By CONN HALLINAN - Counterpunch

There are lots of places in the world where you need to watch your step. You don’t want to be a Sunni in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad (or vice versa). It’s probably not smart to speak Tamal in southern Sri Lanka. You might want to keep being a Muslim under wraps in parts of Mindanao. But most of all you don’t want to be a trade unionist in the U.S.’s one remaining ally in South America, Colombia.

Dawn Paley

The International Criminal Court is sending Argentine attorney Luís Moreno to Colombia to investigate the extradition of paramilitary bosses from Colombia to the US.

By Augusto Bohórque - July 06, 2008

Canada...negotiated with a country with one of the world's worst human rights record; violence has been perpetrated against human rights defenders, members of opposition political parties and social movements, trade unionists, students, rural peasants and indigenous peoples who are opposed to an illegitimate regime and its policies. Today, Uribe is at war with everyone opposed to him, who he has conveniently labeled as 'terrorists'...[T]he supposed 'good name' of Canada on the world stage is being manipulated to push particular readings of development and democracy. What do they look like? Well, they are no different than those exported by the United States.

By Justin Podur - July, 03 2008

[Colombian President] Uribe was completely confident in his own popularity...before Ingrid Betancourt was freed in an operation by his army...Now, whether FARC continues on its path of mistakes and moral failures or whether it releases its hostages and comes to the negotiating table, Uribe will benefit politically. The idea that his regime is based on purchased votes, paramilitary violence, selling the country's assets to multinationals, will be lost in tales of the heroism of an operation that bloodlessly saved an innocent and long-suffering hostage.

By La Chiva - Z Net

On the evening of Thursday, June 26, Uribe called a rushed press conference in reaction to the decision by Colombia's Supreme Court on the case of Yidis Medina: a guilty verdict. The court found that Medina did in fact cast her vote in exchange for political favours. She will spend 3½ years under house arrest for accepting bribes from the president...The president responded...that the justices who questioned the re-election process are doing the bidding of terrorists...On July 3rd, social movements and trade unions in Colombia will hold a rally in Bogota against the illegitimate regime and in defense of the Colombian courts.

By Dawn Paley - July, 02 2008

Will Canadians stand by and allow the Harper government to ratify a Free Trade agreement with Colombia, where 24 unionists were killed and four disappeared in the first 4 months of 2008, so that Canadian mining and oil companies can make more money? Or will Canadians stand up in defence of life and speak out against these agreements, negotiated with one of the most repressive regimes in the hemisphere and in their names but without their consent?

Todd Gordon looks at the new Canada-Colombia free trade deal, including the claim that it will strengthen labour rights in a country renowned for violence against activists.

South American news agencies are reporting that the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia could be signed this week in Bogotá.

Information from Colombian-seized FARC-EP files appears to be fake.

Call it another salvo in Bush v. Chavez with Ecuador's Raphael Correa as a secondary target and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe as a proxy aggressor.

by Cory Fischer-Hoffman - Upside Down World

...[W]hile Colombia has attacked Ecuador, provoking a collapse in diplomatic relations and placing the region at risk of a war, the headlines in the United States read: “Chávez sends forces to Colombia’s border.” This is a calculated attempt to create the image of Venezuela as the aggressor in the conflict, when the clear aggressor is the United States, who trains and funds the Colombian Army, not only in counter-insurgency and terror but now as an imperialist army, who has violated the sovereignty of its neighbor nation and created grave tensions within the region.

Some four million people in Colombia have been displaced, the majority of them by paramilitary groups. These...

By Bill Van Auken

7 March 2008

Nearly a week after Colombia’s cross-border raid against
an encampment of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)
guerrilla movement in neighboring Ecuador, Latin America continues
to confront its worst regional diplomatic and military crisis
in decades. The US government and mass media have weighed in with
unsolicited judgments and advice, attributing the tense standoff
between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela to the threat of terrorism
to Colombia, the complicity in terrorism on the part of Venezuela
and overheated animosities between the respective heads of state
of these three countries.

By JAMES J. BRITTAIN and R. JAMES SACOUMAN - March 4, 2008

After years of increased violations of civilian human rights, the ongoing suppression of trade-unionism, assassinations of left-of-centre activists and politicians, and a political reality that has witnessed 75 governors, mayors, and Congressional politicians alleged or found guilty of having direct links to the paramilitary...the Colombian state has deemed it necessary to illegally encroach upon those nations that deviate from their ideological model of political and economic centralization...[A]fter the actions realized on 1 March, 2008 it is clear that the Colombian state, with the full backing of the United States, will impose its own ideological goals and values, through force...

[Also...] A Response to the Muder of Raúl Reyes in Ecuador
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America by James J Brittain and R. James Sacouman (CounterPunch)

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) issued a communique, subsequent to the freeing of Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzales, in which they remark that they have given the first encouraging step "that invites to think on the possibility of peace in Colombia". (Sigue original en español)

Chavez asks to clear Colombia's rebels from terrorist lists.