Tras afirmaciones sobre el TLC

Petro dice que "no me explico la reacción"

En senador del Polo Democrático, Gustavo Petro, afirmó hoy en Radiosucesos RCN, desde Washington, que no se explica las reacciones que han generado sus declaraciones sobre el Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLC) con Estados Unidos, en las que indicó que este acuerdo comercial favorecería al narcotráfico.

"No me explico la reaccción porque es lo que hemos venido atendiendo en todos los debates parlamentarios alrededor del Tratado de Libre Comercio en lo que respecta a la agricultura en Colombia", señaló el legislador.

"En el último debate en plenaria en el que pude intervenir, tocamos este asunto de frente al ministro (de Agricultura, Andrés Felipe Arias). Tenemos dos visiones diferentes de la agricutura en Colombia", sostuvo.

"Nosotros creemos que hay un uso irracional de la tierra. De los 50 millones de hectáreas que hoy están dentro de la frontera agrícola, sólo 4 millones se dedican a cultivos. El resto son prederas, sin generacion de empleo, lo que se denomina la ganadería extensiva", anotó.

Precisó que "en esos 4 millones de hectáreas que se dedican a cultivos, hay dos grandes porciones. Una es una disminución radical que es la de cutlivos de alimentos, hecha por pequeños y medianos empresarios y campesinos, de donde básicamente la alimentación del pueblo colombiana. Otra, en crecimiento, que es la llamada de cultivos tardíos, de tardío rendimiento, de 10 ó 20 años", subrayó.

Consideró que "el TLC perjudica a los primeros, porque ese tipo de productos no pueden competir en precios con los productos de Estados Unidos y beneficia a los segundos. Esa situación, contrastada con una terrible realidad sufrida a partir de los últimos 15 años en el campo colombiano, hace las cosas más terribles para la población más pobre del mundo rural colombiano", enfatizó.

THE COSTA RICA DEMOCRATIC EXPERIENCE

THE COSTA RICA DEMOCRATIC EXPERIENCE
By Tom Louden, Alliance for Responsible Trade, Quixote Center

