Colombia's Uribe - a "Light unto the Nations"

Colombian ex-Pres Alvaro Uribe has been appointed Vice Chair to the U.N.’s four-member international committee investigating the Israeli commando attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which nine people were killed in international waters. The other three members are an Israeli, a Turk, and a former president of New Zealand.

Interesting choice. Colombia is the US cats paw in South America in the same way Israel is in the Mid East.

On the plus side : Uribe has lots of previous experience with false positives , the practice of murdering innocents and then dressing them up as enemies of the state for a US bounty, and he has good familiarity with Israeli military equipment, commandos and espionage techniques.

On the minus side : May need time off to defend himself at the International Criminal Court over those same "false positives", along with his presidential successor Santos, who was Minister of Defense at the time of the murders.

In 2007, the American Jewish Committee presented Uribe with its “Light unto the Nations” Award: “President Uribe is a staunch ally of the United States, a good friend of Israel and the Jewish people…,” said AJC President E. Robert Goodkind, who presented the award at AJC’s Annual Dinner, held at the National Building Museum in Washington.”
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Friday night Canada-Colombia FTA news dump

(Monday night update below)

On Thursday, the US Dept. of Defense issued a presser from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates praising Colombia as an "exporter of security" and "a model for the region" in its "crackdown against a leftist insurgency".

Touting the U.S.-Colombian Defense Cooperation Agreement under which the US operates seven of Colombia's military bases, Gates called for a renewal of efforts to pass a US-Colombia free trade agreement, "noting that he talked with National Security Advisor James L. Jones Jr. before his trip here about renewing that effort".

Because, as I posted over at The Galloping Beaver on Thursday night, any discussion of a free trade investment agreement naturally originates with the Defense Dept and the National Security Advisor, so we can take Gates' call for renewed strategic meddling in South America as Canada's midwifing marching orders.

And voilà ... right on schedule ...
On Friday afternoon, as not noted in any of our national media, Con House Leader Jay Hill moved to curtail any further debate of Bill C-2, the Canada-Colombia FTA, before it passes second reading and goes back to committee where a combined LibCon effort will likely pass it .

Lib Ralph Goodale noted the motion was "a bit of a surprise on a Friday afternoon" - indeed it was not mentioned in the daily Order Papers - and Lib Dennis Lee fretted about process, but other than that, no Liberals spoke against it, leaving the Bloc and NDP to point out for the umpteenth time what a completely crap bill it is. Unsurprisingly, Hill's motion passed and Peter Van Loan advised the last day for debate on C-2 will be today.

In Sept 2009 Scott Brison said in the House :

"If we isolate Colombia in the Andean region and leave Colombia exposed and vulnerable to the ideological attacks of Chavez's Venezuela, we will be allowing evil to flourish."

Last month in an effort to stave off criticism for supporting a free trade investment agreement with the country with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, Brison brokered a deal with Colombian President Uribe at Davos wherein Canada and Colombia will each conduct their own annual human rights assessments, handily circumventing the recommendation by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on International Trade that an independent human rights impact assessment must be done before the agreement is considered.
Yes, their own human rights assessments; their own environmental assessments too.

I don't have a *lol* loud enough for the concept of Uribe and Co. being forced to do their own assessments - something Uribe does yearly already - but the Cons lapped it up, the Libs are happy to have been provided with a fig leaf, and the media are congratulating them both for "making parliament work".

"Making parliament work" apparently means the Cons killing debate on a crap bill after they get a sufficient number of the Libs onside.

Write those Libs before today's vote !

Dear Honourable Members:

In February 2008 Colombian MP Daniel García-Peña appeared before you to explain that the agreement as written would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia."

"Canadian companies would be attracted to Colombia for all the wrong reasons, namely to take advantage of the country's weak labour, human rights and environmental laws.
Many companies will come to bypass the laws Canada has and take advantage of Colombian standards, which are much lower. In many ways [this could] promote the exploitation of workers."

Furthermore, Mr. García-Peña said, a trade deal could destroy the livelihoods of many small Colombian farmers by flooding the market with subsidized agricultural imports.
"The small peasant farmer would be unable to compete with the cheap imports of food," he said. "[This] would wipe them out."

