Footnotes to Marcel Idels:
Colombia and the New Latin America:
Keys to US and Global Lies 
Three Addictions, Three Lies... Three Keys

1. Interview, April 7, 2002.
 
2. Pearce, Jenny, Operation Big Buck.  “Objective: to cut profits on the trade.  Assessment: trade more profitable than ever.   The value of trade in illicit drugs exceeds that of world trade in oil and is surpassed only by arms dealings. For cocaine alone this amounts to $76 billion, which equals the total national incomes of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia put together.”  Sources: Latin American Newsletters, Informe Confidencial 1: Tráfico de Drogas, London 1991 (min. estimates of profits); World Bank, World Development Report 1990; UNDP, Human Development Report 1990.
 
AP, Arizona Daily Star, September 7, A17. Colombia's Pastrana Calls for Review of War on Drugs. "The conclusions are that drugs are still the first or second biggest business of  mankind… $500 billion."
 
3. Colburn, Forrest D., Latin America at the End of Politics, Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 
 
Page 82, draws from the Inter- American Development Bank's 1998-99 report "Economic and Social Progress in Latin America," Brazil is the most unequal country in the world - the top ten percent have 50 percent of national income, the bottom 50 percent have 10 percent of the income; Chile, Guatemala, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and Paraguay are the next most unequal. The income of a third of Latin Americans (150 million) is less than two dollars per day. And inequality is actually mush worse than the statistics since income from capital (or land ownership) is not included. 
 
Forero, Juan, Still Poor: Latin Americans Protest," New York Times, July 19, p. A1.
 
4. www.coha.org/pressr/99.14Colombia.html, 1999. "The war can be understood only after understanding its socio-economic roots. Inequalities of land and income distribution and skewed living standards are among the worst in Latin America, with 3% of the population controlling 70% of the arable land.
 
Peoples Weekly World, Mar 9, 2002, "In 1984, 32 percent of arable land was held by big landowners - today 49 percent," big landowners represent less than one percent of the population. Colombians that we interviewed say that ten families own half the land.
 
Ferrer, Yadira, Break-Up of AUC Bodes Ill, Asheville Global Report, August 7, 2002. "The amount of land that the paramilitaries occupied by force in the departments of Cordoba and Sucre in the north, Meta in the southeast, and along the Middle Magdalena River, far surpasses the total acreage distributed by the government in 25 years of agrarian reform."
 
5. Chavez in Venezuela and Cardoso in Brazil have long supported regional and continental integration. The landslide victory by Lula and the left in Brazil assures that new programs are tried. Gutierrez will follow suit in Ecuador.
 
6. Colburn, Forrest D., Latin America at the End of Politics, Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 
 
Colburn goes part-way into the stark polling data done by Latinobarometro that show little faith in liberal democracy. Recent updates in the polling ( Economist,  July 28, 2001, p.37 and August 17, 2002, p.29 ) do little to dispel this trend and in fact open up new questions that show how complex the issue is. 
 
Generally excellent chapters on Urban Bias, Ideological Vacuums, Fragile Democracy, Environmental Policy, Shopping Malls, Crime and The Poor.
 
 7. Jordan, John and Jennifer Whitney, Lunch Break Revolutionaries, Dazed magazine, #92, August 2002, p. 91.
 
Asheville Global Report, July 17, 2002. "Get them all out! Is the main demand but the asambleas also call for nationalization of the banks, state expropriation of all public services, refusal to pay IMF debt, revindication of factory occupations and worker control, an end to State terrorism and freedom for political prisoners.
 
The Ecologist, Vol. 32 No 6, August 2002, p. 41. "Uniform hostility to hierarchy and the principle of representative government."
 
Though Argentina, Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay are the most famous locales for these protests, Colombia has had many similar. In October 2000, two million people marched in Bogota protesting the IMF austerity programs and government failure to seek social justice and peace. In September 2002, there were strikes and marches with more than 500,000 students and workers in cities across Colombia despite the government and death squad intimidation and little media coverage.
 
8. In Bolivia, Morales nearly won the presidency campaigning on throwing the DEA out of the country as his first act. At cacerolazos in Argentina much of the rage is directed at US banks and at the US controlled IMF. The Piqueteros at the Cortes de Ruta - road blockades - are even more radically defiant and anti-gringo.
 
Cacerolazos are street demonstrations where people beat on pans or whatever they can find to make lots of noise. Cortes de Rutas block major highways for days.

9. Ecosolidaridad Andes, The Political Economy of a Narco-Terror State: Colombia and Corporate Profits, Z Magazine, October 2002. www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=2261&sectionID=9, covers coal, gas and oil developments in Colombia by ExxonMobile, BP Amoco, Ecopetrol and Occidental Petroleum.

www.Amazonwatch.org/magaprojects/bernsteinfactsheet.html. Sanford Bernstein and Occidental Petroleum: A Deadly Partnership, 2002. 

Chomsky, Aviva, www.Colombiareport.org, Coal Mines and Communities in Colombia: The Salem Connection, September 2, 2002.

10. Castro, Alfredo, US Military Presence in Colombia, ANNCOL Bogota, July 29, 2002. 

11. Alvarez, Maria D., Forests under Fire, NACLA Vol. 35, No.1 www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=452, July 2001. "An estimated 10% of all plant and animal species of the world are found in Colombia, and many live nowhere else." p33.

Easterbrook, Michael, Nature Conservancy, No Man's Land: In the Midst of Civil Conflict, Summer 2002. "Colombia has the world's highest number of birds and amphibians and ranks among the top 5 countries in abundance of flowering plants, reptiles and mammals."

UNDCP Projects in Colombia: UNDCP Programme and Financial Requirements (2001-2002), http://www.undcp.org/colombia/projects.html?id=602. This document exposes the ecological crisis from the war, right-wing drug manufacture and desperate peasants trying to survive globalization.

Independent Review, Vol. VI, No. 3, 2001.

Marti, Jason / Ecosolidarity, CIA Cocaine Death Squads, Covert Action Quarterly, Winter, 1999.

*Donnely, George, Andes Deforestation Threatens Colombia's Water, www.cyclotron.com/, June 3, 2002.

12. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2001 http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001  Almost the same year to year wording - but worse in many ways each year. Shows declining per capita income. The murder rate keeps rising (security and life expectancy impacts) Colombia is having its worst economic crisis in 70 years, its highest levels of violence since 1950 and a wider war is just beginning with all indicators headed sharply downward.