As we head out to observe the voting on the CAFTA referendum, it seems appropriate to compare the state of democracy in the U.S. with that of Costa Rica.  We have only been here a short time, but we've received an intensive course in Costa Rican history and politics.  It has become obvious from this instruction that we in the U.S. have much to learn, if we are to prevent the complete dissolution of the few semblances of democracy which remain in our country.
        We quickly learned that the referendum campaign has included a permanent and massive campaign of fear mongering from the Costa Rican and U.S. governments and a large segment of the corporate sector here.There are many examples of this operation. Pindeco, a subsidiary of Dole, is the transnational which has the majority of pineapple plantations in Costa Rica.  Most of their exports go to the U.S.  They have threatened all of their workers that if the FTA is not passed, they will abandon the country, and all of the workers will lose their jobs.
        This is a concept which is patently absurd.  It is unthinkable that they would abandon all of the investment they have here so easily.In addition, if pineapple exported from here were threatened with a tariff for entry into the U.S., Dole would certainly have sufficient political clout in the U.S. to guarantee that nothing inhibits thier ability to import the pineapple.  Yet this lie they are promoting will undoubtedly affect the way the workers on the plantations will vote tomorrow.
         In a similar way, DEMASA, a Mexican company which has purchased many of the tortilla making facilities throughout the country is promoting the lie.  Every Wednesday they have been meeting in a luxury hotel with all of the plant supervisors, and telling them that if the FTA does not pass, they will leave.  It seems unlikely that Costa Ricans are going stop eating tortillas if the FTA is defeated.  Somebody is going to need to make them.
              The U.S. government, per their permanent custom in Central America, has been up to dirty tricks, blatantly and illegally intervening in the internal affairs of this sovereign country. They seem to be stuck back in the 18th century, acting as if Costa Rica were their backyard. Since about a month ago, Mark Langdale the U.S. ambassador here would go out to the textile factories and threaten the workers that in the event that there wasn't a FTA, the factories would all close.  We read in the paper the threat that the sweatshops would all close, and the 14,000 jobs which still remain in this sector would vanish.
              The State Department and the CIA always seem to wait until the last days of a political campaign to explode their most powerful bombs.  This week their tricks' included a promise from the USTR Susan Schwab that in the event of a defeat of the referendum, there is no possibility for a re-negotiation of the treaty.  What a patently absurd notion!  Yesterday, President Bush released a statement reiterating the lie that a re-negotiation is not possible. 
        Other U.S. officials have threatened that the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which provides trade preferences here and in many other countries in the region, would be revoked.
              Five minute long television commercials, played over and over, employed the most bizarre scare tactics to instill terror in people who don't easily have access to other sources of information.  The Yes' campaign spent piles of money placing these fear-based ads on TV.
              What gives hope that democracy is thriving here is that in spite of the plethora of scare tactics, there were multiple spaces where the NO' campaign was able to present their point of view.  Every day the newspapers are full of a multitude of stories, including extensive interviews with articulate spokespeople on both sides of the issue.
              For the last several weeks, each Thursday night there have been nationally televised debates where knowledgeable people are invited to debate the merit of each position covering a variety of topics.  The themes have included the following: FTA and employment, FTA and the environment, FTA and health care services, FTA and Social Security and Telecommunications.  For anyone interested in becoming educated on the topic, this provided a powerful opportunity to understand the issues and make an informed decision.
             How different than the reality in the United States.  With virtually one political position coming from the only two parties which have any space, real debate on important issues is virtually nonexistent.  We suspect that this is not an accident.      
        A week or so ago, in a small meeting with four U.S. Senators who oppose the trade model currently being imposed, the Senators asked if anyone had been successful in getting opinion articles placed in either the New York Times or the Washington Post.  In the room were representatives of most of the key D.C. organizations who are working against this trade model.  Nobody in the room, including the 4 Senators had been successful in having an opinion piece published related to these FTAs in either of these nationally recognized publications.  The only thing these papers publish is the dribble from Administration and business voices, whose sole reason for being seems to be to satiate their unquenchable thirst for profit, regardless of the consequences for people or the environment around the  world. TV stations and radio are even more closely controlled.  This sad reality bodes badly for our democracy.
              Soon we will know the outcome of the referendum, and we will report any process or procedural irregularities we encounter. Regardless of the outcome, it is clear that after the referendum, Costa Rica will never be quite the same.  We would do well to learn from the many ways the people of Costa Rica have succeeded in fostering debate and promoting an environment which offers real choices, rather than the snow jobs being stuffed down our throats in the U.S.  Somehow we need to recover our democracy from the group of corporations who are holding it hostage.
 

Democrats Talk Sense to Democrats

Editorial, New York Times, October 8, 2007

It was an interesting document: a letter from a group of former Democratic leading lights from the Clinton White House and Congress telling their Democratic brethren on Capitol Hill to get their act together and pass the pending free trade agreements with Peru, Panama and Colombia. At home, the trade pacts would provide opportunities for American exporters and help create jobs. In Latin America, the pacts would contribute to economic growth, shake off dependence on the narcotics trade and cement relationships in a region where Washington's influence is increasingly trumped by the well-oiled diplomacy of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

The arguments are sound. In economic terms, the letter should have also recommended passing the pending agreement with South Korea. These benefits seem unlikely to sway Congressional Democrats. Late last month, key committees in the House and Senate approved the agreement with Peru, but the other three remain snagged on the new Democratic majority's hostility toward trade.

The South Korean agreement faces especially stubborn opposition from the Ford Motor Company and Michigan Congressman Sander Levin, who believes Detroit's carmakers got a raw deal. There are winners and losers in all such agreements, and the overall benefit — an estimated additional $10 billion for the American economy — should carry the day.

With Panama, some lawmakers say they have turned against the pact after its national assembly elected as its leader a man wanted in the United States for the 1992 killing of an American soldier. This is a serious issue and one the White House and State Department should press with Panama's government. Over all, Panama's human rights record is good, and this should not block the agreement.

