial model Obama supports in Colombia and plans to implement in Afghanistan as well), that saying anything more is probably redundant. Except for the fact that it is neoliberalism on steroids, meaning that indigenous peoples everywhere should be on guard against pro-corporate death squads armed by the US.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Implementing Plan Colombia
Apparently the victims of paramilitary death squads, 17 Awa tribal members were murdered last week in Colombia. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees reports on the Indigenous peoples' situation there.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Obama Ugly American
Despite a track record as one of the worst violators of human rights in the hemisphere, President Uribe of Colombia has been blessed by President Obama with promises of increased military aid. As Real News correspondent Forrest Hylton reports, the announcement that US armed forces will soon be moving into Colombia to establish four bases, is rightly seen as a direct threat to neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Dipnote Deception
As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issues threats to the government of Bolivia for continuing to exert its independence, even in the face of the continental reconquest planned for U.S. Southern Command from its new bases in Colombia, the official State Department blog Dipnote is running happy face posts about an imaginary Colombia under joint US-Colombian military rule.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Facts on the Ground
Pepe Escobar and Forest Hylton discuss the US disconnect on integration developments in South America.
Noting the indigenous mobilization in Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia in particular, The Real News reporters observe that the only role currently being played by the US government is in supplying arms to put down labor organizing and indigenous resistance. With the assassination of fourteen indigenous leaders by paramilitaries in Colombia during the last two weeks, the US involvement needs to be held accountable by the American people as well as by international human rights regimes.
Noting the indigenous mobilization in Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia in particular, The Real News reporters observe that the only role currently being played by the US government is in supplying arms to put down labor organizing and indigenous resistance. With the assassination of fourteen indigenous leaders by paramilitaries in Colombia during the last two weeks, the US involvement needs to be held accountable by the American people as well as by international human rights regimes.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Pentecostals Not Welcome
Indigenous leaders in northern Colombia expelled a group of evangelical Christians from their community recently, saying the missionaries were contributing to the “physical, cultural and spiritual extermination of our ethnic group” according to a press statement.
Read more here.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Blow to Biofuel
World Bank suspends oil palm loans in face of evidence the biofuel plantations in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Colombia are an integral part of genocide against indigenous peoples.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Ousting Hugo
The loss of the United States banana republics due to the democratic resurgence in Latin America has peeved Washington for some time, but the successful US-backed coup in Honduras and violent disturbances by US-backed thugs in Colombia evidently give Hillary hope. As Lee Brown writes in Upside Down World, the State Department has its eyes firmly set on helping stage a coup in Venezuela should democratic elections there fail to oust US arch rival Hugo Chavez.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Self Defense
The million plus indigenous peoples of Colombia plan to establish a 100,000-member pan-tribal police force to protect indigenous communities from armed violence by the army, vigilantes, guerrillas and drug-dealers.
Friday, July 09, 2010
On Hillary's Watch
The U.S. State Department has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who was critical of death squads associated with outgoing President Uribe, America’s closest ally in South America. The distinguished human rights reporter was offered a fellowship at Harvard, but under the Patriot Act, he is considered a fellow traveler with terrorists for questioning the conduct of US policy in Colombia.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Obama v Peace
The Obama justice department continues its harassment of the anti-war movement, in particular opponents of US policy in Colombia and Palestine. Serving subpoenas on anti-war organizers and media editors critical of US–funded state terror in South America and the Middle East, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Holder escalates the Obama administration’s war on dissent initiated by FBI raids in September. Peace activists like FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and former special agent Mike German condemn Obama’s mobilization of federal agencies against free speech.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Edge of the Wedge
President Obama’s decision to move US troops into Colombia, while distasteful to Latin America’s new democracies, is perhaps the edge of the wedge to be used in forcefully dividing neoliberal states from their indigenous nations. Leaders like Chile's President Bachelet may have stood behind Bolivian President Morales when it came to US-sponsored assassination attempts, but they are not likely to oppose North American corporations assisting them in plundering tribal peoples. As Obama himself has demonstrated, to be pro-corporate is, by definition, to be anti-indigenous.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Chicago Libre
Privatization of education in the US is not yet encountering organized resistance like in Mexico, but as Wall Street and the White House continue to impose this anti-democratic initiative and others on American society, the day is approaching when anti-privatization strikes in Chicago may mirror those in Colombia. As poverty and social exclusion intensifies as a result of neoliberal fascism and its privatizing agenda, the streets in America could soon look like Oaxaca Libre.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Fortified Free Trade
When the U.S. Government bailed out General Motors in 2008 and 2009, GM was on the ropes in North America, but in South America -- specifically in Colombia -- GM was making money hand over fist. After all, that was the reason for President Clinton's push for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the subsequent agreements in Latin America: to outsource labor to countries where labor was plentiful and protections were few.
Today, fortified with $50 billion from the U.S. Treasury, General Motors is doing well, but its workers are not. As reported by Austin Robles, Colombian GM workers are hurting from workplace injuries, and GM -- along with corrupt Colombian officials -- has been busy falsifying employee medical records in order to deny them coverage for disabling conditions caused by the work they do.
This, of course, is globalization. It's what the WTO protestors meant when they hung their banners from skyscraper cranes in Seattle bearing the arrows indicating democracy to the left, free trade to the right.
