home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

Today's Stories

November 4, 2005

Phillip Cryan
Crackdown in Colombia

November 3, 2005

James Petras
The Libby Affair and the Internal War

Saul Landau
Torn Families and Shot Down Planes: a Cuba Story

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
An Occurrence at Gretna Bridge

Michael Dickinson
Bang! Bang! You're Deaf! Sonic Weapons Over Palestine

Joshua Frank
Sham Behind Closed Doors

Remi Kanazi
Dancing with Perseverance

Reza Fiyouzat
Taxation or Racketeering?

Website of the Day
CIA Leak Investigation: Bigger Fish, Deeper Water?

 

November 2, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Holy Alito!: Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad

Robert Oscar Lopez
Saving Rosa Parks from American Hypocrisy

John Walsh
The Philosophy of Mendacity: From Leo Strauss to Scooter Libby

Brian J. Foley
Why Most Americans Don't Care About Gitmo (and Why They Should)

Ramzy Baroud
Rolling Back Syria

M. Junaid Alam
What Moral Values?

Todd Chretien
Judgment Day for the Governator

Bruce K. Gagnon
The Democrats' Slap Happy Day

Website of the Day
Hands Off Dave!

 

November 1, 2005

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Kent State's Dave Airhart

Gary Leupp
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome

John Ross
Days of the Dead on the Border

Bill Quigley
Why Are They Making New Orleans a Ghost Town?

Joseph Nevins
From a Boundary of Death to One of Life

Dave Lindorff
Thinking About Impeachment

Linda S. Heard
Bashing Syria: Another Trojan Horse from the UN?

Heather Gray
Thank You, Mrs. Parks

Michael Dickinson
To Di For: Charlie and Camilla Cross the Pond

Jeffrey St. Clair
Kent State: Wise Up and Back Off

 

October 31, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Libby's Lies

Mark Weisbrot
Pop Goes the Bubble: Bernancke and the Fed

Mike Whitney
Carry On, Patrick Fitzgerald

Norman Solomon
After the Libby Indictment, the Press Acquits Itself

Farooq Sulehria
Trading Weapons While Kashmir Burns

Nicole Colson
Scapegoating Immigrants

Madis Senner
Dhafir Sentenced to 22 Years: Another Erosion of Civil Rights

Paul Craig Roberts
Scooter and the Neocons


October 29 / 30, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?

Peter Linebaugh
The Wedges of Hephaestus

Tim Wise
Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media

John Chuckman
Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words

Steven Higgs
Green Hoosiers: Forging a New Democracy in the Heartland

Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War

M. Shahid Alam
Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness

Nikki Robinson
Crack Down at Kent State

Ralph Nader
Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives

Joe DeRaymond
Requiem for Bethlehem Steel?

Joshua Frank
Karl's Great Escape: Did Rove Rat on Scooter?

Laura Santina
Tongue-Tied on Iraq: Why Aren't the Dems Screaming Bloody Murder?

Fred Gardner
Death of an Organizer

Michael Dickinson
Insult Your Country

Ron Jacobs
Autumn in America

Dr. Susan Block
Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting

Vanessa S. Jones
Self-Portrait, 1994. Bronte Beach

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Marbet, Gardner, Ford, Albert, Engel, Krieger & St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Red State Update

 

October 28, 2005

Jared Bernstein
Inflation Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record

Virginia Tilley
Embracing the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine

Phil Gasper
The Race to Execute Tookie Williams

Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!

Manual Garcia, Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?

Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice

Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald Focuses on the Forgeries

Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials


Otober 27, 2005

Saul Landau
The Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War

Stuart Hodkinson
Bono and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!

Ingmar Lee
Stop the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq

Lila Rajiva
License to Bill: Gates Does India

Ilan Pappe
The Last Moment of Hope

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald

Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury

Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo

Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown

 

October 26, 2005

Kathy Kelly
For Whom They Toll

Gary Leupp
Dialectics of the Plame Affair

Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial

Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation

Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks

Website of the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index

 

 

October 25, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President?

Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn
Attack on the Palestine Hotel

Conn Hallinan
Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings

Jackie Corr
Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros

Robert Day
Talk to Strangers

John Sugg
Judith Miller and Me

 

October 24, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Revoke Judy Miller's Pulitzer

Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra

Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial

Mike Whitney
Apres Rove

Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...

