Colombian police find $19M under house

[Say_What]

19 million is a lot of scratch--wonder how they'll divy it up. :eyes:

<clips>

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian police Tuesday found about $19 million belonging to a drug trafficking group buried under a house in the southwestern city of Cali, the second such discovery in less than a week.

Police said they arrested nine people who were in the house.

On Friday, police found $16 million hidden in a modest house in Cali, the country's third-largest city about 185 miles southwest of Bogota.

Cali has been a center of Colombia's illegal narcotics industry since the days of the Cali cartel, dismantled in the 1990s.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070117/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_drug_money_1

[bbinacan]

1. I wish I could find

19 million under my house.:toast:

[MannyGoldstein]

2. But It Wasn't In A Freezer.

Now THAT was cool.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Somewhere there's a buncha strung-out drug dealers running around

going
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShitShit

[Judi Lynn]

4. In Colombia, Free Trade Means Murder and Migration

In Colombia, Free Trade Means Murder and Migration

La Prensa San Diego, News Report, David Bacon, Posted: Jan 16, 2007

Development projects anywhere in the world often have a high human cost. In Colombia, the price is often measured in human lives and blood.
Esperanza (she would risk her life, she says, if her real name appeared in print) saw her neighbors pay that price in 2001. Her house sits on the bank of the Rio Salvajina, in the Afro-Colombian municipality of Buenos Aires in Cauca province.

“I saw armed men arrive in cars,” she remembers, “with two, three, four, even five people tied up. They dragged them onto the bridge, shot them two or three times and threw their bodies into the river.”

When the paramilitaries came to her own home, she was so frightened she lost the baby she’d been carrying for five months.
(snip)

Esperanza’s family was first displaced by construction of the dam on the Rio Salvajina in 1984. Along with 3,600 others, her parents and brothers were compelled to leave the valley. Behind the dam, water flooded schools, homes, churches, even cemeteries. And when the turbines started to roll, the Spanish energy conglomerate, Union Fenosa, had plenty of electricity to sell on Latin America’s power market (the dam’s purpose was to generate power that Union Fenosa could market to other countries).

A number of community leaders who resisted removal were killed or disappeared.
(snip/...)

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=6af27459a2a44f294053edc5f8312340

[UpInArms]

8. thanks for that Judi Lynn - made me think about that

guy that wrote "Confessions of a Economic Hitman" - John Perkins.

I do so hope that he knows how many lives he ruined.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Saw him on C-Span weekend Books show speaking from a bookstore.

He really seems to consciously carry a burden of guilt about it, as well as a burning desire to tell as many people as he can reach what has been happening, now that he has been able to transform his own ambition, and regain some part of his soul.

He lives with a constant awareness he's had death threats, and is in actual danger now at all times, since he has made his experiences, observations public knowledge. You almost get the feeling he hopes in some way to be able to at least try to balance in any way possible the damage he (as he was hired to do) has done, during the rest of his life.

I'm hoping and praying far, far more is finally exposed before so many more people are harmed. Colombia looks like one place starting to come under scrutiny to the point this just might be possible one day, despite all the violent efforts to prevent it by the paramilitaries, the corrupt Congressmen, and members of Uribe's cabinet, who are involved.

There's a great program which will probably be repeated on cable about a prison in Colombia, visiting both the common rebel prisoners, and the wealthy paramilitary prisoners. It is far more amazing than anyone could describe. The only thing I can articulate is that the government-connected paramilitary prisoners live in a style of privilege you would NOT expect to see in prison, in that country. It would leave one speechless. They even have their own gourmet chefs. Hmmmmm.

I had only seen the program recently when I read in a newswire source that now the Colombian politicians are becoming involved, as they are being found out in irrefutable ways to be connected to the paramilitaries. Someone found a laptop with evidence. Someone found evidence that many of them had taken a vow of loyalty to them, as well. Speculation has moved into reports that people believe the actual evidence might eventually lead all the way to the very top, as it surely has involved some of his cabinet members already.

If the invesigations can't be quashed, this country could go through radical change soon. It could only be a vast improvement.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Democracy and Plan Colombia

Democracy and Plan Colombia
by Hector Mondragon
January 14, 2007

President George W. Bush has asked the American people to "be patient" so that Iraq can become like Colombia—so that the Iraqis can defeat terrorism and establish a stable democracy like the one Washington has nurtured in Colombia. I would like to comment on this nightmare.
(snip)

What is the primary objective of plan colombia? Never before have drug traffickers had so much power in Colombia. Today they have penetrated the stock market, laundered their drug money in the form of treasury bonds and gained a foothold in the electoral process. And although those in Uribe's party who have been publicly identified as drug lords were purged, they created their own parallel pro-Uribe parties and have gotten themselves elected to Congress. This is not to say anything of those drug lords who have not been publicly identified and who remain on Uribe's party's lists.

In the past, drug traffickers financed electoral campaigns from the shadows, financing publicity and paying for hotels and travel. This was a relatively small-scale operation. Today, however, they openly finance entire electoral campaigns. The government's own statistics acknowledge that in 2005, $3 billion flowed through Colombia, with no record of how the money entered the country. No one planted money seeds and grew the $3 billion; this is just a portion of the billions of dollars and euros that the paramilitaries have laundered. Why does Washington, with its moral crusade, the War on Drugs, permit this? Because Colombia serves as its base for attacking the democratic processes taking place in neighboring countries.

This is the reality of U.S. intervention in Colombia. Colombia is becoming an eternal battleground, in order to secure the country as a base of operations for controlling Ecuador, Venezuela and possibly even Peru, Brazil and Bolivia. They say, "Have patience with Colombia; we're heading to Venezuela and Ecuador! Be patient with Iraq; we're on our way to Iran."
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=11863

[zbdent]

5. Dang it, I knew I put it down somewhere ...

oh well, easy come, easy go ...

