STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Working For Peace, Justice, and A Sustainable Environment
Online Edition: June, 2000 Vol. XI, No. X
Depleted Uranium: In our name
What is depleted uranium?
US aid to Colombia: for drugs or oil?
Virtual Commandments of the Dot-com Faith By NORMAN SOLOMON
Peace Community
The last Connections Fundraiser -- Again?
Exciting speakers at June Peace Camp 2000
Peace Camp Registration Form2000 Peace Centers Conference -- Interesting and Inspiring
Students P.A.U.S.E. for Peace, Acceptance, and Understanding for Students Everywhere
Living Lightly:
Mud Pies and Purple Onions
Heartland Conference and Fair offers sustainable ag fun and savvy
Recipe of the Month: SHRIMP CREOLE
CALENDAR --CURRENT & COMING EVENTS
By LAWRENCE RIECHARD
José Lua talked as if it were a war. "I deserted," Lua said of his experience as a Bracero worker in Coachella, near the Mexican border, in 1955. "It was hard, hard - that was really hard work. We were getting paid only 65 cents an hour and they were taking out $1.65 a day just for housing. And it was hot, it was incredibly hot. We were supposed to work eight hours a day, but it was so hot we could only work four or five."
"No, I didn't like it," José added. "But it was necessary. We came here to work. What could we do? I suffered a lot." José said he and his fellow Braceros came to this country "como vendidos" (like sold ones - slaves).
After José "deserted" from Coachella he drifted north, hopping trains. He saw much of the country: Nebraska, Wyoming. He ended up in Chicago where he worked for a while.
José was one of some 5 million Mexicans who came to this country under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bracero program. Started in 1942, the program was designed to alleviate a severe labor shortage in this country's fields and orchards brought on by World War II. The program well outlasted the war, ending in 1964. José's first experience as a Bracero began in 1951 at age 17 and continued until 1957.
What José didn't know until just last year is that throughout his six years as a Bracero, and throughout the entire life of the program, 10 per cent of his wages and those of every other Bracero were deducted for a sort of repatriation/retirement fund, to be paid to the workers upon their return to Mexico. The only problem is the money has never been paid back; not to Luis, not to any of the 5 million Braceros. "They never told us about the 10 per cent," José said. "We didn't know until last year. No one knew. I saw it in the paper."
According to the Mexican government the money - estimated at $200-300 million plus interest, up to $1 billion by some estimates - was deposited in El Banco Rural in Mexico. Banrural, as the bank is now known, says the account exists, but nothing is in it. Rumor has it the money went to build luxury hotels in Cancun, Acapulco and other places.
And that's where the Rural Economic Alternatives Program (REAP) of the American Friends Service Committee in Stockton comes in. REAP is working with a committee of ex-Braceros called Braceroproa to get the money released to the workers, wherever it may be. It is estimated that perhaps half of the Braceros have died, but millions are still alive, and thousands still live in the Central Valley. [See sidebar.] With the invaluable help of volunteers, REAP has done intakes on scores, perhaps hundreds, of the workers, slowly and steadily building a case for release of the funds. Every time Univision runs a story on the ex-Braceros ù it has run several ù the phones ring off the hook in the REAP office.
In addition to doing intakes, REAP has held press conferences to publicize the campaign for release of the funds, and REAP staffers have held a meeting with Mike Wackman, aide to Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Stockton), to discuss the workers' plight. Wackman has taken information on ten of the ex-Braceros in REAP's file and has said he will look into the matter.
It is REAP's position that the U.S. government bears considerable responsibility in the matter of the missing money. The exact workings of the Bracero program and the 10 per cent deductions are still somewhat unclear to REAP, but one thing is clear: the U.S. government administered the program, and if it was not directly responsible for the pay deductions, at the very least it approved them.
José Lua plans to retire at the end of this harvest season in November. He's going to pack his bags and head back to his native Mexico. Like everyone else, José would like to enjoy a reasonably comfortable retirement -- not an easy prospect for a farmworker in this country. Like millions of other ex-Braceros, José is only asking for what is rightfully his.
ACTION: To urge Rep. Pombo to pursue the release of the Bracero fund, call him at (209) 951-3091. For information on REAP's work, contact its office at 445 W. Weber Ave., Ste. 129, Stockton, CA 95103-2146; phone (209) 465-4265; FAX (209)465-4279; www.afsc.org; .
The author is the REAP Project Coordinator.