13. UNDCP Projects in Colombia: UNDCP Programme and Financial Requirements (2001-2002), http://www.undcp.org/colombia/projects.html?id=602

14. Adams, David and Paul De La Garza,  Report criticizes drug spray mix, © St. Petersburg Times published September 6, 2002. WASHINGTON -- A chemical mix supplied by the United States to wipe out drug crops in Colombia is potentially harmful to humans and the environment, according to a government report released Thursday. After previously defending its use of the chemicals, the State Department now says it plans to switch to a less toxic formulation.

Prothero, P. Mitchell, Washington Politics & Policy Desk (UPI), August 9, 2002.  Lies told by Rand Beers, State Department head of Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, in an attempt to have lawsuit against Dyncorp spraying thrown out of court.

Ecosolidaridad Andes, The Political Economy of a Narco-Terror State: Colombia and Corporate Profits, Z Magazine, October 2002. www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=2261&sectionID=9

15.Witness for Peace, Colombia: Why You Should Care ( A pamphlet series on The US "War on Drugs"). "Crop eradication is the least effective…the greatest amount of money is needed to make the smallest difference in actual drug consumption. 

Rydell and Everingham, Controlling Cocaine. "To achieve a one percent reduction in cocaine consumption, the US could spend an additional $34 million on drug treatment or 20 times more, $783 million, on eradication.

US General Accounting Office, Drug Control: Narcotics Threat from Colombia Continues to Grow, 2001. "Despite 2 years of spraying… net coca cultivation increased 50 percent."

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, June, 2000. P.45, "as fumigation continues the rural poor will face fewer and fewer options for survival."

16. Alvarez, Maria D., Forests under Fire, NACLA Vol. 35, No.1 www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=452, July 2001.

Idels, Marcel, Andes on Fire, www.Bluegreenearth.com. "The war and the herbicide spraying by the US endangers the most biologically diverse region on Earth. Fifty percent of all species live in tropical rainforests. Five to ten percent of all tropical species disappear each decade: 100 species a day. Half of all the land based species on Earth live in the Amazon basin, according to the Audubon website (www.audubon.org). There are more species of fish in the Amazon than in the entire Atlantic Ocean."

Zorrilla, Carlos, Mining: The New Threat to Biodiversity in the Andes, www.RAINFORESTINFO.ORG.AU, 2002.

17. Podur, Justin and Manuel Rozental, Prepare for 4 Years of the Uribe Model, Znet, May 30, 2002. "Uribe and the paras are far from enemies…the plan for Colombia is accelerated development… starvation wages… drug war to fumigate farmers off their lands, the dirty war to kill unionists, peace activists, women activists, and rural leaders; the war on terror…economic war with IMF structural adjustment… the war of lies that makes people invisible…"

For obvious US/Bush propensity to lie see: Leech Garry M., Colombian Contras: US propagandists Prepare America for New Generation of "Freedom Fighters." The Indypendent, July 2002, p. 17. "Reich a former Reagan propagandist, will likely have to clean up the image of the Colombian military and its paramilitary allies... From 1982 to 1986, Reich was chief of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), ... spreading fear in the US public of Nicaragua's Sandinista government and promoting the US-backed Contras. Reich worked closely with [Eventually-convicted and then pardoned] Oliver North and the National Security Council to manage policy toward Nicaragua until the Iran-Contra scandal broke. A Comptroller's office report stated that Reich's office had "Engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities." OPD was shut down in 1987... when questions regarding Washington's role in the failed coup against Venezuela [2002] are taken into account, it appears that Reich may already be up to his old tricks again.

George W. Bush appointed Reich the State Department's chief diplomat in Latin America in 2001. 

For the clever PR lies of Castano see: Wilson Scott, Washington Post, The evolution of the U.S. role in Colombia's Civil War, Foreign Service, March 18, 2002; Page A09, BOGOTA. "Uribe's view is also shared by Colombia's top generals and the leader of an irregular army that emerged in response to the guerrilla insurgency." The worst thing that happened to Colombia is the guerrillas' corruption by drug money," said Carlos Castano, head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a 15,000-member paramilitary group that itself profits enormously from the drug trade and from donations by Colombia's ranchers and other private business interests. "For years, the guerrillas seemed like they might be the solution to our problems . . . until they allied themselves with the drug traffickers," he said in an interview."

18. www.ecopetrol.com.co; http://www.ecopetrol.com.co/ecop/ingles.htm

19. Wolf, Paul, www.derechos.net/paulwolf/colombia/drugwar.htm

www.HRW.org, The Sixth Division report.

20. The winner take all structure in the US (unlike any other country) excludes the poor from winning office even if they are a majority (unless they all voted, though registration and no voting holidays make this difficult too). In Italy the right-wing and centrists kept the Communist Party out of power for decades even though the communists garnered as much as 40 percent of the vote. In Italy this resulted in armed struggle while in the US they just fill up the prisons or let the poor terrorize themselves with crime and drugs.

21.www.csn.org, Interview of from Matthew Knoesterof (MK) from Colombia Support Network, by Sean Setaro. "Paramilitaries are privately owned armies from large landholders, which often tend to be [ or once were] drug lords. They were constructed from former drug cartels, as well as self-defense groups from cattle ranchers that kind of merged together with the old cartels. They are absolutely rife with drug money and the official Armed Forces of Colombia are intimately tied in with that, too, because the Armed Forces answer to the large landholders and the corporate powers."

Caicedo, Jaime,  Uribe: The Perfec Man For Washington, 
 
ANNCOL Stockholm, August 14, 2002. Exclusive interview by Roberto Gutiérrez with key figure in the Colombian opposition: General Secretary of the Colombian Communist Party. “Uribe is an organic representative of the new Colombian bourgeoisie. An example of the upper middle strata, enriched by narcotrafficking, determined to make the program of great transnational capital functional. He is not the spokesperson of the classical sector: industrial, commercial, exporters, financiers, landowners.” 

22. 2000 Colombia: Watch List Colombia. Luis Moreno, an employee of State Department, bragged he helped Colombian army create a database of subversives, terrorists and drug dealers.

Washington Times, 3/16/1994, p. a15. "U.S. probably a collaborator and much of U.S. aid for counternarcotics diverted to "killing fields." Amnesty International report said human meat is sold on black market and politicians gunned down along with children, homosexuals, and drug addicts. U.S. support because of Colombia's strategic position. No one is safe, people killed for body parts. 

Kovaleski, Serge, Washington Post, August, 1999, "Senator Piedad Cordoba… president of the Senate human rights commission, was blindfolded… flown by [US?] helicopter to a mountain hideout where she met… Carlos Castano. 'He showed me printed transcripts of my telephone conversations." She also heard taped conversations of Jaimie Garzon a popular comedian that Castano killed.

