Category: Articles

Drugs & Guns: US spikes military aid for Colombia war

The Clinton Administration’s $1.6 billion military aid package to Colombia, sought in the name of fighting the “war on drugs”, is a cynical and multi-layered policy initiative against Colombia’s poor and for global capitalist domination. With the package, Colombia will receive more US military aid than any other country, save Israel and Egypt, signaling that Colombia is the country to watch to prevent another Vietnam-like military disaster.

The aid package is cynical because fighting drugs is at best a convenient cover for a policy far more important to US interests: eliminating insurgencies in the hemisphere. US officials privately know destroying drug crops at the source doesn’t keep drugs off the streets. Nor do they care-the us government needs drugs to justify the prison industrial complex and to get the public to accept ever more government power in the name of “public safety” and the war on drugs. Tellingly, Congress rejected an amendment to the aid package that would have provided funding for drug abuse treatment in the US.

The package is multi-layered because the US sponsored hostilities are both cause and effect. The insurgencies in Colombia are in part a direct result of global forces which are moving peasants away from subsistence agriculture and towards urban industrial employment worldwide. Colombia’s governing elite, in league with the IMF and World Bank, needs to maintain these policies, known generally as structural adjustment, to maintain economic growth and their own power. Obtaining funding to suppress insurgency is a cost of doing business in a world economy intent on snuffing out peasant life. To complete the circle, drug suppression activities like aerial chemical spraying eliminates non-drug and drug peasant crops alike, accelerating the process of peasant removal required by global industrialization.

It is at best ironic that the same global economic forces which lead to the insurgency in Colombia force peasant farmers, unable to support themselves with “legal” crops, into coca production, which then is seen as the justification for US funding against the insurgency. US officials recognize it is a lot cheaper, and more consistent with the goals of globalization, to shoot and bomb Colombia’s poor into line than it would be to relieve the economic conditions causing the “problem” the US claims to be attempting to address: coca production.

Critics in Colombia fear the US aid package will bring an intensification of the war between Southern Colombia, stronghold of the FARC leftist rebels. The US aid, designed to arm and train the Colombian security forces, will further involve the US in the war.

The civil war pits two leftist guerrilla armies-the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces) and the ELN (Army of National Liberation)-against the Colombian military and right wing paramilitary forces, which are linked to the military and reportedly receive US training and funding. Trapped in the middle are millions of civilians suffering the brunt of the extortion, kidnappings and mass killings associated with the conflict.

FARC and ELN have a political agenda that calls for agrarian reform, democratization and protection of natural resources from multinational corporations. In exchange for allegiance, the FARC offers peasants the promise of eventual political power and protection from the government and the growing paramilitaries that are the guerrillas most brutal and most effective adversaries.

Sadly, there are no real “good guys” in this quagmire. The conflict comes down to who will have the power; control over the world’s most profitable drug trade, valuable natural resources including oil, and control of the nation’s government with the players including displaced peasants, the guerrillas, the drug traffickers, the army, and the paramilitary. Inevitably, the common people are the real ones to suffer, forgotten by the Clinton Administration and the Colombian government.

Colombian peasants are caught between global economic forces on one side, the war on another, with the US backed narco war adding its own special set of persecutions.

In December, the government agreed to a $2.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to combat the worst market economic conditions in more than 50 years. The loan, designed to protect the owning class, came with a price: the IMF made the loan conditional on austerity measures-principally cutting government subsidies and programs for the poor, including subsidies for “legal” alternatives to coca production.

Predictably, austerity measures only increase the number of peasants who turn to coca production as a means of supporting themselves and their families, especially when the market price for legal crops remains below subsistence levels.

As economic forces move Colombian peasants into drug production, the US government, which supports the IMF policies which in turn cause the increase in coca production, is expanding its drug eradication program.

