Posted on 03/04/2003 1:34:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Edited on 07/12/2004 4:01:12 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
RIO DE JANEIRO (Agence France-Presse) - The high command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has three bases or hide-outs in Brazil, the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo reported during the weekend, quoting Colombian intelligence sources.
The report said the largest of the bases is in the southern Brazilian state of Parana, in a region known as Guaira, on land owned by a naturalized Brazilian of Lebanese origin who has been in government custody for seven months.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
It's Cool Again to be Communist***Inspired by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba's Fidel Castro, military strongman Chavez is turning oil-rich Venezuela into a populist, anti-U.S. dictatorship, say U.S. intelligence sources. They tell Insight that Chavez is providing a safe haven for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) narcoguerrillas, an 18,000-man insurgency that began decades ago as an offshoot of the local Communist Party and still clings to Marxist-Leninist ideology.
………………U.S. policy during the Clinton administration provided Colombia, a country twice as large as France, with the means to combat drug producers and traffickers but deliberately restricted the use of U.S.-supplied military equipment to prevent Bogotá from effectively fighting the FARC. A U.S.-brokered "peace" process helped give the FARC a protected sanctuary the size of Switzerland in the heart of the country. Now, Colombia faces the prospect of disintegration as the cocaine- and heroin-financed FARC gains military ground. ***
IRA/Cuban/Venezuelan Involvement in Colombia ***The President's Peace Commission even planned for the eventual participation of a contingent of Cuban soldiers that would be members of a U.N. verification team in northern Colombia. The team would have been responsible for verifying the good conduct of the guerrillas in a distension zone controlled by the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN). - Snip - Based in northern Colombia, Cuba has lately been involved in the peace process, which had continued unabated until last week in Caracas, Venezuela, under the watchful supervision of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Those talks were broken off last week, however, and in the past few days the ELN has launched a series of attacks crossing through Venezuelan territory to attack Colombian border posts. -
- Snip - Anti-aircraft missile experts from Cuba and Venezuela are probably working on the seven anti-aircraft missile bases that have been detected under construction in the distension zone. Armaments tracking detected the arrival of Stinger and Redeye anti-aircraft missiles from Syria several years ago. More shipments of anti-aircraft missiles and launchers have probably been made by the Russian mafia, closely linked to the FARC because of its unique ability to pay in highly lucrative cocaine, which Russia distributes throughout Europe. -Snip - Cuba, for its part, is denying the presence of Cuban troops. Cuban chancellor Aymee Hernandez said in Havana, "It's a great fallacy, the whole world knows that there are no Cubans there [in Colombia]."***
Chavez: Colombian Rebel Contact 'Humanitarian'-denies collaborating with FARC*** Chavez, who spoke in Bolivia late on Wednesday, was commenting on a video released in Caracas by four opposition journalists that allegedly showed a Venezuelan military team negotiating with FARC guerrillas inside Colombia in July 2000.
Opponents of Chavez, a left-wing former paratrooper who attempted an abortive coup in 1992 before winning elections six years later, have frequently accused him of sympathizing with Colombia's Marxist rebels and even of cooperating with them. ***
Chavez security chief alleges FARC links*** I am resigning because I disagree with the DISIP's policy of providing security to Colombian guerrillas ... this policy is more than just irregular, it approaches treason to Venezuela given the innumerable deaths, kidnappings and other crimes for which these groups are responsible in our country." Egui Bastidas said 90 percent of his fellow officers "obey orders but do not agree with them" and called on President Hugo Chavez to reverse his policy of tacit support for the rebels. "All the peace negotiations there are over and open confrontations between the guerrillas and the Colombian government have begun. Are they going to carry on letting them cross over into Venezuelan territory?" Egui Bastidas asked.
The former DISIP official called on the Armed Forces to issue a statement about their view of the Chávez government's alleged support for the Colombian guerrillas. Egui Bastidas also made a number of revelations about DISIP activities in recent months. He said the Venezuelan security service had collected personal information about all serving military officers and had also tried to smear opposition figures, such as Alberto Pena, the mayor of Metropolitan Caracas. The official said he was also concerned at the growing role of Russian and Cuban security advisers in Venezuela.
