Colombia

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comrades -- I just returned from a morning and afternoon conference in
Montpelier, Vermont whose purpose was to hash out the issues and to begin to
pull together some responses to the increasing U.S. intervention in
Colombia.  It was a good start -- with some 40 people in attendance, many of
them younger people from the Vermont Action Network.  One of the invited
speakers was a guy from the Colombia Support Network out of Boston.
Unfortunately, he laid out a very liberal line which criticized both the
Colombia government/right-wing paramilitaries (80%) and the guerillas (20%)
for "human rights violations".  No mention needless to say about the
class-content of violence.   A couple of us, including another guy on this
list, tried to challenge him to prove what he was saying.  We defended the
need, where appropriate, for revolutionary violence.  He cited unnamed human
rights organizations, according to which the FARC supposedly was guilty of
killing people outside of the combat situation.  I seem to remember Louis
dealt with this whole canard following some discussion with some NACLA
people in New York.  Can you please remind me?  What info do others have
about this?  Just as in the Anti(Vietnam) War movement, some old positions
seem to the replicating themselves here, with the pacifist human-rights
types objectively lining up with U.S. imperialism by their fright from the
revolutionaries.   Some of these human rights organizations I know are
funded by very mainstream, to say the least, sources.

best,
jay
http://www.neravt.com/left/