Month: June 2017

Source: TomDispatch

The tabs on their shoulders read “Special Forces,” “Ranger,” “Airborne.” And soon their guidon — the “colors” of Company B, 3rd Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group — would be adorned with the “Bandera de Guerra,” a Colombian combat decoration.

“Today we commemorate sixteen years of a permanent fight against drugs in a ceremony where all Colombians can recognize the special counternarcotic brigade’s hard work against drug trafficking,” said Army Colonel Walther Jimenez, the commander of the Colombian military’s Special Anti-Drug Brigade, last December.  America’s most elite troops, the Special Operations forces (SOF), have worked with that Colombian unit since its creation in December 2000.  Since 2014, four teams of Special Forces soldiers have intensely monitored the brigade.  Now, they were being honored for it. read more

Source: Common Dreams

The Amazon is the sort of wild place where you often go looking for one thing, but find another. So it was when Mongabay travelled in May on a mission to observe illegal logging operations within federal conservation units beside the BR-163, the Amazon highway linking the city of Santarém on the Amazon River with Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso state.

What we expected to find was a serious crime involving illegal timber extraction on federal lands, and possible infringement of labor laws, with workers held in conditions analogous to slavery. read more