Bill and Kathleen Christison
US Foreign Policy and Palestine

 

October 22 / 23, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
When Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller

Billy Sothern
Letter from the Circle Bar, New Orleans

Saul Landau
Bush, an Assessment

Ralph Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers

Behrooz Ghamari
Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve?

Brian Cloughley
Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory?

Diana Barahona
Venezuela's National Workers' Union

Fred Gardner
Dershowitzed!

Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About

Patrick Cockburn
Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer

Laura Carlsen
Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake

James Petras
China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness

Joshua Frank
Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Disasters are Us

Michelle Bollinger
When Abortion Was Illegal

Missy Comley Beattie
CSI: Iraq

Kona Lowell
Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun

Ben Tripp
Tanks for the Memories

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening To This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel

Website of the Day
Indictment Watch

 

October 21, 2005

Dave Lindorff
The Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense Budget

Col. Dan Smith
The Destruction of the National Guard

Norman Solomon
Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph

Madis Senner
Abusing Katrina

Michael Donnelly
Richard Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots


October 20, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Comes to NYC

Ray McGovern
16 Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost

Jeremy Brecher /
Brendan Smith

Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right?

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court

Kevin Zeese
Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?

Ross Eisenbrey
Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment

Randy Shields
James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton

Justine Davidson
Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory

After Lucas Cranach
Judy and Holofernes

Joe Allen
The Scandalous History of the Red Cross

 

October 19, 2005

Christopher Reed
Koizumi and the Rape of Nanking

Stephen Soldz
Bush and Avian Flu: the Excuses Begin to Fly

Chet Richards
War and Intelligence

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam on Trial

Scott Richard Lyons
Multicultural Columbus?

Ralph Nader
An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin

Website of the Day
Shocking Video: Why Birds May Be Taking Viral Vengeance on Humans

 

October 18, 2005

Chet Flippo
Merle Haggard: "Let's Get Out of Iraq"

Ron Jacobs
Dual Devotions: the Catholic Church and the US Flag

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
A Tale of Two Cities: From DC to Toledo

Dave Lindorff
Judy Miller: Little Miss Run Amok

Virginia Rodino
A Winter Patriot: Reflections on the Antiwar Movement

Thomas Healy
The Weather in Goshen: Still Radical After All These Years

Ralph Nader
A New New Orleans

Stephen Lendman
The Sorrows of Haiti

Patrick Cockburn
On the Eve of Saddam's Trial: a Divided Iraq

 

October 17, 2005

Peter Linebaugh
Spinoza and the Black Limos

Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State

Cockburn / Sengupta
"If the Sunnis Don't Like It, That's Their Problem"

Mike Whitney
Miller's Confession: Last Gasp Before Indictments?

Uri Avnery
Iraq Now: What Awaits Samira?

Harold Pinter
Torture & Misery in the Name of Freedom

Website of the Day
Al Joudi v. Bush

 

October 15 / 16, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ayatollahs of the Apocalypse

Patrick Cockburn
"This Constitution Won't Get Me a Job"

Saul Landau
Two Terrorists and a Lush: Osama, Posada and Bush's Drinking

Neve Gordon
"Beyond Chutzpah": Exposing Grave Moral Distortions

Moshe Adler
Poverty in New York City

Christopher Brauchli
Lynndie England's Burden

Diane Farsetta
The Emperor Doesn't Disclose: the Fight Against Fake News

Sam Husseini
Notes on Current Reporting About Judith Miller

Monica Benderman
From Chaos to Conscience to Peace

Mickey Z.
POW Abuse by US: Nothing New Going On Here

Douglas C. Smyth
George W. Bush, the Honorius of Our Time

Lee Sustar
Will Delphi Bust the UAW?

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoids Arrive in Realm of Established Fact

Elizabeth Schulte
A Former Panther's Georgia Campaign: an Interview with Elaine Brown

Joshua Frank
Will the Democrats Save Harriet Miers?

David Vest
Down with Formalism! Up with Values!

