An ACLU report describes Obama's failings on civil liberties etc.
From the ACLU here. And the actual report is here.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Obama wants to boost arms exports
Article here, the US is already the world's leading arms exporter.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Crack cocaine sentence
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Private contractors surge in Iraq
The State Department wants more private contractors in Iraq as regular troops are withdrawing, Jeremy Scahill reports.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Britain's rendition program
Britain appeared to have have used rendition to transfer a detainee from Belgium to London.
Until now, it was known that Britain had been associated with the US rendition program, but not that Britain could have had its own rendition program.
Until now, it was known that Britain had been associated with the US rendition program, but not that Britain could have had its own rendition program.
NATO attacks lead to rise in insurgent attacks
NATO attacks on civilians in Afghanistan appears to motivate more attacks by insurgents on NATO, according to a new report.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Libya, Megrahi
Counterpunch has a good summary article of the evidence in the Megrahi case. It is very unlikely he was the bomber; rather it is most probably going back to Iran, not Libya.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Asbestos
The West, like Canada, is exporting a lot of asbestos to the Third World, even if it causes cancer.
An article about the effects in India.
And one about the US.
And a web resource (BBC).
An article about the effects in India.
And one about the US.
And a web resource (BBC).
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
MI5 knew terrorism would increase after Iraq attack
Good article revealing that MI5 knew attacking Iraq would lead to more terrorist threats against the UK; MI5 refused to participate in the WMD dossier against Iraq.
The invasion of Iraq triggered a massive upsurge in terrorist activity against the UK, the former head of MI5 said today.
Baroness Manningham-Buller said the Security Service had been forced to seek a doubling of its budget as it struggled to cope with the volume of plots generated in the aftermath of the invasion in 2003.
Giving evidence to the official inquiry into the conflict, she said ministers had been warned that the launch of military action against Iraq would lead to a heightened prospect of attack by al Qaida.
The evidence of Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been "fragmentary", she said, and she dismissed Tony Blair's argument that action had been necessary to prevent them falling into hands of terrorists.
She disclosed that MI5 had refused to contribute to the Government's dossier on Iraqi WMD in 2002 and she criticised the way that the invasion had shifted attention away from the al Qaida threat in Afghanistan.
The agency had, however, warned ministers through the assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee - Britain's senior intelligence body - that an invasion would lead to an increased threat from al Qaida.
While they had seen a build up terrorist activity following the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, she said that the threat had increased "substantially" in the wake of the military intervention in March 2003.
She suggested that "a whole generation of young people" had been "radicalised" by what they saw as an attack on Islam, before quickly correcting herself to say: "Not a whole generation, a few among a generation".
At times, she said, MI5 had been almost overwhelmed by the number of terror plots that sprung up.
"We were pretty well swamped - that's possibly an exaggeration - but we were very overburdened with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things that we needed to pursue," she said.
Despite having seen MI5's budget increase immediately following the 9/11 attacks and then again in 2002, Lady Manningham-Buller said that she had to ask Mr Blair for a further doubling of its resources in 2003.
"This is unheard of, certainly unheard of today, but he and the Treasury and the chancellor accepted that because I was able to demonstrate the scale of the problem that we were confronted by," she said.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Dudus Coke and the CIA
Dudus Coke was arrested recently, but in earlier years the Jamaican government was cooperating with him extensively. And the CIA was supporting the government and by extension Dudus Coke and his dad.
See this article in full:
The CIA, the Cold War, and Cocaine: The Connections of Christopher "Dudus" Coke.
Kevin Edmonds. NACLA. July 14, 2010
On June 22, Jamaican police arrested Christopher "Dudus" Coke in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston and immediately delivered him into U.S. custody. Coke was captured after a bloody siege that left 73 people dead. Tivoli Gardens is one of the city's "garrison communities," virtually autonomous communities that are typically linked to one of the country's political parties and off limits to the city's law enforcement authorities.
Many Jamaicans are hoping that Coke will reveal the long history of connections between the country's political leaders, its business elite, and its gunmen in the street. Such revelations are likely to illuminate the connections among the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP, the country's conservative political party), the government, gangsters, and the past actions of the CIA, which helped create one of Jamaica's most powerful organized crime organizations, the Shower Posse. These links are ever more important as the United States is poised to invest millions of dollars to make the Caribbean its newest front in the drug war, ostensibly fighting some of the same personalities and groups they helped create.