Piedad's kidnapping illustrates the layers of protection, intelligence gathering and assistance that the US provides. Since 1989 a variety of US intelligence agencies have used a variety of high tech electronic devices to monitor communications in Colombia. In Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden reviews a few of these and the training given to Colombians on surveillance, wire taps and  phone location procedures (pp. 70 - 90). By now the practice must be widespread. Uribe has banned cell phone use in rural areas partly to help with intelligence efforts to track guerrilla phone calls.

23. Colombian Communist Party Press Release of September 11, New Decree Establishes Semi-Dictatorship in Colombia, ANNCOL,com, September 13, 2002. Translated by Liz Atherton / Colombia Peace Association.

Castro. Alfredo,.ANNCOL Colombia September 27, 2002. Two Regions Placed Under Military Rule. 

24. For direct subsidies see: Forero, Juan, G.I.'s Enter the Colombian Fray to Protect an Oil Pipeline, New York Times, October 4, 2002, p.1. "The $94 million counterinsurgency program is also an important element in the offensive by Colombia's new government." Mentions the more than $24 million that oil companies have spent lobbying and on political contributions to get the pipeline protection and more aid for Colombia's military.
 
www.DynCorp-sucks.com
 
www.pressurepoint.org/pp_exxon_tobaco.html
 
Torriero, E.A. and Pedro Ruiz Gutierrez, Privatising the War in Colombia, Ft. Lauderdale Sentinel, September 20, 2000.
 
www.StopEsso.org; 
 
www.Campaign ExxonMobil.org; 
 
www.StopMobil.net;
 
www.PressurePoint.org; 
 
www.GreenPeace.org/climate
 
www.emagazine/july-august_1996/0796;  www.emagazine/july-august_1996/0796curr2.htm
 
Chomsky, Aviva, www.Colombiareport.org, Coal Mines and Communities in Colombia: The Salem Connection, September 2, 2002.
 
www. globalexchange.org/colombia/2002912_320.html.
 
www.Drummondco.com

25. Stokes, Doug, Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia, www.Zmag.org/content/colombia/stokes_perception-management.cfm, June 7, 2002.
 
" Donnie Marshall, the current DEA Administrator, stated in 2001 before the subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, that "the Farce controls certain areas of Colombia and the FARC in those regions generate revenue by "taxing" local drug related activities." Marshall goes on to state categorically that "at present, there is no corroborated information that the FARC is involved directly in the shipment of drugs from Colombia." Marshall agreed with Milford that - unlike the FARC - the right-wing paramilitary groups "raise funds through extortion, or by protecting laboratory operations in northern and central Colombia. The Carlos Castano organization, and possibly other paramilitary groups appears to be directly involved in processing cocaine. At least one of these paramilitary groups appears to be involved in exporting cocaine from Colombia."

26. Engqvist, Maria, UNIONIST WHO FILED LAW SUIT AGAINST COCA-COLA SHOT DEAD, ANNCOL Stockholm, 06.09.2002. The Coca-Cola killings in Colombia continue. Last week union activist Adolfo de Jesus Munera was murdered shortly after he received notice that a law suit filed by him against Coca-Cola was accepted by Colombia’s Constitutional Court.

Dudley, Steven, and Mario A. Murillo, Oil in a Time of War; Multinational Exploration and Its Impact on the Internal Conflict in Colombia, www.wbalifree.org/ouramericas/oil.htm, July 1999. page 1,5,6. Cites BBC "World in Action report," and the 1992 contract between BP and the DSL mercenary training company

www.moles.org/projectunderground/mil/colombia.html. Militarization and Minerals Tour: Colombia, August 1999.

Geitner, Paul, AP Business Writer, Colombia: Deadly Nation for Unions, Associated Press, June 17, 2002. BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Colombia was the most dangerous nation for union members again last year, with 201 killings or disappearances reported, or 90 percent of the worldwide total, according to an annual survey released Tuesday. The total in Colombia, plagued by drug traffickers and a decades-old guerrilla war, was more than 30 percent higher than the 153 reported in 2000, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions said. That pushed the global figure up to 223, 14 more than in 2000. Public sector union members in Colombia were targeted the most, accounting for about 65 percent of those killed or missing. The ICFTU attributed that to their opposition to privatization of state-owned industries. "Trade union activists are being systematically eliminated," the report said, adding at another point, "The entire country has been swept by this anti-union violence." While the Colombian government denies responsibility, the report charged most of the killings were "carried out by paramilitary groups which enjoy the tacit complicity of the security forces." 

27. Tate, Winifred, NACLA _ Vol. 35, No. 3, Nov./Dec. 2001, Report on the Americas, "Into the Andean Quagmire: Bush II Keeps Up March to Militarization www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=57
 
In the years between the first and second Bush administrations, however, the situation across the region had deteriorated with increasing violence, growing economic woes and ongoing political instability. As human rights safeguards established over the past two decades are rolled back in the frenzy to root out terrorism, the real danger of increased support for abusive military intelligence units will increase." 

Asheville Global Report, No. 134, Aug. 9, 2001. 

In the 1960's the US promised many of the same things that rural Colombia still needs. Robert White the former Ambassador to El Salvador who was a diplomat in Bogota and toured the Colombian countryside in the mid-1970's, said on a recent trip "Then, as now, there were few signs that the government has ever invested a peso in education, health care or farm-to-market roads. Back then, I gave talks to rural communities assuring them that the US remained committed to the Alliance for Progress reforms of President Kennedy. But successive Colombian governments reneged… and Washington concentrated funding on counterinsurgency that I believe strengthened the violent extremes in the region." (The Wrong War, Washington Post, September 12, 1999)

Wilson, Scott, Washington Post, December 27, 2001, Transfer of Power in Colombia: 
 
PARAISO, Colombia -- It is hard to imagine a place more misnamed than this village in northern Colombia's San Lucas Range. Paradise has had a difficult year.
 
Months ago, President Andres Pastrana sent the army into Paraiso and the surrounding region to create a safe haven for peace talks with Colombia's second-largest guerrilla force. The army did not carry out Pastrana's orders. Instead, it appeared to work in tandem with the paramilitary forces to drive the guerrillas deep into the jungle-covered mountains.

www.mpri.com is a high-level military consulting firm that is advising the Colombian military.

28. For polling data on the disappearance of faith in democracy see: Economist, July 28, 2001, p.37 and August 17, 2002, p.29.

