Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

July 3, 2017 By Fausta

Colombia: Timockenko has a stroke

Luckily for him, he was in Colombia and didn’t have to make-do with “free Cuban healthcare.”

Colombian Rebel Leader Hospitalized After StrokeTimochenko’s illness comes just days after FARC handed over the last of its individual weapons as part of peace deal

The top commander of Colombia’s largest rebel movement was hospitalized Sunday following a stroke and remains in intensive care, just days after his group handed over the last of its individual weapons as part of a historic peace deal.

Rodrigo Londoño, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, checked himself into a hospital emergency room in the city of Villavicencio shortly after 8 a.m. with slurred speech and numbness in his arm, doctors said in a news conference. They said he remains in intensive care as a precautionary measure, but his speech and mobility have already recovered 90% from what they described as a temporary blockage of blood to his brain.

In other news,

Howes, Stansell and Gonsalves were rescued from the FARC nine years ago.

Celebrating nine years of freedom today. Thanking God and the Colombian Army for Operación Jaque. pic.twitter.com/Yxvx7dToX9

— Marc D Gonsalves (@marc_gonsalves) July 2, 2017

Thanks to president @AlvaroUribeVel you and so many others came back alive. https://t.co/I4TqSbjXkQ

— fairwitness8 (@fairwitness8) July 2, 2017

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Filed Under: Colombia, FARC, Fausta's blog Tagged With: Keith Stansell, Marc D. Gonsalves, Thomas R. Howes, Timochenko

January 10, 2017 By Fausta

Colombia: No pardon for Simon Trinidad

El Tiempo reports that there will be no presidential pardon for FARC leader Ricardo Palmera a.k.a. Simón Trinidad, who is currently serving a 60-year sentence at the Florence ADX US Penitentiary for the execution of American Vietnam Veteran and Bronze Star recipient Thomas Janis, and the kidnapping and torture of Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes.

Julián Villabona Galarza explains,

Although Obama has the legal authority to grant a pardon Trinidad, due to special executive powers in the American legal system, he will not exercise his powers on this occasion, according to reporter Sergio Gómez Maseri, who is the Washington correspondent for El Tiempo, and who had first hand information from a United States government source.

Colombian president Santos reportedly had been pressuring Washington to release the terrorist Trinidad to appease the FARC, which he later denied.

In other FARC news, French president François Hollande to visit FARC encampment on official Colombia trip

Hollande will visit Colombia between the 22 and 24 of January, when he is expected to visit a guerilla demobilization site in Cauca province.

“Hollande, the president of France who cannot confront jihadist terrorism, will visit a Colombia handed over to the FARC.”

Noticia en Europa "HOLLANDE, PRESIDENTE FRANCÉS QUE NO HA SABIDO ENFRENTAR AL TERRORISMO YIHAIDISTA, VISITA LA COLOMBIA ENTREGADA A LAS FARC

— Álvaro Uribe Vélez (@AlvaroUribeVel) January 8, 2017

Hollande’s visit is yet one more step towards legitimizing the FARC’s ascension to political power.

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Filed Under: Colombia, FARC Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Francois Hollande, Juan Manuel Santos, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, Ricardo Palmera a.k.a “Simón Trinidad”, Thomas Howes

November 15, 2016 By Fausta

Cuba: US court rules Cuba must pay $116 million to FARC victims

A Federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled that Cuba Must Pay $166M To Colombian Terrorist Victims for having provided the FARC with materials, training and resources – the same Cuban government that is hosting the so-called peace negotiations between the FARC and the Colombian government.

The Federal court’s was a default ruling but establishes precedent.

Capitol Hill Cubans has the story:

A Washington, D.C., federal court has granted a $166 million default judgment against the Cuban government for its support of Colombian rebels who captured, tortured and held for ransom for five years three U.S. contractors and killed another.

Federal Judge Amit P. Mehta awarded $44.7 million to each of three surviving contractors from a narcotics surveillance flight shot down in 2003 by the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, FARC for its Spanish acronym, in addition to $12 million in damages for the widow of a fourth contractor executed immediately after the crash, and $5 million for each of his four children under the State Sponsors of Terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

“The court has little trouble concluding that Cuba provided the FARC with the materials, training, and resources necessary to carry out these batteries — the aircraft sabotage and physical torture — and that it did so with intent to harm these plaintiffs. Cuba intentionally provided support to the FARC over a number of years and encouraged the FARC to use violence to promote its political agenda,” the decision states.

Cuba’s communist government provided funding, training, weapons and facilitated the drug trafficking efforts of the FARC for decades leading up to the downing of the counter-narcotics operation, and throughout the captivity of Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howe, civilian contractors participating in the operation on behalf of the U.S. Embassy, according to the opinion.

Stansell, Gonsalves and Howe were released eight years ago. Back then, computers seized from the FARC showed that Nancy Pelosi had been indirectly contacting the FARC for a hostages-for-terrorists swap.