Only Colombia's deal should be delayed. President Álvaro Uribe and his government have not done enough to bring to justice the paramilitary thugs — and their political backers — responsible for widespread human rights violations. Colombia is eager for the trade deal, and it has made some progress on human rights. But more is needed and withholding ratification can still be used as a lever to change Mr. Uribe's behavior. Meanwhile, Congress should move quickly to pass the Peru deal, for all the reasons in the Democrats' sensible letter — and to show Colombia what it's missing.

Premio Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights a el Senador Gustavo Petro

The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards Thirty-One Years This year's program will mark the 31st anniversary of the September 21, 1976 car bombing that killed Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and American Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Until 9/11, it was the most infamous act of international terrorism ever to take place in our nation's capital. Letelier and Moffitt were colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies, where Letelier had become one of the most outspoken critics of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Moffitt was a 25-year-old fundraiser who ran a "Music Carryout" that made musical instruments accessible to all. A massive FBI investigation traced the crime to the highest levels of Pinochet's regime. The Institute for Policy Studies has continued to host the annual human rights award in the names of Letelier and Moffitt to honor these fallen colleagues while celebrating new heroes of the human rights movement from the United States and elsewhere in the Americas.   Wednesday, October 17, 2007 National Press Club Ballroom 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC Map & Directions 5:30pm • Reception and light fare 7-8:15pm • Human Rights Program Award Presenters Rep. Jan Schakowsky Eve Ensler Wade Henderson * * * RSVP & Reservations Early Bird resvations until September 30 Online Reservations, Fast & Secure About the 2007 Award Recipients Senator Gustavo Petro Gustavo Petro is at the forefront of challenging the paramilitary infiltration of Colombian society. Elected to the Colombian Senate after 12 years in Congress, Petro has focused his investigations on the influence of far-right narco-militaries and death squads on the justice system, Congress, the military, and the president's inner circle. His courageous efforts have exposed more than a dozen Colombian legislators, several governors, and other top-ranking political and military figures. Petro has been a leading voice in Colombian human rights and democracy movements since his involvement in the peace process of the 1990s and the re-writing of the country's constitution. Although he is the most threatened person in the country, he is also one of the most popular, receiving the second most votes in the 2006 elections and winning "person of the year" honors for 2006 from the country's most widely circulated magazine. Read more: in Wikipedia (Spanish) or Democracy Now! (English) Appeal for Redress The Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq has rapidly become the most influential force within the U.S. armed services to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The Appeal calls for an immediate military withdrawal from Iraq as a proud, proactive, and patriotic act. Started in January 2007 by Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto and Marine Corps Sergeant Liam Madden, the Appeal for Redress brings together nearly 2,000 active-duty U.S. military personnel, most of them veterans of the Iraq War. Because of their risk-taking for peace, they have quickly gained the support of both veteran organizations and anti-war organizations. The Appeal, part of a growing surge of support for ending the Iraq War, is also a critically important effort to exercise and guarantee the freedom of speech within the armed services. Read more: AppealForRedress.org DC Vote DC Vote has been advocating on behalf of full political representation for the residents of Washington, DC for nearly a decade. Under the banner of "no taxation without representation," DC Vote has called attention to the equal rights denied to the more than half a million DC citizens. In 2006, after bringing over 5,000 people into the streets of the nation's capital, DC Vote was instrumental in gaining passage of the DC House Voting Rights Act, the most promising step toward political representation in decades. Read more: DCVote.org * * * Letelier-Moffitt Selection Committee Sarah Anderson, Institute for Policy Studies Fred Azcarate, AFL-CIO Marie Dennis, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Joe Eldridge, Chaplain, American University Jill Gay, Activist Adam Isacson, Center for International Policy Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive Erik Leaver, Institute for Policy Studies Isabel Morel de Letelier E. Ethelbert Miller, Howard University Joy Olson, Washington Office on Latin America Barbara Shailor, AFL-CIO Sanho Tree, Institute for Policy Studies

EL POLO RURAL

By Aurelio Suárez Montoya, La Tarde, Oct 9 de 2007

Existe la creencia de que el Polo Democrático
Alternativo es un partido urbano; no obstante que los
hechos de la actual campaña electoral muestren lo
contrario. El que en más de 600 municipios del país se
presenten listas a los concejos y en conjunto, en casi
todos ellos, se lancen candidatos polistas a las
alcaldías es prueba fehaciente de cuánto se ha
irrigado el nuevo partido de la izquierda democrática
y ello pese a que, como es conocido, es en las áreas
rurales donde la violencia se ha querido incubar como
forma de hacer política a lo cual el Polo en
reiteradas oportunidades ha expresado su oposición
radical.

