On the FARC ceasefire and FARC/Colombia peace negotiations in Cuba:
To discuss the implications of the ceasefire, Inside Story Americas with presenter Shihab Rattansi, (Aljazeera news service) is joined by guests: Laura Gil, a columnist for El Tiempo and former consultant to the Organisation of American States, and James Jones, a development specialist who has worked extensively in FARC-controlled areas.
On Honduras:
To discuss this, Inside Story Americas is also joined by guests: Dana Frank, a historian of Honduras who teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Pamela Spees, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents the parents of Isso Murillo, a 19-year-old demonstrator who was shot and killed in the aftermath of the Honduras coup in 2009.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/11/2012112051713508222.html
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Of these guests, James Jones was the least informative and I would guess that he may be hiding his status as a USAID private contractor in Colombia--and possibly even one of those who worked with the U.S. military on Afghanistan-like "pacification" programs in areas where the U.S./Colombia militaries were brutally clearing the peasants off of their lands, in at least one case with a massacre, followed by USAID personnel and contractors in Pentagon helicopters dropping in to appoint the local government and police its loyalty to the fascist regime in Bogota, and protect the interests of U.S. and allied transglobal corporations.
The description of James Jones, above, is presumably a self-description--what he told Aljazeera. He describes himself as a "development specialist" but he doesn't say for whom--and a "development specialist" who has "worked extensively in FARC-controlled areas." These are the very areas where the peasants were being murdered and driven off their lands (5 million displaced peasants!). He certainly wasn't there working for the peasants or the FARC guerillas!
He is tight-lipped--not full of info and intelligent comments and questions like the three other guests. You can't always tell by appearances (he is not telegenic), but he looks like a man who is hiding something. He has little to contribute and seems to frown on the FARC/Colombia peace talks. He also has a bureaucratic air (fussing over definitions--land reform vs agrarian reform), like USAID report writers and lower level diplomats, and those in the (U.S. taxpayer-funded) 'private sector" who imitate this dry style in which "pacification" is drained of all the bloodshed and made to sound like a benevolent program. I may be wrong about him. But if this had been an interview of him alone, I would not be praising it, and, indeed, I would be very distrustful.
But the other guests and the interviewer (Shihab Rattansi, of Aljazeera) make up for this a thousand-fold! The three other guests are all women, and all contribute vital information and perspectives on these trouble spots (Colombia, Honduras) and raise THE vital questions on these news stories: For instance, the question is not, "Will Honduras have free and fair elections?" The question is, Will the Libre party candidates even live to the election? Political assassination of leftists and journalists is so endemic in the U.S. client state of Honduras, that it is a serious question whether presidential candidate, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (Mel Zelaya's wife) and other Libre candidates will still be alive when Hondurans cast their votes next year. Several Libre candidates have already been murdered!
That's the kind of discussion this is: A REALITY-BASED discussion!
Dana Frank (UC Santa Cruz) raised this particular question (safety of the opposition candidates) and raised many other issues and questions about Honduras, including increased U.S. military presence, U.S. military/DEA involvement in murders of Hondurans, the chief of police's involvement with death squads, the top to bottom illicit drug corruption in the government and military and more. Laura Gil is a lawyer (CCR) in a case involving U.S.-trained/funded police murdering an innocent teenager and other innocent Hondurans. Both women discussed various aspects the utter lack of accountability in the U.S.-backed Honduran government.
Laura Gil (El Tiempo) among other things raised the question of the economic and political structure of Colombia--a subject at the FARC talks in Cuba--needing to be expanded to include all of civil society in Colombia. At issue are the type of capitalism and the type of democracy that Colombia should have. She pointed out, for instance, that the FARC used the language of private property rights in outlining the negotiation item of the theft of peasant lands. This points to the FARC (generally considered to be communists) being open to compromise within the political process. Must Colombia's capitalism be "Neo-liberal" (the rich get richer, the poor get kicked off the island)? Gil says Colombia's economic/political structure should be discussed generally in Colombia, not just in the Cuba talks.
REALITY-BASED discussion!
Kudos to Laura Gil, Dana Frank and Pamela Spees for all their research and investigative work and to Aljazeera's Shihab Rattansi for presenting it! Very impressive!
Again, this kind of discussion should be routine in the broadcast media, since broadcast media use our PUBLIC airwaves. That it is NOT--that the U.S. public is routinely DENIED this kind of information and discussion on our PUBLIC airwaves--is a disgrace and worse--it is an appalling assault on our democracy by unaccountable corporate media barons.
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