Those who would benefit are the large agro-businesses in Colombia that would buy up the land of destitute farmers for the production of biodiesel, palm oil and beef for export.
Worst of all, Mr. García-Peña added, these large agro-businesses have ties to the paramilitary squads at the heart of the ongoing rights abuses and violence in the South American country.

According to the Washington Post, the millions of dollars in US aid funnelled into Colombia go to the wealthy landowners to grow oil-producing palm groves : "four families received most of the $10 million provided in 2007 and 2008".

45 trade union leaders were killed last year in addition to thousands of indigenous people pushed off their land for mining interests.

And for what?
According to Glen Hodgson, VP and chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada :
"Our annual trade with Colombia is about the same level as that with South Dakota and is actually smaller than that with Delaware or Rhode Island. Compared to other markets much closer, Colombia is not really a major player. 80% of Colombia’s imports to Canada are actually duty free already."

I urge you to vote against the investors rights bill C-2 today.

Thank you.

Monday night update. Canada-Colombia FTA passes 183 to 78
37 Libs voted with the Cons in favour; Bloc and NDP against.
Turns out the media pundits were right about Libs and Cons working happily together to secure agribiz dumping and investment rights for Canadian companies to exploit Colombia.

In the House today, Liberals Bob Rae, Scott Simms, Scott Brison, Martha Hall Findlay, Paul Szabo, Justin Trudeau, and Robert Oliphant joined the Cons in praising Uribe's remarkable progress in reducing poverty by 1% per year while simultaneusly increasing the gap between rich and poor. "We'll be helping!" said the lovely Hall Findlay. "Windows, not walls!"

No Libs voted against the bill, although some abstained. However the debate did gave Lib Scott Brison the opportunity to bring up Hugo Chavez a few more times so that he and Con MP Ed Fast, the Chair of the Justice and Human Rights Committee, could grill NDP's Olivia Chow on why she had never publicly denounced Chavez. I think I liked Brison better when he was a Con.

The bill now heads off to committee for rubberstamping by the 7 out of 12 committee members who already voted in favour of it today.

Walk of Shame - Liberals who voted with the Cons on C-2, the Canada Colombia FTA : Ignatieff, Dion, Rae, Bagnell, Brison, Bagnell, Belanger, Crombie, Cuzner, Dryden, Kirsty Duncan, Easter, Eyking, Fry, Garneau, Goodale, Holland, Hall Findlay, LeBlanc, MacAuley, McCallum, McGuinty, John McKay, Mendes, Shawn Murphy, Murray, Oliphant, Proulx, Ratansi, Regan, Rota, Russell, and Trudeau.
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Canada Colombia Free Trade Agreement - It's ba-a-ack

First some twaddle from Steve, in which he tries to spin signing an agreement with the criminal regime with the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere as striking a blow against "protectionism" :

PM calls on Parliament to pass Colombia free-trade pact

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on Parliament to pass Canada's free-trade agreement with Colombia, saying Wednesday it would "send a clear message" to Washington and around the world about the risks of protectionism.

He said Buy America sentiment growing in the U.S. Congress, as well as some states and municipalities south of the border, is of particular concern to Canada.

"It is the right thing to do for Canada, to do for Colombia, and the right thing to do for the global economy," he told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday alongside Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Never mind that Colombia Senator Robeldo told the International Trade Committee on March 26 of this year that signing the CanCol FTA will effectively "absolve, pardon, and reward" Uribe for his support of human rights abuses and will condemn Colombia to even lower labour standards than they already have in order to compete with influx of subsidized Canadian foodstuffs, resulting in local farmers being unable to compete and losing their land.

Instead, via Canuck Media Monitor, a little Canada-Colombia history from Yves Engler's The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy :

"In 1997, Ottawa initiated a re-write of Colombia's mining code.
CIDA worked on it with a Colombian law firm and the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI). The proposals became law in 2001 and offered a familiar list of goodies to mining corporations: the weakening of environmental and labor laws, reduced royalties paid to the government, tax exemptions, and added years to mining concessions.

