Congratulations Colombia! Up two spots to number six in the world!

The World Terrorism Risk Index, that is.

With a deserved hat tip to Colombia Reports, your author is directed to world risk specialist Maplecroft and its updated World Terrorism Risk Index report, out today. Here's the graphic from the report (green good, red bad etc etc)...

...and here's the top ten.

1) Somalia
2) Pakistan
3) Iraq
4) Afghanistan
5) Palestine Occupied Territories
6) Colombia
7) Thailand
8) Philippines
9) Yemen
10) Russia

Yes indeedy, since its last review Maplecroft has upped Colombia from number 8 to number 6 in the  whole wide world for terrorism, calling the risk "extreme". And if you notice the top six, it's kind of a coincidence that they all have close military ties with The USA isn't it? Or perhaps it isn't....

What US mining companies do in Colombia

Top EngLang source for all things Colombia, Colombia Reports, brings us the news of how US mining companies congratulate far right wing paramilitary terrorists when they go around assassinating people. Here's an excerpt:

U.S. coal giant Drummond congratulated members of paramilitary organization AUC on the murder of two labor rights activists working for the Colombian branch of the company, a paramilitary testified Wednesday.

Drummond is involved in a lawsuit filed by victims of paramilitary violence that accuse the coal company of having given money to paramilitary organization AUC between 1999 and 2005, during which 116 civilians were killed in the region where the firm operates.

According to Spanish press agency EFE, the lawyer of one of the bosses of the demobilized AUC, extradited Rodrigo "Jorge 40" Tuvar Pupo, told press that his client admits responsibility for the murder of the unionists in 2001.

A second paramilitary, "Samario," said in the hearing that two Drummond executives congratulated Jorge 40 and Oscar Jose Ospino, alias "Tolemaida" on the crime in a meeting that took place after the double homicide, Caracol Radio reported.

The two victims, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya, were murdered in CONTINUES HERE

Message to Canadian mining analysts covering Colombian gold stocks

This post is for all those analysts in all those Canadian brokerages, shops, houses and newsletters that cover junior goldies in the Norte de Santander department of Colombia, for example Ventana Gold (VEN.to), Greystar Resources (GSL.to), Galway Resources (GWY.v) amongst a lot of others. And really it's more of a question for you guys up there, because I'd really like to know why you refuse to inform your clients about the unstable political situation in that region, why you refuse to pass information on the social upheavals and misery being caused by far-right wing paramilitary terrorists, why you refuse to tell people about the drug trafficking, the mass killings, the attacks on civilian populations, the displacement of entire villages under duress and the underaged girls forced into prostitution.

Why do you stay totally silent about the enormous political risks currently suffered by Norte de Santander? Do you really think that encouraging a bunch of wealthy Canadians to pour money into such an unstable region is a good idea? It seems to me that by not passing on important information about this region you are either ignorant of Norte de Santander and shouldn't be covering the stocks in the first place, or you are deliberately misleading people.

Here follows a translation of this report in Colombia's El Tiempo daily dated to last weekend, featuring the Public Defender Ombudsman Volmar Pérez Ortiz, a man that so good at his job that he was re-elected by Colombia's congress for this important role for a third consecutive term in 2008 (which runs to 2012). This person knows about one thousand times more about Norte de Santander than the equities analysts that pump these stocks to their clients.

Public Defender Ombudsman Warns That Violende Impacts Vulnerable Population

Vólmar Pérez Ortiz says that violence generated by the actions of illegal groups in the Norte De Santander department has a direct impact on the most sensitive sectors.

The National Public Defender Ombudsman also indicated that the cases of violence that communities are exposed to include selective homicides, massacres, forced displacements, threats, attacks and combats using the civilian population as human shields, anti-personnel mines, use and recruitment of children and adolescents to the paramilitry and forced prostitution.

The functionary also said that the illegal groups that operate in the region such as the 'Aguilas Negras' and the 'Rastrojos' have shown a capacity of expanded control over the populations, particularly in the border areas.