El programa del Polo tiene importantes referencias
sobre el agro. En párrafo especial consigna que:
"Llevaremos a cabo una política agraria que garantice
nuestra seguridad alimentaria, y eliminaremos la
actual concentración de las tierras y los latifundios
improductivos. Se protegerá la producción rural con la
disminución de las rentas financieras e inmobiliarias,
la transferencia tecnológica y la lucha por la
eliminación de los subsidios agrícolas en los países
desarrollados así como las barreras que utilizan para
proteger su mercado mientras exigen la apertura total
del nuestro. Se garantizará el acceso individual o
colectivo de los campesinos a la tierra, y se les
prestará el apoyo estatal necesario para una vida
familiar digna. Serán respetados los derechos
históricos y las costumbres ancestrales de las
comunidades indígenas y afro-descendientes".

No sólo lo anterior. Líderes reconocidos del Polo,
como el senador Jorge Enrique Robledo, han sido los
adalides en el Congreso en el control político y la
crítica sin ambigüedades de la gestión uribista en el
campo; la cual, no está de más repetirlo, ha sido
desastrosa. También el representante a la Cámara,
Germán Reyes, se ha echado al hombro la discusión en
esa Corporación de la iniciativa oficial, acorde con
la división internacional del trabajo que quieren
imponer los países del Norte, de convertir el campo de
Colombia en un reservorio de agrocombustibles en
detrimento de la producción de alimentos, ya bastante
menguada y rematada en el TLC, y a favor de
oligopolios que han concentrado ese negocio.

Personas que se han destacado por su labor de apoyo a
las luchas de las comunidades rurales, encabezan
listas y candidaturas, a nombre del Polo, a lo ancho y
largo de Colombia. Gonzalo Arango, Eudoro Álvarez y
Horacio Eslava, para las gobernaciones de Risaralda,
Meta y Boyacá, dirigentes agropecuarios contienden por
estar en asambleas departamentales para reforzar desde
la brega política los esfuerzos del sector para
subsistir en medio del crudo neoliberalismo impuesto;
como Jorge Gómez en Antioquia, Luis Elber Vergara en
el Cauca, Óscar Gutiérrez en Caldas, Alonso Orozco en
Caquetá, Antonio Gutiérrez en el Quindío, Leonel
Juvinao en Magdalena y Roberto Lema en Risaralda. Y,
en cuanto a concejos municipales en diferentes
capitales y poblaciones de clara incidencia en el
sector rural, siendo muchísimos los casos destacables,
vale mencionar a Alexander Espinosa, dedicado toda su
vida al progreso de la zona rural de Ibagué, a Libardo
Gómez en Neiva, donde ha liderado la defensa del arroz
de manera valiente y arrojada, a Oliverio Castillo en
Tunja, defensor de productores de géneros de clima
templado. Conozco de persistentes líderes de
campesinos, de agricultores y de indígenas que desde
los cuatro puntos cardinales de Colombia como
Quinchía, Santa Rosa de Cabal y Belén de Umbría, o
Cotorra, Codazzi, Tausa o Chaparral y Rovira llevan la
enseña del Polo a cafeteros, paneleros y productores
de cereales y oleaginosas, de hortalizas y de leche.