Today, fortified with $50 billion from the U.S. Treasury, General Motors is doing well, but its workers are not. As reported by Austin Robles, Colombian GM workers are hurting from workplace injuries, and GM -- along with corrupt Colombian officials -- has been busy falsifying employee medical records in order to deny them coverage for disabling conditions caused by the work they do.
This, of course, is globalization. It's what the WTO protestors meant when they hung their banners from skyscraper cranes in Seattle bearing the arrows indicating democracy to the left, free trade to the right.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Anti-Indigenous Axis
The crackdown on Uyghurs in China, like the systematic brutality of Israel toward Palestinians, betrays the promise of universal human rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. More recently, subsuming freedom to power betrays the specific extension of human rights to indigenous peoples by the UN in 2007.
While international law is on their side, indigenous peoples only hope in surmounting the anti-indigenous axis of state institutions, markets, and transnational criminal enterprise, is pan-tribal global solidarity, with support from civil society.
As the leading member of the anti-indigenous axis, the United States has already sided with China and Israel in crushing self-determination. As conflicts over resources related to energy and climate change escalate, murderous regimes like Colombia, Nigeria and Indonesia can count on the US for money and arms to continue the genocide of indigenous peoples.
While international law is on their side, indigenous peoples only hope in surmounting the anti-indigenous axis of state institutions, markets, and transnational criminal enterprise, is pan-tribal global solidarity, with support from civil society.
As the leading member of the anti-indigenous axis, the United States has already sided with China and Israel in crushing self-determination. As conflicts over resources related to energy and climate change escalate, murderous regimes like Colombia, Nigeria and Indonesia can count on the US for money and arms to continue the genocide of indigenous peoples.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Exporting Violence
When the US abandoned any pretense at pursuing democratic values, opting instead for an economy based solely on exporting violence and fraud, the window of opportunity for democratic reform in Latin America rapidly closed. As Upside Down World reports, the 2009 US-backed coup in Honduras has set in motion a replay of President Reagan's murderous meddling in Central America, while Plan Colombia and the reintroduction of U.S. military bases in Chile and Argentina preclude even neoliberal independence in South America. As President Obama seeks to emulate and maybe even surpass the ruthlessness of his mentor President Reagan, democracies and democratic movements in the Western hemisphere are no more immune to U.S. military aggression and economic subversion than are Central Asia or the Middle East.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Mobilization Against Globalization
Monday, March 13, 2006
Key Words
Some useful words to type in the search box above:
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wise use
1948
activism
ad
anxiety
aristocracy
arrogance
Arvin Hill
authenticity
BIAW
Bill Wassmuth
blogging
cbs 60 minutes
capitalism
civil disobedience
civil war
coal
Colombia
communication
community
conflict
conspiracism
consumerist
criminality
culture
democracy
Dewey Beard
education
Eloise Cobell
entrepreneurs
fascism
fascist
Feinstein
fourth world
futurists
gift
Hakim Bey
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Harper's
hope
humanist
identity
indigenous
institutions
Irish
John P. O'Neill
knowledge
landlady
law and order
leadership
learning
markets
media
memory
militia
minutemen
missionary
models
moral
moral theatrics
movement
nations
Native American
netwar
networks
nomadic
nuclear
Obama
organizing
panic
patterns
peace
Pew
philanthropy
preserving
private equity
progress
progressive
prostitution
protector
psychological warfare
psywar
racial profiling
racism
research
Richard Armitage
risk
Salish
Sara Robinson
Sarajevo
Social Security
solidarity
sovereignty
spectacle
storytellers
system
terrorism
totems
trauma
tribes
tributaries
vigilantes
vigilantism
violence
whistleblowers
wise use
Friday, February 17, 2006
Ethnic Cleansing
Sometimes it helps to step outside the pervasive incoherence that presently characterizes America, in order to look at our problems in a more global context. And no problem in the US is more elemental in that regard than our relations with First Nations, both at home and abroad.
Without getting into the local particulars of countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Nigeria, or Peru, the one fact that they share in common is that the rights of their internally displaced indigenous nations are--according to international conventions--human rights in their most elemental form. The right to continue to exist as a people: to speak, dance, sing, worship, educate, develop, and govern themselves as they see fit; that is what neoliberal economics and neoconservative militarism continue to violate on a daily basis.
Oppression of indigenous nations by Euro-American institutions in the form of centralized governments, organized religion, and corporatized economies--that deny indigenous autonomy and self-determination--is by definition genocidal in that by making it impossible to coexist, a de facto ethnic cleansing results.
Without getting into the local particulars of countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Nigeria, or Peru, the one fact that they share in common is that the rights of their internally displaced indigenous nations are--according to international conventions--human rights in their most elemental form. The right to continue to exist as a people: to speak, dance, sing, worship, educate, develop, and govern themselves as they see fit; that is what neoliberal economics and neoconservative militarism continue to violate on a daily basis.
Oppression of indigenous nations by Euro-American institutions in the form of centralized governments, organized religion, and corporatized economies--that deny indigenous autonomy and self-determination--is by definition genocidal in that by making it impossible to coexist, a de facto ethnic cleansing results.