Egui Bastidas said he had experienced "the direct participation and the attempts at indoctrination by the Russian and Cuban intelligence services, who have direct and virtually unlimited access within the Helicoide (DISIP's headquarters building)." The official's lawyer, former DISIP Secretary-General Joaquin Chaffardet, said around 100 members of the Cuban intelligence services are currently operating in Venezuela. The new allegations would, if proven, further strain the already difficult relationship between the United States and Venezuela. ***
Hill spoke Monday at a two-day conference sponsored by the University of Miami's North South Center, the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees American military operations in Latin America. The conference, ''Building Regional Security in the Western Hemisphere,'' addressed how Colombia's conflict could wreak havoc region-wide. Colombia's nearly four-decade war pits illegal right-wing paramilitaries and the armed forces against two leftist insurgencies, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army. All three illegal groups are financed by the drug trade, making them major suppliers of the 500 tons of cocaine entering the U.S. each year.
The operation, which includes gun running and money laundering, Hill said, provides ''hundreds of millions'' of dollars to other terrorist groups around the world. The United States has provided $2 billion to help Colombia beat not just drugs but the rebels as well. Last month three American defense contractors surveying coca crops were kidnapped by the FARC, and a third was killed. The topic was notably unmentioned by Hill and most other conference participants, including Colombia's ambassador to Washington, Luis Moreno. ''Terrorist groups operating in Colombia are feeling the crunch,'' Moreno said, insisting that the Colombian military is making serious inroads against the groups. ''But we must keep it up,'' he said. ``We must step it up.'' [End]
The most cursory search of the web reveals hundreds or thousands of connections between terror groups...
You hit the nail on the head- the great problem in all those countries is that most people are dirt poor, a very few are amazingly rich, and there's little between. A large middle class is the key to success with most any type of representative government.
Truer words were never spoken... maybe we should dedicate this thread to O'Reilly since he hasn't had a really good issue to chew on in a while, and doesn't even appear to be looking south. But even Freepers seem to ignore the south, even as inflamed and near as it is to our shores. Their only interest, it seems, it to fret about immigration from Central America and South America, without really considering why there is a huge immigration problem down south in the first place. Much of it is caused by Cuban-backed terrorism throughout the hemisphere. Now Venezuela's oil is going to back it too, and ME terrorists are swarming in to add to the problem, and still no one is interested because they are only looking at the ME region, and not the whole web of terror.
Yes. I'd like to see him take on the terrorist network in this hemisphere (with such strong ties with world terrorism and anti-Americanism). He taught school in south Florida and I believe could comment on many levels. It would be interesting to see and hear his position and see some hard-hitting interviews.
a 2003 thread to read
great farc resarch here ping
Cinci...
Do you have anything on Al Gore, Occidental Oil, and the U'Wa tribe of Colombia?
I know that Gore Sr. was given a seat in the board of Directors for Occidental by Armand Hammer upon his retirement from the Senate, and that the Gore family owns a boatload of stock in the company.
I also seem to recall that Clinton gave $1.3 billion in aid to Colombia in 2000, and that as soon as he did that, the U'was lost their legal fight to stop Occidental Oil from drilling in their lands.
The FARC is entwined in this story as well.
The Colombian Connection: Al Gore & Big Oil
NewsMax.com http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/11/124032
Friday, May 12, 2000
It’s a major scandal waiting to break, the story of a Colombian tribe of Indians, a major oil company and the vice president of the United States.
In a startling expose in the current issue of The Nation, writer Ken Silverstein uncovers the shocking tale of Gore’s historical super-close connection to the giant Occidental Petroleum company, its ongoing attempts to despoil the U’wa tribal ancestral homeland, and the shady role the Clinton administration is playing behind the scenes.
And the expose is given more weight in view of the fact that it appears in an ultra left-wing publication one would expect to be backing ultra liberal Al Gore’s presidential bid to the hilt.
Briefly, the dispute, which turned violent when Colombian security forces used tear gas against members of the tribe demonstrating against Occidental’s drilling plans, resulting in the subsequent death of three children who drowned when fleeing the melee, involves the company’s plan to drill on U’wa tribal land, which the company believes holds 1.4 billion barrels of oil worth about $35 billion in today’s prices.
Interestingly, in view of Gore’s pretensions to be a dedicated environmentalist, one of the principal objections to Occidental’s drilling is its record of disastrous oil spills from its Caño Limon pipeline, just north of U'wa land and repeatedly bombed by guerrillas. The spills, Silverstein reports, have badly polluted rivers and lakes.