On June 25 Coke was charged by a grand jury in New York with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine, and to traffic firearms from 1994 to 2007. The United States requested his extradition in August 2009, but Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding rejected the request, claiming that the evidence against Coke was obtained illegally.
Golding even went so far as to hire the California law firm Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips to lobby against the extradition request. Many speculate that he went to such lengths because he owes much of his political success to Coke, Jamaica's most infamous gangster. Golding presides over the electoral district of West Kingston, where Tivoli Gardens is located and the Shower Posse is based. Only after nine months of intense domestic and international pressure did Golding finally cave on May 18 and order the offensive to capture Coke.
International media captured the violence of Coke's capture, and many wondered why so many West Kingston citizens would sacrifice their lives to defend the leader of the notorious Shower Posse. To the residents of Tivoli however, Coke was more than simply a gangster - he was a respected community leader, philanthropist, businessman, and a powerful political authority. For instance, despite the U.S. extradition request last year, the JLP government continued to support Coke's construction company, Incomparable Enterprise Ltd., with millions of dollars in government contracts. This allowed Coke to distribute jobs and further consolidate power within his community.
The garrison town of Tivoli Gardens began as a political project by former prime minister and JLP politician Edward Seaga in 1963. In order to complete his idea of "urban renewal" after his election to represent West Kingston in 1962, he first had to bulldoze a neighborhood called Back 'O Wall, a large Rastafarian community loyal to the leftist People's National Party (PNP). The original residents were forced out and replaced with Seaga's supporters in large modern housing complexes.
To enforce his will, Seaga constructed his own political militia, headed by Lester "Jim Brown" Coke, the father of Dudus Coke. Lester Coke obtained a reputation as a brutal and loyal enforcer, organizing the young men of Tivoli into the Shower Posse in the early 1970s. The Shower Posse expanded its influence to the harbor fronts of Kingston, securing an invaluable port to traffic drugs to the United States. Aside from the overtly criminal nature of drug dealing and murder, the Shower Posse was responsible within the garrison community for bringing supporters to the polls, fundraising, and intimidating members of the opposition.This is where the link betweenpolitics and drug trafficking began.
Seaga's promotion of Jamaica as a free market paradise in the 1970s was ripe for garnering Washington's support under the prevailing cold war environment, especially since prime minister and PNP leader Michael Manley, who served from 1972-1980, was promoting democratic socialism while rubbing elbows with Fidel Castro and Julius Nyerere. The CIA quickly brought Seaga under its wing in order to undermine any attempt to move the nation in a more leftward direction. Manley, however, copied the successes of Seaga's garrison community in East Kingston by constructing replicas in areas like Dunkirk, Jungle, and Matthew's Lane. As guns arrived from the USSR, the militarization of Jamaican politics was complete.
The connections between the CIA and the Shower Posse have long been known. Former CIA agent Philip Agee, for example, revealed that "the CIA was using the JLP as its instrument in the campaign against the Michael Manley government, I'd say most of the violence was coming from the JLP, and behind them was the CIA in terms of getting weapons in and getting money in."
In 1989, former Shower Posse member Charles "Little Nut" Miller was charged with drug trafficking but agreed to testify against other gang leaders in order to receive immunity. In his testimony - in which he implicated himself in nine murders - Miller revealed his connection to the JLP as a "political enforcer," as well as to the CIA, going as far to state that "the United States made me what I am"(Newsweek, July 13th, 1998). After testifying, Miller returned to his native St. Kitts where he blossomed into one of the regions most notorious drug barons, though he has been in prison in the United States since 2000 on drug charges.
1992 brought forth the greatest opportunity to highlight the connections between the JLP, the Shower Posse, and the CIA. It came with the arrest of Lester Coke, who was awaiting extradition to the United States on charges similar to those now faced by his son. The opportunity for Lester Coke's testimony in open court never occurred, as he was burned alive in his jail cell.
On June 27, Jamaicans breathed a sigh of relief as Dudus Coke was successfully brought to the United States for trial. Many feared that he would meet the same fate as his father and never live to testify about how deeply the government is involved with the gangsters. The editorial pages of the country's media outlets such as the Observer and Gleaner hope that this will be a step forward for the nation, if indeed Coke's testimony does bring down more drug lords and corrupt politicians and the political gangsterism that has plagued the country for so long.
