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Today's
Stories
March 5 / 6,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Arnold
vs. the Nurses
March 4, 2005
Frederick Hudson
Caught
in a Cage
March 3, 2005
Pat Williams
"Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old"
Brian Cloughley
Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions
Dave Lindorff
Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan?
Amira Hass
Oslo All Over Again
Greg Moses
In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go?
Lynne Landes
Exit Poll Madness
Nelson P. Valdés
Rapture Takes Leftists
John Ross
Mexico's
Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist
Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
March 2, 2005
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
The
"Noble Liars" Attack Syria
Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental
Dissent
M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah
Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"
Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Uncle
Bucky Makes a Killing
Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey
March 1, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Million
Dollar Bigotry
David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions
Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq
Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled
Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security
Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black
Prince
Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Coming End of the American Superpower
Website of
the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran
February 28,
2005
Gary Leupp
Year
4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?
Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers
Mickey Z.
The
Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter
Thompson and the "Right to Die"
Paul de Rooij
Why
Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel
David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media
Mario Lamo
Jimenez
Maria
Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars
Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge
of Academia
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend Edition
March 5 / 6, 2005
The Other Colombia, the One of Hope
Militarism
and Social Movements
By
RAÚL ZIBECHI
"Half of the country is
in the hands of the paras," Paula says by the candlelight
in a bar in La Candelaria, the historic old town of Bogotá
that has been declared a World Heritage Site. "Wherever
they establish their domain, they impose strict rules on daily
life and customs: the haircuts of the young people, the closing
times of the bars and clubs, and above all, they control and
harass the women." Paula works for an environmental organization
and she cannot hide her anguish over a country that she and many
other Colombians feel is slipping out of their hands. Daniel,
a university professor, more calmly adds, "Here there was
a war and the paramilitaries won. The paramilitaries are not
only auxiliaries of the state, but they are also the embodiment
of a societal project that hopes to wipe out the social advances
and conquests of more than a century."
Both assertions, at first glance,
appear exaggerated. Friday night, La Candelaria is full
of young students from the private universities that abound in
the area who flock to the many bars that dot this beautiful neighborhood
of narrow, cobblestone streets and old colonial houses. The night
seems peaceful with nothing to reveal that the country is at
war and, as my hosts claim, controlled by the military. But upon
leaving the bar, we see uniformed patrols entering the nightspots,
asking for documentation or simply observing the clientele. Back
at the hotel, we turn on the television to a program about the
Colombian armed forces, with beautiful young women extolling
the virtues of the military's social work.
As the days pass, my initial
doubts about militarization disappear. Bogotá is a city
bristling with olive-green uniforms. The military presence is
an unavoidable part of daily life. At the main entrance of the
National University, for example, several armored vehicles serve
to remind the students that at any moment the soldiers may enter
to restore "order." This kind of supervision constitutes
systematic control of the very pores of social life. And with
it, according to all reports, fear is converted into a way of
life, with no end in sight.
If the military presence is
suffocating in the big city, in the rural areas it is even stronger
and, above all, more indiscriminate. The war and violence in
Colombia revolve on a central axis: land. Territorial control
is the reason for a conflict that has already lasted half a century.
It began in 1948, when liberal leader and popular mayor Jorge
Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated. He was detested
by the Colombian oligarchy, one of the most unyielding in the
world. With time and global changes, the fight for land as a
means of production is being replaced with the defense of territory
as a space to nurture identities, people's histories, and natural
riches. Additionally, Colombia has been converted into an essential
piece of the regional, geopolitical chess game, for its ports
on both the Pacific and the Caribbean, for its proximity to Panama
and the world's most important maritime route, and for its extensive
border with Venezuela, a country that is in the sights of the
White House.
Winning
the War
Álvaro Uribe was elected
president of the war. A half century of civil violence (since
the Bogotazo of 1948, a spontaneous popular insurrection
after the assassination of Gaitán) and 20 years of failed
peace processes have generated deep skepticism in a population
that is tired of politicians and their electoral promises.
