Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Colombia Trade Fight is a Human Rights Test
The Colombia Free Trade Agreement is best summed up as a proposal to formalize U.S. support for the assassination of labor union organizers by death squads, impoverishment of workers and the undermining of farming operations that will leave more landless peasants with no alternative but to immigrate to the United States seeking work.
The Wisconsin-based Colombia Support Network, which has led the campaigning by U.S. activists to support human rights in that South American country, says without equivocation that the Colombia FTA "would solely benefit US transnational companies."
The Colombia Support Network is highlighting opposition on the part of labor, farm and human activists in Colombia to the trade deal now being promoted by the Bush administration. That opposition is echoed by U.S. labor, farm and human rights groups, which have united in their efforts to block congressional approval of the pact.
Colombian union federations say they opposed the pact not just because it would weaken domestic industries and jeopardize employment but because it would make it harder to advance the cause of human rights in a country where more than 2,500 trade unionists have been murdered over the past two decades.
While President Bush and his allies attempt to suggest that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez has made progress in promoting human rights, honest political players in that country say the opposite. "(Uribe) has not responded adequately to the violence that plagues Colombians and particularly union leaders and human rights activists, as is demonstrated by the alarming figures from last month, in which four union leaders were murdered," explains Carlos Gaviria Diaz, the Harvard-educated constitutional lawyer who serves as president of Colombia's Polo Democrático Alternativo political party.
The former president of Colombia's Constitutional Court has deep concerns about the treaty because of the threat it poses to human rights campaigning in his country, but Gaviria's worries do not stop there.
"The fundamental problem with the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the United States and Colombia is that it has been reduced to an agreement between winners and losers," he says. "Unfortunately, we Colombians are the losers, because we lose any possibility of achieving prosperous development. Likewise, many have also indicated correctly that this FTA benefits only a select minority in the United States, not the general population. For example, the destruction of Colombian agriculture caused by the FTA will stimulate the planting of coca in Colombia and more drug dealing in the streets of American cities."
Can the Colombia FTA be blocked in Congress? Absolutely. Though Arizona Senator John McCain is a strong backer of the deal, a number of key Republicans have come out in opposition to it. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe says, "I will not support the FTA with Colombia due to ongoing concerns about Bogota's failure to prosecute individuals, including some close to its government and military, who have murdered and otherwise oppressed union leaders in that country." Former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, is also opposed because he says the Colombian government has failed to adequately addtess "still unconscionable levels of violence against trade unionists."
With the Republicans divided on this issue, a solid Democratic front in the House and Senate will stop the Colombia FTA. Most Democrats -- including presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- oppose this dramatically-flawed trade deal. But the Bush administration is focusing its lobbying energy on Democrats, especially those with ties to the radically pro-free trade Democratic Leadership Council.
The Colombia fight represents a critical test for Democrats in Congress. Most of the Democratic candidates who beat Republican members of the House and Senate in 2006 did so as outspoken critics of U.S. trade policies. Now, the party controls the Congress. By blocking this deal, they will keep an essential promise made to the American people -- and they will, at the same time, display the sort of concern the people Colombia that might finally pressure that country's oppressive government to begin respecting human rights.
John Nichols is a co-founder of Free Press and the co-author with Robert W. McChesney of TRAGEDY & FARCE: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy — The New Press.
© 2008 The Nation
7 Comments so far
Show AllHillary Clinton may say she's against this Colombia FTA deal, but the reported revelation, if true, that Bill pocketed $800,000 to somehow consult FOR the deal on the side ought to fully disqualify her candidacy in the minds of voters. She told us she didn't know about Monica either. Either too dumb or too shrewd. Maybe too dishonest.
Human rights? Here's a thought.
You do not have the right to remain silent.
Anything you do not say, can, and will be used against you in a military tribunal.
You do not have the right to speak to an attorney or to have an attorney present during any questioning (which includes being interrogated to death).
If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will definitely not be provided for you at government expense.
Also, you no longer have the right of freedom of speech or assembly. And you no longer have the right of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. You also do not have the right of appeal at the supreme court.
However, you can be deprived of liberty and property without due process of the law. You can also be held indefinitely in military custody without being charged and without access to lawyers.
And the government is now authorised to spy on you.