However with the continued problems of structural poverty, the country faces a near impossible task. As other countries throughout the region find themselves in similar situations as Jamaica, in 2007 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime designated the Caribbean as themost dangerous place on Earth. Statistics from Jamaica's Ministry of National Security traced a tripling of the annual murder rate - from 542 in 1990 to 1,680 in 2009.
The recent events in Tivoli Gardens have further brought the drug war in the Caribbean to the attention of the U.S. government. On June 10, Hillary Clinton was in Barbados to address members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and outline the plans of the Obama administration to combat the drug trade in the region. Clinton told the assembled ministers that the United States is "applying lessons we've learned in Colombia, Mexico and Central America to our security cooperation" and is "working to curtail the flow of guns and illicit funds to the region and to reduce demand for drugs." Looking at the lack of success the United States has had combating drugs so far in other regions such as Mexico, where there have been an estimated 23,000 drug related deaths since 2006, Clinton's statement can only be interpreted as more bad news for the people of the Caribbean. Remember: it was the CIA that helped create drug gangs like the Shower Posse in the first place.
Kevin Edmonds is a NACLA Research Associate.
See this article in full:
The CIA, the Cold War, and Cocaine: The Connections of Christopher "Dudus" Coke.
Kevin Edmonds. NACLA. July 14, 2010
On June 22, Jamaican police arrested Christopher "Dudus" Coke in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston and immediately delivered him into U.S. custody. Coke was captured after a bloody siege that left 73 people dead. Tivoli Gardens is one of the city's "garrison communities," virtually autonomous communities that are typically linked to one of the country's political parties and off limits to the city's law enforcement authorities.
Many Jamaicans are hoping that Coke will reveal the long history of connections between the country's political leaders, its business elite, and its gunmen in the street. Such revelations are likely to illuminate the connections among the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP, the country's conservative political party), the government, gangsters, and the past actions of the CIA, which helped create one of Jamaica's most powerful organized crime organizations, the Shower Posse. These links are ever more important as the United States is poised to invest millions of dollars to make the Caribbean its newest front in the drug war, ostensibly fighting some of the same personalities and groups they helped create.
On June 25 Coke was charged by a grand jury in New York with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine, and to traffic firearms from 1994 to 2007. The United States requested his extradition in August 2009, but Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding rejected the request, claiming that the evidence against Coke was obtained illegally.
Golding even went so far as to hire the California law firm Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips to lobby against the extradition request. Many speculate that he went to such lengths because he owes much of his political success to Coke, Jamaica's most infamous gangster. Golding presides over the electoral district of West Kingston, where Tivoli Gardens is located and the Shower Posse is based. Only after nine months of intense domestic and international pressure did Golding finally cave on May 18 and order the offensive to capture Coke.
International media captured the violence of Coke's capture, and many wondered why so many West Kingston citizens would sacrifice their lives to defend the leader of the notorious Shower Posse. To the residents of Tivoli however, Coke was more than simply a gangster - he was a respected community leader, philanthropist, businessman, and a powerful political authority. For instance, despite the U.S. extradition request last year, the JLP government continued to support Coke's construction company, Incomparable Enterprise Ltd., with millions of dollars in government contracts. This allowed Coke to distribute jobs and further consolidate power within his community.
The garrison town of Tivoli Gardens began as a political project by former prime minister and JLP politician Edward Seaga in 1963. In order to complete his idea of "urban renewal" after his election to represent West Kingston in 1962, he first had to bulldoze a neighborhood called Back 'O Wall, a large Rastafarian community loyal to the leftist People's National Party (PNP). The original residents were forced out and replaced with Seaga's supporters in large modern housing complexes.
To enforce his will, Seaga constructed his own political militia, headed by Lester "Jim Brown" Coke, the father of Dudus Coke. Lester Coke obtained a reputation as a brutal and loyal enforcer, organizing the young men of Tivoli into the Shower Posse in the early 1970s. The Shower Posse expanded its influence to the harbor fronts of Kingston, securing an invaluable port to traffic drugs to the United States. Aside from the overtly criminal nature of drug dealing and murder, the Shower Posse was responsible within the garrison community for bringing supporters to the polls, fundraising, and intimidating members of the opposition.This is where the link betweenpolitics and drug trafficking began.