For links between drug dealing and violence see: Ricardo Rocha Garcia, The Colombian Economy After 25 Years of Drug Trafficking; UN ODCCP - Colombia, http://www.undcp.org/colombia/rocha.html
 
"Although, drug trafficking has had little direct and positive effects on the Colombian economy, there is no doubt that the incidence of trafficking on the country's social and political instability has been very important. The escalation of violence coincides with the increase in drug trafficking, and there is a strong correlation between homicides and drug trafficking offenses. And the drug traffickers fuel the armed conflict through their financial support to guerrilla and paramilitaries. In order to protect their interests the drug traffickers are furthermore engaged in a large scale corruption of politicians and civil servants with the predictable result that people's faith in their country's institutions has declined further at incalculable costs to the society. Both the guerrilla and the paramilitaries depend on illicit drugs to finance their war. In most regions of illicit cultivation and processing they levy taxes on harvesting, processing and transport by river or air, and in some areas the insurgents control the local trade in coca base. In addition many drug traffickers have their own private armies to protect, not only laboratories and domestic trafficking routes, but also their own investments in landed property outside the regions of illicit cultivation and processing. (Part V)." 

Colburn, Forrest D., Latin America at the End of Politics, Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 
 
Latin America has the highest crime rates in the world and they are increasing (p.75). 

Colburn's  analysis fits the Colombian situation where as drug influence spreads corruption throughout the army, government and society then crime increases. He examines theories to explain rising crime rates: neoliberalism, guerrillas/civil wars, police corruption, and inequality. All of these are rampant in Colombia. He even considers the influences of the US culture of materialism and pop "gangsta" music culture. The lack of meaningful democracy or "belongingness" is also widely recognized as pushing people into responses such as drug use, crime or revolutionary activity.

The Genocidal Democracy, by Javier Geraldo, disputes the narco connection to muder, but attributes a much higher rate of murders to the Colombian government and the death squads. Based-on pre-1995 data, the current evidence points to a connection between all of these murders. 

29. Colburn, Forrest D., Latin America at the End of Politics, Princeton Univ. Press, 2002.

30. Podur, Justin, Cauca: Their Fate Lies in Our Hands: Interview with Noam Chomsky, ZNET, www.zmag.org/crisesCurEvts/Colombia/colombiatop.htm, Autonomous communities in Northern Cauca.

Zarate-Laun, Cacelia, The Forgotten War, ZNET, www.zmag.org, September 16. Information on recently killed human rights workers and US culpability.

Actualidad, September 2002, Zmag.org/colombia. "Young people of all ages, social strata, economic classes, ideologies, and all the colors and regions of Colombia; students, workers, artists, members of religious groups, cultural and community workers, peasants, sportspeople, environmentalists, among others, are committed to the construction of a country where all of us belong and where all our dreams and expectations are possible."

31. Ninety percent of labor union organizers and rank and file that are killed worldwide typically die in Colombia. Colombia not only leads the world in murders, but also leads in the number of murdered priests, teachers, human rights workers, political organizers, judges, police and lawyers.

32. See note 28 on the correlation between drug traffiking and homicides.

Officially, 3500 to 4000 murders are called "political" violence each year since 1989, but this figure does not count the 1000s of additional "criminal" murders that are committed by the same "political" murderers and their associates (the criminal gangs and narcotics cartels - actually all the same thing and people! - such intentional obfuscation!) 25,000 to 30,000 people are murdered every year in Colombia - 6 times the murder rate in the US (100 times the British rate ?). These murders occur because of the government's negligence and their tolerance of the drug dealers. 

*We first got this idea from The Carter Center which emphasizes the 25,000 dead each year. In the beginning of Ingrid Bentacourt's book: Until Death Do Us Part, she laments the 30,000 murders  resulting from the violence.

*Castro, Alfredo, Combat and Assassination in Medellin, ANNCOL Colombia, September, 2002. "So, far this year over 2500 people have been assassinated in Medellin." 

*Medellin may be the most violent place in Colombia but the region around Medellin represents less than 5 percent of the population of Colombia. A straight-line extrapolation for the whole country would equal 50,000 assassinations. The actual total for this year - country-wide  - could reach 40,000 dead. In this scenario we would attribute 12,000 to the direct consequence of the civil war: 240 by the guerrillas, 4800 to the AUC political murders, 5200 to AUC narco-murders and 1760 murders committed directly by the Armed Forces. In reality the Armed Forces are responsible along with the GOC of most of the AUC's political murders and some of its narco-murders. Complicating the body counts is the AUC and the military's habit of killing people and then dressing them up as guerrillas.

Zarate-Laun, The Forgotten War, Zmag.org/colombia/, Spetember 16, 2002. "Everyday 20 persons are killed in Colombia and 1,000 are displaced." This equals 7300 murders and 365,000 displaced per year.

33. http://www.lchr.org/feature/colombia/more.htm. “Colombia’s human rights disaster is both product and symptom of a steady deterioration in public institutions, in particular the legal system. Colombian officials have publicly acknowledged this ‘de-institutionalization’ of the state. Government policies have exacerbated this phenomenon, which has destroyed accountability for human rights violations, deprived many Colombians of due process, and encouraged outlaw paramilitary groups linked to massive abuses.”  

Rosenberg, Tina, The Great Cocaine Quagmire, Rollingstone Magazine, April 2001. "A military strategy has never been successful in cutting the supply of drugs. As for Colombia, the military aid is likely to make matters worse - to widen the war, handicap the peace talks, embolden the hard-liners and cause more civilian deaths… directly assocciate the US with these killers (AUC)."

Estimates of AUC strength:  
	  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, June 2000: AUC has 6,000 
	  WOLA, June 2002 says AUC has 11,000 
	  Asheville Global Report August 7, 2002: AUC - 10,000 
	  Justin Podur, August 12, 2002 says AUC has 15,000 
	  Reuters September 28 (and August 16) 2002 AUC- 10,000 
	  Gary Leech, Colombia Report, September 30, 2002: AUC has 12,000 
	  Mancuso claimed AUC had 14,000 in 2002 

34. http://www.lchr.org/feature/colombia/more.htm> are themselves frequently attacked. Though international scrutiny and demands by human rights groups have led to modest progress in bringing rights violators to justice, most human rights violations are either unresolved or inadequately punished. The Colombian army has fought guerrilla groups for over 30 years. The war has caused a worsening human rights disaster. Over one million Colombians have been displaced.

http://www.refugees.org/world/countryrpt/amer_carib/colombia.htm. In 1999 alone, between 2,000 and 3,000 people died as a result of political violence and extrajudicial killings. An estimated 1,845 were killed in some 399 massacres (defined as killings of three or more people outside of combat). The Colombian army and its paramilitary allies committed most of these abuses.

Arizona Republic [A.P.] March 9, 2002, "The Congress, traditionally a corrupt and inefficient body."

