Tanks are Rolling. Troops are Marching.

[Patroklos]

Hasn't the kidnappings per year in Colombia gone down form thousands to 600 odd? Yeah, the handful of plublicity hand overs surely outweight that

[chequita guevara]

I couldn't say, as I don't know whether you're correct or not.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
FARC doesn't stand and fight very often. The whole point of being a guerrilla is hit and run. And the Colombian military will frequently go and massacre a village and declare a great victory over the FARC. The paras are tied at the hip to the military and are often led by current or former officers. They frequently are transported around the country on military transports and allowed to pass through military check points.

Anyway, without American help, which Bush has now pledged, Colombia would likely be defeated. Two-front war, plus two guerrilla groups.

Colombia is the proof that a country can still be a nominal democracy and still rank among the most evil places on Earth. One wonders, though, whether the masses of Colombian people would welcome liberation or not. There is no electoral alternative to the ruling parties, as they were massacred over ten years ago, and the opposition keeps getting slaughtered.

Venezuala would make a shocking, and stunning turn on Ecuador thus clinching victory for our South American Freedom Fighters.

[chequita guevara]

[DinoDoc]

He's furthering his own private joke of Chavez being a CIA plant.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
He's furthering his own private joke of Chavez being a CIA plant.

Are you sure it's a joke? There's no smily?

[Patroklos]

The CIA doesn't smile.

[chequita guevara]

Sure they do. That's when you know you are ****ed.

[Patroklos]

Eh, I wouldn't really know, I've always had a hood over my head of a bright light in my eyes during all my encounters

[Sprayber]

Is this a script for an upcoming Missing in Action movie?

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Eh, I wouldn't really know, I've always had a hood over my head of a bright light in my eyes during all my encounters

That was you? Oh...sorry.

[Whoha]

Can anyone verify this translation?

Telephone Call from Chavez to "Reyes" Allowed Colombians to Locate FARC Camp

A telephone call that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, would have made to the guerrilla leader "Raul Reyes,"1 permitted location of the encampment, according to reports from Colombian intelligence, RCN Radio divulged today.

http://www.elpais.com.co/paisonline/notas/Marzo052008/llamadachavez.html

[Whoha]

Ok here's an English version of the story:

http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/03/05/en_colcd_art_alleged-chavezs-cal_05A1410439.shtml

[chequita guevara]

Greg Palast < palast@mailings.gregpalast.com > wrote:

$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE

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

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

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

By Greg Palast

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

That’s what George Bush tells us.
And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing
President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.
So: After the fact,
Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war
as a to stop the threat of WMDs!

Uh, where have we heard that before?

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about
the mechanism of the hostage exchange.
Here’s the next line:

“To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options:
Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’;
one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland,
European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

As to the 300, I must note that the
FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners.

Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe?
Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press,

I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story
about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.

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

Well, so what? This is what.

Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation
of international law, condemned by every single
Latin member of the Organization of American States.
And George Bush just loved it.

He called Uribe to back Colombia, against,
“the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as
the provocativemaneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

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

Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez
before the International Criminal Court.
If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush:

it was just discovered that
Right-Wing Death Squads held
Murder-Planning Sessions at Uribe’s Ranch.

Uribe’s associates have been called before
the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.

In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe
to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war,
to drown out accusations of his own criminality.

Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC
by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks
with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange.

Uribe authorized the negotiations, however,
he knew, should those talks have Succeeded in
Obtaining the Release of those Kidnapped by the FARC,
credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez,
and discredit heaped on Uribe.

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

Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas
to keep the region from blowing sky high.
While moving troops to his border – no chief of state
can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil
– Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC .

Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases,
a better track record than Colombia’s own, corruptmilitary.

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

Amateur Hour in Blue

Wecan trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border.
But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?
The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush,
simply can’t help himself:
an outlaw invasion
by a Right-Wing Death-Squad Promoter
is just fine with him.

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

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

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

(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan
of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra.
Giustra has given over a $100 Million to Bill Clinton projects.
Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe.

On the spot,
Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

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

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for
the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert
and labeling the Democrats as amateurs.

Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages
Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”

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

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

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

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

******************

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

http://www.GregPalast.com

[Arrian]

So let me see if I get the history of this straight...

Colombia enlists Chavez's aid in negotiating the release of hostages held by FARC. The FARC negotiator is hiding in Equador. Equador's involvement in the negotiations is ? Colombia then wacks the FARC guy in a raid into Equador, w/o asking Equador first.

Palast alleges Equador is no friend to FARC. That isn't so clear to me, but that may simply be b/c I don't know much about the situation. The only thing I do know is that a contingent of FARC was clearly in Equador.

This Washington Post article contains more allegations about what was on that laptop:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030601943.html

Colombian officials claim they recovered Reyes' computer and on it, two letters detailing recent meetings with Correa's security minister, Gustavo Larrea, in which Larrea apparently offered to replace Ecuadorian military leaders hostile to the FARC and asked the guerrillas to train locals on organizacion de masas (mass mobilization).

Ecuador disputes the authenticity of these letters and the other purported evidence that would concretely link Correa, Chavez and the FARC for their own political gain. Ecuador does not, however, dispute the meetings themselves and argues that they were motivated by humanitarian concerns. Before Reyes was killed, Ecuadoran officials say they were about to secure the release of more FARC-held hostages.

I'm not inclined to simply accept the Colombian's claims about the info they supposedly recovered at the FARC camp. On the other hand, the whole thing smells fishy to me - not just Colombia's actions and claims. FARC clearly has a presence in Equador. FARC was meeting with big shots in the Equadorian government. Hmm.

The $300 million/dirty bomb claims are pretty out there. That I don't buy at all. Colombia needs to put up or shut up there. They threatened to file charges in court. I say do it, if they really have the goods.

I could see why the Colombians aren't too fond of Chavez, though:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/05/america/05venez.php?page=2

Contrasting the FARC's image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia's moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If memory serves, Che also is a fan of FARC...

-Arrian