Seaga's promotion of Jamaica as a free market paradise in the 1970s was ripe for garnering Washington's support under the prevailing cold war environment, especially since prime minister and PNP leader Michael Manley, who served from 1972-1980, was promoting democratic socialism while rubbing elbows with Fidel Castro and Julius Nyerere. The CIA quickly brought Seaga under its wing in order to undermine any attempt to move the nation in a more leftward direction. Manley, however, copied the successes of Seaga's garrison community in East Kingston by constructing replicas in areas like Dunkirk, Jungle, and Matthew's Lane. As guns arrived from the USSR, the militarization of Jamaican politics was complete.
The connections between the CIA and the Shower Posse have long been known. Former CIA agent Philip Agee, for example, revealed that "the CIA was using the JLP as its instrument in the campaign against the Michael Manley government, I'd say most of the violence was coming from the JLP, and behind them was the CIA in terms of getting weapons in and getting money in."
In 1989, former Shower Posse member Charles "Little Nut" Miller was charged with drug trafficking but agreed to testify against other gang leaders in order to receive immunity. In his testimony - in which he implicated himself in nine murders - Miller revealed his connection to the JLP as a "political enforcer," as well as to the CIA, going as far to state that "the United States made me what I am"(Newsweek, July 13th, 1998). After testifying, Miller returned to his native St. Kitts where he blossomed into one of the regions most notorious drug barons, though he has been in prison in the United States since 2000 on drug charges.
1992 brought forth the greatest opportunity to highlight the connections between the JLP, the Shower Posse, and the CIA. It came with the arrest of Lester Coke, who was awaiting extradition to the United States on charges similar to those now faced by his son. The opportunity for Lester Coke's testimony in open court never occurred, as he was burned alive in his jail cell.
On June 27, Jamaicans breathed a sigh of relief as Dudus Coke was successfully brought to the United States for trial. Many feared that he would meet the same fate as his father and never live to testify about how deeply the government is involved with the gangsters. The editorial pages of the country's media outlets such as the Observer and Gleaner hope that this will be a step forward for the nation, if indeed Coke's testimony does bring down more drug lords and corrupt politicians and the political gangsterism that has plagued the country for so long.
However with the continued problems of structural poverty, the country faces a near impossible task. As other countries throughout the region find themselves in similar situations as Jamaica, in 2007 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime designated the Caribbean as themost dangerous place on Earth. Statistics from Jamaica's Ministry of National Security traced a tripling of the annual murder rate - from 542 in 1990 to 1,680 in 2009.
The recent events in Tivoli Gardens have further brought the drug war in the Caribbean to the attention of the U.S. government. On June 10, Hillary Clinton was in Barbados to address members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and outline the plans of the Obama administration to combat the drug trade in the region. Clinton told the assembled ministers that the United States is "applying lessons we've learned in Colombia, Mexico and Central America to our security cooperation" and is "working to curtail the flow of guns and illicit funds to the region and to reduce demand for drugs." Looking at the lack of success the United States has had combating drugs so far in other regions such as Mexico, where there have been an estimated 23,000 drug related deaths since 2006, Clinton's statement can only be interpreted as more bad news for the people of the Caribbean. Remember: it was the CIA that helped create drug gangs like the Shower Posse in the first place.
Kevin Edmonds is a NACLA Research Associate.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Anti immigrant feelings in Europe
Article saying that the recent wave of anti-immigrant feelings and political parties in Europe is a product of the economic downturn: whereas a few years back immigrants were needed economically, now, with unemployment rising, politicians put the blame on immigrants.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Afghans against NATO
Afghans in the south are against any offensive against Kandahar and do not support NATO troops.
This is from a new report by ICOS, the press release is here. And the report here.
This is from a new report by ICOS, the press release is here. And the report here.
Friday, July 16, 2010
UK and torture
Newly released documents show the extent of Tony Blair and his government in torture.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Army to help oil exploration in Colombia
Until now, the Colombian military was used to help clear areas with oil from civil society and guerillas, but now they will take an even more active role in the service of oil companies: they will participate directly in oil exploration, in seismic studies for example.
