Dear Supporters,

There is a growing debate in Congress concerning Plan Colombia. There needs to be an end to U.S. military aid to Colombia. The almost $5 billion the U.S. has sent in military aid since 2000 has had horrendous results in Colombia. It has paid for military and para-military human rights abuses including massacres, disappearances, kidnapping and threats to social justice and labor activists and their families.

Some in the Latin America solidarity movement are calling for a shift in funding from military aid to humanitarian aid. However, the Colombia Action Network does not support a call for ‘humanitarian aid’ in lieu of military aid. Repeatedly over the past seven years, the Colombian social movement has demanded that the government spend money on social services rather than war. The movement has also demanded that the U.S. stop sending military aid and advisors to Colombia. The movement has not called for the U.S. to send humanitarian aid because they know that the Colombian government would not increase social spending. The Colombian government would instead just use the funds to offset more military spending. As long as the Colombian government spends their resources fighting, killing and torturing the Colombian people the solidarity movement in the U.S. should demand an end to all aid – both military and ‘humanitarian’ – to Colombia.

Now is a key time to end Plan Colombia. Between the Uribe’s and Chiquita’s death squad scandals and the unpopularity of Bush’s foreign policy in general, the Democrats are considering ending Plan Colombia. We need to stand together to say a clear “no” to aid to Colombia. Please do everything you can to demand an end to Plan Colombia. Call Congress at 202-224-3121 or go www.house.gov and www.senate.gov. Thanks for your support.

Peace,

Meredith Aby

Colombia Action Network

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #Colombia #Statement #ColombiaActionNetwork #PlanColombia #Americas

On December 3rd Colombian revolutionary Ricardo Palmera faces sentencing in a Washington D.C. federal court. The National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera will pack the courtroom in support of this brave freedom fighter.

Ricardo Palmera is a peace negotiator for Colombia’s rebels – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The U.S. extradited Palmera to a prison outside Washington D.C. and hold him in solitary confinement – no family, no friends, no reporters, not even his own Colombian lawyer. Palmera only defends his country and fights for freedom and democracy for the Colombian people.

Professor Palmera’s trials are extraordinary. By speaking the truth, FARC leader Palmera has consistently beaten the Bush administration’s prosecutors. Palmera won a victory when the first trial ended in a hung jury. When the U.S. government re-tried Palmera on the same exact charges, Judge Hogan was caught cheating and had to step down. Hogan’s replacement, Judge Lamberth refused to allow Palmera any witnesses. The U.S. prosecutor has dozens of witnesses – paid informants, lying convicted drug runners, and corrupt Colombian government officials. At the end of the retrial, the jury could not find Palmera guilty of “terrorism” charges or a kidnapping charge related to three U.S. military contractors captured and held by the FARC. Unfortunately, based upon the FARC capturing its enemies in combat, the jury convicted Palmera of “belonging to a conspiracy to kidnap”. In another recent “drug” trial, seven American jurors wanted to find Professor Palmera “not guilty”, but a hung jury resulted. The U.S. prosecutor plans to re-try Ricardo Palmera though there is no evidence, only paid informants. Palmera plans to testify and win again. The only fair trial is no trial. The only fair sentence is no sentence.

Tom Burke of the National Committee says, “Ricardo Palmera is a good man who dedicates his whole life to the Colombian people. We oppose the extradition, trials, and imprisonment of Ricardo Palmera because it violates the sovereignty of the Colombian people. Palmera is a political prisoner.”

Angela Denio of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) relates, “Students from across the U.S. are educating themselves and protesting the trials and sentencing of Professor Palmera. We oppose the war in Iraq and we oppose Plan Colombia – the U.S. dirty war that brings poverty, misery, and death to the Colombian people. SDS protests at the U.S. Military’s School of the America’s in Georgia, where the Colombian death squads are trained. An SOA graduate recently testified against Professor Palmera. It is Bush and the SOA that should be on trial! Our campaign to Free Ricardo Palmera is growing and spreading. People are speaking out.”