New York Times, Jan. 15, 2002, " There are many steps toward the kind of agreements that could form the basis of a real peace; few have actually been taken by [the government]... controlling the paramilitaries, galvanizing support for a negotiated settlement among the elite business class and the military... the government needs to show it is serious about carrying out difficult reforms, among them restructuring a corrupt and closed political system and purging rights violators from the army... be prepared to take on such complicated issues as agrarian reform and an equitable tax structure."

Thoumi, F.E., Why the illegal psychoactive drugs industry grew in Colombia, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 34, No. 3, 1992, pp. 37-64.

Perhaps the Colombian elite are not the greatest problem, former president Pastrana says that he asked Clinton for social aid. "When I told him I wanted US help for human development, President Clinton said, "I can't help you with that. What I can get for you out of Congress is weapons and military supplies" Rolling Stone, May 9, 2002, p. 67.

35. Paul Wolf has research on La Violencia at www.derechos.org/paulwolf/colombia/drugwar.htm 

Scott, P. and Marshall, J. (1991). Cocaine Politics, p. 261. Colombia. MAS (Muerte A Secuestradores): "Death to Kidnappers," Colombian antiguerrilla death squad founded in December 1981 by members of Medellin cartel, Cali cartel, and Colombian military. 

For evidence on the weakness of the Colombian Government see: 
 
Howe, Benjamin Ryder, Out of the Jungle, Atlantic Monthly, May 2000, p.38. "Other institutions are no better than the army at doing their job. Police fail to solve 95 percent of crimes, and fail even to investigate most murders. When a justice system loses credibility to such an aextent, victims stop reporting crimes… Bank of Colombia director, Salomon Kalmanovitz said, 'The reality is that a weak system of justice can benefit the upper classes.' The war means the freedom to avoid paying taxes, to misuse public funds, and to dip into the rivers of drug-related cash."

36. In Germany the left won the 2002 elections running against Bush and his war against Iraq, even calling him "like-Hitler; a British Labor party representative said on BBC " Most people in Europe don't trust Mr. Bush," September 28;the Left nearly won the elections in Bolivia in 2002 running against Bush and anti-Bush feelings are high throughout Latin America.

Perelez, Jane, "Anger at US Said to be at New High," New York Times, September 11, 2002, p. A23, Anger permeates all strata of society, especially among the educated…disdain reserved for Mr. Bush…People have given up because they don't believe the US will change its policy."

 "This is a crusade… the Axis of Evil (Iran, Iraq, North Korea) " -  G.W. Bush
 
Lobe, Jim, Latest Bush moves will sow disorder, Asheville Global Report, July 17, 2002, p. 6.

Ecologist, September 2002. Almost the whole magazine is an anti-Bush and anti-US, with a review of the Earth Summit and other actions that the US has done to turn world opinion against it.

Speaking against the IMF which is a polite anti-Bush code word: "There are two priorities which we will not abandon… we will maintain social programs and financing of provincial economies (Argentine Economy Minister Lavagna)… There are opinions on the part of the IMF that left even the most pliant of us fed up (Interior Minister Matzkin)," Larry Rohter, Argentina says it Will Skip Payment, New York Times, September 25, 2002.

37. Stokes, Doug, Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia, www.Zmag.org/content/colombia/stokes_perception-management.cfm, June 7, 2002

38. Bowden Mark, Killing Pablo, 2002: The Hunt For the World's greatest outlaw - Penguin Books, London, p.8. His source is Gaitan of Colombia: A Political Biography,by Richard E. Sharpless, 1978. A Thousand Dances, by Jthousy, 1957 has the text of a similar speech (p. 99) and much detail of Gaitan's efforts leading up to 1948.

39. Rafael Uribe Uribe (1914), Camilo Torres ( ELN ), Gomez Hurtado (!970?), Luis Carlos Galan, 1989 by Escobar/Castano; Jose Antequera (UP) 1989 killed by MAS or Los Pepes;  Bernardo Jaramillo (UP) killed by Castano/ Los Pepes-MAS, 1990; Carlos Pizzarro / Pepes/MAS; Jaime Pardo Leal (UP), Pepes/MAS; Jaime Garzon peace advocate (1999), Alex Lopera, Peace Commisioner (and former vice minister of youth), killed by SOA-trained officers of the 4th Brigade including Gen. Ospina Ovalle (now head of the Army), 1999; and Jose Luis Arroyave, a priest and peace advocate in Medellin, 2002; and dozens more union and civic leaders.

40. Romero, Oscar, The Violence of Love, Plough Publishing, House of Bruderhoff Communities, 2002

41. In fact, that is what the school of Americas (SOA) now called WHISC (as in "sweep the old name/image under the rug") has taught for 30 years. Castano kills anyone who might ever become a leftist. It is the justification used in the mass murders of Pinochet, the Argentinean Generals, Fujimori/Montesinos and the US FBI's Cointelpro now "legalized" under the Patriot Act.

42. Transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking
 
P. WILLIAMS Director, The Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies and Professor of International Security, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America; C. FLOREZ Chief, Intelligence Operations, National Drug Intelligence Center, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, United States of America. "A global trading system that emphasizes free trade rather than fair trade is one that encourages the rise of drug production and the emergence of transnational criminal organizations in developing countries. In spite of the rise of licit transnational corporations in developing countries, the Cali Cartel remains, in effect, the developing countries’ most successful transnational corporation. That is not only a comment about the importance of the drug- trafficking industry, but is also a reflection of the continued economic problems that face developing countries. In that connection, some researchers credit the Colombian cartels and their huge monetary base with providing much of the economic stability and even prosperity that Colombia enjoyed throughout the 1980s and early 1990s."

Cockburn and St. Clair, Whiteout, p. 308 Details on how Medellin Cartel members were involved in dealing drugs for the CIA and US government to support anti-Castro Cubans involved in Watergate and Chilean Embassy break-ins (1972), the Somoza dictatorship, and the Contras who fought the Sandinistas. Also some mention of Cali cartel. page 95, a Venezuelan Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila was arrested for shipping 22 tons of cocaine to the US in a "controlled Shipment" for the Cali cartel - CIA approved.

Wash Post Sept. 22, 99, page b.1.Nov. 1998 half ton of cocaine found on Airplane of the chief of Colombian Military Transport - when it landed in Miami. Another plane connected to President Samper [Cali cartel] was seized when heroin was discovered in 1995. 

43. www.coha.org/pressr/99.14Colombia.html, 1999. "In 1985, guerrilla leaders formed the UP in an effort to lay down their arms and participate peacefully in civil society… enjoyed tremendous popular success, with roughly 4,000 party members voted into various state and municipal positions. In a lesson not lost upon the present generation of FARC leaders, virtually all of these UP officials were murdered."