"Almost all the ex-Braceros still in this country are now either legal permanent residents or citizens, 95 per cent or more," says Luis Magaña, Interim Coordinator, Rural Economic Alternatives Program (REAP) of the American Friends Service Committee.
"Most of them are quite old by now and the life of an undocumented worker is too hard for them," says Magaña, a longtime farmworker activist. "So if they are unable to 'normalize' their immigration status, they go back to Mexico."
In addition to REAP's work with ex-Braceros, the Stockton project office of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker service organization, continues its alternative economic development projects, including continued support of local farmers' markets, support of local efforts to preserve prime farm land and develop low-income housing, and support for an initiative that promotes ethnic business development.
Many Stanislaus Connections readers fondly remember past REAP staff members. REAP's founder, the late Mack Warner, is remembered as "the father of California farmers markets" and for his other work to improve the economic viability of small family farmers and farmworkers. Raj Ramaiya was guest speaker at Peace Camp in 1989, describing his community development work in the very diverse Stockton area.
By PISETH SUOR
(Introduction by Hennie Erat: Among the many interesting people who attend English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) classes at Modesto Junior College are some who have come to the US to move beyond the dark and harrowing experiences of their countries of origin. The nightmares of the past are most often unknown to those around them as these students concentrate on the challenges of the present with hopes for a better future. This semester in an advanced ESL class, however, stories poured out in an assignment in which students were invited to write about a close call they or someone near to them had experienced. One story, written by a particularly polite, bright, and diligent Cambodian student, Piseth Suor, stood out from the others and bears repeating.)
My Horrifying Experiences
In the late 70's the Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime. Since Cambodia was still ruled by communist regime, my family decided to escape to Thai territory. We stayed in Nong Chan camp, which was sponsored by UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees), waiting to immigrate to the third country. One month later, the Thai authorities took us from this camp and dropped us at the northern Cambodian border with Thailand, which was Dong Rek Mountain.
I still remember that event, even though I was only nine years old at the time. We were forced by Thai soldiers to go down the hill when the bus, which we had ridden in, arrived at the border. The hill was very high and had no steps leading down it. All the refugees refused to go down, since the mountain was very steep and at the foot of it there were a lot of mine fields. Suddenly Thai soldiers started firing very cruelly at all of the people, who were trying to come back. Two women holding their babies were killed when they tried to beg the soldiers to let them go back or wait there. We had no choice, so we started going down step by step. It was very frightening: if we went back we would encounter gunfire from Thai soldiers, and if we went down the hill, we would face minefields and a steep hill. I was not able to go down the hill because it was too steep. It required swinging down by using a vine. Thus I sat on my oldest brother's shoulders and he swung down step by step through the trees and vines.
Shortly before we got to the foot of the hill, one mine just exploded and killed four people and injured three others. We were terrified because, if we had come one minute earlier, some persons in my family might have been wounded or killed. We had to move by following the other people's foot steps in front of us, very slowly, because there were a lot of mines. On some days we could move only 200 meters. Besides mines, we encountered hunger and thirst because when they dropped us, they didn't provide us any food or drink. There was water in the lake nearby, but we could not use it since the area surrounding the lake was covered by a lot of landmines and the water was poisoned by the Vietnamese troops and Khmer rouge because that area had been their battlefield recently. Moreover, there was a bad smell since around us there were many corpses of people who had been killed by land mines. I was very scared at that time.
One day when we were moving slowly in the line, one man who was located about 20 meters from us felt tired because he hadn't eaten for two days. He dropped his bag on the grass. Unfortunately the bag dropped on a mine and it exploded. Two people in front of me were killed and four were wounded. That was the second close call for my family and me.
Those events still give me nightmares today. When I dream, I always see those events. We spent one week crossing that minefield, a distance of about two miles. We were lucky in our family that no one was hurt by land mines, but we had prayed a lot, and we swore not to go back to Thailand any more.
(Concluding Thoughts by Hennie Erat: As shocking as Mr. Suor's experiences were, they were shared by countless others in his country. Though Cambodia is no longer at war, the country is still littered with an estimated eight million landmines, roughly one per person living there. One out of every 245 persons is an amputee injured by a landmine explosion, yet they might be considered the lucky ones: half of all mine victims die within minutes of the blast. Cambodians are being trained in mine clearance techniques through various mine action programs such as the Mines Advisory Group. This group is funded in part by Church World Service through moneys raised in their annual CROP walks held in cities across the US. According to Church World Service's factsheet, "Landmines: War's Lethal Legacy," the United States government, while contributing to mine action programs, hesitates to join in the international Mine Ban Treat and continues to hold the fourth largest stockpile of mines in the world.)