Ben Tripp
Epistle II: the Reawakenign

Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, Ford and Louise

Website of the Weekend
The Hidden Canyon

 

October 14, 2005

Farrah Hassen
A Somber Ramadan in Syria

Ron Jacobs
The Black Panthers: They Haven't Forgotten; Neither Should We

Sasha Kramer
USAID and Haiti: the Friendly Face of Imperialism?

Katrina Yeaw
The Student Struggle in Italy

Nicole Colson
Bird Flu: Militarizing Health Care

Raúl Zibechi
Survival and Existence in El Alto

Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez and the Politics of Race

Website of the Day
LA Filmmakers Cooperative


October 13, 2005

Jeremy Scahill
Mr. Bush Goes to Tikrit (Sort Of)

Jeff Birkenstein
A Thoreau for Our Time: Why Cindy Sheehan Matters

Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher
Harriet Miers: Bush or the Constitution?

Stan Cox
Did You Know This About Iraq?

Anis Memon
The Curious Case of Russ Feingold

Gary Leupp
Miller, Libby and the June Notes

Dave Zirin
A Tribute to August Wilson

Matthew Koehler
America's Endangered Forests

Werther
The Two-Headed Monster

Website of the Day
Hurricane Song


October 12, 2005

Omar Waraich
Britain and the Quake: Mean and Stingy

William Cook
Voices Behind the Entombment Wall

Phil Gasper
Countdown to a Legal Lynching

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls

Matt Vidal
Capital, Power and Class

John Gautreaux
New Orleans will Never be the Same

Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War

Mark Weisbrot
The IMF Has Lost Its Influence

Brian J. Foley
Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety

Website of the Day
Columbus Day Lies

 

October 11, 2005

Roger Morris / Steve Schmidt
Strategic Demands of the 21st Century

Lila Rajiva
Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib

Bill Quigley
New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again

Paul Craig Roberts
Natural Born Liars

Dave Lindorff
Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Suspect Thy Neighbor

Mitchel Cohen
Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese

Tariq Ali
Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror

Website of the Day
L'Heure Americaine

 

October 10, 2005

Cindy and Craig Corrie
Rachel's Words Live

Joshua Frank
Washington's War Dems

Gideon Levy
The Beautiful Life Without Arafat

Alan Wallis
The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square

Mickey Z.
In Defense of Liars

CounterPunch News Service
Vermont Independence Convention

Paul Craig Roberts
The Police State is Closer Than You Think

Website of the Day
Dylan's Chronicles

 

October 8 / 9, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People

Ralph Nader
Katrina and the Growls of Greed

Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case

Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream

Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas

Lenni Brenner
The Millions More Movement and Zionism

Nikolas Kozloff
Bird Flu and Bush

Brian Cloughley
Training Soldiers in Iraq

Alice Slater
A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl?

John Gautreaux
A View from Cajun Country

Fred Gardner
Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Leveethan Approach

M.G. Piety
Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard

Tom Gorman
The Hitchens Doctrine

Mike Whitney
Bunker Days with George

Aseem Shrivastava
Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan

Ben Tripp
Religion, an Epistle

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Ford

 

October 7, 2005

Larry Johnson
The Plame Case: the Real Issues

Will Youmans
Why Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus

Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?

Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison

Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle

Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs

Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir

Website of the Day
FBI Witchhunt


October 6, 2005

P. Sainath
"Take That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal Idol Again

Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged

Paul Craig Roberts
Blundering into Syria

Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion

Dave Lindorff
Easy Money in the Big Easy

Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell

M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason

Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot

Robert Pollin
Is the Dollar Still Falling?

 

October 5, 2005

Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines

Robert Jensen
Is Bush a Racist?

Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire

Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad"

Dave Zirin
Barry Bonds Laughs Last

Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over

Alan Maass
Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work

 

October 4, 2005

Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.

Mike Roselle
Houston, You've Got a Problem

Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers

John Chuckman
War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say

Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys

Mickey Z.
An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski

Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims

Gary Leupp
An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History

Website of the Day
Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan

 

October 3, 2005

Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi Rice: Gunslinger

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Seth Sandronsky
The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

Red Alert for CounterPunchers!
Annual Fundraising Appeal

We interrupt your regular reading habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch needs your financial support!

We're not in the habit of making idle threats and this isn't one. Either we meet our fundraising goal of $60,000 over the next three weeks or we'll be forced to drastically curtail the operation of our website. It's near the end of our year and the wolf is at the door.