In the resource sector, the link between profiteering and massive human rights abuses, especially forced displacement, is very obvious. Colombia's population of internally displaced persons (3 million as of 2008) is second only to that of Sudan. Engler described how two Canadian companies, BFC Construction and Agra-Monenco, contributed to human rights violations in northeastern Colombia:

"With $18.2 million from EDC [Export Development Canada] the companies' Urra dam submerged over 7,400 hectares, including old-growth forest as well as thelands and homes of 411 families, all of whom were without individual legal land titles, only having collective indigenous land rights.
About 2,800 people were forcibly resettled to make way for the Canadian companies' project and a further 70,000 people were directly impacted.
Predictably the community resisted the dam. According to Amnesty International, six indigenous people protesting the project were killed and ten additional members of the community were disappeared by paramilitary and guerrilla forces."

Well, at least Colombia can't be accused of a history of indulging in "protectionism".
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Take it to Iggy tomorrow at Canada Place

Via the Canada-Colombia Project
The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement can only pass with Liberal support. The NDP and Bloc are already opposed.
Take it to Iggy tomorrow at Canada Place at noon.

"We the undersigned are deeply concerned that Canada would abandon its values and its support of internationally recognized human rights in order to gain economic advantage for its companies at the expense of millions of displaced, impoverished Colombians."

Signed by Maude Barlow, Stephen Lewis, Ed Broadbent, Claudette Carbonneau, Alex Neve, Paul Moist, Rev. Bill Phipps, Farley Mowat, Sarah Polley, Naomi Klein, Council of Canadians, Greenpeace, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec, the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, the B.C. Teachers' Federation, Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, the National Union of Public and General Employees and many more. h/t Rabble
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Appearing before the International Trade Committee on March 26 of this year, Colombia Senator Robeldo was absolutely scathing re the Canada-Colombia FTA :

~Approval of the CanCol FTA will effectively "absolve, pardon, and reward" Uribe for his support of human rights abuses.
~It will condemn Colombia to poverty and result in even lower labour standards than they already have in order to compete with influx of subsidized Canadian foodstuffs. Local farmers will not be able to compete and will lose their land.
~Another 49 assassinations last year. More paramilitary orgs now, not fewer.

Top ten reasons why Canada should cancel Harper's "free trade" deal with Colombia

Canada steps into the void ...
Bowling for Colombians
How much for the little girl?
A licence to kill
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Update : A couple of hundred of us I would guess at the rally on Friday. Many good speakers including NDP trade critic Peter Julian who has been a very effective critic of this FTA on the trade committee.
Dr. Dawg was inside the convention. Hi Dr. Dawg!
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The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement - A licence to kill

I'm trying to imagine how well it would go down in Canada if we passed a law providing for a token fine to be paid - on a purely voluntary basis -whenever the government combined with Canadian corporations to murder union workers. Not too well I think.

So why are we again considering promoting this behavior from the over 20 Canadian mining and oil and gas operations already in Columbia, including Nexen, Enbridge, Petrominerales, Coalcorp and Vancouver's B2Gold?


In July 2007 Steve stood next to President Uribe of Colombia and proclaimed it would be "ridiculous" to refuse to enter a free trade agreement with Columbia based on the latter's abysmal human rights record - a record which is even worse in 2008 than it was in 2007.

In November 2008 Steve and Uribe shook hands on the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Coincidentally this was the same month the world heard about high-ranking Colombian army officers involved in “false positives” - the execution and dressing up of civilians as FARC guerrillas and claiming they were killed in combat in order to collect a body count bonus.

On March 26, 2009, the Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement passed first reading in the House as Bill C-23.



Some notes from the excellent MAKING A BAD SITUATION WORSE -
AN ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT OF THE CANADA-COLOMBIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

Canadian Council for International Co-operation
Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers
Canadian Labour Congress
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

• Extrajudicial executions by security forces : 2007 - 330; 2004 to 2006 - 220; 2003 - 130 ; 2002 - 100.


• 270,675 people have been forced to flee from their homes in the first quarter of 2008 - the highest rate of internal displacement since 1987


• 1,015 people have disappeared over the past year – more than four times the total for 2007 and a 1300% increase over 2005. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, members of the country’s armed forces are suspects in more than 90% of the cases it is investigating.