Burke finishes, “From Baghdad to Bogotá, President Bush’s empire is crumbling around him. At every trial, the rebel leader Ricardo Palmera exposes the lies, distortions, and injustice of Bush and the U.S. Empire. Palmera has beaten the U.S. government again and again. We await Ricardo Palmera’s speech! We say Free Ricardo Palmera!”

Free Ricardo Palmera!

Picket line and press conference to demand Ricardo Palmera's freedom!

Monday, December 3rd, 8:30 AM picket line 9:00 AM press conference

U.S. Federal Court Building (333 Constitution Ave., NW)

For more info contact Tom Burke at 773-844-3612 or Mick Kelly at 612-715-3280. www.freericardopalmera.org

#UnitedStates #SDS #Colombia #RicardoPalmera #NationalCommitteeToFreeRicardoPalmera #Statement #PoliticalPrisoners #PlanColombia #RevolutionaryArmedForcesOfColombiaFARC

Born into a peasant family, Marulanda joined Colombia’s Liberal forces fighting against the Conservatives. He became a guerilla in La Violencia, the civil war following the 1948 assassination of presidential candidate Gaitan, a popular and national democratic leader despised by the U.S. government. This civil war continues to this day, with the U.S. intervening on the side of the Colombian elites. As Marulanda said, “I did not go looking for war, war came looking for me.”

In the late 1950s Marulanda joined forces with Jacobo Arenas, a Marxist fighter and admirer of Che Guevara. They became the important leadership team of the newly founded FARC in 1964. From a small, tightly knit group of revolutionaries, the FARC today is a formidable force that threatens the whole of U.S. imperialism's plans in Latin America. Marulanda is largely responsible for the revolution's success.

Marulanda was ideologically firm, a Marxist-Leninist applying the scientific theory of revolution to the conditions of Colombian society. He was a great strategist, like Mao in China or General Giap in Vietnam, understanding the capabilities of his own revolutionary people's army, the FARC-EP, while anticipating the moves and capabilities of his enemies – U.S. imperialism and the Colombian oligarchy.

Marulanda and the FARC learned from the peasants and working classes, studying and struggling. They remained tactically flexible, moving forward and retreating according to the situation, whether in military conduct or with political initiatives like the Patriotic Union or peace negotiation. Always, Marulanda kept politics in command. In times when other revolutionaries stumbled or faltered, the FARC took strides forward, methodically cutting a path through the layers of confusion and disinformation sowed by the enemies of revolution and socialism.

The last decade of Marulanda's life was dedicated to defeating Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia is the U.S. Pentagon's dirty war, bringing death and destruction to the doorsteps of peasants and workers in Colombia. Like the Vietnam War, the U.S. government is waging a large-scale counter-insurgency war. Colombia's armed forces have more than doubled their size over the past eight years. The Colombian military murders peasants in cold blood, driving millions off their land, villages are destroyed, death squads assassinate trade unionists, and U.S. planes spray chemical agents across wide areas of the countryside to scorch the earth. Funded by U.S. taxpayer at nearly $5 billion, planned by Pentagon generals, and conducted by U.S. military advisors and private contractors, the war is brutal and fierce but rarely reported on by the U.S. media. Still Marulanda was able to organize an orderly retreat by the FARC and they are hitting back at the U.S. intervention, with many small battles every week.

Plan Colombia, like the invasion and occupation of Iraq, is a failure. Lapdogs like President Uribe may announce bigger and greater victories, exaggerating and crowing, but their gains are temporary and futile. The Colombian people, like the Iraqi people, will triumph.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization honors the life and leadership of Manuel Marulanda, commander in chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army. Marulanda, nicknamed, Sure-shot, passed away in the arms of his partner, surrounded by guerrilla fighters. He died from natural causes at the age of 77 after leading the life of a revolutionary warrior since the late 1940s. We are all living things and all that lives must pass on. The ideas and example of Marulanda will continue to live in the minds of all those continuing the fight to end barbarism and win back our humanity. The FARC has chosen from amongst its many capable leaders the veteran fighter and Marxist-Leninist Alfonso Cano.

Long live the sprit of Marulanda!