War is destroying the social
fabric of the country: Almost 3 million displaced persons, 8,000
homicides annually for socio-political reasons, 3,500 detentions
a year, and hundreds of forced disappearances. These are the
tragic results of a conflict that appears interminable. In all,
Colombia has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with
some 27,000 homicides a year. (1) The state appears incapable
of offering security and justice in a situation of deteriorating
institutions. This panorama explains the reasons why the population
feels fear and chose security in 2002, electing Álvaro
Uribe, who was promoted by the paramilitary sector, on a hard-line
platform of ending the war. The ruinous situation dates back
decades. In 1978, then-President Turbay Ayala (1978-1982) expanded
the Statute of Security, which gave the armed forces judicial
functions and opened the doors to the systematic violation of
human rights. The Constitution of 1991 eliminated the state of
siege with which the country had been governed for one century,
but it instituted a state of shock.
Colombia lives in a permanent
contradiction between constructing democratic order or authoritarian
order. The wide-ranging violence and the election of Uribe tipped
the balance toward the second option. The neoliberal model, generator
of exclusion and social marginalization, and the policies of
the government of U.S. President George W. Bush, among them the
"Plan Colombia," do nothing more than strengthen authoritarianism.
The present Colombian administration decided to cut social spending
in order to finance the war. The methods adopted by Uribe clearly
show this orientation: the creation of a net of civilian informers
of up to a million people to help the armed forces; security
fronts in neighborhoods and businesses; tied to this a network
of taxi and other drivers to ensure security on streets and highways;
and the establishment of a Day of Reward that pays citizens who
in the previous week helped the law stop acts of terrorism and
capture those responsible. Moreover, the government has increased
the personnel in the armed forces by 30,000 and in the police
force by 10,000. Plus, it has created 120,000 "peasant soldiers."
It has also set up Zones of Rehabilitation and Consolidation
under the direction of the military in which civil liberties,
such as the right of assembly and mobilization, are restricted.
At the same time that this
promotes the dismantling of the public apparatus, it is generating
situations of legal informality that favor indiscretion in the
use of force. The scheme encourages the reorganization of society
using the army as a model. Analyst María Teresa Uribe
maintains that it is an attempt to "model society along
the lines of a militia and convert the citizen into a combatant
with duties and obligations in the scenes of war." With
this vigilante society, "trust between neighbors, old loyalties
of solidarity and the threads of cordiality break, dissolve,
atomize; and in this context of mutual suspicion, collective
action, public deliberation, and social organization decline.
It ends with silence prevailing and with the withdrawal of individuals
into the private and domestic sphere." (2)
Guerrillas,
Paramilitaries, Drug Trafficking
The previous description, although
correct, does not cover the whole problem. The war happens on
stages determined by geography and history's idiosyncrasies.
Colombia's fragmented territory is divided by three branches
of the Andean mountain range. It is crisscrossed by jungles and
mountains, forests of permanent fog, deep valleys, and inaccessible
regions. The Colombian state, which was formed by the gradual
integration of territories, populations, and social groups, never
was able to control all of this territory. It never was a modern
state, and today the principal economic and social problem of
the country is the concentration of land, which generated an
agrarian problem that was never resolved. In sum, there never
was a true state in Colombia or anything like agrarian reform
or a redistribution of the land, which makes Colombia different
from many other South American countries.
The enormous power of the national
and regional elites, woven over a stratified social base and
the marginalization of the majority of farmers, produced two
complementary facts: the fragmentation of the presence of the
state and the weakness of the mechanisms of social regulation.
This was compensated for with a wider movement of permanent colonization,
with the expulsion of the "excess" population of farmers
toward the margins of agricultural borders and, more recently,
toward the periphery of the big cities. "In these zones
the organization of social life is left to the free play of the
people and social groups, due to the absence of state regulation
and the lack of relations with the national society." (3)
In these areas the guerilla
was born. It is the continuation-certainly amplified and more
systematic-of a duality of powers inherited from colonial times:
The isolated territories were populated by marginalized groups,
mestizos reluctant to bow to the control of the clergy, whites
without land, blacks and mulattos fleeing from the mines. These
are regions that are the exact opposite face of the elitist cities,
which are governed as the feudal territory of the dominant groups.