The $1.6 billion aid package includes more money for helicopters to spray vast areas of Colombian farmland with potentially harmful herbicides intended to destroy coca crops, but which also destroys food crops and “legal” crops produced through government sponsored crops substitution programs. American financed aerial spraying campaigns have been the principal means by which the Colombian government has sought to reduce coca and opium poppy cultivation for nearly a decade. The eradication fleet has grown to include 65 airplanes and helicopters, which fly every day, weather permitting. Despite these efforts which have received more than $150 million in American aid over the last five years, cocaine and heroin production in Colombia has more than doubled since 1995.

These eradication methods threaten rural health: spraying reportedly takes place over schools, houses, grazing areas and sources of water. Spraying can’t accomplish the stated goal because spraying only exacerbates drug production by destabilizing the communities that are trying to get out of growing these crops by replacing them with “legal” alternatives.

How Colombian peasants are supposed to survive after the coca crops have been eradicated is a subject rarely discussed by the White House and State Department. In reality, given the dismantling of “legal” crop subsidies, there are only three options open: move deeper into the jungle and plant new coca crops, join guerrilla or paramilitary forces, or flee to the poverty ridden slums of the economically depressed cities, providing a larger surplus army of labor to keep labor prices down.

It is indisputable that additional US military aid will widen the war, disrupt the peace process and guarantee ongoing attacks on indigenous populations, destroying their culture and way of life.

The US and Colombian governments admit that expanding the war will displace more peasants, in a country already dealing with 1.9 million refugees. Meanwhile, the murder of labor organizers, peasant leaders, church workers, and expansion of paramilitary death squads in conjunction with the military will continue.

Military aid to Colombia should be cut, not expanded, and the war on drugs ought to be ended both for the harm it causes in Colombia and right here at home. Keep an eye on what the US is doing in Colombia.

For more information, contact Colombia Human Rights Network www.igc.org/colhrnet/, Resources Center for the Americas www.americas.org.

How and why to bring chaos in the streets to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions August 14-17 and July 31 – August 3

Massive militant protests at both the Democratic and Republican National conventions this summer are expected to raise a visible and fundamental challenge to the corrupt political system in the United States. Only a matter of months after the historic Battle of Seattle, which uncovered wide popular dissatisfaction over the increasing pace of corporate domination, global environmental devastation and gross income inequality, there is no discussion of the real issues in the Presidential race between the Democrats and the Republicans. Its up to direct action oriented youth, radical grannies, environmentalists, anarchists and militant labor to split the lie of the electoral system wide open for all to see.

Every presidential election year since the 1960s, the party conventions have been a gathering point for activists. In recent years, these protests have sometimes taken on a routine, predictable, formulaic feeling. They have been easily ignored by the media, who keep busy fitting protests into the comfortable mold of single issue politics, demanding reform or minor concessions-at cost, perhaps a third party alternative.

The summer of 2000 will be different because of our innovative, confrontational, disruptive tactics, increased willingness to take risks, focused and radical political critique and breathtaking daring. And, hopefully, a good measure of luck.

Shutting down or massively disrupting the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and the successful shut down of the WTO last November are battles of a common struggle. The Democrats and Republicans represent corporate interests in the US government while the WTO represents corporate interests in trade rules that dominate all world governments. And its not just about voting for a third party that would claim to stand up for something different-the problem is about voting for one’s own rulers; about having rulers at all.

In essence, the Democrats, the Republicans, the US government, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, Wall Street, the arms industry, factory farming, the mainstream media, etc. are all institutional expressions of a vast system of corporate domination in which powerful economic forces dominate the earth and its people. Decisions affecting everyone and everything are monopolized in a few private hands, and are made not in the interest of human happiness, beauty, sustainability or health, but in pursuit of short term accumulation of money for its own sake, divorced from any consideration of the real world effects of “economic progress”.

Somewhere in New York or London or Tokyo, a few men are deciding which species will survive, which children will starve, which will toil in factories, who will lose their land to cattle ranching or hydroelectric dams, whether the air will be clean, and what you will do, buy, and know. They meet in secret. Its not a conspiracy-its called private industry.