Hasta en Bogotá, una ciudad con el 75% de su área en
el sector rural, Samuel Moreno ha recibido el
beneplácito de los grupos del campo vinculados a las
hortalizas, la papa y la leche, que contribuyen a la
seguridad alimentaria de la Capital y que están hoy
seriamente amenazados por la expansión urbana abrupta
que se está llevando a cabo para favorecer los
intereses de empresas multinacionales. Cuenta la
historia que los agricultores norteamericanos, cuando
se iniciaron sus penurias en la segunda mitad del
siglo XIX, se organizaron en un partido propio
conocido como La Grange (La Granja). Años más tarde
aquí el Polo Democrático Alternativo empieza a surgir
como el partido que llena las aspiraciones de los
pobladores rurales del país, quienes así van
conformando el Polo rural.

A tantrum is not a defense

A tantrum is not a defense

By Center for International Policy, Oct 11

 

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has a famous tendency to fly into a rage when people ask too many probing questions about his past.

Perhaps the best-known example occurred during the 2002 presidential campaign, when Uribe stormed out of an interview with Newsweek reporter Joe Contreras.

Let's not talk further. I see that you have come here to smear my political career. … I refuse to accept that you foreign correspondents come here to ask me these kinds of questions and repeat slanders made against me.

Or this 1994 interview with Simon Strong, author of Whitewash: Pablo Escobar and the Cocaine Wars, recounted by Gerardo Reyes of El Nuevo Herald.

Uribe reacted with visible anger to the reporter's questions about his tenure as director of Colombia's Civil Aeronautics agency [Colombia's version of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, during the early 1980s] and his political support for Senator William Vélez, one of Escobar's allies.

"This short-statured man jumped from his chair, furious, crossed the room between the waiters who were preparing for lunch, climbed the stairs, and did not stop until he was amid his bodyguards…" the reporter writes.

From there, wrote Strong, Uribe yelled several times, with rage, "I am honest."

"I had not made any suggestion to the contrary," Strong explained.

Following some other questions, the author adds, Uribe became even angrier, and with his hands jabbing at the reporter's face demanded that he take back what he was saying.

At that point, Strong decided to suspend the interview.

Earlier this year, when Colombian opposition Senator Gustavo Petro announced his intention to investigate alleged links between President Uribe's associates and paramilitary groups, Uribe called Sen. Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, a terrorist in a business suit. Then during his early May visit to Washington, Uribe went after Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco at a dinner attended by several U.S. senators and congresspeople. "'You're biased to the guerrillas and everyone in Colombia thinks that,' Mr. Uribe lectured, according to a number of people at the session," the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

In the past week or so, however, we have witnessed at least three new presidential outbursts.

• Last week, Colombia's media published excerpts from a book by Virginia Vallejo, a former newscaster who was drug lord Pablo Escobar's girlfriend. The book indicated that Escobar knew the young Uribe. Bizarrely, the president chose to defend himself by lashing out at Gonzalo Guillén, a Colombian citizen who is a longtime correspondent for El Nuevo Herald, the sister newspaper of The Miami Herald. Guillén published an unflattering biography of Uribe earlier this year. "Behind this woman is Gonzalo Guillén, who has dedicated his journalistic career to slander and lies," Uribe told a Bogotá radio program.Guillén, who said he had not even read Vallejo's book, was forced to leave Colombia Saturday after receiving about two dozen threats.
• Early this week, Uribe revealed that he had received a letter from an imprisoned mid-level paramilitary leader. The letter named one of the Supreme Court's most effective investigators of the "para-politics" scandal. The paramilitary leader alleged that this investigator tried to induce him to testify that President Uribe had ordered him to kill another paramilitary leader in 2003. Though the charge sounded ridiculous on its face, President Uribe called the investigator directly, and made public calls for an investigation into the Supreme Court's actions. The resulting war of words between the President and the Supreme Court has escalated all week.
• Then on a radio call-in show on Tuesday, Uribe demanded that the hosts locate and contact Daniel Coronell, a columnist for Semana magazine and director of the Noticias Uno cable television program. Coronell, who has spent most of the past two years outside of Colombia because of threats, was just awarded the country's Simón Bolívar journalism prize (Colombia's version of a Pulitzer). In a column on Sunday, Coronell explored some of the alleged links between Uribe and Pablo Escobar mentioned in Vallejo's book.Uribe shocked listeners of "La FM" radio on Tuesday, as he and Coronell engaged in a ferocious live verbal battle. "The only thing you do is shield yourself in your rights as a journalist," Uribe told Coronell, "so that in my case you can wound me with lies. Enough of this cynicism behind your quote-unquote 'journalistic ethics.'"

