John Lindsay-Poland's blog

This essay of mine was recently included in a collection by the magazine Mother Jones called "Mission Creep: US Military Presence Worldwide."

What impresses about the sprawl of US bases and its reconstitution since 2001 is the lack of accountability. The US military presence overseas serves as an implicit threat of intervention to host countries and neighbors, and so enables the United States to defy international law and other obligations to the global community. The bases are also themselves unaccountable, especially as polluters, purveyors of sexual violence, and sites for torture. For most nations, it is an exercise in frustration to use political, diplomatic, or judicial channels to address the United States' abuses or extralegal demands, because Washington's military stands ready for aggression.

LinkTV's bilingual program "Latin Pulse" produced a 24-minute program on the Colombian hostage rescue, which aired on July 29. I was part of a panel with three others on the program, which starts about half-way in.

You can also watch it and read and a transcript at LinkTV's web site.

It was like a Hollywood picture. Intelligence agents infiltrated the Colombian FARC guerrillas and led them to believe that their commander wanted to move 15 high-profile hostages held by the group, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors. Army commandos posing as representatives of an international nongovernmental group then landed a Russian-made helicopter and picked up the hostages. Then they were free, without a shot being fired.

We celebrate the freedom of these 15 people. They suffered greatly during up to 10 years in captivity, bound in chains in the jungle. The world could identify with their suffering, which was extensively reported.

But absent from the rescue story are many communities threatened by violence from growing right-wing paramilitaries, army killings and guerrillas, and the nearly 4 million others who are internal refugees from the war. Will the international community show interest in their suffering, and in resolving the conflict, now that Betancourt is free?

When I was in Bogota earlier this month continuing research on US military aid, I caught up with Mike Power, a stringer for BBC and Reuters. He had just come back from the Meta region, where he’d interviewed the mother of a 15-year-old boy killed by the army and passed off as a guerrilla. He talked about how he’d stayed up late transcribing the interview, hearing the woman say over and over on his machine “I came home and I was destroyed.” We spoke of the experience of translating and interpreting, how powerful it is when the personal voice of another, someone in grief, comes through you.

The BBC didn’t run his piece, apparently because the mother’s testimony was not sufficiently ‘credible.’ Fortunately, online magaine The First Post has featured this story, and quotes FOR and Amnesty International (see article below). FOR and Amnesty collaborated on a joint report about US support for Colombian army units that have committed extrajudicial killings. You can see it at www.forcolombia.org/Calltoinvestigate

In some towns, the activities of military commands that manage nuclear weapons is a subject of downward glances and furtive conversation. In Omaha, Nebraska, according to Tim Rinne, director of Nebraskans for Peace, it's a matter of celebration. There, Offut Air Force Base house Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the place where George W. Bush landed on September 11 when he was reportedly hiding from suspected attackers.

Tens of thousands of Colombians marched on March 6 in Bogota (see photos by Sarah Koopman) and many other cities to stand with the victims of right-wing paramilitary violence and to protest violence by all armed groups. Solidarity events occurred in New York, Washington, and San Francisco.

Now, in the wake of accusations by a presidential advisor that the activists in Colombia who helped organize these peaceful marches are guerrillas, they are being targeted with paramilitary threats, kidnappings, and even killings.

Lethal attacks on Colombian labor activists also continue. On March 4 in Washington, President Bush called on Congress to approve the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, although Colombia is the most dangerous nation in the world to be a trade unionist. As if in response, in the four days following his statement, four labor leaders in Colombia were murdered.

Two recently released films appear to have a lot in common. “The Brave One,” starring Jodie Foster, and “In the Valley of Elah,” starring Tommie Lee Jones, each feature main characters who lose someone they love to a murder, and on their path of responding to the crime, team up with a police detective. In both, perpetrators record and keep their crimes on cell phones, apparently oblivious to their potential as evidence, or sure of their impunity. But the similarities get thin from there on out.

FOR’s Colombia Program has experienced series of crises and opportunities in the last six weeks – and we want you to know about them and have a chance to respond with your financial and active support.

Back from the US Social Forum in Atlanta, and still with me is something many of us witnessed on the last morning, during the procession of people presenting resolutions and declarations in the Civic Center. It was a long line, and each person had only a minute or 2, facilitated by a couple people on the stage, who would approach a speaker and lightly touch her or him when the time was up. Mostly it was individuals. Two people, both indigenous, came to the mike, the woman spoke, and she was followed by a man, an indigena from Ecuador.