Colombia's plan to hire students as army informers faces flak

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Irish Sun

Colombia's plan to hire students as army informers faces flak
Irish Sun
Friday 29th January, 2010
(IANS)

Bogota, Jan 29 (IANS/EFE) The Colombian government's plan to recruit college students as military informers has evoked criticism across the country.

President Alvaro Uribe's decision to turn university students in the crime-ridden northwestern city of Medellin into army informers was an act of desperation and a sign that the violence was out of control, presidential candidate of the opposition Liberal Party Rafael Pardo said.

Pardo, a former defence minister, said that making a specific group part of the security forces' intelligence network means 'putting it at risk, making it less effective and also provoking retaliation'.

Independent presidential hopeful and former Medellin mayor Sergio Fajardo said the plan is 'a monumental error that runs counter to what education should be all about'.

Read more: http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/594688/cs/1/

[Duende azul]

1. Probably they were doing that all along.

Like the US.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Yup, like the SEVEN new U.S. military bases in Colombia, supposedly just proposed,

but which are more than likely already up and running. (Congress is supposed to approve it, but what is happening in reality is that Congress will be rubber-stamping a huge U.S. military buildup in Colombia that has already occurred.) By the time something gets leaked into the public sector, in countries like Colombia and the U.S., it's more than likely a fait accompli, and the venue of great corporate profiteering and abuse. Programs like "Total Information Awareness" also come to mind. They get caught, they change the name.

[Peace Patriot]

2. But, but, but...Chavez is the one with the crime problem according to our corpo-fascist press

and rightwing DUers...

"Authorities say there were 2,178 homicides in Medellin (COLOMBIA) in 2009, a 108 percent increase over the previous year." --Irish Sun

Interesting how this hasn't been reported by the Wall Street Urinal, the New York Slimes, the Associated Pukes, Rotters, the Miami Hairball, the Washington Psst and the Alphabet Soup of Corporate TV, nor by the rightwing Chavez bashers here at DU.

Cuz guess why? Cuz the CIA and chanting crowds of fascists in Venezuela want you to think, "Crime, Inflation, Blackouts, Chavez, Incompetent, Dictator, Crime, Inflation, Blackouts, Chavez, Incompetent, Dictator, Crime, Inflation, Blackouts, Chavez, Incompetent, Dictator..." in the background of your mind, in the subliminal corners of your consciousness, in the dusty places where bogeymen and stereotypes lurk, to be triggered by the warmongers at the strategically useful moment.

They also want you to think that the narco/security state of Colombia is WILDLY POPULAR because it's propped up by $6 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer funded military aid, when the truth is that the U.S. "war on drugs" is an utterly failed, extremely corrupt, murderous, nation-wrecking project to transform Colombia into a tool for U.S. aggression in the region.

So our people don't hear about a 108% increase in homicides in Colombia. This is not considered a useful fact here. Not to mention the latest Uribe/CIA/Pentagon plan to spread the fascist corruption to university campuses by creating "nazi youth groups" to serve the Fatherland.

It would be kind of funny--if the intent were not so evil--how they call Chavez a "dictator" on the one hand and "incompetent" ("crime, inflation, blackouts") on the other. But that's how subliminal messaging works--it tries to override reason by, among other things, trying to get you to accept completely contradictory assertions (i.e., "war is peace"). The truth is nowhere to found in these shadows of propagandistic imaging. The truths about the achievements of the Chavez government--in education, health care, economic growth, good financial management, transparent elections, expansion of citizen participation--are black-holed in corpo-fascist 'news' reports while wholly untruthful, irrational messages are conveyed, using stereotypes of Latin American dictators and "banana republics"--with the excruciating irony (to the rational mind) that whatever Latin American dictators and "banana republics" there have been, have been the creations of the CIA, and supported by U.S. tax dollars, in the interest of U.S. global corporate predators.

Chavez is NOT a "dictator." Nor is Chavez or his government "incompetent." They have been truly elected, by big margins of the vote, BECAUSE they are democratic, and BECAUSE they are not just competent, they have been very successful on many fronts. But not on all fronts. Get it? Street crime, inflation, blackouts. So frigging what? What government in the frigging world DOESN'T have SOME problems? We are supposed to believe that because the Chavez government can't solve all problems by fiat, Chavez is a "dictator." Figure that one out. Or, maybe it's that the propagandists have realized that the "Big Lie" about "Chavez the dictator" is disintegrating in the face of rational inquiry, so they have to come up with something else BAD and stereotypical of (U.S. media created) Latin America: incompetence. Crime, inflation running wild; blackouts everywhere! Panic! Panic!

The same, mind-bending, propagandistic technique of contradictions is used to portray the most outlaw government on the planet--Colombia's--as, somehow, law-abiding, "conservative," desirous of civil order, crackers-down on crime, 'good' sheriffs, blah, blah, blah.

"Authorities say there were 2,178 homicides in Medellin (COLOMBIA, U.S. client state, $6 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid) in 2009, a 108 percent increase over the previous year." --Irish Sun

As for the WILDLY POPULAR Uribe (--popular among people who are confident that their views, if expressed to pollsters, will not get their heads shot off or their body parts found in a mass grave thirty years later), he is, in truth, presiding over a government of such vast criminality that some 60 of his closest political associates (including family members) are under investigation, indicted or in jail, as the result of the work of courageous prosecutors who live under death threats themselves. And guess where Uribe got his start? Medellin! And guess whose go-to guy he was? The Medellin Cartel. And guess whose go-to guy he is today?

I suspect they're about to dump him, a la Diem/South Vietnam, but that's another story**. For now, the massive, out-of-control crime--death squads, murder (including the murder of thousands of innocents--union leaders, human rights workers, peasant farmers), big time drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, bribery, coercion and state terror--perpetrated at the highest levels of the Colombian government and military is mostly treated as IN THE PAST, by our controlled press, when it is reported at all, and Venezuela--VENEZUELA!--which has actually made significant--in some cases, astonishing--social progress, is portrayed as a crime-ridden tyranny with incompetent leaders.

------


**Get this (i.e., Uribe's likely replacement)...

Former defense minister and possible presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos said that such a strategy may yet prove helpful to police forces. He said that state policy to pay informants in return for intelligence has so far been "quite successful."

"It seems to me this could help calm down and improve the public order in a city like Medellin," he said. In a radio interview, he added that information obtained from students would be "useful, and the population would then have dividends for their families."

General Alberto Jose Mejia, commander of the military's 4th Brigade, said the policy "does not seek to militarize students." More and better intelligence from Medellin's poorer neighborhoods could improve coordination between the police and the army, and allow security forces to respond more quickly, he said.

The homicide rate in Medellin increased by 108% from 2008 to 2009.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7878-candidates-critique-uribes-cash-for-intelligence-scheme-for-students.html

[Peace Patriot]

4. I wonder why this post got bumped out of Latest Breaking News. It's current.

The Irish Sun is a "mainstream" paper, as far as I know.

------------------------

If, as I suspect, the "usual suspects" of the corpo-fascist 'news' DON'T report a 108% increase in homicides in a Colombian city, and DON'T report the 'proposed' student spy network being pushed by the CIA's guy in Colombia, then relegating this news to the Latin American Forum dungeon also denies it to DUers. This is information that Democrats need to know, because Colombia is a U.S. client state, supported by $6 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer funded military aid. What the Colombian government does is being done in our name, with our money and in alliance with the Obama administration.