Civil war or a war on drugs?
Media criticism of coverage of
Plan Columbia

     Vision Tv media critic, Barry Zwicker, conducted an interview recently with Kathy Price of the Inter-Church Committee for Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA). This page on Toronto.com describes the ICCHRLA as follows:

"Who's there to remind the Canadian government of the moral and ethical cost of its trade agendas in the Americas? ICCHRLA (pronounced icker-law) is. The committee promotes human rights and social justice in solidarity with Canadian and Latin American partner churches, human rights groups and grassroots organizations. ICCHRLA says: "This mission arises from a profound belief, as Christians, that the Gospel calls us to struggle together with the poor and the oppressed to transform policies, practices and regimes that undermine or destroy human lives." Its voice is heard at international forums as well as in Ottawa and through the Canadian church network. ICCHRLA publishes the "Alerta" newsletter five times a year, as well as special reports."

     The committee is in the process of producing a truly shocking video on the situation on the ground in Columbia, and the 7 minute segment featured a number of clips from this work in progress. (When the video is complete I will remember to supply more information here.)

     The obvious inequality in the division of wealth and the very stuff of life itself evident in Columbian society is characteristic of the social structures in place throughout Latin American nations, and in other nations around the world plagued with poverty and gross social injustice, and the uprising and revolutionary wars this sort of social injustice fuels is responsble for both the civil wars that flare up frequently in these regions, and for repeated American intervention particular in Latin America over the last century. In the past it was clearly understood and admitted that the intervention was against communist revolutionaries, but in the conflict in Columbia the intervention is disguised as a 'war on drugs'. It is the lack of discussion of the 40 year civil war that is the object of Zwickers media critique. The conflict is not put into context but is rather misrepresented as a 'drug war'. In fact, as the videos will document, it is peasants, human rights workers, and other activists who are among the targets of the Columbian military, and the purpose of this reign of terror is to simply maintain the power of a tiny elite, as well as their wealth. American intervention in these Latin American conflicts in support of Capitalism (usually said to be in support of 'freedom', the chosen buzz word for this sort of thing) works out in the end to be American intervention in support of a tiny and extremely wealthy elite and ends up propping up the type of inequality and injustice that sparks such anger and such violence as what has been going on in Columbia and throughout Latin American for many decades.

     
Hands tied and shot and widespread poverty in Columbia
(c) Inter-Church Committee for Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA)

     This is a prophetic religious site, and so I do not even pretend to be unbiased about how I feel about the way things get done on this planet. And I am concerned about 'plan Columbia' and more intervention in the poorest nations of the world by the most powerful, and I am a protestor by nature and by profession, and so I lodge a protest on this site. For example, consider the following, when the super rich families, the oligarchs who actually own almost all of Latin America, as one example, well when they are hungry they hunger, and I assume myself that they wipe their backsides when they use the toilet. Someone will have to explain to me why I should support such a corrupt system that rapes the earth for a small minority, and leaves huge majorities in suffering poverty. Concepts such as 'natural justice' and 'equality' mean nothing in this planet, and while in the past religion was used as a tool to bring peasants into obedient compliance to the 'naturally superior' (the 'lords' and 'barons' and so on) it would seem to me that it is about time that this planet left behind its evil past and started becoming more civilized. And what is naturally superior about such obviously ruthless conduct as this type of shocking hoarding? How does one justify inequality and cruel injustice of this sort? (What is so special about the oligarchy, so special that murder must be constantly committed to keep them on the throne?) Only violence can stop people asking such questions, and this is what you will see in the video being produced described above.

     (Note: this is a religious site, so a few relevant quotes from the prophets... "Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you alone are left with ownership of everything in the land.YAHWEH of hosts has sworn in my hearing: "Surely many mansions shall be desolate, large and beautiful mansions, without inhabitant."Isaiah chapter 5 verse 8. "And they shall hide in the caves and crawl under the rocks and into the holes of the ground, to hide themselves from the terror of YAHWEH, and from the glory of YAHWEH's majesty, when YAHWEH rises to terrify the earth. In that day they will throw their silver and gold into the streets, to the moles and to the bats, and they hide in the caverns and under the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs, from before the terror of YAHWEH, to hide themselves from the glory of YAHWEH's majesty, when YAHWEH's rises to terrify the earth. Turn away from these 'powerful' people in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account are they?" Isaiah chapter 2 verse 19