The US government is a focal point for global corporate domination. The US government has been one of the main proponents of the WTO. As the last remaining super-power, the US government and its military provide the might to back up the economic power of the WTO. Attacks on the Democrats and Republicans strike at the core, where corporations buy control of the US government for mere pennies.

Even a cursory examination of the Democrats and Republicans demonstrates that they are the same-one party with two names representing the interests of corporations. On any policy important to corporate expansion and control, they share one position and act in concert to promote “growth” and “jobs”. The tiny number of issues on which they differ only put in more stark relief the extent to which they share a single platform on the really important issues of economic power.

Neither ever takes any position hostile to ultimate corporate control, although many mainstream “labor” organizations foolishly fund their oppressors, the Democrats, with lavish campaign contributions. What has mainstream labor obtained for their largess? Nothing. Democrats have supported every move towards “free” (corporate dominated) trade and would never dare to take action seriously threatening corporate control.

The campaign money game makes it clear that corporations own both the Democrats and Republicans. The following corporations’ donations simultaneously put them in the top 20 contributors to the Democrats and the Republicans: Philip Morris, Atlantic Richfield (Arco), AT&T/TCI, MCI WorldCom and the Seagram Co. MCI gave almost precisely the same amount to each party $1,459,029 to the Democrats and $1,423,298 to the Republicans. Corporations give money to both parties simultaneously because they’re buying the same thing from both. Funding for both parties is a who’s who of corporate America. Walt Disney Co., Goldman Sachs, Mattell, Viacom, Citigroup, and BellSouth have provided major funding for the Democrats and Al Gore. Nabisco, Archer Daniels Midland, UST, Bell Atlantic/NYNEX, Pfizer, Enron, Chevron, and Merrill Lynch are major Republican contributors.

What Is To Be Done

Disrupting the conventions isn’t about “protesting” the Republicrats-it’s about creating a crisis where it can’t be ignored-creating a visual inspiration towards an alternative to politics, corporations and government at all. During Seattle, the media didn’t accurately report the anti-globalization critique of the thousands in the streets, but it didn’t matter. Millions of people around the world intuitively understood the message conveyed by the chaos in the streets: the veneer of “satisfaction” with business as usual sold daily by the media is a lie. That simple realization, which rarely breaks through the sitcoms and talk shows and daily commute, was a wake-up call more powerful than a million flyers. The conventions represent another opportunity to expand the sense that something is very wrong, and you don’t have to just take it. Action towards a new world is possible-it’s happening right now.

Given the frustrating experience in DC, it may take an extra measure of creativity, bravery and spontaneous militancy to split the system wide open. You can bet there will be thousands of police trying to keep the streets cleared. Tame marches and scripted civil disobedience actions won’t be enough. Drumming and too many puppets, but not enough disruption, won’t cut it. Our advantage lies in being unpredictable, refusing to operate on their terms, speaking the truth in the face of corporate obfuscation, and having fun while doing all of it. Have you ever seen a cop smile?

A wide variety of marches, rallies, alternative conventions and conferences are scheduled to coincide with the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles 14-17 and the Republican Convention in Philadelphia July 31 – August 3. (See end of article for contact info.)

In Los Angeles, plans are underway for the North American Anarchist Conference from August 11-17 which will proceed and coincide with the Democratic Convention. Direct action is planned against the convention. (See separate article.) Leftists and Progressives are calling for a People’s Convention from August 10-17, including nominations for an independent national shadow cabinet to provide progressive political analysis throughout the next president’s administration, as well as a forum for third-party candidates.

In Philadelphia, marches or actions are planned for July 29, 30, 31 and August 1 and 2. The Philadelphia Direct Action Group is planning a series of direct actions against the US electoral system and for participatory democracy. PDAG is calling for a convergence July 24-30, followed by a March for Economic Human Rights July 31, and actions targeting the Convention August 2 and the Prison
Industrial Complex August 1. Leftists are sponsoring a march and rally entitled “Unity 2000” on July 30: gather at JFK Blvd near the 30th St. train station for march to the rally.