• Fewer than 1% of Colombian workers enjoy the right to collective bargaining, hampered by the introduction of anti-union legislation
• Over 60% of the more than 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia have been forced from their homes and lands in areas of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance.
• As of October 2008, more than 60 parliamentarians – most of whom are part of President Uribe's governing coalition in Congress… were under formal or preliminary investigation for their suspected links to paramilitary groups..., several have either pleaded guilty or have been found guilty of association with paramilitary groups, electoral fraud, murder, and the organizing, arming and financing of paramilitary groups.”

In Feb. 2008, Daniel García-Peña, VP of the leftist opposition party in Colombia came to Canada and explained why a free trade agreement would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia." :

"Canadian companies would be attracted to Colombia for all the wrong reasons, namely to take advantage of the country's weak labour, human rights and environmental laws. Many companies will come to bypass the laws Canada has and take advantage of Colombian standards, which are much lower. In many ways [this could] promote the exploitation of workers."
Furthermore, Mr. García-Peña says, a trade deal could destroy the livelihoods of many small Colombian farmers by flooding the market with subsidized agricultural imports. "The small peasant farmer would be unable to compete with the cheap imports of food," he says. "[This] would wipe them out."
Those who would benefit, he says, are the large agro-businesses in Colombia that would buy up the land of destitute farmers for the production of biodiesel, palm oil and beef for export.
Worst of all, Mr. García-Peña adds, these large agro-businesses have ties to the paramilitary squads at the heart of the ongoing rights abuses and violence in the South American country."

Please join NDP MP Peter Julian in sending Michael Ignatieff a note asking him to do some credit to his former reputation as a human rights activist : IgnatM@parl.gc.ca
Top Ten Reasons Why Canada Should Cancel Harper's "Free Trade" Deal With Colombia.
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The Three Amigos shovel some PR for Uribe

in advance of news of his cousin's arrest.
Seems my question on Tuesday night about why each of the three amigos mounted such a stirring and seemingly completely off-topic defence of Colombia's President Uribe in their joint press conference was answered in the following day's news :

WaPo : Cousin of Colombian President Arrested in Death Squad Probe

"Authorities on Tuesday arrested former senator Mario Uribe, a cousin and close ally of President Alvaro Uribe, for alleged ties to death squads in a widening inquiry that has implicated nearly a quarter of Colombia's Congress.
The arrest of the former senator, who built a formidable political movement that helped his cousin win the presidency in 2002, comes during an institutional crisis that has tarnished a country closely allied with the United States."

AFP : Colombia's Uribe under probe over 1997 massacre

"Colombian President Alvaro Uribe denied Wednesday charges he helped plan a 1997 massacre by right-wing paramilitaries, while confirming that his role was being examined in an official investigation."

At their Summit presser, Bush, echoed by Harper, proclaimed : "we got no better friend in South America than President Uribe."

So The Three Amigos presumably already knew about the arrest and thought they'd shovel a little PR manure for the Uribe government before the rest of us heard about it.

Linda Carlsen of the Americas Program, Center for International Policy, also writing before news of the Uribe arrests broke, dissects "the prominence of this issue in the official statements" here:

"Again the summit is being used to advance the failing Bush administration domestic agenda.
Considering again that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is not an issue in Mexico, the geopolitical strategy of building alliances among rightwing governments in the hemisphere to confront the growing number of leftwing governments becomes clear. This ideological taking sides has no place in a trilateral summit dedicated to North American integration issues and panders to the Bush agenda."

The whole article is an excellent read :
Dissecting the North American Summit Joint Statement: Bush's Last Stand

Bowling for Colombians

Daniel García-Peña, VP of the leftist opposition party in Colombia, explains in the simplest possible terms why a free trade agreement would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia." :

"Canadian companies would be attracted to Colombia for all the wrong reasons, namely to take advantage of the country's weak labour, human rights and environmental laws.
Many companies will come to bypass the laws Canada has and take advantage of Colombian standards, which are much lower. In many ways [this could] promote the exploitation of workers."

