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FLAHSBACK-Book Review: Colombia, Laboratory of Witches http://radicalnotes.com/journal/2008/08/12/colombia-book-review/

The study provides us with a clear account of the complex network of inter-locking elites made up of the Colombian ruling class, the US imperial apparatus and the Colombian military. While the death squads played a major role in the killing of thousands of popular leaders and dispossessing 3 million peasants, they received the support of the Colombian oligarchy. Once the military and the regime, with $5 billion USD in US military aid, took possession of disputed regions from the guerrillas, the death squads were in part demobilized.

The growth and decline of the death squads was clearly a result of US and Colombian policy: They were ‘tactical’ instruments designed to carry out the bloodiest tasks of purging civil society of popular, mass-based opposition. Calvo Ospina’s detailed survey of the horrific human rights record of the first 5 years of Uribe’s rule stands in stark contrast to the barrage of favorable propaganda showered on the macabre figure after freeing Franco-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt by Bush, Sarkozy, Zapatero, Chavez, and Castro among others.

During the first 3 years of the Uribe Presidency (August 2002- December 31, 2005) over one million Colombians were forcibly displaced, the great majority peasants violently uprooted and dispossessed of their land and homes by the death squads/military, who subsequently seized their land under the pretext of eliminating potential supporters of the FARC and other social movements. The peasants-turned-urban-squatters, who became local leaders, subsequently were assassinated by the regime’s secret political police (DAS) or death squads. Uribe’s regime has murdered over 500 trade union activists and leaders since coming to power in 2003.

One trade union leader succinctly summed up the dismal political choices for Colombian activists: “In Colombia its easier to organize a guerrilla (movement) than a trade union. Anyone who doubts that should try to organize one at their workplace” (page 348). According to the European Union, more than 300 human rights activists were murdered by the Uribe regime in its first term of office (page 349). In the first two years of his regime, Uribe was responsible for the assassination or ‘disappearance’ of 6,148 unarmed civilians in non-combat circumstances.

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Angry Demonstrators Demand Sarkozy to Pay Up and Return Aristide to Haiti http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_18_10/2_18_10.html

Thousands of supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide took to the streets on Wednesday as French president Nicolas Sarkozy toured the earthquake ravaged capital of Port au Prince.Holding pictures of the ousted president aloft they chanted for France to pay more then 21 billion dollars in restitution and reparations and to return Aristide as Sarkozy's helicopter landed near Haiti's quake damaged national palace.

Their demands stem from a long held dispute over compensation a nascent Haiti was forced to pay French slave owners in exchange for recognition of their independence and France's role in ousting Aristide in 2004."We need Aristide to return!" shouted demonstrators as Haitian president Preval made a rare appearance on the lawn in front of Haiti's destroyed seat of government following Sarkozy's visit. Waving photos of Aristide they also began chanting, "If Aristide were here he would be suffering along with us!" as Preval turned his back on the crowd and withdrew to his luxury jeep amid tight security.

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The roles of colonialism, the Cold War and the ‘ongoing political and economic plunder’ http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62351

Take the oil-rich Niger Delta, for example. 70 per cent of Nigerians in the region live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than a dollar a day. By contrast, the starting salary for a Chevron engineer in the area tops US$175,000 and the company has walked away with millions in revenue already. In the context of such vicious plunder, Sachs’ plan to save dying Africans by handing out bed nets and fertilisers amounts to a slap in the face.

Instances like this can be multiplied ad nauseum. Take the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Canadian negotiators recently convinced the DRC government to barter away mineral concessions worth some US$120 billion to China in exchange for a paltry US$6 billion of infrastructural development. Why are the Congolese people so desperately poor when they’re literally sitting on a goldmine? Because – as with European colonialism – their mineral profits are being siphoned by first world corporations that can get away without paying them the real price of the commodities they extract or the labour that digs them up. Africans don’t need aid, they need fairer trade arrangements.

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Dead Aid’: A critical reading http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62386

My critique of aid as it is currently practised is based on my analysis of how it is used by the oligopolies that control globalisation, and that it is also the cause of Africa’s exclusion and marginalisation. This exclusion is therefore in some way built into aid.The politics of aid, the choice of its beneficiaries, the forms of intervention and its immediate objectives are inextricably linked to geopolitical considerations. Each region of the globe performs a unique role in the globalised liberal system The new phase of history we are entering is characterised by intensifying conflict over the world’s natural resources.

The dominant powers seek to reserve the rights to Africa’s natural resources (its ‘useful’ side), to the exclusion of the ‘emerging powers’, whose needs for these same resources continue to grow. The only guarantee that the dominant powers have of exclusive access is through political control, and reducing African countries to mere ‘client states’. Foreign aid plays an important role in achieving and maintaining this.

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Shell in Nigeria: The struggle for accountability http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62358

The settlement of the landmark Wiwa v Shell lawsuit in June 2009 marked a small but significant step forward for the dozen plaintiffs involved. They charged Shell with complicity in human rights abuses, including crimes against humanity, summary execution, torture and arbitrary detention. The abuses occurred during military crackdowns in the 1990s, when 300,000 of the minority Ogoni people mobilised under the leadership of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, to protest at the environmental and social devastation caused by Shell, Chevron and other companies in the oil rich Niger Delta.

These were some of the largest protests against an oil company ever seen. In response, Shell collaborated with the Nigerian military in a campaign of indiscriminate violence in Ogoniland, culminating in the execution of Saro-Wiwa and eight other activistsGovernment security forces are routinely on the payroll of international oil companies, and the same forces are responsible for an unknown number of summary executions, killings, torture and detainment.

According to local rights monitor the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), as recently as December 2009, armed soldiers securing a Shell manifold in K-Dere in Ogoni tortured a man and his wife, severely beating them severely with gun butts and horsewhips till they vomited blood. These incidents are routinely carried out by security forces paid, fed and housed by Shell.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Eurostat denies it was influenced by lobbying pressures http://euobserver.com/9/29493

The EU's statistics agency, Eurostat, has denied Belgian accusations that some of its decisions are influenced by lobbying from larger EU countries. "Eurostat's role is to treat all member states equally," the Luxembourg-based agency told this website in an emailed statement on Wednesday On Monday, the European Commission handed member states a proposal to award Eurostat auditing powers in response to doubts over Greek data.The following day, Belgian finance minister Didier Reynders said any increase in Eurostat's remit should be accompanied by an internal overhaul to increase the independence and transparency of the statistics office.

The statistics agency has not been immune from controversy in the past. In 2003, three senior officials were removed from their posts and a number of contracts with outside companies were cancelled after it was alleged that a double accounting system had been used during the 1990s to transfer large amounts of money to secret bank accounts."We shouldn't forget that we have also known problems within Eurostat," said Mr Reynders, in reference to a scandal.