The time is past for Leonard Peltier to be granted a fair retrial, says Amnesty International. AIUSA is calling for the release of the American Indian leader who has been imprisoned for 24 years.
"While we do not consider him a prisoner of conscience, the evidence that Peltier killed the two agents is far from conclusive," says AIUSA Deputy Executive Director Curt Goering in the lead article in the most recent issue of Amnesty Now.
Leonard Peltier, an Anishinabe-Lakota Indian and a leading member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), is serving two consecutive life sentences for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents during a shoot out on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Amnesty International has long been concerned about the legal process that led to his conviction and sentencing. Peltier's numerous appeals over the years have failed to dispel substantial lingering doubts about the fairness of his original trial, in which prosecutors argued that he shot and killed agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler at point-blank range. For his part, Peltier acknowledges participating in the Pine Ridge firefight but denies having murdered anyone.
Two other men who admitted shooting at agents during the firefight were allowed to plead self-defense. Tried separately from Peltier, Dino Butler and Robert Robideau, cited an atmosphere of fear prevailing on the reservation in 1975, the result of hundreds of attacks on AIM supporters following the AIM-led siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. Had the trial judge permitted Peltier to make a similar case, Amnesty International believes that the outcome might have been very different.
AI is also concerned that the FBI knowingly used perjured testimony to obtain Peltier's extradition from Canada to stand trial; that the trial judge did not permit the defense to call a witness who said federal agents had coerced her into signing false affidavits implicating Peltier; and that the prosecution withheld crucial evidence --particularly a ballistics report contradicting the state's claim that a rifle found in Peltier's possession was the same weapon used to kill Williams and Coler.
Last spring, noting that the prisoner had exhausted all available legal appeals, AI determined that a retrial was no longer a feasible option and called for his release.
The Federal Parole Commission is scheduled to consider Peltier's application on June 12.
ACTION: For more information, contact Amnesty International; www.amnestyusa.org. Appeals asking for Leonard Peltier's immediate release on parole or through a grant of clemency, citing the concerns outlined above, can be addressed to President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and members of the Federal Parole Commission via Amnesty International USA, 322 Eight Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Copies will be sent to the Peltier defense team.
-- Excerpted from Amnesty Now, Spring 2000, page 1 by Indira Clark.
Source: Merced County Fatherhood Initiative
On Friday June 9 from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., a coalition of eighteen local agencies will sponsor a conference designed to broaden the knowledge and assistance to fathers.
With workshops and speakers, issues of family well-being will be explored. Community resource providers will be present with information. Child development and the importance of a father's involvement is the keynote theme of the conference
ACTION: Space is limited, so register early. Cost is $10 including materials and lunch. Make checks payable to Merced Localink, Inc., and mail to Merced County Fatherhood Initiative, 3144 North G St.,, Suite 125-336, Merced, CA 95340.
By WILLIAM E. BISHOP
That there is injustice in the world is clear to all who open their eyes. I seem to have inherited an ability to fly into a rage at the abuse and misuse of the innocent by those who ought to know better. Very early in my life I realized that a life of political engagement would seriously shorten my life expectancy: heart attacks, stroke, any of the disorders brought on by an excess of rage and stress. It was also about this same time in my life when I read Dr. Pangloss’ suggestion: to tend to my own corner of the garden.
Always, my prime dictum has been: first, do no harm. My practice, as best I could muster, has been to practice in my own life the principles I would pass on to others. That others might fail to see the lesson is none of my business. Unfortunately, I have come to a crossroads in my life that leaves me unable to continue along the quiet path. My concern now is not to become too shrill.
This sea change came as a result of the decision by the Board of the Peace/Life Center to make a point of conscience of our dealings with Iraq. It is very easy to shrug off America's treatment of Iraq in our well-cultivated ignorance. But once I came to know the details of the matter, I am unable to deny that my country has engaged, in my name, in actions and behaviors which are despicable and intolerable.