"For the Defender of the People Ombudsman, the continued reality of forced transborder displacement in Norte de Santander is worrying , as in other zones of the extensive frontier with Venezuela", said Pérez, who added that the displacements do not have good estimated numbers due to the characteristics of the operations that affect undeclared refugees who do not report their situations to avoid being expelled or as a means of self-protection from the illegal groups.

Vólmar Pérez said that the forced displacements are principally as a consequence of threats and constraints from illegal armed groups on the civilian populations that live in regions close to the border.

Hillary/Evo

The background: The USA is not on friendly diplomatic terms with Iran (natch). Bolivia is on friendly diplomatic terms with Iran.

First Hillary, quoted via Two Weeks Notice:

"If people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them. And we hope that they will think twice."

Now Evo, quoted via AFP (trans: Otto):

They say that Iran exports terrorism. Do you know who exports terrorism? Those people who send troops to other countries, who install themselves in military bases, they are the ones that practice terrorism. It is the government of The United States that practices terrorism at the moment."

Meanwhile, for all you mineheads piling into Colombia juniors on the advice of corrupt Canadian brokerages without a second thought.....

.... just keep repeating that mantra of yours, dumbasses:

Colombia good...no risk...war over....no threat....moral investment
Colombia good...no risk...war over....no threat....moral investment
Colombia good...no risk...war over....no threat....moral investment
Colombia good...no risk...war over....no threat....moral investment
Colombia good...no risk...war over....no threat....moral investment

Photo stolen shamelessly from da boorev (complete with typo if you look carefully)


Report from LAHT:

BOGOTA – A dozen municipal council members have been killed so far this year in Colombia and more than 2,000 others have received threats from guerrillas and other illegal armed groups, officials said on Tuesday.

“Two councilors are kidnapped, attacks have been made against some 32 councilors and more than 2,000 councilors today have security measures known by the national government,” Colombian Federation of Councilors spokesman Fabio Estrada told Caracol Radio.

Colombia’s municipal council members must also deal with “a situation of neglect that affects their security,” Estrada said.

Over the weekend, a member of the city council in Villavicencio, the capital of Meta province, was killed during CONTINUES HERE

Here's one of about ten thousand reports on the connections between Uribe's gov't and far right wing death squads:

BOGOTA - Colombian prosecutors have decided to open an investigation into the alleged ties between Vice President Francisco Santos and right-wing militias CONTINUES HERE

And especially for you guys that think Norte de Santander (GSL, VEN, plenty others) have no problems...

Irregular armed groups from Colombia have been active for years in Táchira, an Andean highlands state that borders the northeastern Colombian department of Norte de Santander.

DYODD dude, and while you're at it why not ask your financial advisor about the conspiracy of silence amongst mining analysts about the total lack of talk on political risk in Colombia?

Now remember what they told you

Venezuela is mean and nasty and horrible and in an arms race to destabilize the whole region.

Colombia is nice and kind and soft and gentle, it's recent problems are now all gone and it's a perfectly safe and morally upstanding place to invest...for example, landgrabbing for goldmine territory in the middle of the jungle.

But wait! What's this? Why on earth is Colombia spending more on defence and security in its 2010 budget than it is on education? Click through and allow the always excellent 'Plan Colombia and Beyond' to fill you in on the details.

Peru and Shining Path: The gov't gets one right at last

A portrait of shits

So far, the stealthy return of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorists to some sort of minor irritant power in Peru has been badly dealt with by the Twobreakfasts administration. The policies enacted have done nothing to hinder the movement's control of the key VRAE coca producing region (if you don't believe me check recent cocaine numbers for the country) and the "we're gonna stop 'em" talk from Twobreakfasts himself, from the defence ministry and the interior ministry has been all talk and no action.

But this weekend they actually did something worthy of praise. Late last week Alfredo Crespo, the lawyer for imprisoned Sendero leader Abimael Guzmán, held a press conference to announce the publication of Guzman's new book/biography/ridiculous apologist rant. It was a full-on presser and got people (example Rendon over at GranCombo) wondering how the devil this scum can peddle a book like this in open defiance to the country. Well late last night Peru's ministry of justice announced it would be seeking charges against the lawyer for "apology to terrorism".