One wouldn't expect going berserk to be a good strategy for deflecting allegations that, if proven, would shake the Uribe presidency to its foundations. For the most part, though, this strategy has worked. Though they fail to dispel all questions and allegations, Uribe's fits have at least sent the message that "if you're likely to send the president into public paroxysms of rage, you'd better have your evidence well in order."

In fact, there isn't enough evidence to prove conclusively that Álvaro Uribe spent at least some of his political career as an associate of narcotraffickers and paramilitaries. It's all circumstantial, hearsay, or similarly flimsy.

But these allegations are a frequent topic of conversation all over Colombia, and throughout Colombia policy-making circles in the United States.

What exactly are Uribe's detractors claiming? Here are some of the principal allegations. All of these remain unproven in any court of law, and denied - often quite passionately denied - by President Uribe himself.

• Family ties: According to Time magazine, President Uribe's father, Alberto Uribe, "was a friend of Fabio Ochoa, the late patriarch of the city's notorious drug cartel (the two shared a love of horses)." (Ochoa and Uribe's mother were cousins.) In a much-circulated 1985 photograph, President Uribe's brother Santiago can be seen partying with Ochoa's son.
• Aerocivil: In 1980, a 27-year-old Álvaro Uribe was named to head the Colombian government agency in charge of civilian aviation, the analogue to the FAA in the United States. The agency director who preceded Uribe, who had sought to close airstrips used by narcotraffickers, was killed after twenty days in office. During Uribe's tenure, according to Newsweek reporter Joe Contreras, "Well-informed sources say that a record number of pilot's licenses and airstrip construction permits were issued by the civil-aviation authority, … a period when drug trafficking was on the rise."A 2002 book that Contreras co-authored with Colombian journalist Fernando Garavito notes: "One year after Uribe Vélez left his post, the National Drugs Council [Colombian 'drug czar' office], presided by the justice minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, ordered Aerocivil 'to suspend narcotraffickers' flights' and indicated that in the past this agency had suffered from a passive and negligent attitude."

• Cesar Villegas: Uribe's deputy at Aerocivil, César Villegas, was later jailed for five years due to his ties to the Cali cartel. In his on-air fight with Daniel Coronell this week, Uribe vigorously denied having visited Villegas in prison. Villegas was murdered in early 2002.
• Mayor of Medellín: Just as he turned 30 in 1982, Uribe became mayor of Medellín, which was then an appointed post. He served for five months at a time when the city was solidly under the sway of Pablo Escobar's narcotrafficking organization. That year, Escobar was elected to Colombia's Congress as a legislative alternate from the same party (Liberal) as Uribe.
• Virginia Vallejo's allegations: Escobar's ex-girlfriend has just released a book with passages that President Uribe says are total fabrications.
  

  Page 48: "I asked him how Pablo manages to have his own runway and fleet of aircraft, to get tons of coca out of the country, and to bring giraffes and elephants from Africa, and to smuggle in Rolligons [all-terrain vehicles] and six-meter boats. … Pablito is a 'big guy': he has the key guy at the Civilian Aviation Agency, a young kid who is the son of one of the first narcos… a guy named Uribes [sic], a cousin of the Ochoas… Álvaro Uribe."

  Page 111: "One night, after inaugurating one of his sports projects, Pablo introduces me to the former mayor of Medellín, whose mother is cousin of the Ochoas' father; he calls him 'Doptor Varito' [Little Doctor Álvaro] and he immediately leaves a good impression on me because I think that he is one of Pablo's few friends with the face of a decent person and, as I recall, the only one who wore glasses like a student. [President Uribe says he did not wear glasses until 1990.] … He is named Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Pablo idolizes him. … Pablo later explains to me … that this blessed kid, with the help of sub-director César Villegas, gave us dozens of licenses for planes and helicopters. … Thanks to him I know everything that happens in Civil Aviation and in the Medellín airport, because his successor was trained to give us what we needed. … If one day something should stop me and Santofimio [Alberto Santofimio, a Colombian senator sentenced to jail today for the 1989 murder of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán] in our path to the presidency, this kid would be my candidate. You see him with his glasses and his seminarian's face, but he is a nasty fighter."

