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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Mon Sep 16, 2019, 01:16 AM Sep 2019

New US ambassador arrives in Colombia



by Adriaan Alsema September 15, 2019

The United States’ new ambassador, Philip Goldberg, arrived in Colombia on Saturday, a month after the former ambassador left.

Goldberg replaces former ambassador Kevin Whitaker who was expected to leave in February 2017 already, but was forced to stay on amid bickering between the White House and US Congress about his successor.

In a press release, Goldberg said he was “very happy to be here in Colombia,” where he worked early this century as coordinator of “Plan Colombia,” a bilateral initiative to curb cocaine exports to the US and combat leftist guerrillas.

. . .

Furthermore, the former Plan Colombia coordinator will be confronted with resistance from Congress against US-backed plans to resume the aerial fumigation of coca, the base ingredient for cocaine.

This strategy was a key element of Plan Colombia, but is currently banned because of growing evidence it is ineffective and a major hazard to public health and the environment.

Goldberg will also have to try to improve deteriorated relations with Colombia’s courts and congress, which effectively wants to end the US-backed “war on drugs” and vowed to seek the approval of legislation to seek a long-term solution to the country’s booming drug trade.

Adding to the ambassador’s challenges are the pending investigations against allegedly rogue DEA agents who tried to link a former FARC commander to drug trafficking apparently without any evidence.

Last but not least, Goldberg will be playing a key role in his government’s dealings with Venezuela, which is suffering a major humanitarian and institutional crisis and whose government has accused Washington of conspiring with the Colombian government to oust disputed President Nicolas Maduro.

https://colombiareports.com/new-us-ambassador-arrives-in-colombia/

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Trump's new ambassador to Colombia was once expelled from Bolivia

Philip Goldberg was accused of fomenting dissent in 2008
Conservative will oversee vast military aid budget

Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 13.45 EDT

Donald Trump has nominated a controversial career diplomat who was once expelled from Bolivia as the new US ambassador to Colombia, in a move that is likely to raise eyebrows across Latin America.

Philip Goldberg served as the US ambassador to Bolivia for two years before its leftwing president, Evo Morales, accused him of fomenting dissent in 2008 and ordered him to leave the country.

. . .

Beginning in 2000, the US provided Colombia with nearly $10bn in aid – dubbed Plan Colombia – 71% of which went to Colombian security forces. Watchdogs say that rather than help Colombia win on the battlefield, Plan Colombia intensified a wave of paramilitary violence that victimized more than 6 million people.

Goldberg once served as the coordinator of Plan Colombia from the embassy in Bogotá.

“He’ll probably be more focused on military assistance and crop eradication than on peace accord implementation and protecting human rights,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a thinktank. “But that’s the current US stance, anyway.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/02/trump-philip-goldberg-colombia-ambassador-bolivia

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US Embassy in Bolivia Tells Fulbright Scholar and Peace Corps Volunteers to Spy on Venezuelans and Cubans in Bolivia
STORY FEBRUARY 11, 2008

An American Fulbright scholar and Peace Corps volunteers in Bolivia say the US embassy told them to spy on Venezuelans and Cubans in Bolivia. We go to Bolivia to speak with the Fulbright scholar Alexander van Schaick and Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, the reporter who broke the story for ABC News. [includes rush transcript]

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: A US embassy official in Bolivia told Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar to “spy” on Venezuelans and Cubans in the country, this according to an ABC News report. Assistant Regional Security Officer Vincent Cooper reportedly told the group of Peace Corps volunteers in July 2007 and at least one Fulbright scholar in November of 2007 to “keep tabs” on the Cubans and Venezuelans they came across in Bolivia.

The US embassy in Bolivia has also been using American taxpayer money to help fund opposition groups, according to an article in The Progressive magazine. Two years into the embattled presidency of Bolivia’s Evo Morales, the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, has funneled over $4 million to support Morales’s opponents.

In August 2007, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera accused the US embassy of financing opposition groups, and Presidential Minister Juan Ramon de la Quintana said the Bush administration was working to undermine the Bolivian government and foster instability.

. . .

ALEXANDER VAN SCHAICK: Hi, Amy. Thanks. Well, what happened, basically, is I arrived in Bolivia to start my Fulbright grant in La Paz, and the first sort of step before you go and start doing your own research is to go through an orientation, which is pretty standard, at the US embassy, because the main Fulbright officer in Bolivia is based out of the US embassy. So that part was pretty normal, just sort of talking about the Fulbright program, stuff like that, talking about living in Bolivia. I met with a cultural affairs officer in the embassy.

Now, the part, obviously, that’s more controversial is, I was taken to a security briefing on the security floor of the embassy. It was given to me by a man named Vincent Cooper. It was just me and him in the room. And again, for most of the time, it was pretty standard, stuff like, you know, how not to put yourself in danger, how to live in Bolivia, what not to do, stuff like that. But the part that obviously raised the flags in my mind was when he told me, “If you should encounter any Venezuelans or Cubans in the field — doctors, field workers, etc. — the embassy would like you to report their names and something like where they’re located to the embassy.” And then he said, “We know they’re out there. We just want to keep tabs on them.” And that’s pretty much the extent of the ask, as it were.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you say?
ALEXANDER VAN SCHAICK: I actually at the time didn’t say anything, because the first thought that popped into my mind was, “Oh, my god, the US — this US embassy official just asked me to spy,” and I didn’t want to sort of confront him on that directly. I immediately was thinking, what can I do — because this is obviously wrong, obviously against what the Fulbright program is about — what can I do to change this so that it doesn’t happen again?

More:
https://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/11/us_embassy_in_bolivia_tells_fulbright

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Reactionary Rampage: The Paramilitary Massacre in Bolivia
Events in Bolivia took a dramatic turn on September 11 with the murder of more than two dozen government supporters by armed vigilantes in the northern department of Pando. With the massacre, President Morales' denunciations of a "civic coup" grew more urgent, sparking an emergency top-level meeting of the South American Union in Chile. In response to these recent events, Bolivia's opposition has slightly pulled back its overt attacks, but it will nonetheless continue to actively make the situation ungovernable for the weakened Morales administration.

September 16, 2008

Forrest Hylton
Bolivian President Evo Morales’ expulsion of US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg on September 10 for alleged coup plotting sparked the latest diplomatic crisis in the Americas. But the diplomatic fallout has overshadowed the internal dynamics that led to the massacre of some 30 campesinos with perhaps as many as 40 more disappeared in El Porvenir, Pando, near Bolivia’s northeastern border with Brazil. The massacre coincided with the 35th anniversary of the violent overthrow of socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile.

More:
https://nacla.org/news/reactionary-rampage-paramilitary-massacre-bolivia
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