The issue at hand is the United States Military's use of depleted uranium (DU) in the artillery shells used against Iraqi armor during the Gulf War. There are others far more knowledgeable than I on the subject, and I strongly recommend that everyone make the effort to access the information available. I limit my own comments to a short summary of what I have read elsewhere. Depleted uranium is the slag left over after processing out the plutonium for nuclear weapons, or fuel for our nuclear reactors. The stuff is radioactive. It simply is not sufficiently radioactive for use in a nuclear reaction. It is the stuff bubbling away in the underground cisterns at Hanford, Washington. The stuff that nobody wants dumped in their backyard, that nobody wants trucked through their neighborhood. Depleted uranium is denser than tungsten, and we don't have to import the stuff at exorbitant costs. So the military has worked a deal with their armaments suppliers to have the stuff embedded in artillery shells so we can dump it in some enemy's back yard.
Make no mistake: the fact the stuff wasn't used for fuel rods or nuclear bombs doesn't make it safe. It is radioactive. Military sources now tell us that American tank crews engaged in the Gulf War were exposed to radiation that equaled to about one chest x-ray per day. A British military expert charged with cleaning up Kosovo has given his troops three very specific instructions regarding shells containing depleted uranium: "stay away, stay away, stay away." In Iraq, cancers have risen tenfold and birth defects are soaring. The Gulf War was a nuclear war, plain and simple. And when faced with the fact, the U.S. military is stonewalling.
First: do no harm. But how can we live by this dictum when our government is poisoning our planet in our names? I am coming near to rejecting citizenship in a nation willing conduct itself in this manner. Before I do so, I must first write to all of my representatives in Washington, D.C. explaining the nature of the problem, and ask that they take a position to stop the Military from any further use of depleted uranium.
ACTION: I am unable to remain silent on this issue. I urge everyone reading this to similarly write to our representatives in Washington. Our government has poisoned Iraq in our name: this act is unconscionable. It is time we attempted to make amends.
By ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL
There is growing concern here in America about the use of depleted uranium for military purposes. Many critics raise questions about the medical consequences on our service men and women when so-called DU bullets are fired. DU ammunition was used extensively against Iraqi forces in Desert Storm and is often cited as a possible cause of the illness known as Gulf War syndrome. Most frequently the charge is that DU causes radioactive poisoning.
True, DU is a residue of the refining process which turns uranium ore into fissionable material for use in nuclear weapons. But the depletion that takes place in the refining process removes the U-235 isotopes from the ore and leaves only U-238 which is not radioactive. Thus, DU may be processed into extremely dense, heavy ammunition suitable for penetrating tank armor without concern for radioactivity. However, when those shells penetrate the target they burn and form chemical particles which are compounds of uranium - a heavy metal. It is highly likely that if those particles are inhaled or ingested by humans they produce a form of heavy metal poisoning. It is this danger that may very well contribute to Gulf War syndrome cases. Until thorough research has been conducted and the exact effects of DU munitions determined, it would be very wise and prudent to suspend all use of DU munitions by U.S. forces.
If you would like more information on this or other military related topics, call 1-800-CDI-3334 or visit www.cdi.org
From: The Question Of The Week, Program No. 526, January 6, 2000
(Editor's note: Attempts by CONNECTIONS to allow Admiral Carroll an opportunity to either correct or reiterate his statement concerning U-238 have not received a response. The Editor's own education has it that uranium is a naturally occurring unstable (i.e. radioactive) heavy metal. This is confirmed by Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary: "uranium 238 -- the radioactive uranium isotope having a mass number 238 and a half life of 4.5 x 109 years, comprising 99.28% of natural uranium.")
By ELIZABETH VENCILL
She sits at the lunch table in a cozy restaurant in mid-Modesto in a gray-green suit and glasses, with an unemotional face and speaks in even, quiet tones. Minh Nguyen Beebout's uncle is a retired Communist General in the North Viet Namese Army in Hanoi, Viet Nam. He pushed his brother, her father, and the family from Hanoi to Hai Phong in 1954, a year after she, was born the 7th of 9 children, telling him that he must go for the sake of his children's futures. From there the family came to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. The General never saw his brother again.
For twenty years the family had a business in Saigon, raising their nine children during the French occupation, the subsequent war with the French, then the Viet Nam War fought by the Americans. Mother bought and sold things, making bargains, doing business, hearing stories, living. The 3 boys and 6 girls grew. One brother became an engineer educated at Stanford. One brother was educated in Japan. And another was becoming a doctor. All the children were college material.
She begins. "My brother worked for the bank and came home for lunch every day like a good son, but full of idealistic stories about Viet Nam for the Viet Namese people. My mother knew differently, that people were leaving and not coming back. My father made arrangements for us to leave, but did not include him because his head was in the clouds someplace. About two weeks before we left, my brother came home from work and said to shut the shop, we had to talk, because we have to leave. My father asked him, 'Where have you been? Your boss is gone, you have let all your subordinates go, what are you doing?' My brother made the plan that we would all stop going to school, go to his house and lay low, then escape on a boat. My parents could not liquidate anything because we could not let anyone know we were leaving.
