>From: Global Community Centre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: January 17, 2000 7:45 PM
>Subject: Global News Online #11
>
>
>
>This article, taken from the Fall/Winter 1999 issue of
>�CovertAction Quarterly�, is part of Global Community
>Centre's "News On Line" service.
>
>
>Crossroads Of War and Biodiversity:
>CIA, Cocaine, and Death Squads
>
>by the Eco-Solidarity Working Group
>
>
> Forty million people, along with the most biologically
>diverse, endangered ecosystems in the world, are under attack by
>the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and mercenaries paid
>by oil companies. This war is fought with bombs and bullets, as
>well as with herbicides and media misinformation. The cause of
>the war is as diverse as the region's terrain and its ethnic variety.
>The rapacious greed of multinationals like Occidental Petroleum,
>Shell, BP Texaco, and their counterparts in the Colombian elite
>is the main problem, but cocaine use in the U.S. is the fuel that
>fires this inferno. Drug exports pay for the weapons of the
>rightwing govemment-backed death squads and the revolutionary
>guerrillas.
> For years Colombia was banned from receiving U.S.
>military or drug fighting money due to its poor human rights
>record and its failure to cooperate in the drug war. In 1998 they
>received $89 million, and this year the total reached $289 million.
>Despite continued human rights abuses. Colombia is now the
>third largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel and Egypt.
>Direct U.S. military intervention looms on the horizon for this
>region, which exports more oil to the U.S. than the entire Middle
>East. President Clinton is giving the nod to a death-squad
>offensive. These squads work closely with Colombian military
>and together they are responsible for the deaths of 25,000 people
>this decade -300,000 since 1945. Violence has displaced 1.2
>million people in the last three years (mostly women and
>children).
> Death squads guard petroleum facilities and shipments
>of cocaine. The head of these squads, Carlos Castafio, is a key
>player in the Cali Drug Cartel, according to the Drug
>Enforcement Administration. Castafio took over the direction of
>the death squads from another CIA asset, Colombian Army
>General Van Martinez. CIA involvement in Colombia began in
>the 1950s and grew along with the drug trade. In 1991 the CIA
>established a Colombian naval intelligence group that became a
>key part of the death squads' continuing terror campaign against
>guerrillas and anyone who speaks out for change or peace. Many
>death squad leaders graduated from the School of the Americas
>in Fort Benning, Georgia, where thousands of Latin American
>soldiers have been trained in counterinsurgency and torture.
>Castafto proudly takes responsibility for his massacres. He has
>kidnapped Colombian senators and he speaks in radio interviews
>about the need for more killing. Arrest warrants for Castafio,
>army officers and other death squad leaders gather dust on the
>Attorney General's desk. Evidence mounts of collaboration
>between the military and the death squads. In July, the largest
>Colombian guerrilla group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
>de Colombia (FARC) launched an attack against the mountain
>headquarters of Castafio, but were driven back by the Colombian
>army with U.S. intelligence assistance.
> Hundreds of U.S. military personnel are on the ground,
>training elite units of the Colombian Army Sophisticated U.S.
>spy planes, like the U.S. RC-7B, inform and direct combat
>operations. DynaCorp and East Inc. operate a private air force
>used to eradicate poppies and coca plants, dousing hundreds
>of square miles of the countryside with herbicides. Monsanto's
>Roundup is the toxin of choice, but the U.S. has pressured
>Colombia to use Dow Chemical's more lethal tebuthiuron. Trade
>named Spike, it comes in a granular form making it easier to
>apply. Colombia is the only country in the hemisphere where
>drug crops are sprayed from the air. Genetically engineered
>viruses are also being developed for the drug war arsenal. Despite
>this toxic rain, coca production has risen dramatically In July, two
>DynaCorp employees were killed along with five U.S. military
>personnel when an intelligence-gathering aircraft hit a mountain
>or a FARC missile in southern Colombia.
