So, they win an award. The public relations of the right-wing agenda in Colombia. What agenda? The neo-liberal economic model, the 1%-99% story that been prevalent over the last generation. Its the primacy of business.Open the highway to the Amazon, a little strip mining, a little Bank of Nova Scotia takeover to grub the Canuck mining and oil cash;the usual. Individual’s exisingt to serve the “market” and not the contrary. Yes, but in Colombia, the benefits will trickle down to everyone. Right. Its a great little swindle. The FARC drives the peasants off their land….The FARC is then defeated, Agro-Industrial-export business steps in. The cheap labor hinterland for the north. This isn’t ordinary capitalism, its uncontested, unregulated acting like NGO’s in foreign jurisdictions.Disturbingly, local academia,media and politicians all sing its praises.
DEMOBILISING TERRORISTS:
Program of Humanitarian Attention to the Demobilised, by Lowe-SSP3-‘FARC Operation Christmas Campaign’ (Awarded: Grand Prix, Best International paper, Best Social Value paper, and a Gold award) This campaign demonstrates how Colombia successfully demobilised members of the oldest guerrilla group in the world, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), which commits a terrorist act on average once every three days. Insight revealed that Christmas is the most sensitive period for this group….
---Colombia's 60-year struggle against the world's oldest guerrilla group, FARC, which commits a terrorist act once every 3 days. We were asked to create an idea to demobilise them. Inviting them to rediscover their lives and their freedom. Going back to basics and conducting interviews with 200 ex-guerrillas revealed a powerful insight—that Christmas time is the most sensitive period for guerrillas. The interviews also reinforced how difficult it would be to communicate with a target audience who in the main are beyond the reach of conventional media.--- Read More:http://www.jaychiatawards.com/winners2011/gold_lowe_pahd.html
…Consequently ‘Operation Christmas’ was created; two anti-guerrilla contingents and two Black Hawk helicopters travelled into the jungle to cover trees with 2,000 LED lights, alongside banners exhorting the guerrillas to lay down their arms. The message successfully encouraged 331 FARC members to demobilise and re-enter society. The year-on-year reduction in guerrilla numbers is estimated to return over £2.3m to Colombian government through tax receipts, a £11.35 ROMI, and the benefits to Colombian society and economy through a reduction in FARC’s illegal ‘fundraising’ is estimated to be £1m in the first year.
Said Lord Black of Brentwood, Executive Director, Telegraph Media Group and Chairman of Judges for the 2011 IPA Effectiveness Awards: “The judges were all in agreement that this case was something special. The profound insight and creative execution should be hailed as an inspiration for the industry. It is a definitive winner for the Grand Prix.” Read More:http://www.istockanalyst.com/business/news/5514320/effective-advertising-campaigns-save-livesa
---An investigation has been launched into Piedad Cordoba, one of the most vocal opposition leaders, after claims she gave advice to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It was sparked after files were found on the computers of FARC spokesman Paul Reyes, who was killed in 2008 in military attack on Colombian rebels in neighbouring Ecuador. Once a powerful force that kidnapped and bombed at will, FARC has been driven back into remote mountains and jungles by the U.S.-backed military campaign. Insurgents are now deeply engaged in cocaine trafficking. Inspector General Alejandro Ordonez said: 'The senator... exceeded the duties authorised by the government to negotiate humanitarian exchanges.' Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315832/Colombian-senator-Piedad-Cordoba-banned-public-office-FARC-claims.html#ixzz1cnS8CAN8
ADDENDUM:
That is a point exactly 1.85 kilometres on the Ecuadorian side of the border with Colombia.