"When we got the call to go, we went to a house to wait for the bus to the ferry. It never came. Then someone got a call, and told us to leave there and go to the ferry. There were about 200 people in that house. We left quietly, not taking all of them. When we got to the ferry, it was parked at the dock backwards, so we had to jump on. I don't know how I did that. All we could take was a change of clothes in a little handbag. Some of my sisters and other people, were left on the pier.
"The boat was pushed into international waters and cut loose without food, or water, or a motor. It rained for the next two days, and we floated there going nowhere. It was really scary. All around us were the US Seventh Fleet going round and round, not picking us up. Finally on the third day the USS Sergeant Miller picked us from the sea. We sat on the deck for the next five days to the Philippines. They fed us once a day, and gave us water twice a day. When it got hot, they hosed us off with salt water. It was sticky. We could not lie down because there was no room. We could only sit. It was really hot.
"When we got off, we went to a camp where Red Cross volunteers gave us a Coke and an orange. You know, that was the best Coke I ever tasted. We stayed there for a few days and then we went to Wake Island. My brother volunteered to work with the Army doctors with the Vietnamese people. He was in his last year of medical school when we left in the spring, and could not take his final exams. We all volunteered at the camp hospital for something to do. We were there for about three weeks while trying to figure out where we would go next. My other brother said we have to split up because we will never all get sponsored into the US together. He said it had been his job to get us out of Viet Nam. He took my parents, I went with my brother and my two sisters went together. We all got sent to locations in the Los Angeles area.
"After we got here, my brother said it had been his job to get us out of Viet Nam, but that now we were here and had to assimilate into the culture and do here what we wanted to do in Viet Nam. I was in my last year of pharmacy school. I and my brother were with a family in LA who weren't well to do, but they had good hearts. The doctor on Wake Island sponsored my brother to go to the Midwest and study to take an equivalency exam, which he passed.
"I was now alone in LA and wanted to see my parents. The family let me go see them, and I did not go back. I wanted to stay with my parents and my sisters. My sisters and I enrolled in the community college where they only gave me 52 units for all my college work. I had to repeat organic chemistry and physics and I had to take Political Science, but I had a hard time because I didn't know English or American current events very well. I got a D and the teacher would not let me take it over again because, he said, I passed it. We were on public assistance and able to get a small apartment together while we went to school. I eventually went to a Medical Technology training program in Fresno where I learned to practice Clinical Laboratory Science.
"Many people assume that I met my husband in Viet Nam and that I am a war bride. Nice girls were not allowed to talk to American GI's. Once I was riding a scooter down the street in Saigon and a GI on a troop vehicle threw an apple at me and hit me. They were loud and rude and only bar girls would be seen with them. A girl I know of was sold by her family as a maid to another family in Saigon. The man raped her, and she then was considered tainted. It was these women who were with GI's. It was not until after I met my husband that I learned that the GI's in Saigon were afraid for their lives, and might die the next day.
"All of my parents' descendants and their spouses eventually came to America through various sponsors over the next ten years. We keep the tradition of honoring our late father and have a reunion every year at my brother's big house in Los Angeles. My mother is about 83. There are four generations of my family in America, so many people that we now must go outside to take the family photograph with a wide angle lens."
Minh Beebout is a Clinical Laboratory Scientist at the Memorial Medical Center Laboratory and the Health Services Agency Laboratory in Modesto. She is married and has a daughter in college and a son in high school.
US aid to Colombia: for drugs or oil?
By CHAD SOKOLOVSKY
The threat of violence and abuse associated with illegal drug use accounts for the outrage that most Americans feel towards the drug trade in the United States and abroad.
In addition to the millions already spent in doubtful attempts to stop the flow of drugs towards this country, the Clinton administration is now proposing to send an additional $1.6 billion dollars to the government of Colombia for the war against drugs, in the form of military training, equipment and cash.
According to a March 2000 article in Time, Barry McCaffrey of the CIA states that in 1999, "Colombia produced 520 metric tons of cocaine, three times what the agency [the CIA] had previously calculated." He also asserts that "80% of the cocaine and heroin entering the US comes from or through Colombia, causing 52,000 deaths here each year, along with $110 billion in health-care, crime and lost productivity costs."