Welcome to the USA circa 2008.
What happens next depends on our next President. Hillary is running against Obama as a Progressive, but what is she really? I read a comment that she was being dragged kicking and screaming to the left by Obama's populist campaign. I find the following very interesting:
"The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) held its annual convention in Columbus, Ohio, last weekend (July 2005), outlining its program for the upcoming 2006 mid-term elections and the presidential election in 2008. Speeches at the meeting and documents published in advance indicate that the Democratic Party plans to run an extremely right-wing campaign, particularly on the issues of "national security" and the war in Iraq.
Formed in the mid-1980s, the DLC is a dominant influence within the Democratic Party. It has been the main source of the "new Democrat" movement that has pushed the party to the right over the past two decades.
The main speaker at the convention was New York senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton accepted a post to head the council's new "American Dream Initiative," in which capacity she will travel the country promoting the DLC's views. This positions her as the frontrunner for the party's nomination in 2008. In courting the DLC, Clinton is following in the footsteps of her husband, who chaired the council from 1990 to 1991, before running for office.
Amid speculation that she could seek the same path to the White House, Hillary Clinton used her speech at the convention to dispel any notion that she would ever run as a "liberal" candidate. In using the DLC platform to call for a "cease fire" among the Democratic Party's different factions, Clinton was sending a clear signal to left forces within the party, such as Moveon.org: Even the slightest nod to anti-war sentiment will be opposed by the party leadership.
Clinton emphasized her commitment to creating "a unified, coherent strategy focused on eliminating terrorists wherever we find them" and "improving homeland defense." She envisioned a future society in which "we've put more troops in uniform, we've equipped them better, and we've trained them to face today's stress, not yesterday's." In calling for more troops, she repeated the main criticism that Democrats have directed against Bush's handling of the war in Iraq—that not enough forces were committed to guarantee victory.
Clinton also endorsed DLC ideas such as welfare reform, implemented by her husband, which has deprived millions of people of government assistance. She called for fiscal responsibility and repeated certain "cultural" themes designed to neutralize opposition from the extreme right. She urged passage of an "enforceable international ban on human cloning" and sounded notes from her recent campaign attacking violent video games. She called for all Americans to come together on the basis of "our faith in God and our shared values,"
For Clinton, the speech is the continuation of an attempt to promote her right-wing credentials. In recent months, she has teamed up with former House speaker Newt Gingrich and current Senate majority leader Bill Frist on health legislation that would be amenable to big business. She has taken a post on the Senate Arms Committee to allow her to voice strong support for the war in Iraq and an increase in the number of troops in the military. In January, she made a speech calling for Democrats and Republicans to find "common ground" on the abortion issue."
From the following link:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/dlc-j28.shtml
These statements of hers have been published in the past, but in the heat of the moment, people tend to forget the past. As we know, Hillary has changed her tune substantially in the primary race against Obama, but what I want to know, is will the REAL Hillary Clinton please stand up? And when this is all over, who will she be? Again the darling of the corporate/conservative DLC, of which her husband was chairman?
kathyodat
The Mark Penn / husband Bill Colombia lobbying "scandal" is hitting at the right time for the PA primary. The democratic machine has done its best to deliver PA to Hillary, Rendell and Nutter have returned the favors, and union folk remember good times during the Clinton years.
But now the PA dems can see who has been selling PA jobs down the river. There is a great article on Counterpunch today.
Change will not come from Washington. It will come from you and others at the local level. Washington is a sewer. Use that knowledge as fertilizer for your local efforts. Ignore national politics, reduce your spending and when you do buy, buy local, reduce your carbon footprint, respect life, grow a garden, vegi's and flowers, turn off the propaganda box, enhance your community of friends and acquaintances, and vote Green locally.
Might this FTA also make it easier for the U. S. now having an Ally then can command and funnel weapons to building up the Columbian Military to launch an attack on Venezuela in the future. Maybe they don't need FTA to do that.
"The Colombia Free Trade Agreement is best summed up as a proposal to formalize U.S. support for the assassination of labor union organizers by death squads, impoverishment of workers and the undermining of farming operations that will leave more landless peasants with no alternative but to immigrate to the United States seeking work."
Well, then...this Congress is SURE to Pass-it...