Monday, July 12, 2010
NAFTA drugs immigration mexico
Article linking the expansion of NAFTA to migration to the US and intervention under a war on drugs cover.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Cambodia and Afghanistan
Article comparing the US bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1965-1973 which led to the rise of Pol Pot, to the US campaign in Afghanistan, which is helping the Taliban.
CNN fires editor for comments
Article saying CNN fired its Middle East editor.
CNN on Wednesday removed its senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, from her job after she published a Twitter message saying that she respected the Shiite cleric the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who died on Sunday.
CNN on Wednesday removed its senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, from her job after she published a Twitter message saying that she respected the Shiite cleric the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who died on Sunday.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Colombia paramilitaries
This is a good article in its entirety about Colombia and how paramilitaries own businesses that benefit from displacement of indigenous communities:
Javier Darío Restrepo. Inter Press Service. July 5, 2010
BOGOTÁ - Twenty-three African palm plantation owners, who invested 34 million dollars in Colombia up to 2003 and have spent another 15 million dollars on a palm oil refinery, are soon to be sentenced by a court.
They are charged with, the forcible displacement of 5,000 small farmers and invasion of 100,000 hectares of land that is legally the collective property of Afro-Colombian communities in the jungles of Chocó, a province in the northwest of the country.
Lawyer Carlos Merlano, one of the accused, who works for the Urapalma company, agreed to plead guilty to the charges against him and testify against others involved, in exchange for leniency.
The case would be just another land dispute, but for the involvement of the army, notary's offices, state bodies and even the Agriculture Ministry.
With the country's attention focused on the actions of president-elect Juan Manuel Santos, this case has hardly been noticed, and yet it is part of the legacy of outgoing President Álvaro Uribe which the new government will have to deal with when it takes office in August.
The prosecution accuses leaders of ultra-rightwing paramilitary groups such as Freddy Rendón (alias "El Alemán"); a woman called Sister Teresa Gómez; and a palm plantation owner from Antioquía, a province bordering Chocó, Rodrigo Zapata, of colluding in crime for profit.
Thirteen years ago, some 5,000 black and mestizo (of mixed indigenous and European descent) small farmers fled from their homes and lands as a result of a terror campaign waged by 80 paramilitaries who went from farm to farm announcing: "We need your land. Sell up and leave; if you don't sell, your widow will."
The operation was commanded by paramilitary leaders Carlos and Vicente Castaño, two brothers who own Urapalma - one of the nine companies involved in an agro-industrial project to convert the extensive and fertile lands between the Atrato and Murindó rivers into plantations devoted to the production of biodiesel from palm oil.
The paramilitary offensive to take over the land did not stop at threats. Crops were destroyed, homes were burned and community leaders who protested and tried to organise resistance were killed. These actions were supported by the army.
Investigations in the area by prosecutors and non-governmental organisations, on which the verdict of the Constitutional Court will be based, describe paramilitary checkpoints that were set up close to those manned by the state security forces, where any small farmer could be detained on suspicion of collaborating with leftwing guerrillas or belonging to the Communist Party.
Paramilitary groups were organised to fight the guerrillas who took up arms in 1964 and had moved into these regions.
Accusing a small landowner of collaborating with the guerrillas was enough to make him a military target.
General Rito Alejo del Río, now serving a prison sentence for murder, ordered the bombing of the Cacarica river area in the north of Chocó in 1997 "to fight subversion", which together with harassment from the paramilitaries provoked the displacement of the black community.
Between 2001 and 2005, the prosecution documented 15 mass displacements, 13 of which were attributed to the paramilitaries, one to the guerrillas and one to the army.
The prosecution and officials of the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) found that contracts and titles for these lands are full of irregularities, such as falsified public documents.
Prosecution investigators were surprised to find that a 2000 sales contract for a property of 5,890 hectares had been signed by a man who drowned in the Jiguamiandó river in 1995.
The Agriculture Ministry encouraged these agro-industrial projects by granting generous loans for land purchases and infrastructure for extensive plantations.
Through state agencies like the Autonomous Regional Development Corporation for Chocó and INCODER itself - which is now under judicial investigation - officials in charge of assessing loans granted state funds to companies owned by paramilitaries.