[Kagemusha]

6. Possession of cash is itself illegal?

Just wondering.

[951-Riverside]

7. Cop: What cash?

:D

[sendero]

9. We miscounted......

.... there was only 17 million :)

[Judi Lynn]

11. Colombia's police arrest major drug kingpin

Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Colombia's police arrest major drug kingpin



BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A reputed drug kingpin was captured Monday following a shootout, police said, ending a years-long hunt for a man wanted by American officials for allegedly smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States.

Eugenio Montoya Sanchez is believed by authorities to be a leader of the Norte del Valle drug cartel, which the FBI lists on its Web site as the "most powerful and violent drug-trafficking organization in Colombia."
(snip)

The Norte del Valle cartel became Colombia's most powerful after the dismantling of the Medellin and Cali cartels in the 1980s and early 90s. Officials believe it is responsible for as much as 30 percent of the more than 550 tons of Colombian cocaine smuggled each year to the United States.

To protect its valuable drug routes, the cartel is believed to have worked closely with right-wing death squads whose umbrella organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, is listed as a terrorist organization by Washington.
(snip/...)

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/world/MI37489/

[madeline_con]

12. He looks stoned. n/t

:smoke:

[Judi Lynn]

13. There may be a good reason for STAYING stoned, if his paramilitary group

operated like the ones which took chain saws out and sawed up Colombian villagers, along with smashing them with clubs, and gutting them with machetes.

Here's only a hint of so many available references to their crude viciousness:

AUC fighters routinely induced fear in the rural population by entering villages and rounding up the residents in the town plaza. They would then brutally kill a handful of villagers, often dismembering them with machetes and chainsaws, before ordering the rest of the people to leave the region. By forcibly displacing the rural population in this manner, the paramilitaries hoped to eliminate local support for the guerrillas. This strategy has aggravated the already grossly inequitable distribution of arable lands as large landowners, as well as multinational corporations interested in oil, coal and natural gas resources, have taken over much of the abandoned land. More than 2.5 million rural Colombians have been displaced by the conflict in the past 15 years, many of them fleeing to the impoverished shantytowns that are rapidly encircling many of Colombia's cities.
(snip)

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia133.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/i/630/ 10-13-2005/8a5500126d8b2139.html

(October 12, 2005) — An international human rights court announced Wednesday that it has ordered Colombia to pay damages in the 1997 massacre of dozens of villagers by right-wing paramilitary fighters.

Human rights groups and former soldiers have criticized the Colombian army for not sending troops to the village of Mapiripan to stop the bloodshed, in which the anti-rebel militias killed dozens of unarmed civilians they accused of being leftist guerrilla sympathizers.

In the ruling, issued last month but not released until Wednesday, the InterAmerican Human Rights court ordered the government to pay $1 million in material damages and another $2.6 million in punitive damages to family members of 20 victims who have been identified.

The San Jose, Costa Rica-based court also ordered the government to construct a monument and identify the rest of the victims. A total of 49 people were believed slain.
(snip/...)

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=3286

A few photos of Mapiripan: http://groups.msn.com/CentaurosBolivarianos/mapiripan.msnw
(Images too graphic to post on this page)

The Massacre in Mapiripán

Between July 15 and July 20, paramilitaries took total control of the town, dividing themselves into groups of 20 to 30 and dispersing into the community. With lists in hand, they asked for the victims by name. All individuals on the list were people who had been present at town meetings with the guerrillas, who had participated in the peasant marches in 1996 or who were community leaders. The paramilitaries allegedly carried their victims to the slaughterhouse, tied them up and killed them at night, later throwing the bodies into the Guaviare River. Most victims were tortured and the majority were also decapitated. The brutal attack on Mapiripan caused hundreds of terrorized villagers to flee to the capital of Meta, Villavicencio.

During the bloodshed, Ivan Cortes Novoa, a municipal judge in Mapiripan, claims he notified Army Major Hernan Orozco, of the Joaquin Paris Battalion, several times about the massacres and asked for help from officials. Judge Cortes remembers sitting in his office typing his testimony in secret. "Every night," he wrote, "they kill a group of five or six defenseless people, who are cruelly and monstrously killed.... I want to leave everything written in case they kill me, too."

The judge says he told Orozco on July 17 that sixteen people had already died. One of the victims, he explained, was hung from a hook, carved up like a bird, and his chopped up body thrown into the river. According to the judge, Orozco responded that the situation seemed very serious, and that he was sorry, but that he couldn't help. Major Orozco later admitted that during the time the paramilitaries rampaged the area the judge had called him eight times. Still, no authorities ever intervened during the attack.

In October 1997, the State Attorney General's Office announced that it would begin a formal investigation into the actions of four Army officials, including Major Orozco, and five civil servants who are accused of failing to provide any assistance to the local population during the bloody massacre.

What happened in Mapiripan is part of a greater paramilitary offensive aimed at acquiring territory in areas where guerrillas dominated and paramilitary groups had no previous presence. Similar attacks are sure to happen again, a fear underscored by the declaration of Carlos Castano, leader of the ACCU, that "There will be many more Mapiripans."
(snip)

http://colhrnet.igc.org/newsletter/y1997/winter97art/mapiri.htm



Carlos Castaño, quoted in the article immediately above.
Too bad, he won't be around to murder any more Colombians.
He was found murdered and buried last year, and it was learned
his own drug lord, paramilitary brother is the one who commissioned
his execution.

[Toucano]

15. Amazed that this got reported. n/t