> The news media have confused the issues and kept secret
>U.S. culpability in this dirty war. They create an impression that
>the FARC and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN),
>Colombia's other major guerrilla group, have long controlled most
>of the drug trade, but, in fact, �ELN until now has been a minor
>player.� Moreover the guerrillas are presented as unwilling to lay
>down their arms as part of a peace plan. In the late 1980s,
>guerrillas put down the gun for the ballot box. They were met
>with the votes of many people and a hail of bullets from the
>death squads. Almost 5,000 members of the opposition political
>party, Patriotic Union, have been killed by the right wing since
>1989.
> The oil companies and the government must be held
>responsible for the violence and the pollution that is the
>by-product of their oil operations. Oil is Colombia's most important
>legal export (27 percent of total exports). Coffee is second
>(15 percent). The U.S. imports 260,000 barrels of Colombian oil
>every day In the U'wa region alone, 1.7 million barrels of oil
>have spilled onto the soil and rivers in the last 12 years.
>Colombia has the worst human rights record in the Americas,
>and the area around the U'wa has the worst record in Colombia.
>Robin Kirk, author of "War with Colombia and International
>Law," supports the contention that the death squads make their
>massacres as brutal and gruesome as possible to make sure the
>message is understood. They often carry lists of trade unionists,
>Catholic priests, human rights observers and guerrilla supporters.
> A biological paradise, Colombia has the greatest number
>of bird species (1,780) of any country in the world. It is second
>in plants and amphibians and third in reptiles. Only Brazil, which
>is seven times larger, surpasses Colombia in total number of
>species. The Macarena region contains Colombia's first biological
>preserve, established in 1942. Half of the world's orchids bloom
>here, and a dazzling variety of jaguars, dolphin, primates, giant
>otters, spectacled bears, agoutis, kinkajous and the FARC live
>here too. The Macarena has been its headquarters for decades,
>and it has earned respect from biologists for establishing some
>order over the squatters who are a constant threat to the region's
>biological integrity.
> Besides the war, the oil spills, dams and herbicides, there
>is the usual devastation from cattle, road construction, logging
>and mining - the social and environmental externalities that come
>with the U.S. model of economic development. Manatees, tapirs,
>and macaws are but a tiny fraction of the species that are on the
>edge of extinction in Colombia. Most species have not even been
>classified here.
> In this threatened ecosystem, the guerrillas are fighting for
>their lives and the tens of thousands of relatives they have lost to
>U.S. and narco-death squads. Thousands of young people have
>joined the guerrilla's bid to end the right wing's forty years of
>collusion with oil company exploitation and death squad violence.
>Their goal is to stop this neo-liberal madness that devastates
>people and the environment in a chase for profits.
> Eco-Solidarity seeks an end to the phoney drug war that
>the U.S. wages against the land and the poor people of Colombia.
>The most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world are at
>risk here. Almost two million people have been displaced by a
>brutal civil war that is financed and directed by the U.S. and its
>covert operations. Refugees, mostly women and children; are
>crowded into slums or driven further into the rainforests.
>
>For more information, contact:
>Jason Martin, Eco-Solidarity Colombia; Tel.: (520) 388-5514
>e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>website: www.geocities.coni/rainforest/andes/2185
>
>
>
>
>
>To subscribe to this excellent alternative periodical, please contact:
>
>CovertAction Quarterly
>1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW
>Washington, D.C. 20005
>Tel: (202) 331-9763
>Fax: (202) 331-9751
>E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Website: www.covertaction.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Cuba SI: http://www.egroups.com/group/cubasi/
>Imperialism NO! Venceramos!
>Information and discussion about Cuba.
>Discussion of the path of Ernesto Che Guevara.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>For the fastest and easiest way to backup your files and, access them from
>
>anywhere. Try @backup Free for 30 days. Click here for a chance to win a
>
>digital camera.
>http://click.egroups.com/1/337/0/_/30563/_/948194010/
>
>-- 20 megs of disk space in your group's Document Vault
>-- http://www.egroups.com/docvault/cubasi/?m=1
__________________________________
KOMINFORM
P.O. Box 66
00841 Helsinki - Finland
+358-40-7177941, fax +358-9-7591081
e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.kominf.pp.fi
___________________________________
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe/unsubscribe messages
mailto [EMAIL PROTECTED]
___________________________________