Companies owned by Vicente Castaño were granted 2.8 million dollars from agencies like the Financial Fund for the Agricultural Sector (FINAGRO) and the Agrarian Bank, and three of the nine companies under investigation received over 6.8 million dollars.
Protests by non-governmental organisations and community councils to bodies like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) set the wheels of justice in motion.
The cause of the Afro-Colombian communities of Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó has been taken up by the IACHR, the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, the Catholic diocese of Quibdó (the capital of Chocó) and the Administrative Court of Chocó.
In December, the Administrative Court gave the government a deadline of one month for the palm growers to vacate legally protected territories.
Complying with the court order, the Interior Ministry prepared to hand over the land to a local management board that was supported by only four community councils out of 24. The remaining councils denounced this board as a front for the palm plantation owners.
The Constitutional Court vigorously opposed the land management board about to be installed by the Interior Ministry, and ordered another board that would safeguard the rights of the black communities.
So far, this conflict has not been included as part of the new government's programme. But it will have to be addressed, as it is part of the legacy it will inherit.
Javier Darío Restrepo. Inter Press Service. July 5, 2010
BOGOTÁ - Twenty-three African palm plantation owners, who invested 34 million dollars in Colombia up to 2003 and have spent another 15 million dollars on a palm oil refinery, are soon to be sentenced by a court.
They are charged with, the forcible displacement of 5,000 small farmers and invasion of 100,000 hectares of land that is legally the collective property of Afro-Colombian communities in the jungles of Chocó, a province in the northwest of the country.
Lawyer Carlos Merlano, one of the accused, who works for the Urapalma company, agreed to plead guilty to the charges against him and testify against others involved, in exchange for leniency.
The case would be just another land dispute, but for the involvement of the army, notary's offices, state bodies and even the Agriculture Ministry.
With the country's attention focused on the actions of president-elect Juan Manuel Santos, this case has hardly been noticed, and yet it is part of the legacy of outgoing President Álvaro Uribe which the new government will have to deal with when it takes office in August.
The prosecution accuses leaders of ultra-rightwing paramilitary groups such as Freddy Rendón (alias "El Alemán"); a woman called Sister Teresa Gómez; and a palm plantation owner from Antioquía, a province bordering Chocó, Rodrigo Zapata, of colluding in crime for profit.
Thirteen years ago, some 5,000 black and mestizo (of mixed indigenous and European descent) small farmers fled from their homes and lands as a result of a terror campaign waged by 80 paramilitaries who went from farm to farm announcing: "We need your land. Sell up and leave; if you don't sell, your widow will."
The operation was commanded by paramilitary leaders Carlos and Vicente Castaño, two brothers who own Urapalma - one of the nine companies involved in an agro-industrial project to convert the extensive and fertile lands between the Atrato and Murindó rivers into plantations devoted to the production of biodiesel from palm oil.
The paramilitary offensive to take over the land did not stop at threats. Crops were destroyed, homes were burned and community leaders who protested and tried to organise resistance were killed. These actions were supported by the army.
Investigations in the area by prosecutors and non-governmental organisations, on which the verdict of the Constitutional Court will be based, describe paramilitary checkpoints that were set up close to those manned by the state security forces, where any small farmer could be detained on suspicion of collaborating with leftwing guerrillas or belonging to the Communist Party.
Paramilitary groups were organised to fight the guerrillas who took up arms in 1964 and had moved into these regions.
Accusing a small landowner of collaborating with the guerrillas was enough to make him a military target.
General Rito Alejo del Río, now serving a prison sentence for murder, ordered the bombing of the Cacarica river area in the north of Chocó in 1997 "to fight subversion", which together with harassment from the paramilitaries provoked the displacement of the black community.
Between 2001 and 2005, the prosecution documented 15 mass displacements, 13 of which were attributed to the paramilitaries, one to the guerrillas and one to the army.
The prosecution and officials of the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) found that contracts and titles for these lands are full of irregularities, such as falsified public documents.
Prosecution investigators were surprised to find that a 2000 sales contract for a property of 5,890 hectares had been signed by a man who drowned in the Jiguamiandó river in 1995.
The Agriculture Ministry encouraged these agro-industrial projects by granting generous loans for land purchases and infrastructure for extensive plantations.
Through state agencies like the Autonomous Regional Development Corporation for Chocó and INCODER itself - which is now under judicial investigation - officials in charge of assessing loans granted state funds to companies owned by paramilitaries.