• The helicopter: On the June 1983 day that the FARC killed his father and wounded his brother in eastern Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe tried to reach the site by taking one of Pablo Escobar's helicopters from Medellín. Uribe says he did not know the helicopter belonged to Escobar. Daniel Coronell's Sunday Semana column includes scanned images (PDF and PDF) of 24-year-old news coverage of Uribe's "frustrated rescue."
• Pedro Juan Moreno and the precursor chemicals: This from Joe Contreras' ill-starred Newsweek interview with Uribe:
  

  Contreras: In 1997 and 1998, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] seized 50,000 kilos of a chemical precursor used in the processing of cocaine. Those chemicals had been allegedly purchased by a company belonging to Pedro Juan Moreno, who served as your cabinet chief when you were governor of Antioquia.

  Uribe: I became aware of that only after my term as governor ended. If the charges are true, he should go to jail. If they are groundless, the DEA should rectify that error. I believe that an error was made in his case.

  Pedro Juan Moreno died in a helicopter crash in February 2006.

• Death squad meetings on Uribe's ranch: During his April 2007 congressional hearing on paramilitarism in Uribe's home state of Antioquia, opposition Senator Gustavo Petro brought out testimony from an investigation, closed many years ago, claiming that the president may have fostered paramilitary activity during the late 1980s. The Washington Post reported:
  

  Sen. Gustavo Petro said the militiamen met at Uribe's Guacharacas farm as well as ranches owned by his brother, Santiago Uribe, and a close associate, Luis Alberto Villegas.

  "From there, at night, they would go out and kill people," Petro said, referring to the sprawling ranch owned by Álvaro Uribe, who served as a senator from 1986 to 1994.

• 1991 DIA document: A September 1991 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, declassified in 2004, includes Uribe on a list of "the more important Colombian narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations." The document lists Uribe as:
  

  A Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the US. His father was murdered in Colombia for his connection with the narcotraffickers. Uribe has worked for the Medellín cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria. He has participated in Escobar's political campaign to win the position of assistant parliamentarian to Jorge Ortega. Uribe has been one of the politicians, form the Senate, hwo has attacked all forms of the extradition treaty.

  The DIA has backed away from this intelligence report - a very strange document that also lists Colombian pop star Carlos Vives (then a soap-opera actor) as a narcotics figure. The document is considered to be "not finally evaluated" intelligence: only as reliable as its anonymous source.

• Governor of Antioquia: Uribe's tenure as governor of Antioquia department spanned 1995 to 1997. This was a period of very rapid paramilitary expansion in Antioquia, with near-daily massacres, particularly in the northwestern region of Urabá. Uribe's active sponsorship of "Convivir" - government-sponsored citizen self-defense militias, many of which came under paramilitary control - contributed to this phenomenon. Gen. Rito Alejo, who headed the army's 17th Brigade at the time in the Urabá region, stands widely accused of sponsoring the paramilitaries' growth. After Alejo and another general were forced out of office in 1999 - many claim under U.S. pressure - Uribe was the keynote speaker at a Bogotá dinner in their honor.
• Carlos Náder: Some of the threats that forced journalist Daniel Coronell to leave Colombia in 2005 came via e-mail. These e-mail threats were traced to the computer of Carlos Náder Simmonds, a former member of the Colombian Congress who spent three years in a U.S. jail for narcotrafficking. The subsequent investigation revealed that among the several dozen people who may have used Náder's home computer were Uribe's two sons, who frequented the disgraced politician's house. As we noted in a 2005 blog entry:
  

  Náder has a shady past. In 1983, while a member of Congress from Córdoba, he was arrested and later found guilty by a New York court of trying to sell cocaine to a DEA agent. He spent at least three years in a U.S. prison. He was close enough to Medellín Cartel chief Pablo Escobar that, in 1990, recordings of phone conversations surfaced in which Náder calls Escobar "brother" and "compadre," they discuss threats against César Gaviria (then a presidential candidate) and the daily newspaper El Tiempo, and Náder expresses support for the 1989 assassination of popular presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán ("better dead than a son of a b***h").