Shutting down the Republicrats is about far more than promoting a third party alternative, or putting pressure on the parties or government. Ultimately, its up to people everywhere to build a new way of life apart from corporations, apart from governments and parties, and apart from coercion. Decisions should be made locally by all the people effected by the decision, not by distant rulers, either corporate or governmental.

More Information

Following is a far from extensive list of contacts organizing for the summer’s festivities (not including the cops, of course). Contact ‘em and see how you can get involved:

The August Collective (coordinating the North American Anarchist Conference in LA August 11-17)

www.geocities.com/naacweb

PO Box 6188

Fullarton, CA 92834

LA People’s Convention

www.peoplesconvention.com

Philadelphia Direct Action Group

www.thepartysover.org

(215) 387-5624

General Info:

d2kla.org

It was 4 am and some friends and I were sitting around talking, doing the late night watch at UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. It was November 1999, and the entire university was on strike. All campuses, including UNAM’s 10 or so public high schools had been occupied for over 7 months. I was just visiting, and I hadn’t quite gotten used to the new schedule. I’d been eyeing the pile of blankets and thinking about finding a good spot on the auditorium floor, hoping I wouldn’t trip over any sleeping bodies on my way in.

All of a sudden, Beto and Conejo came bursting in, laughing uproariously and slapping their thighs. “We really got her this time!” They were truly crying with glee. What’s so funny, everyone wanted to know. The two pranksters had gone to Jani’s private sleeping quarters, previously a small storage space on the roof, banged loudly on the door and pretended to be cops, gone in to “arrest” her. “She almost peed her pants she was so scared.” “What the fuck!” I was pissed. “Why do you have to go mess with her like that. Everyone is already stressed out enough to begin with. If you guys like that kind of abuse then do it to each other but don’t go around giving innocent people heart attacks.” The two young men quieted down for a minute, but to my surprise, no one else in the room agreed with me. Even the older and mellower students nodded in support of the trick. Mariana explained, “We can’t let anyone get too comfortable here. It’s important that people be ready to react at any moment, and that means when you hear them coming, get up and get ready to deal. Jani should have been up and out the back door by the time they went in there. In the beginning we had a lot more of this kind of exercise, but after 7 months we’re getting soft. We don’t know when the police are going to invade, but they probably will.”

In fact, UNAM campuses were taken by force by federal police on February 6th, 2000, approximately 9 months after the strike began. Nearly 1,000 students were jailed, and given a long list of charges, some including terrorism, which carries a forty year minimum sentence.

The strike began April 20th, 1999 as a reaction to the University head, Rector Barnes’ announcement that he was going to significantly raise tuition costs. Education has always been supported by taxes in Mexico, taking a mere 2.6% of the country’s gross national product. But due to pressure from the World Bank and the IMF, the Mexican government agreed to begin the process of privatizing education in 1999. The educational system should pay for itself, they wrote, ad as for the poor who can’t afford it, we’d rather have them working in a factory anyway.

Mexico has a long history of powerful student movements, so Barnes, hoping to soften the blow, announced the fee hikes would not affect any students currently attending the University. Only entering students would be subjected to the new pay-to-play system. But the bribe fell flat on the face. Not only did UNAM’s 26,000 students stand up and say “Hell No!” to the fees, but once they got organized, they started noticing other things that were wrong with their education system, and added the following 5 additional demands.

2. Democratize the University Council. UNAM is currently governed by the University Council, a body made up of the principals of each of the schools, who are appointed by the Rector. These principals, in turn, hand pick two students at each school to run against each other in elections to produce student representatives for the council. The strikers demanded real qualitative representation, as well as the inclusion of both workers and faculty in a Congress to resolve other issues affecting the University.

3. Dissolve all links to the CENEVAL. The National Center for Evaluation, otherwise known at the CENEVAL, is a private organization that has been responsible for “evaluating” student performance using standardized exams since 1994. A private, for-profit company, CENEVAL gives everybody who wants to continue their education beyond junior high school a single test, and based on your scores on that test they decide where you go and what you study, which may be something very different from what you had originally envisioned. They actually have ads on TV of people who got into a major diverging completely from what they wanted. For example, they asked for engineering but got social work, who unconvincingly explain how it’s not really that bad.