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Filed Under: Colombia, Communism, Cuba, FARC Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howe

November 11, 2015 By Fausta

Colombia: Today’s FARC news

A roundup of FARC:

Former FARC Member Sentenced to 27 Years in Prison. Ex-guard convicted in 2003 hostage-taking of American Defense Department contractors

A member of a Colombian terrorist group was sentenced Tuesday to 27 years in prison for his role in a 2003 hostage-taking of three American Defense department contractors.

Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltrán, 43 years old, was the third leader of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas (FARC) convicted in the hostage taking of Marc D. Gonsalves, Thomas R. Howes and Keith Stansell, employees of a Northrop Grumman Corp.subsidiary. The men, along with fellow American Thomas Janis and Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz of the Colombian military, were captured when their antidrug surveillance plane went down in FARC-held territory in 2003. Messrs. Gonsalves, Howes and Stansell were rescued in 2008, after 1,967 days in captivity, along with other hostages, including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

Colombia is again the world’s top coca producer. Here’s why that’s a blow to the U.S. (emphasis added),

The coca boom comes at an especially sensitive time for the Colombian government, which is in the final stages of peace negotiations with leftist FARC rebels, who have long profited from the illegal drug trade. Last month the government halted aerial spraying of the crop, citing concerns that the herbicides used may cause cancer. That program had been a pillar of Plan Colombia, under which the United States has provided more than $9 billion to this country since 2000.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a key U.S. ally, said his administration is ready to launch a massive crop substitution campaign if a deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is reached and areas under rebel control become safe enough for government workers. The guerrillas and the government have already agreed in principle on a sweeping new development plan for Colombia’s struggling rural areas, with the FARC pledging to help persuade farmers to rip out their coca in favor of lawful crops.

U.S. and Colombian officials say the biggest reason for the current bumper crop is that the FARC, along with other armed groups, has encouraged farmers to plant more coca in anticipation of the peace deal and the new government aid.

Colombia’s Farc rebel group ‘ordered to stop buying guns’

The leader of Colombia’s largest armed rebel group, the Farc, has said he ordered the organisation in September to stop buying guns and ammunition.

How convenient: Amid Ceasefire In Colombia, FARC Proposes US Military Funding Go To Peace-Building Fund

“The resources allocated to military aid should be redirected in their entirety to the fund” to end the conflict, according to a statement read by Lucas Carvajal, a FARC peace delegation member. The statement also called upon Colombian President Juan Manual Santos to “redefine the current structure of public expenditure…in particular, the spending on security and defense.”

“In the name of peace, narco-terrorism again takes over Colombia, all the lost effort and the risking of so much blood to disassemble it!”

En nombre de la paz el narcoterrorismo se toma de nuevo a Colombia, todo el esfuerzo perdido y el riesgo de cuánta sangre para desmontarlo!

— Álvaro Uribe Vélez (@AlvaroUribeVel) November 11, 2015

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Filed Under: Colombia, FARC Tagged With: Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltrán, Fausta' blog, Ingrid Betancourt, Keith Stansell, Marc D. Gonsalves, Thomas R. Howes

March 3, 2009 By Fausta

The real Ingrid Betancourt in captivity, and today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern

Former hostages Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves have their book out, Out of Captivity. Monsters and Critics has a lengthy review of the book. In it the former hostages describe not only their horrible ordeal, but also explain in detail what Ingrid Betancourt was like:
Colombia Hostage Book
Ingrid Betancourt was ‘worse than guards’, claims a fellow hostage
The heroic status of Ingrid Betancourt, who was rescued from six years in the hands of Marxist guerrillas deep in the Colombian jungle, has been shattered by a memoir from her fellow captives.

One of the American prisoners claimed that she was haughty, self-absorbed, stole their food, hoarded books, and risked their lives by informing the guards that they were CIA.

Mind you, Betancourt had to be aware that by claiming the men were CIA she was endangering their lives.

But the three American hostages are not the only ones: The London Times, in an article titled Hostages line up to vilify the ‘jungle heroine’ Ingrid Betancourt

Now Clara Rojas, a friend and colleague seized with Ms Betancourt in 2002, has joined in with further disclosures expected in a forthcoming book.

“I thought she was my friend, but she has demonstrated to me that she wasn’t so much,” Ms Rojas said in a trenchant interview with the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair published this week.

In the report, entitled False Appearances, Ms Rojas, a Colombian lawyer, rejects as fiction the story advanced by Ms Betancourt as to how they came to share captivity. She was not Ms Betancourt’s vice-presidential candidate, Ms Rojas said, nor did she volunteer herself as a hostage. She had accompanied Ms Betancourt to San Vicente del Caguán, where they were captured in February 2002, “out of friendship”.

When the Farc guerrillas who intercepted them said they were taking Ms Betancourt, Ms Rojas asked what would happen to her. Her inquiry so offended them that they took her as well, she said. “I had a generous attitude and because of this I expected something different from Ingrid, but it wasn’t so.”