Such an encroachment of sovereign territory is several hundred metres outside of the usual lassitude accepted between states who share those legally “precise borders” with practically hard to define frontier areas. I would direct readers doubtful of such to examine in the footnotes a facsimile copy of a letter sent from the Venezuelan government to the Colombian government protesting the incursion of 60 Colombian soldiers on May 16, 2008 in Sector Banks Paez Municipality of Apure state at coordinates: 7º 2′ 12,5″ N, 72º 2′ 6,4″ W or a mere 800 metres on the wrong side of the border. (*i)…
----Chomsky:Since Plan Columbia came in, atrocities have increased, the struggles were militarized, the numbers of people who have been murdered have increased, the number of Union activists murdered has increased sharply, in fact, Columbia - I forget the numbers - has a large percentage of the worlds' union activists murdered. The number of people who have been driven out of their land has increased, more people are driven into the slums, I have some figures about it in the Hegemony or Survival book. You're always a year behind in statistics. Another effect is that it turned FARC into just another paramilitary force, I mean, whatever FARC had been, it did grow out of peasants' concerns and demands and had a kind of political program that had some meaning - that all has gone. Now, it's just another terrorist force preying on the peasants. So, it did succeed in militarizing the conflict. Not very good for Columbians. I was down there in Southern Columbia about a year ago. They are just afraid of talking about it, peasants who have been driven out of the land by these chemical warfare programs. They are just as afraid of the FARC as they are of the paramilitaries at this point. Read More:http://www.zcommunications.org/interview-with-noam-ch
y-by-noam-chomsky image:http://tokyospring.blogspot.com/2011/06/civilized-barbarian.html…Once the Colombian security services landed at that point 1.85km inside Ecuador on the 1st of March, 2008 they then wasted no time in giving journalists and the more profitable lobby of lawyers something to read and write about. Meaning – they killed a whole bunch of people in tents, amongst who was a man whose birth certificate said he was Edgar Devia Silva but who was and is better known to the underground jungle crew of global retro-revolution as “Raul Reyes”, the number 2 of FARC. In addition to being “well in” with the then leadership of FARC of decades on account of in-law bedding arrangements, Raul Reyes managed to combine it seems an extraordinary interest in personal computers with the pressures one would expect from being the interlocutor for the last credible proposal of a peace process between FARC and the Colombian state.
Indeed such was the “A-list” category of Raul Reyes that on the day the Colombians technically invaded Ecuador to kill him he was the covert point of contact between FARC and the republic of France (as led by Celia Bruni and Nik Sarkozy) for the lengthy chats about Ingrid Betancourt’s release. As no doubt most media watchers remember the eventual movie rights which would ensue from the expected release of Ingrid Betancourt and her stories of love, betrayal, espionage, politics & irony through all those years in jungle captivity were estimated to rival the box office takings of Tarzan.
Before however, we re-examine the charades and games which led up to and followed the release of Ingrid Betancourt I would like to explain more about the importance of Raul Reyes. Read More:http://www.indymedia.ie/article/93553
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Chomsky:The Columbia Plan intensified the war and, in reaction to it, FARC became more of a military force and dropped their social program. That is a pretty natural reaction when you come under military attack. They did come under harsher military attack. They were driven out of some of the areas that they controlled, and they responded to it by becoming more of a militant terrorist force and you could see the changes. By now, they barely have a social program, I don’t think the peasants and human rights activists that were kind of sympathetic to them see them any longer as a social political force. ELN, maybe, likely, but they are a pretty marginal group. There is now an effort going on to integrate the paramilitaries into the society which means to sort of formalize their role as enforcers. How that will go, I don’t know.
It’s extremely hard to say anything about public opinion in Columbia because they take polls, but they are totally meaningless. The polls are mostly taken by telephone – three quarters of the population never heard of a telephone. This is one of the reasons why they were so surprised at the last election. Even in Bogota they got the predictions all wrong. That’s kind of what happened in India, they just don’t know what most of the population is thinking because they’re kind of out of the wealthy system. It just looks like an intensification of every ugly feature there. As for the effects on cocaine production – which is irrelevant anyway – but, it appears to have no effect. The way to measure the cocaine production is to look at the price in New York and London: It is going down. I just read in England when I was there a couple of days ago that cocaine prices are at about the lowest level they have been in recent memory, which means, the production is soaring. You drive it out one place and then to somewhere else. But the whole idea of fighting drugs this way is grotesque anyway. But even if you somehow accept it, it probably has little or no effects. It does have the effect to drive peasants off their lands. You drive them off the land, the mining company comes in, they strip-mine the mountains, agro-business comes in, produces export crops, the usual business. Read More:http://www.zcommunications.org/interview-with-noam-chomsky-by-noam-chomsky
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