QUITE RIGHT TOO

The world and especially Peru doesn't need these scumballs getting the merest ounce of publicity for anything they do. There are times when freedom of speech should be suspended and those trying to peddle filth disguised as debate thrown into jail and there are times when a government should (even must) lay down a line of authority and say, "No, sorry, you cannot do what the F you want in the name of this or the name of that...not on our watch". So well done and applause to the justice ministry of Peru and down with all Sendero sympathy once and for all. Jailtime for Crespo, please. Lots of it.

UPDATE: The following was left in the comments section by reader 'mr'. Absolutely right, mr, and the situation he recounts was repeated by these überscum all over the country.

In Oct. 1991 I was in Mazamari the day after SL had carried out a major attack in San Martin de Pangoa. 200+. One of the things done in that attack was the ritual killing of an eleven year-old boy, called 'bautizo'. No amount of ink and paper can ever cover up the atrocious MO of those individuals. Another disgusting tactic employed around Lima to gain access to high tension towers which had been mined was to pay children to climb through the barbed wire and cross the area. Very ugly. SL did not want to gain control of Peru as such, their objectives were doing exactly what they did. If they really wanted to control the country their MO would have been entirely different. Scumbags is light-handed, Otto.

Your daily dose of foreign terrorists in LatAm

Laurent Bocquet photographed at the
auditions for the movie 'Mars Attacks'

So apparently Hugo Chávez was remarkably restrained today on his 26 hour long "Alo Presidente" show (choosing to whack into the Oraganization of American States instead...don't worry, that'll blow over). The only thing Hugo had to say about the arrested and armed-to-the-teeth Dom Reppers and the Frenchie Bocquet (three "click to enlarge" shots of the dude included today...kinda weird shaped head or am I dreaming?) was:

"I'm not going to say anything yet because I have no proof of the plan they had."

Ohh...watch out world, cos the next episode will be the USA saying that Chávez and company are using torture to extract confessions. That'd be funny, wouldn't it?

Swim!

probably playing online scrabble

Found chez Bocquet on Friday. Hey...everyone has the right to a hobby, no?

Half a kilo of C4 in Caracas, anyone?

Some French dude named Laurent Bocquet (above, from his 'feibu' page, as we say down here) got arrested trying to escape Caracas, Venezuela, and get to Isla Margarita on Friday. He was nabbed along with Omar Campusano, Diomedis Campusano and Edgar Florián Sánchez (all from The Dominican Republic). All four are supposedly members of the criminal gang known as "The Internationals" (oh how subtle). So when police checked out the arrested Frenchie's house in Caracas they found:

• half a kilo of C4 explosive
• flame throwers
• 5,000 (yeah, five thousand) shotgun cartridges
• bullet-proof vests
• military uniforms
• foreign licence plates
• 3 FAL weapons
• 2 machine guns
• 3 shotguns
• telescopic sights
• etc etc

Expect Venezuelan police to be called human rights offenders for daring to arrest foreign nationals like this on their soil. I mean, the impertinence...what's half a kilo of C4 between friends anyway?

UPDATE: Venezuela's Interior Minister has given a presser this afternoon to name the group as a "terrorist organization". Minister Tareck Al Aissami also said that Bocquet is known as an expert in military matters and a sharpshooter/sniper who saw action in Europe (the exact country wasn't mentioned). Here's a quote from Al Aissami:

"We can testify that the type of armaments used by these military terrorist organizations are for actions of destabilization. With this find we have no doubt in telling the country that we have dealt a severe blow to terrorism and to those groups that try to drag Venezuela into scenes of blood and confrontation."

Meanwhile, in the quiet provincial border towns of Colombia....

...they've got no space left in the morgues.

In Caucasia, Antioquia, medics are complaining about the heavier that normal workload of autopsies. In the period Jan 1st to April 25th 2008 there were "just" 46 murders in an otherwise sleepy old town, but this year it's got up to a pesky 102 in the same lapse. "Here we only have one autopsy table and two old storage compartments, and on average we're doing two autopsies a day", said the doc.