Victory to the FARC!

#UnitedStates #Editorial #Colombia #Editorials #RicardoPalmera #Remembrances #PlanColombia #ManuelMarulanda #RevolutionaryArmedForcesOfColombiaPeoplesArmyFARCEP #LaViolencia #MarxistLeninist

The FARC moved the prisoners of war from three separate jungle camps to one location, planning to transfer them by helicopter and release them to French and Swiss government envoys. It was a simple plan that would have given the FARC a platform to demand freedom for 500 FARC fighters in Colombian prisons. For FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera and rebel Sonia (Anayibe Rojas Valderrama), held as hostages in U.S. jails, the raid and the refusal of the U.S. and Colombian governments to negotiate is bad news.

During its 44 years of fighting a guerrilla war in the countryside of Colombia, the FARC has unilaterally released prisoners a number of times, including seven months ago. These prisoner releases provide a rare opportunity for the FARC to present their political views and talk about pathways to social justice and peace in Colombia. At the prisoner release ceremonies, the FARC message sharply contrasts with the typical media distortions and censorship about them. In recent times, the U.S. strategy is to criminalize the FARC, to make it impossible for the FARC to negotiate with the Colombian government (or anyone else) and to deny the legitimate struggle of the peasants and workers.

The U.S. wants war without end. Bush wants victory, not prisoner exchanges and negotiations. The U.S. is frustrating all attempts at talks, while intensifying the war in Colombia. During his testimony in U.S. court, FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera explained he was kidnapped by U.S. intelligence in Ecuador on his way to speak with a U.N. envoy three years ago. In January 2008, the FARC successfully released prisoners to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but only after the U.S. and Colombian military spoiled the first attempt. In March this year, the U.S. was behind a high tech missile and bomb attack killing FARC Commander Raul Reyes and 24 others inside Ecuador. Raul Reyes was planning the next high profile prisoner release with ranking government officials from Ecuador, Venezuela and France. The U.S. tries to kill every effort.

The U.S. behavior is cold, hard and calculated. The U.S. is at war, no negotiations. The U.S. cannot stand for anyone to recognize the legitimacy of the FARC. The Bush officials were shaking with rage when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the FARC should be granted international legitimacy known as ‘belligerency status.’ For the same reasons, the U.S. government was flabbergasted when U.S. prosecutors were forced to repeat Ricardo Palmera’s trials. Most of the American jurors believed Palmera over the U.S. government, leading to mistrials.

In the recent prisoner handover, the FARC were willing to release Colombian soldiers, the wealthy reactionary politician and French citizen named Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. mercenaries. The three American military contractors were paid by Northrop Grumman to help kill Colombians. In the Washington D.C. trials of FARC leader Ricardo Palmera, it was revealed that Marc Gonzalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes provided ‘real time’ information from their high-tech airplane to the Colombian military in its war against the peasant fighters of the FARC. This direct involvement by U.S. soldiers of fortune in Colombia’s civil war is risky business. It shows the calm restraint of the FARC that the three returned to the U.S. in such good shape.

However, soldier of fortune Marc Gonsalves spoke strong words against the Colombian revolutionaries who are fighting to free their country from U.S. domination and war. Like the patriot-for-pay that he is, Gonsalves defensively repeated again and again the big lie of the Bush administration, “the FARC are not revolutionaries.” Poor Marc Gonsalves – his big story of abuse involves his captors making him carry a heavy backpack in the jungle while marching tied together with other prisoners and under armed guard. Compared to the treatment the U.S. military gives prisoners of war at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, one would think Marc Gonsalves and the others might appreciate their good health and fair treatment in someone else’s country.

The effect of the prisoner raid is that the U.S. seized the media spotlight away from the FARC. The fact the FARC was already releasing the prisoners is swept clean from U.S. news stories. This pleases the Bush White House to no end. Bush has just boosted Colombian President Uribe out of a sticky situation where the Colombian Supreme Court was questioning the legitimacy of Uribe’s last election.

