Colombian president says end of war with Farc rebels is near

[alp227]

Source: Reuters

The Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, has said he believes the country is nearing the final phase of nearly 50 years of war and that his government would be willing to sit down and start peace talks with the rebels.

The Andean nation has been wracked by bloodshed from Farc guerrillas and cocaine barons for decades, but a 2002 security crackdown drastically reduced the violence and brought in billions of dollars in foreign investment.

"The last phase of this almost 50-year-old conflict is nearing," Santos said in a speech to the armed forces on Thursday.

"It'll draw near if we persevere, it'll draw near if we continue having the successes that we've been accumulating."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/25/colombia-war-farc-rebels

[Enrique]

1. the American right wing's worst nightmare

if Santos manages this, they'll turn on him and add Colombia to the Axis of Evil.

[Judi Lynn]

2. If only he's close to telling the truth. It wouldn't be a moment too soon, would it? Thanks.Rec. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. There are a lot of damned lies in this article, so beware.

This one stands out:

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"The Andean nation has been wracked by bloodshed from Farc guerrillas and cocaine barons for decades, but a 2002 security crackdown drastically reduced the violence and brought in billions of dollars in foreign investment." --Rotters

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Shocking to see this in the Guardian--one of the only sources of reliable information about the world, although we in the Latin American Forum have been noticing the unreliability and egregious anti-Left, pro-Right bias of the Guardian's reporter on Latin America (Rory Carroll). On Latin American issues, the Guardian is an bad as all the rest of the "mainstream" press. (This article is unsigned and attributed to Rotters.)

In truth, "the Andean nation has been wracked by bloodshed" committed by the Colombian military, with $7 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer money via the Bush Junta, against innocent, peaceful Colombian civilians--thousands of trade unionists, teachers, human rights workers, community activists, peasant farmers and other innocents slaughtered, in obvious preparation for U.S. "free trade for the rich," in addition to the "false positives" murders: Colombian military luring youths with promises of jobs, murdering them and dressing their bodies up like FARC guerrillas, to up their "body counts," to earn bonuses and promotions and to impress U.S. senators. The Colombian military ran a "scorched earth" campaign against rural villages and drove FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands with state terror--the worst human displacement crisis on earth. This must have thrilled the "foreign investors" who "brought in billions of dollars," among them, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Monsanto, Drummond Coal, Chiquita International, et al. In fact, Drummond Coal and Chiquita joined the fascist turkey shoot in Colombia and hired some of the rightwing death squads to take care of their "labor problems."

Amnesty International attributes 92% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia to the Colombian military (about half) and to their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half), and only 2% to FARC guerrillas. (The others were ordinary street crime.) What does this tell us about the relative levels of violence of the Colombian military vs the FARC guerrillas? The Colombian military and the Bushwhacks' mafia don 'president' of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, were implementing a BLOODBATH designed in Washington DC. (One of the mass graves filled with bodies murdered by the Colombian military is an area called La Macarena, where the Colombian military engaged in a "pacification" program, a la Vietnam and Afghanistan, written by the USAID,. The Pentagon provided "training" and equipment and on-the-ground U.S. military presence at numerous bases.)

In addition, there are several bits of evidence lying around for those who notice such things (not the Corporate Press) that the U.S. military may have been involved in this carnage, that the U.S. ambassador was directly involved with Uribe's vast, illegal, domestic spying operation (which is suspected of drawing up "hit lists" of trade unionists and others for the rightwing death squads), and that Blackwater was "training" "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan."

In short, it looks like Colombia was the "training ground" for death squads elsewhere, for trying out various strategies of "pacification" (killing and terrorizing civilians), for testing weapons like the USAF drone bombers and spying technology, and providing a backup war profiteer boondoggle to supplement the other U.S. wars.

There is NOTHING good about this Bushwhack/Uribe "security crackdown." Nothing! Yet it is touted in this article as bringing peace. That is bullshit.

Also, I suspect that one of the things going on was Bushwhack/Uribe consolidation of the cocaine trade into fewer hands and direction of that trillion+ dollar revenue stream to selected beneficiaries (U.S. banksters, the Bush Cartel, the CIA). The U.S. "war on drugs" was used to get control of the cocaine trade and the U.S. "war on terror"--added to "Plan Colombia" by the Bushwhacks--was used to destroy the labor movement and the leftist opposition.

All of the above is why I view Santos' suggestion that the war "is over" with a jaundiced eye. The war "is over" because "the mission was accomplished"--all those peasants driven from their lands, all those dead leftists? They don't want the mountains of dead bodies stinking up their "free trade" zones?

I welcome peace like any sane person--whether in Iraq or Afghanistan or Colombia, or anywhere the U.S. or its operatives have been killing people. What I oppose is AMNESIA--because when the U.S. commits mass murder, directly or by proxy, for the benefit of the rich, and no one is held accountable for this, it WILL happen again. And it is not over in Colombia. The military and the death squads are STILL murdering innocent people with almost complete impunity. Where and when do the people at the top--the people who gave these orders, the people who designed these horrors, the people who appropriated our money for murderers and war profiteers and thugs and gangsters, pay for their crimes? Where and when do the rich and powerful have to answer for what they've done?

Santos announces that it's "almost over" and then all the blood of the innocents just washes into the Corporate Media's "river of forgetfulness." That is the problem with this article. This is a very, very serious and dangerous lie.