44. Bowden, Mark, Killing Pablo, 2002: The Hunt For the World's greatest outlaw - Penguin Books, London, wwww.killingpablo.com. pp. 52-53. Just from 1985, thirty judges were killed before Laura, then 4 more and then 11 at the Palace of Justice battle. Actually the exact number for the period 198-1991 may be closer to 60 and the killing has continued.

45. Ricardo Rocha Garcia, The Colombian Economy After 25 Years of Drug Trafficking; UN ODCCP - Colombia, http://www.undcp.org/colombia/rocha.html "Drug traffickers own 4.4 million hectares, worth at least $2.2 billion." (Part IV)

Leech, Gary M., www.Colombiareport.org, 1999. "Paramilitary forces in northern Colombia, through the use of terror, displaced entire populations in order to implement an aggressive counter-agrarian reform. These tactics allowed narco-landowners to further increase their land holdings, whilst at the same time disrupting bases of peasant support for the guerrillas. By the end of the 1980's, drug traffickers had become the largest landowners in the country… "large swaths of rural Colombia into large, unproductive cattle ranches." [There were 28 million head of cattle in Colombia in 1987]

Asheville Global Report, No. 134, August 9, 2001, www.agrnews.org. Coffee prices fell 52 percent since 1997 [and possibly another 30-40 percent since 2000]

Alvarez, Maria D., Forests under Fire, NACLA Vol. 35, No.1 www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=452, July 2001. "800,000 tons total agricultural imports by Colombia in1990, three million in 1995, 7 million in 1999." This translates into lost rural jobs.

46. Williams, P. and C. Florez, Transnational Criminal Organizations and Drug Trafficking, 1994. "In that connection, it is interesting that the rise of Medellin as one of the main centers of the cocaine trafficking industry was coterminous with its decline as a major textile producer. The Colombian drug traffickers provided alternative employment, with the result that they obtained the sympathy of at least the local population. Such loyalty is an important asset for the group, not least because it helps to strengthen counter-intelligence capabilities and makes it more difficult for the Government to engage in effective action against the organizations. In the battle for hearts and minds, the employer has a distinct advantage." 

47. Castro, Alfredo, Uribe Takes First Steps Toward Open Dictatorship, ANNCOL Bogotá, August 13, 2002 Less than a week after being inaugurated as Colombia’s new president, extremist Alvaro Uribe Velez, has enacted a law that vastly curtails the rights of Colombian citizens and appears to legalise certain tactics used by paramilitary death squads. Civil society is bracing itself for the worst and already parts of the union movement are making plans to start operating in secret.

48. Drug ties to all levels of the government are well recognized during the period  see:
 
Lobe, Jim, Colombia seen afoul of US Military Aid, www.AGR.com, February 14, 2002, "ties to drug traffickers during most of the 1990's…"

Killing Pablo, pp. 31, 91.

49. Bowden, Mark, Killing Pablo: The Hunt For the World's greatest outlaw - Penguin Books, London, 2002,  wwww.killingpablo.com. pp. 182-200 and 215-220, 225-226, 256-272. The 1979 extradition treaty was of key importance for the US. Pablo Escobar was elected as an alternate for the Colombian Assembly from Medellin in 1982.

50. I've never been convinced that anyone really knows how alliances shape up in Colombia. The elite seem to get their way, but how the various drug cartels, criminal gangs armed forces factions and corrupt politicians interact or get behind a new program seems impossible to decipher. Parts of the Cali cartel helped capture Escobar and they must have been bought off before the government moved on to attack the Cali cartel. Castano is the only character capable of enforcing an alliance among these disparate groups as we wrote in Covert Action Quarterly, Winter 1999. Whatever happened it worked well for US interests and the drug traffickers. The US maintained links with military during the Samper Narco-presidency and weapons and training flowed to certain elements in the military. More information on these recipients and their future careers might shed light.

51. Apparently, most Colombians were resigned to war after seeing the false promises of Pastrana's peace hacked away by the paramilitaries. Since no one could stop Castano, many people decided to follow him. The low voter turnout, the fraud and the protests that took place from 2000 to 2002 suggest that as in the rest of Latin America liberal democracy and voting had lost any real meaning. A vote for Uribe became a vote for Castano, war and US aid. Some writers say the shift to a strongman like Peron or Fujimori is a repeating pattern in Latin America. If that was true it no longer seems to hold what with the horrors of Fujimori and all other strongman attempts. 

52. The guerrillas were popular in many areas until the full-scale death squad offensives of 1998-1999 when terror became too much for many people and they fled or became too frightened to help or join the guerrillas. Through training and carefully spending their small budget on weapons the guerrilla became strong enough to diversify their funding sources further with road-blocks, corporate extortion and kidnapping. This may have helped the elite and narco-bourgeoisie accept each other better and rally behind the AUC. The guerrillas had little choice but to expand and keep up the pressure since the death squads were growing, US aid was beginning to increase and human rights groups had been unable to raise a sufficient international outcry against the massacres and impunity of the armed forces.

53. Howe, Benjamin Ryder, Out of the Jungle, Atlantic Monthly, May 2000, p. 38, "Carlos Castano may now be Latin America's most feared warlord. Castano symbolizes what has gone wrong with Colombia,,, death squads: gangs of mercenaries and hit men who try to terrify the population… the army relies on Castano's death squads to fight its most difficult battles… the AUC is one of the few effective tools it has… the army needs them."

Caballero, Cristina, Mapiripan: A Shortcut to Hell, www.icij.org/investigate/caballero.html. July 28, 1997.

Tibu massacre 1999 and hundreds more.

See footnote #22 and Killing Pablo for evidence of intelligence sharing that began with Los Pepes and continues on today.

54. Forero, Juan, Still Poor: Latin Americans Protest," New York Times, July 19, p. A1.

Contact www.ecuanex.net for details of the Quito FTAA meet.

www.ecuador.indymedia.org/

Asheville Global Report, September 4, 2002. Also good statements on the "simulacrum of democracy" in Argentina that is really a "mafiocracy."

55.  Apparently the EU has caved in for the time being to US pressure and has exempted all US troops from the ICC as long as they are tried in the US.

56. Stokes, Doug, Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia, www.Zmag.org/content/colombia/stokes_perception-management.cfm, June 7, 2002.

57. Biden, Joseph R., A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations; United States Senate, 106th Congress, Second Session, May 2000.