As for the atmosphere around the place, here are a few quotes:

"The rumours run from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but nobody knows anything when they're asked about a crime."

"They say that two men were in a hairdressers. On hearing a woman talk about the conflict they made the hair stylist shave her bald and remove her eyebrows, and then gave her 24 hours to leave Caucasia."

"The assassins rent one house in every neighbourhood, which allow them to hide quickly once they commit a crime and we (the police) cannot enter without a search warrant."

"The people fear for their lives, because those committing the homicides are locals, young men that were born and raised here."

So, gentle reader and lover of freedom, how does the situation in Caucasia compare to the US-backed shouts of "oppression!" that comes from the mouths of theVenezuelans with painted hands as they march noisily down streets tilting against windmills? The above is what real fear, real terror and real oppression are all about. When it's the genuine article, noise is replaced by a roaring silence and you rarely get to find out about it.

Bolivia Mercenaries update

El Gaviero has two posts that neatly sum up in English the latest happenings in the investigation into the mercenary terrorist cell dismantled in Santa Cruz.

• This post sums up the latest arrests and the backbround to what the terrorists were planning.

• This post links the fascists to local Santa Cruz leaders and also to Human Rights Foundation, a very dubious NGO that has some nasty rightwingers behind it, including our old friend the bipolar Alek Boyd.

Two recommended reads to keep you fully up to date. Nice work from blogmeister MG and good to see El Gaviero back and regular, too.

Bolivia Quiz for New Irish Viewers!

Welcome friends from across the sea in the land of Guinness, green things and small people at ends of rainbows! We're so glad that you've finally realized there's a whole continent somewhere South of uncle's house in Boston MA, even more pleased that you've realized it's made up of different subsections called "countries", too. It's slightly sad that it took the sudden death of an idiot countryman of yours to get you this far, but every cloud, eh...?

So to help you out with your ongoing education about all things Bolivia here we go with our gentle multiple choice quiz entitled:

*****ALL ABOUT EVO*****

All you need to do is study the question and click on the answer you think is correct. And don't worry if you get one wrong as it won't make your interweb machine blow up in front of you. I'll be wishing the best of Irish Blarney luck to you, so I will. Here we go!!!

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A) Acting out a personal fantasy about being an international man of mystery in Bolivia is:
1) Stupid and dangerous
2) Perfectly normal
3) What's Bolivia again?

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B) Foreign nationals working under assumed names for Santa Cruz fascist scum are:
1) Perfectly normal, actually. Happens all the time
2) Slightly suspicious, perhaps
3) Good enough reason from them to be under surveillance, so it is

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C) Foreign nationals ____________ carry firearms in Bolivia.
1) strictly, stopSTOPstop, mega no-no, cannot under any circumstances
2) always
3) might as well as long as nobody is looking

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D) Plotting to kill the President of Bolivia is:
1) kind of frowned upon
2) normal behaviour for a "bit o dis bit o dat" Irish dude
3) likely to be the last thing you ever do if you're living in Bolivia

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E) Irish journalists that pass themselves off as experts about a country they couldn't even find on a map one week ago are:
1) laughable
2) par for the course
3) what's Bolivia again?

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F) According to the Princeton University online dictionary, the definition of the word "denial" is:
1) A river in Egypt
2) A psychiatric defence mechanism that causes illogical rejection of painful thoughts
3) The refusal to recognize that people who don't look like us are normal

The Sendero narcoterrorists of Peru: Some insight

Town in the Sendero VRAE stronghold region of Peru

I like it when people take me to task.

After commenting yesterday on the 13 (now 14, sad to say, and another is still missing) soldiers killed by Sendero terrorists last week, I received today the following mail from somebody who prefers to remain anonymous. Suffice to say that this person is someone who is in a position to know what they're talking about and whose view I greatly respect. I think it's worth reprinting here and have been given permission to do so.

I will add my own two cents' worth, though. The whole subject of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is still a very touchy one in Peru. Locals' memories are still of the open wound variety about what went on in the 1980s and 1990s and people that criticize the official government standpoint make themselves targets for totally unwarranted accusations of being sympathizers. But enough of me, here's the insightful and worthy mail I received this morning:

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On what basis do you say this with such confidence?