She also spoke of Ms Betancourt’s distant behaviour in the jungle, particularly after Ms Rojas became pregnant by one of her captors.

Worse yet,

The birth of Ms Rojas’s son Emmanuel in 2004 is a particular source of tension. Ms Betancourt claimed in an interview with Larry King that she stopped Ms Rojas from drowning her baby in a jungle river — an allegation that is denied.

On the bright side, El Espectador got on the nerves of Raul Reyes, the now-dead #2 FARC guy, who described her as,

A lady of volcanic temper, rude, and provoking the guerillas in charge of her.”

Why does this matter?

It matters because Betancourt was nearly idolized in parts of Latin America and in Europe, particularly in France, and has made it known that she might seek another chance at Colombian politics. Market Memeorandum recommends, We Recommend Shunning Shares of Ingrid Betancourt. The Revelations of the Three Americans Finally Break an Absurd Code of Silence

Ingrid Betancourt was the symbol of Colombia’s cruel war for years. The former senator was abducted by the FARC guerrillas for about seven years, keep in captivity under miserable conditions. Her release took place last July, in a successful counter-intelligence operation launched by the government of President Alvaro Uribe. Her release was nothing but spectacular and fanned optimism over the decay of the FARC and the possibility that Colombia would someday finally be in peace.

That infamous symbol is over, thank God!

On Friday, three U.S. contractors who were also retained by the FARC for 1,976 days after their plane was shut down by the guerrillas (they refuse to be called spies but they probably were spying on the FARC’s drug operations) released a book in which they thrash Mrs. Colombia War Symbol, a.k.a. Ingrid, accusing her of hoarding and stealing food, complain about her attitude to her peers in the camp and tell a tale of cruelty, envy and arrogance. As AP Bogotá-based writer Frank Bajak said in his story, the Americans revealed that ”she was haughty and self-absorbed, stole food and hoarded books, and even put their lives in danger by telling rebel guards they were CIA agents.´´ What a national heroine we have in this country!

But here comes the funny thing. As if it were a sort of an offense against Colombian sovereignty, politicians, clerics, children, the poor and the rich — everyone — came to the attack of the three Americans (as if they hadn’t been kidnapped and put under the same suffering of the national heroine for long years) to defend our brave former senator. Colombians alleged that the Americans had broken a slient, tacit, Biblic-if-you-fancy code that states ”kidnapping jungle experiences die in the jungle.´´ Pure BS. It seems that Colombians are afraid of the revelations about their lives in the jungle — I don’t know what kind of secret code was that or where it did come from.

The truth is, that code exists no more, thanks to the bravery of these three spies who seem freer and less inclined to worshipping false idols like Betancourt than 44 million people. Looks like life in a FARC camp is pretty much a season of ”Big Brother,´´ that horrendous reality show were contestants love stabbing one another in their backs, cheating their couples outside the house where the show is filmed, intriguing for and against others … well, I can only say I laughed when I read the news.

Since we write about markets here, I will put this on market terms: Colombians, please sell your holdings of Ingrid Betancourt shares sooner than later. I urge the rest of the world to do the same. Stop believing in her. If you once were sympathetic to her mother, the former beauty queen and pedantic longstanding member of Bogotá’s oligarchy, Mrs. Yolanda Pulecio, shun her stock quickly too, before they tank like Citigroup Inc.’s stock. Those two are the reflex of a fetid Colombia — and I don’t mean their suffering should be overlooked, but carefully assessed, put into perspective. Truth is, Ingrid Betancourt’s irresponsible attitude during the aftermath of the breakdown of peace negotiations in Feb. 2002 led to her abduction. Her irresponsible attitude put the country and then-President Andrés Pastrana at a crossroads.

Betancourt would do something good to the world by sending back that prize she won, the Príncipe de Asturias. She should renounce to a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. That would be a shame for the country she says she loves so much — but put on dire straits the day she decided she had to be kidnapped by the FARC to make a point.

The war against the FARC rages on. Last weekend,

The Colombian army has killed a leading commander of the left-wing guerrilla movement FARC. Jesús Gúzman, also known as Gaitan, was killed in fighting at the weekend. He was wanted in connection with a series of supermarket bombings near the capital Bogotá, which formed part of an extortion campaign.

The Colombian intelligence services believe that FARC is increasingly resorting to extortion now that it is becoming more difficult for the movement to kidnap people for ransom.

At the same time, in south east Colombia the FARC killed four Colombian troops.
(CORRECTION Thursday, 5 March): South WEST Colombia)

The FARC is changing tactics and launching what they call “Plan Rebirth”

The rebels have brought their 45-year conflict back into the cities, with four bomb attacks so far this year.

They have also stepped up their extortion demands and their hold on the drugs trade, according to the government.

Whether this is an act of desperation or a regrouping, we shall soon find out.

I’ll be talking about this in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern. Chat’s open at 10:45AM. See you there.

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Filed Under: Colombia, FARC, Ingrid Betancourt Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, Out of Captivity, Thomas Howes

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