58. Leech, Gary M., www.Colombiareport.org, 1999 (see his footnote 26).

59. www.hrw.org

60. Goff, Stan, Is Colombia the next Vietnam, ANNCOL.com. "According to Ralph McGehee, a highly decorated CIA veteran, 'Disinformation is a large part of covert action, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies.' I have come to agree. Some will say that by taking this position, I am supporting the FARC. They would be right. Imperialism is the enemy of us all."

For another peek at manipulation (lies) by the US government see: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, June 2000, p.45 (insert). "Magazine signed contracts with the drug policy office in which they agreed to run one free anti-drug ad for every ad the office paid for [or] they could publish certain stories that met the guidelines the office had laid down for editorial content."
 
61. See notes 30 - 33

62. Just since 1975, US intelligence, military and foreign policies have helped slaughter thousands in each of the following countries: Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Chile. Many thousands died in other countries and none of this counts the economic policies that structurally kill millions more.

WOLA, US Policy Fails to Address Growing Paramilitary Threat, June 11, 2002, www.wola.org, Senator Patrick Leahy, "The certification had more to do with the fact that US aid was running out than with Colombia's actually making sufficient progress on human rights."

63. Tate, Winifred, Colombia: The Right Gathers Momentum, NACLA, May/June, 2002, Vol. 35, No. 6. "Paramilitary groups carried out "armed Campaigning" in support of Uribe."

www.Wola.org, US policy fails to address growing paramilitary threat in Colombia. June, 2002. Cites interference and threats by paras and "Gen. Gary Speer of Southcom acknowledged, "Even the Colombian military leadership looks at the illegal paramilitaries, the AUC, as the greater long-term threat." [Gen. Peter Pace said the same thing to Congress a year earlier]; see: http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/vanish01.html  and  http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/career.html

64. Chomsky, Noam, Alternative Press Review, Spring 2001. “The US and human rights groups have long recognized them to be responsible for the overwhelming majority of the atrocities, including the most atrocious of them, and they are surely the most violent and brutal terrorist organization in the Western hemisphere, ranking high in the world,” 

65. Ruiz, Bert, A Bright Shinning Lie, Colombia Report, February, 18, 2002

For more lies and global deceptions see: Castro, Alfredo, AN OPEN LETTER FROM COLOMBIAN JOURNALIST TO LUIS ALFONSO PLAZAS VEGA, ANNCOL.com. Criminal history of Uribe appointee to Director of Confiscated Assets

66. Leech, Gary, Washington Targets Colombia's Rebels, Colombia Report, July 29, 2002. www.colombiareport.org

67. www.colombiareport.org

68. Evans, Michael, Guerrillas, Drugs and Human Rights in US - Colombian Policy, 1988-2002, National Security Archive Book No. 69.

69. Castro, Alfredo, Dirty War in Bolivar Department, ANNCOL Colombia, May, 8, 2002, Interview with veteran human rights worker from Bolivar, Gloria.

At the attack of Castano's headquarters at Nudo de Paramillo in1998 (New Years eve), US surveillance and communications monitoring aircraft aided logistics while Slavatore Mancuso flew a Blackhawk helicopter into the battle to save Castano. See: http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/vanish01.html and http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/career.html

70. www.amnesty.org

Bowden Mark, Killing Pablo, 2002: The Hunt For the World's greatest outlaw - Penguin Books, London, p.89. A CIA operative reported suspects thrown out of helicopter.

Carrigan, Ana, An Invasion Foretold, In These Times, May 14, 2001, page 14. Example of a regional massacre over several years.

Chengue and El Salado (in the North); Tibu; Mapiripan; Comuna 13 (2002 )(a Medellin slum); El Tigre; Naya (2002); Barbacoas; Izcuande; and hundreds more.

71. Many of the massacres attributed to the guerrilla were mistakes, are actually the army or the paras or else they remain unsubstantiated.

72. Tate, Winifred, Colombia: The Right Gathers Momentum, NACLA, May/June, 2002, Vol. 35, No. 6. AUC salaries paid to urban youth from criminal gangs.

73 Tate, Winifred, Colombia: The Right Gathers Momentum, NACLA, May/June, 2002, Vol. 35, No. 6. Interview in Bogota.

74. Witness for Peace delegate eyewitness report, from a January 2002 visit to Colombia, "In none of our nine meetings with various civic, union or human rights groups, were the ELN or FARC cited as the perpetrators of atrocities, only the paras." 

Interview with Catholic priest who worked with Paez indigenous people, "The FARC operate in our area, but the people don't fear them like the paras."

75. Rivera, Rachel, Colombia Groups Alarmed by US anti-terror, www.AGRNEWS.org, May 6, 2002. "It is a myth of the media that we have been displaced by the conflict between the paramilitaries and the guerrillas," says Cordoba (President of the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians) "It was the paramilitaries who came and took our land."

Castro, Alfredo, Dirty War in Bolivar Department, ANNCOL Colombia, May, 8, 2002, Interview with veteran human rights worker from Bolivar, Gloria. "Where I work in Bolivar over 99% of all the violations are carried out by the paramilitaries, many times working with the army… authorities will blame the guerrillas if they feel it is beneficial. However, upon further  investigation we find that the accusations are almost always false."

76. "FARC Submits Proposals," Peoples Weekly World, Feb. 15, 2002.

Colombia: The Politics of Escalation," Mark Cook, Covert Action Quarterly, No. 68, 1999. FARC has made many proposals during the three years of peace talks. They have been open both to legalization and to crop substitution programs as a way to reduce the magnitude of the drug problem in Colombia and the US [as Cook points out].

"13 Point Communique from the Mountains of Colombia" ANNCOL, Feb., 2002

77. Vigilante Violence, George Magazine Farewell Issue, April, 2001. p122, "I'll go work in the coca fields, "she says. "What else is there."

78. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2000. Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2000/.  "Narcotics traffickers continued to control large tracts of land and other assets and exerted influence throughout society, the economy, and political life. Income distribution is highly skewed; much of the population lives in poverty… 25,660 murders occurred during the year… 63 percent of crimes go unreported and 40 percent of all reported crimes go unpunished."

Betancourt, Ingrid, Until Death Do Us Part, ECCO Press, 2002.

Williams, P. and C. Florez, Transnational Criminal Organizations and Drug Trafficking, 1994. Though arguing strongly throughout their seminal work that drug trafficking is negative for the economy and a function of a weak and corrupted state, they conclude: "Yet those organizations, pernicious as they are, also have some positive effects. Drug trafficking, for example, contributes to foreign exchange for States such as Bolivia and Colombia, something that has been especially important in a period of debt and failing commodity prices. Moreover, transnational criminal organizations are often important employers providing job opportunities that would not otherwise be available. Transnational crime also provides an important safety net in the event that there is a downturn in the licit economy, especially when multiplier effects are considered. Indeed, the argument about dislocation outlined above suggests that the growth of the illicit economy is a function of weaknesses, shortcomings and shocks in the licit economy. If the economy was functioning effectively, the pressures for transnational criminal activity would be much less. In some cases, the black market can be understood as a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, poorly functioning licit markets."

