Plan Colombia

by Garry Leech

Over the past five years Colombia has achieved impressive economic growth as foreign investment has increased dramatically. According to most analysts, it is the policies of President Alvaro Uribe that have created the security conditions required by foreign companies to operate in the country. A significant portion of Colombia's economic growth has resulted from investment in the country's extractive sector, reflecting the confidence of foreign investors in the capacity of the Colombian military to safeguard their operations in the country's rural conflict zones. However, analysts who praise the Uribe government for Colobmia's economic growth often ignore the fact that the enhanced security provided by the Colombian military has been achieved through an increase in human rights abuses perpetrated against the rural population.

protestrnc2008.org Everyone who wants to end the U.S. war on Iraq should join the massive march planned for September 1, 2008 - the first day of the Republican National Convention. Inside the convention hall, the Xcel Center, the Republicans will nominate a candidate who wants to continue the war.

Outside, tens of thousands will say "No!" The *Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War *invites you - activists and organizers form all progressive movements - to join us for a national conference to help organize the September 1 march. We will also discuss other plans for protest at the Republican National Convention.

The people of Colombia, like the people of Iraq, need us in the streets protesting at the Republican Convention. We need to stop the U.S. sponsored war in their country, to stop spending working peoples tax dollars to prop up a corrupt narco-trafficking regime. The American public is increasingly aware of the U.S. atrocities in Iraq and becoming more adamantly anti-war. This public outrage will manifest itself at the RNC. We have an opportunity to educate the 100,000 plus people who will come to St. Paul, MN to demonstrate at the RNC about how the U.S.' effort in Iraq is not the only example of this country's quest for empire causing death and destruction.

In 1996, a 41-year-old Colombian trade unionist applied at the Canadian embassy in Mexico City to immigrate to Canada. Amparo Torres was well-known in the region. She was a founding member of the Union Patriotica, a coalition of leftist political parties created a few years earlier at the behest of Colombia's then president in order to bring an end to decades of guerrilla warfare. She had also been kidnapped by one of the country's right-wing death squads.