Companies owned by Vicente Castaño were granted 2.8 million dollars from agencies like the Financial Fund for the Agricultural Sector (FINAGRO) and the Agrarian Bank, and three of the nine companies under investigation received over 6.8 million dollars.
Protests by non-governmental organisations and community councils to bodies like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) set the wheels of justice in motion.
The cause of the Afro-Colombian communities of Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó has been taken up by the IACHR, the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, the Catholic diocese of Quibdó (the capital of Chocó) and the Administrative Court of Chocó.
In December, the Administrative Court gave the government a deadline of one month for the palm growers to vacate legally protected territories.
Complying with the court order, the Interior Ministry prepared to hand over the land to a local management board that was supported by only four community councils out of 24. The remaining councils denounced this board as a front for the palm plantation owners.
The Constitutional Court vigorously opposed the land management board about to be installed by the Interior Ministry, and ordered another board that would safeguard the rights of the black communities.
So far, this conflict has not been included as part of the new government's programme. But it will have to be addressed, as it is part of the legacy it will inherit.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
BP tax breaks
But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.
Billions in subsidies are received by the oil industry: about $4 billion a year in taxbreaks for instance.
Billions in subsidies are received by the oil industry: about $4 billion a year in taxbreaks for instance.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Iran's Student Basij
Meet Iran's Student Basij, an arm of the paramilitary group which was used in the Iran-Iraq war but that is now focuing on domestic policing, and recruits in 54,000 schools in Iran.
UK firm bribed Iraq
A UK firm bribed with many millions of dollars Iraqi and Indonesian officials to sell their lead petrol even if it is toxic.
China Pakistan nuclear deal
China will provide Pakistan with nuclear reactors but the US will probably not oppose this too loudly as they made a similar deal with India.
Obama slow on closing Guantanamo
Obama is slow on closing Guantanamo, and doesn't show any urgency in doing so; so even though he has political opposition to the plan, he doesn't really fight against that opposition:
The second story that arrived in time to cast a mocking light on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture — “Closing Guantánamo Fades as a Priority” — was published in the New York Times. Since President Obama failed to close Guantánamo by his self-imposed deadline of January 22 this year, the administration has failed to set a new deadline — and for a depressing reason, as Sen. Carl Levin explained to the Times.
“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” Sen. Levin said, adding that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration in 2013.
Sen. Levin had no doubt that this failure had come about because of a lack of political will on the part of the administration, which contrasts sharply with the rhetoric of Barack Obama in August 2007, when he was still a U.S. Senator. On that occasion, he spoke compellingly about how, ”In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values. What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power.” However, since coming to power, as Sen. Levin explained, the administration has been “unwilling to make a serious effort to exert its influence.”
With a sharp eye for how principled rhetoric has not been followed up with any attempt whatsoever to persuade Congress of the importance of closing Guantánamo, Sen. Levin contrasted the administration’s “muted response to legislative hurdles to closing Guantánamo with ‘very vocal’ threats to veto financing for a fighter jet engine it opposes,” and added that last year the administration “stood aside as lawmakers restricted the transfer of detainees into the United States except for prosecution,” and also responded with silence just a month ago, when the House and Senate Armed Services Committees voted to block money for renovating a prison in Illinois to take the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo who have not been cleared for release.
“They are not really putting their shoulder to the wheel on this issue,” Sen. Levin concluded, adding, “It’s pretty dormant in terms of their public positions.”
“Dormant” is a good word, but something like “extinct” may be more appropriate, if, as Sen. Levin asserts, Guantánamo will still be open in January 2013. If that occurs, Guantánamo will have been open for 11 years, which doesn’t even bear thinking about. This is especially true because, as it stands now, nearly eight and half years after Guantánamo opened, the Obama administration’s refusal to take leadership on the issue, to drop its unacceptable moratorium on releasing Yemenis cleared by its own Task Force (and in some cases, like Mohammed Hassan Odaini, by the courts), and to abandon an unprincipled policy of continuing to hold men indefinitely without charge or trial demonstrates that senior officials, including the president, genuinely have no interest in bringing to an end a regime founded on torture and arbitrary detention. In most respects, their actions — or their inactivity — represent a ringing endorsement of their predecessors’ vile policies.
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