Peru: "Despite what you might read in the NYT or Comercio this isn't a resurgent idealogical struggle, more like a bunch of heavily armed narcos trying to defend what they consider their patch."

My humble opinion is that there is very little good investigative reporting on Sendero, or on the various Sendero factions operating in Peru today, and while it is convenient to write them off as just a bunch of "delincuentes y narcos", I remember Peru in the early 1980s when Belaunde said the very same thing. And we all know how that ended up (for the record, the legal left initially said it was all an invention by security forces to maintain power and priviledge, after stepping down from government).

Around 3000 senderistas and alleged senderistas have been released from jails in recent years, and no matter how much we care about their rights to remake their lives (and I certainly do), we have to assume that at least some of them remain committed to subversive activity. Some faction of them are winning elections in San Marcos again, and perhaps La Cantuta, and then we have the folks in VRAE and in Alto Huallaga. Who thanks to working with the drug runners, dont have to coerce the locals so much -- they can buy them off, do the hearts and minds stuff. So, maybe they are "just delincuentes" or maybe they aren't, and maybe this involvement in the drug business as a source of income (while others pursue legal channels to power, like university elections), means that THEY have learned from the past, even while others have not.

It concerns me that there are maybe 4 or 5 "experts" on Sendero and drugs who are quoted all the time in the media, and who knows if they have a clue what is happening on the ground.

Not just bananas in that republic

Click to enlarge (gets big)

Up in the northern and northeastern parts of Colombia, the cocaine trade is run by both far left and far right groups. The best known of the bunch is of course the leftwing FARC insurgents, but equally as nasty (though kind of ignored by the national gov't...who knows why?) are far rightwingers such as the Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles).

However not all their revenues come from Colombian marching powder, as both sides in this particularly dirty war are adept at extorsion and racketeering, too. The big export brand of Chiquita Banana made headlines and got into trouble a while back for admitting that it had paid protection money to right wing paramilitary groups, but well worth a read is this new story from Colombia Reports that makes it clear just how pervasive the protection racket is in provincial Colombia. Here's an extract from the report:

• So far, Chiquita Brands is the only multinational company that admitted paying the AUC. Other companies deny having paid the paramilitaries, despite the growing number of testimonies of paramilitary warlords who say the opposite.

But be advised here that it's not just the banana growers that suffer under this weight, so if you are invested any companies currently operating in the region, perhaps a quiet mail to their IR department on this matter would be in order. Just so you have your back covered on the issue. Yeah?

DYODD. I really mean it this time.

Bullying journalists: This one is unlikely to pop up on Fox News Americas

Raul Weiner and his gagging order (photo courtesy of 'La Primera')

In November 2008, the journalist Raul Weiner of Peru's daily paper "La Primera" ran a story about how 13 members of left-wing organizations were being investigated by police for connections to the Colombian FARC (yep, it's that magic laptop again, the one with zero e-mails and planted photos). We're not talking illegal groups here, but heads of established social bodies such as unions and recognized committees. All were being threatened with custody under the same type of vague anti-terrorism legislation now used in the serious countries as the latent bullyboy threat to anybody that dare criticize governments too much or to loudly.

Cut to this week, and Raul Weiner was summoned by Peru's judiciary to defend himself against the very same charges of "crimes against the public peace" and "terrorism", simply because he dared to do his job and tell people what was going on. Weiner was served with the order to attend on Tuesday and his hearing was yesterday, but true to form we do not know and will not know what happened in the courtroom because a gagging order was slapped on proceedings due to "reasons of national security". If this guy is a terrorist, we may as well all go to our local police station right now, form an orderly queue and turn ourselves in. He got wind of a story, he reported on it. The government didn't like the fact that its shady undercover games were made public. The government tries to shut his mouth. That's what's going on here, pure and simple.

Yet again, if all this had happened in Venezuela you'd know about it in realtime on fifty-seven channels, Bruce. But as it's happening in Peru and against a left-wing newspaper the only link in English to this story comes from 'Reporters Without Borders', doing its good, non-partisan work as usual.