79. Gas cylinder -attacks shows the relative poverty of the guerrillas who can not afford or easily acquire real mortars. Little that the guerrillas do looks like terror compared to the Middle East, the World Trade Towers or the last 20 years behavior of the Salvadoran, Guatemalan or Colombian Armed forces or the paramilitaries. Terrorism is usually totally indiscriminate and intentionally and unnecessarily cruel.

80. ANNCOL.com
 
81. www.soaw.org

82. www.colombialibre.org; AUC website with frank discussion and confessions, excerpts from Castano's book, "My Confessions."

83. www.colombialibre.org

http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/vanish01.html and http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/career.html

84. See Castano's book, My Confessions, or the AUC website: www.colombialibre.org.

85. Leech, Gary, Washington targets Colombia's Rebels, July 29, 2002.

86. Becker, Elisabeth, European Union Urges Aspirants to Rebuff US, New York Times, August 14, 2002. "resist signing any agreement that would protect Americans from the ICC."

87. Narco News, www.narconews.com . Former Ambassador and Attorney General of Colombia: Gustavo de Greiff; Father Gregorio Iriarte of Bolivia; Peruvian author and journalist, Ricardo Rumrril; 2002 Colombian Presidential candidate Garzon; many Colombian legislators; the FARC guerrillas; and the former US Republican governor of New Mexico, have all called for legalization in one context or another.

Out from the Shadows, an international drug legalization conference, February 12, Yucatan, Mexico.

NACLA, October, 2002, www.NACLA.org.  The entire issue is on the drug war and cites people from all over the world who have called for decriminalization of drug use.

Asheville Global Report, November 26, 2001. "Horacio Serpa, [leading Presidential candidate] said "New and alternative formulas are needed… policies applied to date have been a failure. At the end of August there were separate bills introduced by two Colombian Senators, Vivan Morales and Rafael Oduz calling for  legalizing or removing penalties for cocaine and heroin production."

88. Estimates of the various armed groups vary considerably, with a range of 17,000 to 30,000 for the FARC-EP and 6000 to 9000 for the ELN. These are just the armed in the field troops. There are many more spies, supporters and safe-houses.See footnote # 33 for AUC estimates.

	  Economist May 6, 2000, say FARC has 17,000 and quotes FARC commandante Bricero saying 32,000 guerrillas 
	  Atlantic Monthly, May 2000: FARC and ELN combined equals 25,000. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, June 2000: FARC has 16,000 
	  Asheville Global Report, August 7, 2002: FARC has 17,000, ELN 8,000 
	  Jeremy McDermott (BBC), August 15, 2002 FARC has 30,000. ANNCOL August 22, Colombia like Vietnam- Urbano says "more than 20,000 combatants to the FARC (recognized by army) 
	  Reuters, September 6, 2002: FARC has 17,000 fighter 
	  Nature Conservancy, Summer 2002: FARC has 16,000 
	  Bert Ruiz, February 18, 2002: AUC 14,000 

 

An eerie article by William T. Vollmann, End of Days (Gear Magazine, July 2001) has this passage: "I began to believe that a revolution might happen in Colombia and each day the impression deepened. Except possibly in Madagascar, I don't believe I have ever seen poor people as angry as in Colombia - angry beyond desperation and fear. They will have their due and every day they are presenting the bill. The police know it ... the police boys in Gutierrez confessed as much."

89. The Needle and the Damage Done, New Internationalist, 1991.

See also: Léon Wever, Drug Policy Changes in Europe and the US, Dutch Ministry of Welfare, 1991. 

The Drug Abuse Situation in the Netherlands 1991, Dutch Ministry of Welfare, and Ministry of Justice

Supporting the articles contention that US intelligence forces are involved in drugs see: Russell, Dan, Drug War: Covert Money, Power and Policy, 1999, KALYX.COM, www.DRUGWAR.COM, Deep history and culture of Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Central. America and Colombia. "Military power is built on money and governments or at least relations between governments are built on military power, the effect of artificially high value of drugs has been to create a symbiosis between drug-dealing and covert military intelligence. ... and institutionalized fascist death-squads and genocide… in Burma, the Philippines, Peru, Paraguay, Pakistan, the list is endless. The biggest drug trafficking organizations are in most of the same countries. And they are funded by the US. (another symbiosis that goes uncritisized.)"  

90. Bowden. Mark,  - Killing Pablo -2002: The Hunt For the World's greatest outlaw - Penguin Books, London - wwww.killingpablo.com. 1979 extradition treaty was key for the US. Escobar elected as an alternate for the Colombian Assembly from Medellin in 1982.

www.gangstersinc.tripod.com/tele.html

91. A left victory in Brazil will open space for criticism, condemnation and lawsuits against the US from many countries. Many countries will rally around Brazil, looking for leadership and a shield under which to build regional integration and a counter-balance to US hegemonic designs.

92. Will, George F., Hasten day Arab world meets its modern match, Arizona Daily Star, August 14, 2002.

93. Lula of the Worker's Party received 47 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections on October 5, 2002. His election with 62 percent of the vote in October is a real landslide. Now everything will change.
 
The Brazilian army discharged 100,000 soldiers in August because of budget problems. More will have to be cut. This will present a problem for Lula who will have to contend with many rumors and threats. Recently the Brazilian military has again threatened indigenous people in northern Brazil near the Venezuelan border where they are building roads and military bases as part of Plan Colombia. Tensions mount in this huge country of 120 million diverse people.

94. The US-backed coup in Venezuela was stopped when undecided members of the armed forces saw that the poor would fight for Chavez. Even the right-wing in the US admits that Chavez has done a good job of rooting out corruption. He has moved forward on a moderate plan of social justice and land reform. If not for US meddling the right-wing and the greedy, corrupt union leaders would have remained marginal, but the US is desperate to control oil everywhere and so democracy and self-determination no longer exist in the empire's lexicon.

95. If Venezuela falls to the right-wing then the FARC and ELN will face a hostile border at their backs and more bases of the US. This will further embolden the Colombian death squads and the army. If the US subdues the guerrillas in Colombia then it will focus more attention on toppling the popular government of Chavez in Venezuela. The US wants both and only the poor stand in its way.