  …

  According to Náder himself, President Uribe even celebrated the 2004 New Year together with the convicted former narco-trafficker in the town of Ríonegro, just outside Medellín. "It is difficult to understand why the President shares his family with someone who served a prison term in the United
  States for cocaine trafficking, without this being seen as a moral impediment," notes El Espectador columnist [and former presidential intelligence (DAS) chief] Ramiro Bejarano.

• Fabio Ochoa's allegations: In a June 2007 interview with Semana magazine, Fabio Ochoa - a member of the Medellín cartel family who is currently a fugitive in Mexico - alleged that he had helped paramilitaries gather money to contribute to Uribe's 2002 presidential campaign. Most observers dismissed these allegations as the words of a hardened criminal with no credibility.
• The campaign video: A video made public in June 2007 shows Uribe in a late 2001 campaign meeting in the paramilitary-dominated town of Puerto Berrío, Antioquia. Seated near the candidate is a local paramilitary leader known as "Comandante Esteban." Uribe says that neither he, nor most of those at the meeting, had any idea that a paramilitary member was present; the meeting was intended to be a visit with local campaign supporters.
• Para-Politics: The list of Uribe's political supporters currently under investigation for paramilitary links continues to grow. The scandal has not touched the president himself, but has claimed members of his inner circle, including his presidential intelligence chief and his cousin Mario Uribe. (Don't miss Semana magazine's "Gallery of Para-Politics," with photos and profiles of the 40 legislators currently embroiled in the scandal.)

Taken together, this is a long and troubling list. Some of these allegations can be dismissed out of hand - but certainly not all of them. If only to ease concerns about with whom the United States is working so closely, we need more than vague denials and episodic temper tantrums. We need facts.

CONTINÚAN ASESINATOS CONTRA DOCENTES AFILIADOS A FECODE

El miércoles 19 de septiembre de 2007, asesinaron en
el Barrio Robledo, del Municipio de Bello, Antioquia,
al educador ROSALINO PALACIOS MOSQUERA, de 39 años y a
uno de sus hermanos.

El crimen de este profesor especializado en inglés y
educación física, de la Institución Educativa Atanasio
Girardot, del Municipio de Bello, eleva a tres el
número de docentes de Antioquia asesinados en
septiembre.

El pasado seis de septiembre también fue asesinado
AUGUSTO RAMIREZ ATEHORTÚA, educador de la Institución
La Inmaculada, de Guarne y el 12 de septiembre fue
ultimado ALBERTO VALENCIA CORREA, Coordinador de la
Institución las Palmas, de Envigado. Antes de esto, el
23 de junio de 2007, fue muerto JULIO CESAR GOMEZ
CANO, Dirigente sindical de ADIDA.

Estos hechos corroboran la agresión contra el
sindicalismo, en la que el magisterio colombiano ha
pagado la mayor cuota de sangre al registrar entre
1986 y 2006 a 742 docentes asesinados.

En este martirologio contra el sindicalismo y
particularmente contra el afiliado a la CUT, que de
los 2515 asesinatos, asumió 2.336, Antioquia ha
sufrido los mayores rigores con 1.078 asesinatos, que
corresponden al 48% de los homicidios cometidos en
todo el territorio nacional, de los cuales el
magisterio agrupado en Adida, es de los más afectados,
con 257 sindicalistas asesinados, durante el periodo
comentado.

La CUT una vez más, rechaza estos asesinatos y demanda
de las autoridades las investigaciones
correspondientes hasta el esclarecimiento de los
hechos y del Gobierno, las garantías para el ejercicio
de la actividad sindical.

CARLOS RODRIGUEZ DIAZ BORIS
MONTES DE OCA A.
Presidente
Secretario General