Despite Bush’s support, President Uribe’s regime is shaky due to his personal and political ties to narco-traffickers and corruption. An old U.S. intelligence report ties Uribe to the infamous cocaine trafficker Pablo Escobar. So does Escobar’s surviving girlfriend. No matter to the White House, Uribe is their man. Uribe’s rule consists of death squad terror for peasants, trade unionists, student activists and human rights defenders. In the countryside deadly chemical poison is sprayed on countless acres of land where FARC support is strongest, driving peasants off the land. Only Iraq has a bigger refugee crisis. Poor Colombians are forced into shantytowns around the big cities. Police and right-wing paramilitaries patrol the shantytowns in tandem. Repression is all around for working and low-income people.

For sections of the middle classes and the rich oligarchy in Colombia, the situation is one of combativeness as they mobilize to support Uribe and the violence of the Colombian state. The wealthy elite who rule Colombia and sell off its natural resources to U.S. corporations are perfectly willing to ignore the repression and the terror in the countryside. They are happy to have U.S. Southern Command conducting the war in their country, but they are careful not to speak too loudly about it. There are 800 U.S. military advisors, 600 military contractors, and scores of U.S. Special Forces on Colombian soil to direct the dirty war.

The rich people who rule Colombia are bathed in the blood of tens of thousands of peasants, workers and leftists. U.S. taxpayers foot the bill to the tune of $5 billion. The Bush administration fully backs the corrupt, narco-trafficking, death squad government of President Uribe. Without this, the wealthy few who rule Colombia with a bloody hand would be chased from power, never to return. The Uribe regime would collapse in months. Death squad democracy would be history, revolution a certainty.

Nevertheless, due to the recent blows against the FARC leadership, American imperialists, Colombian reactionaries and fools of all stripes want to claim the FARC are collapsing or are ‘finished.’ Others who should know better, because they know how it feels to be hunted by assassins, are suggesting that the FARC should one-sidedly ignore the history of Colombia and surrender their weapons. This is wishful thinking. In Colombia, laying down arms is akin to suicide.

For those who want social change in Colombia, the electoral road ends in the cemetery. The Colombian state murdered more than 4000 members, candidates and elected officials of the left-wing party, the Patriotic Union, in the late 1980s. In 1987, Patriotic Union political leader Ricardo Palmera went and joined the FARC, dedicating his own life to continuing the struggle. In his U.S. trials, Professor Palmera said, “My choices were death, exile, or joining the fight in the countryside.” In Colombia, those on the freedom road must carry arms if they are going to defend the people and reach their destination.

For sure, the FARC are reassessing their tactics in terms of releasing the small numbers of prisoners of war they still hold – mostly military officers. However, this is only one part of the FARC strategy. Mainly the FARC organize the masses of Colombian people to take control of their land, labor and lives to make revolution. It is slow, difficult, unglamorous work, but the FARC is a political organization and its strategy relies on the people. After 45 years of building the largest revolutionary army in the hemisphere, with tremendous growth during a period when much of the left was in retreat or capitulating to imperialism, the FARC is more political in its approach to making revolution than ever.

Millions of supporters of the FARC understand the long-term nature of the struggle for national liberation. The FARC is on a long march and expects to face both setbacks and advances. The goal is to wear down the Colombian state and its imperialist backers in the U.S. until conditions exist for the people to seize power. To the north, the American people do not like wars where Americans get killed, so the White House and Pentagon are limited in what they can do.

Plan Colombia is a U.S. war plan that brings poverty, misery and death to Colombians. In practice, Plan Colombia means more war, more repression and more drugs. Plan Colombia is the enemy of all people who want peace and justice. Like Bush and Uribe, the days of Plan Colombia are numbered. Plan Colombia cannot continue and the U.S. will soon need a new strategy or possibly go to war in Latin America.

The growing aggressiveness of the U.S. across Latin America is a sign of weakness, not strength. Bush and the U.S. empire are losing their grip. In Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, the people are rising and attempting to build new societies. The U.S. wants to put a stop to the people’s movements and reverse their gains. If the FARC leads a successful revolution in Colombia, it is game over for the U.S. empire in that region. Like Iraq in the Middle East, Colombia is key to the U.S. strategy for dominating Latin America.