4. Allow the school year interrupted by the conflict to be completed. Many students who participated in the strike have not had their 1999 classes recognized.

5. Repeal the imposed 1997 amendments, which eliminated the “automatic pass” from public high schools to universities, and imposed limits on the amount of time students can study at the University. For students who work full time in addition to going to school, it is next to impossible to complete their studies within the current time restrictions (6 years for a 4 year major).

6. Remove the police apparatus on the University and eliminate all types of threats and sanctions against students, professors, and university workers for their participation in the strike. During the strike’s occupation of University land, the administration maintained a professional “security force” complete with on-campus cameras and paid provocateurs. Professors and workers were threatened and fired. Students were followed, kidnapped for days at a tie and beaten, raped and sometimes killed.

While the repression against the strike was at times very intense, the students also received support from a large segment of the population. Unions, community organizations, students and professors from other universities and lots of young people participated continuously over the past year. Many students’ parents and families have also been very active, taking part in building occupations, fundraising and sitting through 32 hour meetings. And they got a good turn out for their marches: a couple were clocked at more than half a million people.

But the most inspiring thing for me about the strike was how people organized themselves. Each school (there were 36 altogether) had weekly assemblies and sent 5 delegates to the CGH, the Strike’s General Council. Proposals were made and discussed at the individual assemblies, and then discussed and voted on at the CGH sessions (often lasting more than 24 hours). A facilitating body chosen randomly at the end of each session presided over the following meeting and the delegates rotated every time. This structure was adopted because the CGH consciously wanted to avoid creating “leaders”. Even when the CGH was in dialogue with the administration and the administration demanded fixed representatives in order to continue negotiations, the CGH refused, and prevailed. A decentralized structure without a figurehead to co-opt or assassinate is much harder to crush effectively. It’s also more democratic (in the best sense of the word).

The CGH managed to survive and continued to function despite being ousted from the UNAM campuses, and having to deal with the arrest of nearly a thousand members. The University Administration is trying to pretend that everything has returned to normalcy even while they are involved in formal negotiations with the CGH. Administration buildings are still not safe from spontaneous takeover. There are permanent encampments on campus and in front of the jail, calling for the release of their comrades and the fulfillment of the six demands. And in April 2000, the CGH held an International Student Conference to celebrate the year anniversary of the strike, which drew participants from all over Latin America, and Europe. There they discussed strategies for combating privatization and neoliberalism, education as a means of ideological repression, and the uses and abuses of science, technology, culture and the media.

When I was in Mexico City last November, some people told me this is the strongest student move
ment in Mexico’s history. Whether or not this is true, the strike continues to be heard, lending itself to the river of organized dissent/ As I write, on June 5th, the remaining 6 student prisoners have been approved for release on bail, after demanding to be let go as a group. (There are currently 200 students who have charges pending). Public school teachers are currently conducting their own strike on a national scale. The EZLN is having an official gathering in Mexico City on June 9th, in the midst of threats to “resolve the problem” before the new president is elected in July. Even AeroMexico workers have joined the picket line.

And so the struggle continues in the spirit of El Mexe, a Normal School in the state of Hidalgo, where on February 19, 2000, 68 police officers were taken hostage, stripped naked, and hog tied by townspeople, in retaliation for the brutal repression of another student strike. (The officers were later traded for 376 prisoners of the State). As one officer commented afterward, “We always win, but by God, this time we lost.” Amen brother.

Greetings from Uncle Dale

RE: Current educational project targeting mainstream tourists in Seattle. Including, but not limited to Alaska bound cruise ship buffet feeder to Microsoft and Boeing induced corporate smega.

WHAT: Self-guided map of N30 gas zone, highlighting “retailers of death, terror and ecological madness”. Scheduled guided tours leaving Westlake or IndyMedia are a thought. Tour Guides will be B(lack) B(loc) in appearance(ish)…?