CounterPunch's website is supported almost entirely by subscribers to the print edition of our newsletter. We don't clutter the site by selling annoying popup ads. We tried getting money out of Google, but they gave us the boot. We aren't on the receiving end of six-figure grants from big foundations. George Soros doesn't have us on retainer. And we don't sell tickets on cruiseliners.

The continued existence of CounterPunch depends solely on the support and dedication of our readers. And we know there are a lot of you. We get thousands of emails from you every day. Our website receives nearly 100,000 visits each day-and those numbers grow by the month. Of course, all these readers chew up a lot of bandwidth and that costs money.

Through the Iraq war, the daily traumas of the Bush administration, hurricanes, earthquakes and the disappearance of the Democrats, many of you have found a refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We appreciate the support and prepared for the fierce battles to come as the Bush administration expands its wars abroad and at home.

Unlike many other outfits, we don't hit you up for money every month...or even every quarter. We only ask for your support once a year. But we when ask, we mean it. Please, make a donation to CounterPunch today or purchase a gift subscription or a crate of books as holiday presents. To contribute by phone you can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683

Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva



November 4, 2005

Two Social Movement Leaders Detained

Crackdown in Colombia

By PHILLIP CRYAN

The southwest Colombian province of Cauca has a long and celebrated history of popular resistance to injustice and violence. In a country where decades of war have torn apart the social fabric, breeding a deep (and prudent) fear of involvement in anything political -- because such involvement so often gets people killed -- the communities of Cauca have not only continued to stand up against exploitation and attacks, but to do so with force and unity, in enormous numbers.

It is a beautiful, life-affirming place.

Led by a five-centuries-old indigenous resistance, the social movement in Cauca is exceptionally well organized. Campesinos (peasant farmers), Afro-Colombian groups, and trade unions routinely join their "elder brothers and sisters" -- as they often refer to Cauca's indigenous groups -- in multi-day marches along the Pan-American Highway, or occupations of it, involving tens of thousand of people, standing up for life and dignified conditions of living. In September 2004, about 60,000 marched three days along the highway demanding respect for their autonomy and protesting President Alvaro Uribe Velez's economic and security policies.

On a number of occasions over recent years, when Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas have kidnapped indigenous leaders, the Nasa -- Cauca's largest indigenous group -- have sent a few hundred people after them into the mountains, unarmed except for their bastones de mando (authority sticks), and persuaded the FARC to hand over those they had kidnapped. Last month, a tightly knit coalition of indigenous, campesino, Afro-Colombian and union organizations launched a campaign to reclaim stolen lands and demand land reform -- in a country where 0.4% of the population now controls over half the agricultural land -- calling the effort "Liberation of Mother Earth."

This kind of resistance has its costs and consequences. Nearly every time Cauca's indigenous organizations announce a new march or "Mobilization" (the name they use for long-term occupations of the highway), Colombia's usually unflappable rightist president gets on TV and radio to plead with them to call it off. When they go ahead with their plans anyway, military and government officials call them guerrillas, sanctioning paramilitary attacks. When the police attempt to dislodge them, there are always many wounded, and often a few killed -- as happened just a couple weeks ago when indigenous squatters refused to budge from land they had reclaimed.

And there are other risks. Word arrived yesterday that two of the movement's most visible leaders have been jailed.

The latest attempt to silence resistance

José Vicente Otero Chate, a Nasa indigenous leader and former mayor of the municipality of Caldono, was detained back on October 6. And Miguel Alberto Fernández Orozco, President of the CUT (United Workers' Central)-Cauca and leader of the campesino (peasant farmer) organization CIMA, was detained on Tuesday, November 1. The indigenous, campesino, Afro-Colombian and labor sectors of the social movement see the detentions as an attack not just on two individuals but on the entire process of organization and resistance in Cauca.

José Vicente was instrumental in carrying out a popular consultation in Cauca this past March on the Andean Free Trade Agreement currently under negotiation between the U.S. and Andean governments. The outcome, unsurprisingly, was that the vast majority opposes the so-called "free trade" deal and sees it as a direct threat to their food security. Two months after the consultation, José Vicente's home was raided by members of the Colombian Army, who planted weapons inside, then accused him of terrorism. He was arrested on October 6.

