Are FARC rebels reaching into Central America?

[Judi Lynn]

Are FARC rebels reaching into Central America?
The US Treasury has blacklisted 2 Costa Rican businesses for allegedly supporting the FARC.
By Alex Leff , GlobalPost
Published: August 7, 2010 10:25 ET

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — The reach of Colombia’s leftist guerrillas has always extended past the country’s borders — with money, arms and support coming from nearby countries.

Though the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) has mostly been in retreat in recent years, its tentacles still reach Costa Rica, suggests a recent report from the U.S. Treasury.

The Treasury cited two Costa Rica-based agricultural businesses among its blacklist of people and businesses believed to be supporting the FARC, Colombia’s largest left-wing guerrilla group.

FARC began as a leftist campesino movement in the 1960s but it’s now accused of drug running, ransom kidnappings and waging war with the Colombian military and politicians.

Once the office places individuals or companies on its blacklist, it freezes their U.S.-based assets. Anyone caught doing business with the individual or company — with a few exceptions such as lawyers — from inside the United States can face hefty fines and even jail time.

The blacklist — known in Latin America as the “Clinton List” because it started with a 1995 executive order by then-President Bill Clinton — now includes more than 750 businesses and individuals linked to 87 drug kingpins.

“We call it economic death penalty,” said Erich Ferrari, a U.S. attorney who follows cases closely and writes about them on the blog sanctionlaw.com.

More:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/colombia/100728/farc-guerrillas-colombia

[Peace Patriot]

1. Adds to my suspicion that the "miracle laptops" were a Rumsfeld "Office of Special Plans" operation.

And it's becoming apparent, too, that that operation, is, a) alive and well, and b) part of game plan for smooshing the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" together, as one coordinated war against the left in Latin America, with a very substantial covert war aspect to it, that certainly involves "dirty tricks" and may involve worse. Imagine having a set of tools with which to slander, rob, disrupt and disable every leftist politician and leftist activist in Latin America, plus anybody here who aids the Latin American political left in any way, including simply opposing the "war on drugs" and our government's very wrongful policies. We've ALREADY SEEN this probable OSP operation in action against the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador. We can follow those events because the targets are high profile--heads of countries. What may be happening to people at lower levels of political activity and in situations where news doesn't get out?

Uribe's charges against Chavez in Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador, back in 2008-2009-- came right out of the "miracle laptops." And here, in this article, we see that the discrediting of the "miracle laptops" apparently doesn't matter. Operatives like Uribe give such a tool a life of its own. It gets cited again and again--just recently at the OAS with Uribe's crapola accusing Venezuela of 'harboring' FARC guerillas--and the corpo-fascist press, of course, lends it credibility by never referring back to the thorough debunking of the source. The "miracle laptop" (later, laptopS) is like Joseph McCarthy's "Lists"--an entirely bogus source of McCarthyite accusations for slandering anybody at all--academics, teachers, artists, labor union leaders, human rights advocates, civil rights groups. "A communist under every bed!" "A FARC guerrilla supporter under every bed!"

What I find most disturbing about this dangerous, secret operation--the creation and use of invented "intelligence"--so evident in the "miracle laptopS--is the CONTINUED use of it, by Uribe, at the OAS. Today. Now. And if I am right about who designed the whole operation--Donald Rumsfeld--what does this mean about the CONTINUED existence of his "Office of Special Plans," operating within our secret government agencies or independently--to turn invented intelligence into Oil War II: South America (which may be awaiting the next Diebold-(s)elected President of the U.S. to be implemented).

The RECENT accusation against Venezuela is not just an accusation; it is a potential excuse for war--for the Colombian military ($7 BILLION in U.S. funding) with U.S. military backing (SEVEN new U.S. military bases in Colombia) invading Venezuela "in pursuit of the FARC" (an action that was rehearsed with the bombing/raid on Ecuador in 2008), and leaving Venezuela with no options but to shoot back.

Meanwhile, the "miracle laptopS" have other uses...

Follow the "miracle laptops" through this Global Post narrative (the latter part of the article):

------

The companies Agropecuaria San Cayetano de Costa Rica Ltda and Arrocera El Gaucho Ltda are owned by a “FARC financial associate,” Jose Cayetano Melo, said the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control in a June press release.