Seeking: 15-25 word explanations around retail targets during police riots of N30. Explanations of why these retailers deserve boycotts and other profit diversion or limitation.

This is a personal invitation to BB folks. We are growing a program to export to cities across the world. Bring N30 to the same retailers targeted by my family here during convergence. We hope to customize a corporate map applicable to every mall and every city hall.

Slingshot you rock!

Totally,

Uncle Dale

Post-WTO Legal

Slingshot,

I’m bummed about your WTO Legal update. Why, you ask? Well it should (have said) “by DAN legal” since what you printed was a blatant propaganda piece for DAN.

The article claims that the DAN legal team claimed victory for the 570 people arrested on December 1. But what about the people arrested with felony charges on November 30th? Those people are anarchists and you would think Slingshot would support them.

Not one mention of the felons or the Mutual Aid legal Fund was in the last issue. A friend of mine told me she submitted the information about MALF yet somehow it didn’t get in.

What’s the deal? Is this even an anarchist zine anyway? Tons of shit on microradio but nothing on people facing up to a year (in jail) on trumped up charges.

I agree with John Zerzan’s letter last issue, you really seem stuck in a sluggish leftist critique. I wish you all would write more critical pieces and stop all the fluff pieces.

Sorry if that is too harsh but it’s been bugging me for a while.

Sorrel

What can we say? We tried very hard to get the most up to date and accurate information on the post WTO legal situation but despite making repeated calls to our sources, we failed to deliver the goods by press time. Of course we support all of those that were arrested and will continue to. It was our intention to present a well rounded account. Please send donations to:

Mutual Aid Legal Fund

P.O. Box 95616

Seattle, WA 98145-2816

malfund@yahoo.com

We Know Who You Are

Dear Slingshot,

I just wanted to tell you how great issue #68 is. I’ve never read Slingshot before so I don’t know how all the other issues have been but this issue really rocks. The article about trannies is something that I’ve been needing to read for quite some time, thanks. The rest is also damn good reading. Sorry that I’m not sending money or anything cool.

PS: I also think it’s rad that you print letters that criticize you because it makes people think ‘n stuff.

-Anon

Going, Going, Gone

To: Renske

We are indeed out of Organizers. However, if you email back with a good story about losing the Organizer in some valiant radical act at the IMF, we might be able to dig up a copy from our “special circumstances” file that we keep for emergencies, like when the cops steal them or they get covered with pepper spray, etc. Let us know.

From Renske:

Hmmmmm, well, OK, here goes….

I’m a fairly new “convert” to radical, direct action, but after Seattle and Boston, I knew I was ready for something “more” in DC. Once I arrived with my affinity group (The Terribles) and we got hooked up with the New York cluster we determined ourselves to be a flying squad to support those locking down, etc. I started asking questions about communication-and since I apparently asked the right questions, I ended up at a communications meeting with a FRS radio in my hand, ready for action (with a half hour of sleep on a hard ass floor) communicating what was happening at various intersections where we were located – and assisting with getting medics, legal support, etc. to places where cops were doing their repression thing… we hung with it all day ’til the last blockade came down-and then we were up and at ’em again the very next day-in the pouring rain. “We’re Here, We’re Wet – So Sump the Debt!” I was so worried about keeping my communications equipment dry, I didn’t even stop to think about my Slingshot that was getting soaked in my backpack’s front pocket. Keeping a tight march was the plan – since this was an entirely unsanctioned reclaiming of DC streets during rush hour. Huge gaps would have really confused things. Communication was tough that day-pouring rain made visibility harder. Supporting the blockade was our number one priority… and we did the best we could.

OK, so that’s the short version. The longer one is only done in person, sorry. Don’t trust e-mail too much these days. My Slingshot org is totally bust – all the ink drained and I can’t read anything (it did dry up, but it warped and twisted and I can’t open the pages…)

If there is a random extra one for me, I’d be thrilled.

Tired in Minneapolis–Renske