We should do everything in our power to expose the Bush administration and its war in Colombia. That is our responsibility.

The four trials of FARC leader Ricardo Palmera in Washington D.C. went a long way to exposing the phoniness of the War On Terror and the War On Drugs. The U.S. empire, with millions of dollars, could not defeat a lone revolutionary held in solitary confinement and denied many of the constitutional rights Bush claims to defend. Palmera beat the slick U.S. prosecutors on nine out of ten charges and the U.S. was forced to drop all the false drug charges. Professor Palmera is a good and decent man. He chose to do what hundreds of thousands of other Colombians have done before him, to pick up a gun and defend what is right, what is good and what is just. Palmera stands for the poor, against the rich, despite his own background.

We too should stand with Palmera, Sonia and the 500 FARC prisoners held by the proto-fascist Uribe. We should stand with all the Colombian workers and peasants yearning to be free from U.S. corporate dominance and U.S. military death and destruction. The U.S. is on the wrong side of the civil war in Colombia. We need to demand that the U.S. government and military pull out and bring all the troops home now! Stop Plan Colombia!

#Colombia #Editorials #RicardoPalmera #FARC #PoliticalPrisoners #PlanColombia #mercenaries #soldierOfFortune #PatrioticUnion #Americas

Washington, D.C. – A U.S. judge placed ads in Colombia’s newspapers the last week of August “ordering” the FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, to appear in his Washington D.C. courtroom. This adds to a list of bizarre procedures involving the extradition, imprisonment and trial of Ricardo Palmera, an important FARC leader. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ridiculously asserts that the FARC members should leave their homeland and come to the U.S. to appear on charges of, “taking hostages in violation of U.S. laws.”

Ricardo Palmera was extradited from Colombia and imprisoned on the same charges. Legal experts in Colombia and around the world consider the U.S. government’s extradition of Palmera a violation of Colombia’s sovereignty and a kidnapping.

The FARC, with over 27,000 armed fighters, is Latin America’s largest and strongest leftist insurgency. For 40 years the FARC has fought the Colombian state in a civil war. With broad support amongst the people, the FARC is the de facto government in as much as 40% of Colombia. The FARC fights a Vietnam-style people’s war against the corrupt narco-government of President Alvaro Uribe. President Uribe, previously connected to a drug trafficking cartel by U.S. intelligence, now oversees the U.S. government’s ‘war on drugs’ in Colombia. President Uribe signed the papers to send Ricardo Palmera to the U.S. on drug and kidnapping charges.

The FARC holds three U.S. mercenary contractors: Tom Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell. The U.S. government claims their detention is a kidnapping. A statement from the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera clarifies the matter: “It is absurd that the U.S. government has extradited Mr. Palmera on the basis of hostage taking and providing material support to terrorists. The specifics of the charge concern U.S.-contracted mercenaries who were shot down in their plane over FARC territory. A firefight ensued in which a U.S. mercenary and a Colombian sergeant were killed, while three U.S. mercenaries were captured. The U.S. Justice Department is trying to claim that this small battle in Colombia’s civil war amounts to hostage taking, and that the long-running guerrilla war is now a ‘terrorist action!’ This makes a mockery of international law, as Bush attempts to impose U.S. sovereignty in Colombia.”

As the United States military becomes more involved in the war in Colombia, the potential for these cases will increase. Plan Colombia spends over $4 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for massive chemical spraying of poor peasants’ crops and for tripling the size of the Colombian military. Despite analysis that Plan Colombia is a failure, Bush and Congress increased military spending to Colombia in 2005 and upped U.S. military ‘advisors’ to 800, plus 600 mercenary contractors. As U.S. military ‘advisors’ go out into battle alongside the government’s troops, the likelihood of more captured or dead advisors and mercenary contractors seems certain.

Palmera’s next status conference in front of U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan is Oct. 4.

#WashingtonDC #News #FARCEP #Colombia #RicardoPalmera #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #PlanColombia #PoliticalPrisoners