Costa Rican anti-drug authorities here said they identified suspicious activity in Melo’s private bank account in 2008, including the movement of $1 million from Costa Rica to Colombia, according to local press reports from August 2009.

Security Ministry spokesman Jorge Protti told GlobalPost that Melo’s case was shelved after an investigation found no proof of Melo’s FARC link. Melo has fought the accusation, claiming that he resides in Costa Rica because he had to flee the FARC, not assist them. “Because of the persecution (from the FARC), I sought a place to put my soul at ease,” the business owner told the daily La Nacion. Melo could not be reached for comment.

The FARC is accused of infiltrating other countries in the region — most notably the dense jungles of nearby Panama — and some say Costa Rica’s links to the group go deeper than the alleged financial ties.

It’s a prickly accusation: Former Security Minister Fernando Berrocal stepped down in 2008 after sparking a national uproar by alluding to possible links between the FARC and Costa Rican politicians.

Berrocal’s controversial remarks came days after the March 1, 2008, Colombian military raid on a FARC camp in Ecuador. The army killed rebel commander Raul Reyes and obtained FARC’s computer containing information that led to probes inside and outside Colombia.

That same month, the computer’s information brought investigators to an academic’s home just north of the Costa Rican capital of San Jose, where police found $480,000 in rotting cash in a safe that belonged to FARC.

The discovery and Berrocal’s assertions also unearthed a largely forgotten history of cozier times shared by Costa Rica and Colombian leftist rebels that involved frequent visits by FARC members.

Mercedes Munoz, dean of social sciences at University of Costa Rica, criticized Berrocal for taking the computer intelligence out of context without acknowledging the past. “Actions by Reyes and other FARC leaders in Costa Rica not only were not clandestine, but were promoted by ... the very Costa Rican government,” Munoz said. One example is when Costa Rica hosted talks in 1997 between Reyes and a U.S. State Department official.

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

This is truly foul play--not just from the creators of the "miracle laptops" but from the Global Post. The thoroughly debunked, discredited, tainted source--Raul Reyes' alleged laptop (later, laptopS)--is used to lace this narrative with reasonable-sounding assertions of criminal activity, and reasonable-sounding actions by the security apparatus. None of it was reasonable. None of it was valid. It was all PSYOPS--DISinformation, part of a scurrilous and dangerous "black" operation to harass, persecute and harm people for their opinions and their political associations.

Only toward the very end of the article is there any suggestion that there might be something wrong with the source--the "miracle laptopS." And then it is couched as a matter of CONTEXT (i.e., the security apparatus "forgetting" those "cozier" days when the FARC was (and in my opinion still should be) considered a legitimate domestic alternative to the fascist narco-thugs running Colombia). Nothing, nada, about the debunking of the "miracle laptopS."

[Judi Lynn]

4. The article stands out from others in its starkness. It looks like a shifting of gears, doesn't it?

As soon as it appeared, it was if as Reagan's black propagandist in the Office of Public Diplomacy, Cuban "exile" Otto Reich has been put back in charge of media coverage of Latin America all over, again. (We do know he was connected to the illegal Honduran coup, too.)

_{George W. Bush} had Reich working for him via a "recess appointment" since the Senate wouldn't endorse his appointment, and he and his virulent right-winger associates kept constant surveillance and scheming active on, against Latin Americans even though the nation's attention was traumatically focused on the Mid-East.

When Rumsfeld published his article directed at Venezuela that December even though he was out of office it seems he was notifying the world that just because official US business had been directed toward Iraq/Afghanistan, no one should be foolish enough to assume there weren't serious plans already made for Latin American action. It read as a threat, at the time.

I'm sure these steps were already planned well in advance.

[naaman fletcher]

2. Is this our eferrari cited at the bottom?

Anyway, Peacepatriot, to continue our panama discussion of the other day in the shower this morning it hit me that another possible explanation for all this is that its the gotterdamerung of the drug war. that is the drug warriors know they are losing and are in a last ditch attempt to show that the drug war can work. just a thought to bounce around.

[Downwinder]

3. More likely the other way around.

They backed the drug dealers in Honduras.