Because of frequently voiced statistics such as these, it has been easy for Washington to bolster support for its economic aid packages to Colombia to fight against cocaine production. But is this money solely intended to fight a war against drugs? And has it done so in the past?
According to a March 2000 article in the Guardian Weekly, most of the money sent so far has found its way into the hands of paramilitary groups. Paramilitary groups are secretive, vigilante-type death squads which maintain close ties to Colombia’s official military forces without considering themselves bound by Colombia’s laws. Their targets range from poor farmers to prostitutes and from drug dealers to suspected members of Colombia’s guerrilla organizations, to judges, lawyers and journalists who they deem unsympathetic. Ties have also been shown to Colombia’s current president, Andres Pastrana. The Guardian reports that paramilitary groups are responsible for 70% of the great number of human rights violations in Colombia.
In a March 29, 2000 editorial, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins cites one example of these violations. "The Colombian army traditionally demands a high number of enemy casualties from officers who want promotion," she explains. "So the paramilitaries bring dead civilians to army barracks in exchange for weapons. The officers dress the corpses in camouflage and claim they were guerrillas killed in battle."
In addition to cocaine production, Colombia’s primary export, according to media critic Norman Solomon, is oil. The US controls more than half of Colombia’s foreign exports, with international oil giants Texaco, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum heavily invested in Colombia. So what is the connection between a foreign aid package aimed at fighting drugs with securing oil-production in Colombia?
Current U.S. Vice President Al Gore owns as much as half a million dollars worth of stock in Occidental Petroleum. When his father, Al Gore Sr., lost his senate seat in 1970, Armand Hammer, CEO of Occidental, made him president of Island Creek Coal (a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum). This long-standing relationship between the Gore family and the oil giant has led to gross human rights violations.
According to a February article in Workers World, American oil companies such as Occidental Petroleum have been responsible for the eradication of the native U’wa people in the oil-rich highlands of Colombia, so that an estimated 1.5 billion barrels of oil can be exported.
Any efforts to highlight these connections between the paramilitary, the oil industry and Washington are silenced. Colombian journalists who try to expose the corruption of their government – or criticize the drug lords -- face dire consequences. According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Colombian journalists face death-threats, bombings and kidnappings by both the government and the paramilitary groups, as well as by the drug sector. But journalists are not the only targets. On the average, 11 politically related murders occur daily. Furthermore, according to Solomon, out of a population of 37 million people, 35,000 are assassinated each year.
Because of the obvious conflict of interest that the connections between Al Gore and the oil industry presents, securing the oil interests in Columbia has doubtlessly proven to be one of the underlying reasons for the foreign aid to Colombia.
Colombia currently has a 20% unemployment rate. Most Colombians live in poverty due to the actions of the government and the paramilitary groups. According to Solomon, the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies keep hundreds of advisors in Colombia. The US knows that its money is going to fund militarized repression that is aimed largely at popular organizations, labor unions and the poor.
There are two sad ironies of these events in Colombia. One is the fact that the Colombian government is extremely sensitive to negative press in the US. Solomon states that, "General Rito Del Rio angrily denounced a World Wide Web site operated by the Colombia Support Network based in Madison, Wisconsin." The site supplies information on human rights violations in Colombia. If the media frequently exposed the corruption in Colombia, some of the atrocities might be prevented.
The second irony is the fact that Al Gore has received over a million dollars in royalties from his eco-friendly book, Earth in the Balance, while at the same time maintaining stock in a company that is eradicating indigenous people.
The real losers in this anti-drug war are the general populations of Colombia and the United States, who remain in the dark as to the connections between the oil-industry, politicians and the Colombian military and paramilitary.
The media, government and advertising prop up the war against drugs as a crusade to protect human rights. But as Colombia becomes the third largest recipient in the world of US foreign aid, human rights are likely to take a back seat to the geopolitical concerns of the United States. The realities of current US foreign policy in every major oil-producing country in the world lend credence to the fact that the exploitation of natural resources takes precedence over human rights at home and abroad.
For more information, visit the Rainforest Action Networks website: www.rain.org, which has links to various news sources.
DEADLINE TO SUBMIT ARTICLES TO CONNECTIONS.
Tenth of each month. Submit peace, justice and environmentally friendly event notices to P.O. Box 134, Modesto, CA, 95353, or call 522-4967 or 575-4299, or email to costello@ainet.com. Free listings subject to space, availability and editing.