"The Colombian Oil Workers' Union published a report in 1997 saying that Caño Limon is ‘the best example that petroleum exploitation should not be permitted [on the U’wa reservation] at any price,’" he wrote.
Silverstein says the U’wa opposition to Occidental’s plans represents something of a last stand. "A 1998 report by Terry Freitas — one of three U'wa supporters from the United States killed by leftist guerrillas while visiting the tribe's territory last year — says that the Colombian government stripped the tribe of 85 percent of its land between 1940 and 1970,” he explained.
He quotes Roberto Perez, president of the Traditional Authority of the U'wa People, as saying: "The key issue for indigenous groups is defending our territory ... The Occidental project is an affront to our livelihood, our lives and our culture."
Gore has repeatedly refused pleas from fellow Democrats to meet with Perez.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, for example, told Silverstein she wrote to Gore and asked him to meet with U'wa leader Perez and to support an immediate suspension of the Occidental project.
"I am concerned that the operations of oil companies, and in particular Occidental Petroleum, are exacerbating an already explosive situation, with disastrous consequences for the local indigenous people," she wrote. "I am contacting you because you have remained silent on this issue despite your strong financial interests and family ties with Occidental."
She wrote to Gore again on March 30 to complain about his failure to answer her previous letter. Finally Gore sent her a note saying he simply didn’t have the time to meet with Perez.
Most fascinating is the historical connection between the Gore family and Occidental Petroleum, in which Gore holds about a quarter of a million dollars worth of stock in trust for his mother. The connection goes back to Gore’s father’s close relationship with the late Armand Hammer, Occidental’s founder and the son of Julius Hammer, the man who founded the U.S. Communist Party. For all of his life, Armand Hammer remained close to the murderous Joseph Stalin, his successors and the entire Soviet leadership during the Cold War.
He also remained close to Albert Gore Sr., and later to Al Jr., bestowing his largesse lavishly on both.
Hammer, Silverstein notes, liked to brag that he had Gore Sr. "in my back pocket."
When Gore Sr. retired from the Senate in 1970, he got a $500,000-a-year job at a subsidiary of Occidental as well as a company directorship. When the elder Gore died, his estate included hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of Occidental stock.
In the 1960s, Silverstein reports, the Gores discovered zinc ore near land they owned in Tennessee. "Through a company subsidiary Hammer bought the land for $160,000 - twice the amount offered by the only other bidder. He swiftly sold the land back to Al Gore Sr. and agreed to pay him $20,000 a year for mining rights.”
Gore Sr. then sold the property for $140,000 to Al Jr., who has gotten a $20,000 check just about every year since, although Occidental has never mined an ounce of zinc or anything else on the property.
In 1985, Al Jr. leased the property to Union Zinc, a competitor of Occidental.
In his book, "Witness to History," Neil Lyndon, an employee on Hammer's personal staff and the ghost writer of his memoirs, revealed that whenever Hammer he came to Washington he met with Al Gore for lunch or dinner.
"They would often eat together in the company of Occidental's Washington lobbyists and fixers who, on Hammer's behest, hosed tens of millions of dollars in bribes and favours into the political world," Lyndon revealed.
The ties between Gore and Occidental outlived Hammer. In 1992 the company lent the Presidential Inauguration Committee $100,000. In 1996, the company gave $50,000 in soft money to the Democrats in response to a phone call from Gore.
"All told, Occidental has donated nearly half a million dollars in soft money to Democratic committees and causes since Gore joined the ticket in 1992,” Silverstein wrote. In the current presidential campaign Occidental is his No. 2 oil industry donor with company executives and their wives kicking in $10,000 to Gore's campaign.
It’s paid off handsomely. In 1997 Gore, the fanatical opponent of vehicles powered by fossil fuels such as oil, supported the $3.65 billion sale to the company of the government's interest in the Elk Hills oilfield in Bakersfield, Calif., the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history.
"On the very day the deal was sealed Gore gave a speech lamenting the growing threat of global warming,” Silverstein reports.
***
For a full account of the Gore-Occidental relationship, see "The Buying of the President 2000," by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity.
You can read Silverstein’s blockbuster report in The Nation by going to: http://www.thenation.com/
Thanks CW!
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