Furthermore, Mr. García-Peña says, a trade deal could destroy the livelihoods of many small Colombian farmers by flooding the market with subsidized agricultural imports. "The small peasant farmer would be unable to compete with the cheap imports of food," he says. "[This] would wipe them out."
Those who would benefit, he says, are the large agro-businesses in Colombia that would buy up the land of destitute farmers for the production of biodiesel, palm oil and beef for export.

Worst of all, Mr. García-Peña adds, these large agro-businesses have ties to the paramilitary squads at the heart of the ongoing rights abuses and violence in the South American country."

By "abuses and violence", Mr. Garcia-Pena is undoubtedly referring to the Uribe-backed public beheadings of trade unionists, and the murder of 800 union workers, teachers and journalists over the past six years.

US Congressman Michael Michaud, D. Maine, was in Ottawa on Wednesday to shore up opposition against the free trade deal with Colombia. He explained it simply too :
"Once you have a trade deal done, there is no incentive to move forward on human rights," he said.

Anyone having trouble with the reasoning here?

Harper visited Colombia in July 2007 to midwife this Bush-surrogate trade deal. There, with President Uribe at his side, he explained his position :
"When we see a country like Colombia that has decided to address its social, political and economic problems in an integrated way, that wants to embrace democracy and human rights, then we say, 'We're in,' he said."
"We are not going to say fix all your social, political and human rights problems and only then will we engage in trade relations with you.
"That's a ridiculous position," Harper said.

Sigh.

Canada steps into the void...

Canada steps into the void of "Mr Harper's new neighbourhood", the country with the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere.

Reuters : Canada steps into the void left by U.S.-Columbia rift

"Canada started trade talks with Colombia on Monday and pledged full support for President Alvaro Uribe, who has seen his key bilateral relationship with the United States bog down in a scandal over human rights.

In a thinly veiled slap at U.S. congressional Democrats who oppose a trade deal with Colombia due to rights concerns, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper used a trip to Bogota to present himself as a steadier ally.

"We are not going to say fix all your social, political and human rights problems and only then will we engage in trade relations with you. That's a ridiculous position," Harper said in a media conference with Uribe at his side."

This "ridiculous position" is in sharp contrast to Harper's earlier celebrated stand on "not trading human rights for the almighty dollar".
But that was about China. Uribe, however, is a rightwing Conservative.

"Uribe's international standing has been damaged by a scandal in which some of his closest political allies are in jail awaiting trial for helping paramilitary death squads.

But Harper, in the first state visit by a Canadian leader to Colombia, backed Uribe's efforts at ending the country's decades-old guerrilla war and fostering economic growth.

"When we see a country like Colombia that has decided to address its social, political and economic problems in an integrated way, that wants to embrace democracy and human rights, then we say, 'We're in,' he said."

Globe&Mail : "It's an exploratory trip to what might be called "Mister Harper's new neighbourhood."

"We're doing it because we believe it's our neighbourhood," a senior Canadian official said yesterday, echoing Mr. Harper's statement last month at the G8.

Michael Shifter, policy vice-president at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, who recently visited Ottawa :

"What Canada can offer is that it's close to the United States but is not the United States," he said. "The United States has so much baggage in Latin America, but Canada escapes that. This is a hemisphere where there is a lot of mistrust and a lot of disarray, and the U.S. is very handicapped to do anything about it."

But that's ok, because Harper is more than willing to carry that baggage for them :

Reuters : "Colombia has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to crack down on the cocaine trade.
Democrats in control of the U.S. Congress are toughening conditions on that aid and oppose a trade pact due in part to the fact that the Andean country leads the world in labor murders.Uribe's former state security chief is accused of providing a death list of trade union leaders to paramilitary hit men."

72 union leaders assassinated so far in fact.
But hey, let's not get "ridiculous" here - "We're in!". Yeah Canada!

Reuters : Harper's visit comes as many Colombians feel betrayed by the United States for not backing the trade pact.
"This gives Canada an opportunity to come in and assure Colombia that it is a loyal ally," said Michael Shifter of Washington-based think-tank Inter-American Dialogue."
[You again!]

Yes, that's us - a loyal ally and US baggage carrier, stepping into the void ...