Miguel, the trade union and campesino movement leader, has received a series of death threats in recent years. In 2004, he spent several months in exile in Massachusetts, as part of the (now defunct) State Department-funded AFL-CIO Solidarity Center protection program for threatened Colombian unionists. Since returning to Cauca, he has received renewed death threats against himself and his family on at least two occasions. The most recent came on Monday October 17, when the Agro-environmental Association of San Pablo, in neighboring Nariño province, received a pamphlet signed by the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the primary paramilitary federation). The pamphlet stated that CIMA, an organization Miguel helps direct, and a sister campesino organization in Nariño "are led by terrorists and leftist thugs." It advises the organizations "to remain neutral in your thoughts, and not use your organizations to conduct intelligence work or destabilize the region. We are watching every step you take."

Miguel is the best kind of leader. His clarity of thought, generosity of heart, and simple strength of will and ability are such as to make a person -- despite it all -- proud, again, to a member of the species "man." Hopeful again for a sane and decent future.

The charges brought against Miguel are something else. They would be hilarious if the situation weren't so deadly serious. If initial reports are correct, Miguel's arrest represents a new level of Orwellian absurdity for Colombia's "justice" system.

Everyone thought the height of absurdity had been reached already, when, a couple years ago, the "authorities" started charging people who had the bravery to still speak publicly about the collaboration between paramilitaries and the Armed Forces -- a simple fact known to everyone in Colombia's countryside, but one that people are prudently cautious about uttering publicly, after seeing many who did so have to flee town and finding the bodies of others mutilated in nearby rivers -- with "calumny" and "slander," for soiling the good name of Colombia's military and police.

Then, just this year, Uribe pushed the bar even further: he named the law providing his paramilitary allies with political legitimacy, legalization of their stolen lands and fortunes, and what amounts to a blanket pardon for countless, unspeakably gruesome crimes against humanity -- wait for it -- "The Justice and Peace Law." It was a rich linguistic coup on so many levels, there isn't space to even scratch the surface here.

The point, however, is that with Miguel they may have pushed it a step further still. Miguel appears to have been arrested on the accusation -- by anonymous informants -- that he fabricated the death threats against himself and his family. That there were in fact no threats made against him, that he made them up. In other words, this time the charge appears to be that he soiled the good name of the paramilitaries.

Our response

It's hard to believe, often, how critical a role a flood of messages sent to Colombian and U.S. authorities by people in the U.S. can play in securing release in a situation like this. What's more, it tells those who are going after José Vicente and Miguel that future attempts to silence the popular movement will be met with similar international scrutiny and condemnation, and that then plays into their "cost-benefit analysis" when contemplating jailing or threatening or murdering or torturing another of our courageous elder brothers and sisters.

Please ask the U.S. Ambassador in Colombia to investigate these cases and to pressure Colombian authorities for the immediate release of José Vicente and Miguel if it is found that there is no evidence against them. A short and simple message does the trick. Please send it to:
U.S. Ambassador William Wood: AmbassadorB@state.gov

And copy ("Cc."):

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez: auribe@presidencia.gov.co, dh@presidencia.gov.co, Fax (57) 1-566-2071

Please also copy ("Cc.") the following addresses on the e-mails you send, so that Cauca's social organizations will know what communications the government authorities are receiving: fundcima@yahoo.com; anucurcauca@hotmail.com; cric@emtel.net.co.

In the action alert CIMA sent with this news, they closed with the following dateline:
Popayán, in times of dignity and resistance, November 2005

May our times be so, too.

Phillip Cryan lives in Ames, Iowa, and spent 2002 and 2003 doing human rights work in Colombia. He is writing a book about U.S. policy in Colombia, and popular resistance to it, for Common Courage Press. In July 2006 he will help lead a Witness for Peace delegation of labor activists to Colombia -- for more information, visit http://www.witnessforpeace.org or contact Phillip at phillipcryan000@yahoo.com.

 

What You're Missing in the Special Expanded Print Edition
The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam
by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

"The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater." Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Get CounterPunch's Print Edition By Email!

Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558


 

Coming in the Fall
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case Against Israel
By Michael Neumann

Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

WHAT'S INSIDE
Grand Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror

by Jeffrey St. Clair