Daniel Pécaut, one of the most knowledgeable analysts
of Colombia, maintains that the state conserves its own oligarchic
and exclusive features. For that matter, so does the culture
of the Colombian elites.
FARC, created in 1966, emerged
from groups of farmers armed to defend the liberal communities
that emerged during la Violencia. (4) Rather than seeking
nearly impossible ideological agreement, they sought territorial
affinities. The guerilla was consolidated in the zones of colonization,
where the peasants needed to protect themselves from the state
and the landowners, and where the geography offered refuge. Afterward,
the cultural changes of the 1970s, the criminalization of peasant
protest, the birth of the powerful urban movements (workers and
students), and the radicalization of the middle class contributed
to the birth of other rebel groups (ELN, EPL, and M-19). Currently,
FARC counts some 20,000 combatants and the ELN has some 4,000.
The other groups disarmed throughout the 1990s.
The paramilitary groups (of
10,000 to 20,000 members) were born out of the civil "self-defense"
groups, legally created by the army at the end of the 1960s to
serve as backup to counterinsurgency operations. Amnesty International
and Americas Watch have thoroughly documented the close relationship
between the paramilitaries and the security forces of the state,
as have the United Nations and the Organization of American States.
They all attribute the immense majority of human rights violations
in Colombia to the paramilitary groups and they characterize
them as imposing terror in the zones that they control.
But things do not stop here.
The paramilitaries are tightly tied to the big landowners (their
"social cradle") and to drug trafficking, sectors whose
limits are also hard to define. While the army handed out the
weapons to the paramilitary forces, it was the owners of coffee
plantations and cattle farmers who organized them, choosing to
confront the FARC on their own ground, with the formation of
groups of drug-addicted peasants. Their targets were not only
the guerillas, but also the union leaders, professors, journalists,
defenders of human rights, and politicians of the left. With
the years, the rise of drug trafficking has modified this situation.
The Americas Watch 1990 report states that the drug traffickers
have become big landowners, and as such, have begun to share
the right-wing politics of the traditional landowners and directors
of some of the most notorious paramilitary groups. (5)
The diverse "private armies"
ended up coming together as the United Self-Defense of Colombia
(AUC) during the 1990s. Economically and militarily powerful,
they contributed to choosing a president who is considered a
loyal friend, in addition to the numerous legislators who back
them. On July 15, 2003 the government and the AUC signed an agreement
for demobilization. It has been two years since they announced
a ceasefire, yet in 2004 they were responsible for the death
or disappearance of 1,300 people, or more than 70% of all of
the politically motivated homicides in the country not related
to combat. (6) Demobilization talks are continuing in Santa Fé
de Ralito. While the government defends the demobilization of
AUC and says it is submitting to justice, the paramilitaries
have rejected this possibility. One of the greatest difficulties
is that many of the paramilitary leaders can be extradited to
the United States, where they would be judged for drug trafficking.
Three Phases
of Plan Colombia
Plan Colombia is useful for
militarization of the country, but also, in a striking way, for
the consolidation of paramilitarism as a social and political
alternative. Some analysts distinguish three phases of the process
of consolidation and expansion, based on the declarations of
the paramilitary leaders themselves. An imperative reference
is the experience of the Magdalena Medio, one of the strategic
zones of the country where the ultra-right was able to uproot
enclaves of guerillas and the union movement (as it has in the
oil city of Barrancabermeja).
The first phase is about "liberating"
by means of war or terror "large zones of subversion and
its popular bases of support, imposing the process of land concentration,
the modernization of roads, of services, and of infrastructure,
the development of capital and the new hierarchical structure,
and the authority in the social and political organization of
the region." The second phase is about "bringing wealth
to the region" by generating jobs, handing over land, different
kinds of productive projects, technical assistance, and credit.
This looks good on paper, but "the new inhabitants who occupy
the old liberated zones are not those who were uprooted by violence;
it is a new population (poor people brought from other regions),
loyal to the 'patroncito' who rapidly organized them, formed
their base groups. This is the paramilitary self-defense."
The third phase is consolidation, when the conditions are ripe
for the expansion of multinational capitalism and the modernizing
state. (7)
The objectives of Plan Colombia
are present in each one of the three stages: Although 80% of
the resources appear to be dedicated to the war and the strengthening
of the military apparatus, important parts of the budget are
dedicated to plans to improve the infrastructure, health, education,
and alternative development (see Plan Colombia). In this sense,
it is important to conceive of Plan Colombia as an integral,
long-range project to "open" the entire region to the
control of the multinationals and the United States. That is
why analysts frequently point out that Plan Colombia is a way
of "preparing the turf" for the imposition of the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). (8)
In fact, in some regions such
as in Magdelena Medio, parts of the resources of the Plan Colombia
fell into the hands of the paramilitaries' nongovernmental organizations
that manage the plan's social funds. At the same time, with the
imposition of strict control over daily life, the project of
domination allows "the revival of paternalism of the old
landlords without the minimum social obligations of the past."
(9) In Barrancabermeja, a paramilitary laboratory, "they
prohibited the kids from wearing long hair, earrings, and bracelets.
They closed the gay bars, and the beauty parlors of homosexual
men were transferred to women. They killed one homosexual man,
and then they cut off his penis and put it in the mouth of the
dead body." Also, they established a curfew for minors and
obligatory schooling until age 17. They limited the hours for
public establishments and imposed sanctions and punishments on
those who disobey. The report from various human rights organizations
about the Magdalena Medio notes: "On a side street in any
of the neighborhoods of Barrancabermeja and Puerto Wilches, one
can see boys with machete in hand, cleaning the public areas
as part of their punishment. In other cases they are forced to
wear signs that say that they are thieves, prostitutes, etc."
Reaching the end of the report, I find that the anguish of my
hosts in Bogotá, Paula and Daniel, is more than justified.
Difficult
Work of Social Movements
How can one create a social
movement in a militarized society, one in which the spaces for
public action are closed, and where the activists and leaders
are killed or systematically kidnapped? And, above all, how can
civil society avoid reproducing militarism in the process? For
those seeking demilitarization, there is no question that all
actors in the conflict violate human rights, including the guerillas.
In Colombia, Pécaut points out, "Violence is not
only a series of happenings, it is the eruption of a new modality
of politics." That is to say that politics since 1948 or
even earlier represents violence. (11) The depths of the violence
in Colombia are such that not only does it impregnate all manifestations
of the political and social, rather it constitutes them.
Nevertheless, some models exist
for escaping the logic of polarization through the creation of
demilitarized zones off limits to the different actors in the
conflict: guerillas, paramilitaries, and army. It is not something
simple, since violent elements break in to destroy, assassinate,
sequester, and torture. What's more, these areas have been considered
at some time or other by all the actors in the conflict as zones
of real or potential "enemies." Nonetheless, these
models provide an option to the temptation to respond to the
violence with violence or the temptation to abandon the land,
an even more frequent desire. Luis Angel Saavedra, director of
Inredh, a human rights organization in Quito, maintains that
"Plan Colombia is a part of a greater strategy to control
the social movements of Latin America, and the resources of this
part of the world." (12) He argues that similar plans for
military control were undertaken in all of the countries of the
Andean region with the pretext of coca eradication, because they
are the sites where the peace movements are most active. From
this follows the urgent necessity of finding alternatives to
militarism, which always favors those who dominate.
The second problem is the lack
of a real social movement of national proportions able to demonstrate
itself as an alternative to the conflict. A good part of the
experiences for peace are local initiatives, with the notable
exception of the indigenous movement that only represents 2%
of the Colombian population but has a large geographic area of
influence. The Regional Indigenous Council of the Cauca (CRIC)
forms part of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia
(ONIC), which unites all the ethnicities of the country. As an
outcome of hundreds of years of resistance, the indigenous peoples
obtained recognition of territories, called "indigenous
havens." There are 712 in the country and they occupy 30%
of the Colombian territory. The Constitution of 1991 recognizes
collective rights and the Indian people's territories. But they
are being threatened by what they call a "new invasion."
The pressure is on to eliminate Article 329 of the Constitution,
which recognizes the inalienable character of indigenous territories,
in order to implement the FTAA.
The indigenous peoples of the
Cauca are resisting the war by their decision not to participate
in the conflict. They do it as a community and collectively,
based on their cosmology, in an unarmed and non-violent way.
They maintain that they are experiencing the new invasion as
a consequence of globalization. The first and fundamental step
is the defense of territory, from people as well as from cultural,
social, and economic threats. They are trying to maintain diversity
in the means of production, rescuing and strengthening traditional
ways of cultivating the earth, conserving seeds to prevent the
disappearance of crops--everything contrary to the intentions
of the FTAA. They postulate territorial organization as "a
perfectly viable way for the general population to resist the
war." (13)
They resist being uprooted
and hold onto their land. They preserve their own languages as
a way to defy cultural homogenization. They value and fortify
traditional knowledge of healing and all that affects the territory
and the population. Their communities have organized "Indian
guards," unarmed commune members with ancestral canes of
authority or chontas, who protect residents. The guard
"depends exclusively on the community, which in big assemblies
decided to reorganize it, establishing rules of control, criteria
and requisites for its members."(14) Guards carry out no
police functions, and all commune members have to take their
turns at being guards. They have set up meeting places for inhabitants
to gather when an armed conflict breaks out between the guerrilla
and the paramilitaries or the army. They sound alarms for the
community at times of danger. Without resorting to violence,
the guards have recovered people kidnapped by armed groups. They
maintain that the system of guards can be utilized by other sectors
of the population to resist the war, too.
Besides the indigenous communities
in Colombia, other population groups around the country, and
especially in rural areas, have declared their territory war-free,
demanding that the armed groups leave. San José de Apartadó,
in the north of the country, is the first of these communities
of peace. Created in 1997, it maintains its stance despite the
aggressions of armed groups from the left and the right. In only
seven years the small community suffered more than 360 human
rights violations and more than 144 assassinations, perpetrated
by the actors of the conflicts.
In August, San José
de Apartadó opened the Peasant University of the Resistance,
receiving support from 15 other communities. In December of 2004,
the community held the Second Meeting of Communities of Civil
Resistance, "inspired by life and solidarity as an answer
to the actions of death that the Colombian state uses against
the communities." It is true that the communities of peace
movement is small for the size of the challenges, but to have
maintained itself and expanded in the past seven years, the most
violent years of the war, spells hope.
Apart from the urban mobilizations
against the war, Plan Colombia, and the FTAA was the outstanding
indigenous "Minga for Life, Autonomy, Liberty, Justice,
and Happiness," which was celebrated this past Sept. 13.
La minga (a collective work in the indigenous language)
was a mobilization of 60,000 Indians of the Cauca (south) that
convened in Cali for three days.
Organized by the CRIC, la
minga was not directed at the government. It featured no
platform of vindications. Rather it was directed toward the people,
who were called upon to defend life against the war and to oppose
the free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States.
The large mobilization managed to create a demilitarized zone
for three days. It opened with the rescue of the Indian mayor
of Toribío, kidnapped by the FARC. The members of the
indigenous guard arrived en masse, overwhelmed the troops of
the armed group and liberated the mayor together with his delegation.
The indigenous people showed
that it is possible to pry open cracks in a militarized society,
if it's clear that you don't fight war with more war. Or, as
the indigenous women of the south say, fight to undermine "the
dominant logics of eliminating the other," because "in
the logics of life, there is no other, rather the constant flow
that does not eliminate but creates." They denounce the
logic of destruction, saying it is only for the oppressors or
the oppressed, because "the ends and the means cannot be
separated." (15) They believe that the transformations are
made from the bottom up and from the inside out, from the local
to the global and from the singular to the universal. That's
what helped them break the barriers of militarism and indifference.
Daniel, the professor from Bogotá, was in Cali that Wednesday
in September when thousands of Indians crossed the elegant commercial
streets in the second-largest city in Colombia. "It was
exciting," he confesses, "to see the rest of the population's
reception of the Indians. The people were applauding and others
were crying. This is the other Colombia, the one of hope."
Raúl Zibechi is a member of Editorial Council of
the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, teacher and research
of social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América
Latina , and adviser to social groups. He is a monthly contributor
to the IRC's Americas
Program.
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