Another Assassination Attempt Against Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez

Peoples Dispatch January 12, 2023 Peoples Dispatch Admin, Americas, Archives
Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez denounced a new attempt on her life on January 10 / credit: Francia Márquez / Twitter
Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez denounced a new attempt on her life on January 10 / credit: Francia Márquez / Twitter

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez, on Tuesday, January 10, denounced a new attempt on her life. Márquez reported on Twitter that her security team had found a highly destructive explosive device near her family home in the Yolombó village, in the Suárez municipality, in the Cauca department during a security check before her visit. Márquez also reported that the device had been destroyed in a controlled explosion by bomb disposal experts.

“Members of my security team found a device with more than 7 kg of explosive material on the road that leads to my family residence in the village of Yolombó, in Suárez, Cauca. It was destroyed in a controlled manner by anti-explosive personnel from the SIJIN,” Márquez tweeted along with photos of what appeared to be an improvised explosive device.

The Vice President and Minister of Equality, in another tweet, shared a police report about the incident, and said that “the attached report shows that it was another attempt on my life.”

Márquez, an environmental activist who became the first Black woman vice president of Colombia against all odds, added that “regardless, we won’t stop working every day, day after day, until we achieve Total Peace that Colombia dreams of and needs. We will not give up until it is possible to live in true harmony in each territory.”

Márquez had planned to visit her hometown in Yolombó from January 7 to 9. For this reason, a prior inspection was carried out in the areas close to her residence, when the explosives were found. Due to the characteristics and location of the device, intelligence and security personnel concluded that this was an attack against the vice president.

This was not the first time that Márquez had her life threatened. In May 2022, before the presidential elections, during a campaign rally in the capital Bogotá, Márquez was pointed at with a laser when she was on stage addressing a multitude of supporters. At that time, her bodyguards immediately covered her with bulletproof shields to protect her and prevent an attack against her life.

In April 2022, the far-right paramilitary group, Águilas Negras or Black Eagles, issued death threats against several members of the left-wing Historic Pact coalition, including Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, who were candidates at the time.

It was the third death threat that Márquez had received in less than a month. The Águilas Negras had issued two other death threats to Márquez and other progressive political and social leaders in March 2022.

Márquez, who rose to prominence for her struggle against illegal gold mining in Suárez, took office with President Gustavo Petro last year on promises of fighting inequalities, corruption, impunity, drug trafficking, paramilitarism and consolidating peace.

Violence against environmentalists, land defenders, human rights defenders, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, peasant and social leaders like Márquez is not uncommon in Colombia. Paramilitary and drug trafficking groups have been targeting those who work to defend land and natural resources in their territories and pose a threat to the organization’s illegal operations.

Colombia has lived through almost 60 years of internal armed conflict over territorial disputes between paramilitary groups, drug traffickers, the army and guerrillas, which has killed around 450,000 people and displaced over 8 million.

Colombia’s first leftist leaders, President Petro and Vice President Márquez, are determined to bring total peace to the country. The Petro-Márquez government has called on all irregular armed groups operating in different parts of the country to negotiate peace agreements.

According to Colombian human rights organization, the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), so far, at least 23 irregular armed groups have expressed their intention to  engage in dialogue and “accept legal benefits in exchange for peace and definitive non-repetition of violence.”

The government has already begun negotiations with four groups including the dissident groups of the demobilized FARC guerilla group: the Estado Mayor Central, the Segunda Marquetalia; and the drug cartels Clan del Golfo and Los Pachencas. The peace process with the National Liberation Army (ELN) which began under the government of Juan Manuel Santos, but was suspended during the term of Iván Duque, was also restarted and the first round of talks was held in Caracas, Venezuela in December 2022.

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From Palestine to Colombia: The End of the White World Colonial-Capitalist Project?

Ajamu Baraka May 18, 2021 Ajamu Baraka Admin, Americas, Archives, West Asia
Militarized police in Portland, Oregon
“Militarized Police” by Shotboxer Portland is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The world is shocked by the image of an 11-story residential building in Gaza collapsing because of a bomb dropped by the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most advanced armies in the world thanks to U.S. support. But in the United States, Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate and now candidate for mayor of New York City, proudly proclaims he stands with the “heroic people of Israel” who are under attack from the vicious, occupied Palestinians, who have no army, no rights and no state.

But as politically and morally contradictory as Yang’s sentiments might appear for many, the alternative world of Western liberalism has a different standard. In that world, liberals claim that all are equal with inalienable rights. But in practice, some lives are more equal and more valuable than others. 

In the liberal world, Trump is condemned for attempting to reject the results of the election and indicating he might not leave office at the end of his term. But as soon as Biden occupied the White House, one of his first foreign policy decisions was to give the U.S.-imposed Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, a green light to ignore the demands of the Haitian people and the end of his term in February. He remains in office.  

In the liberal world, the United States that has backed every vicious right-wing dictator in the world since the Second World War, orchestrates coups, murders foreign leaders, attacks nations fighting for independence in places like Vietnam, trains torturers, brandishes nuclear bombs, has the longest-held political prisoners on the planet, is number one in global arms sales, imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, has supported apartheid South Africa and is supporting apartheid Israel—while championing human rights! 

In the liberal world, the United States can openly train, fund, and back opposition parties and even determine who the leader of a nation should be, but react with moral outrage when supposedly Russian-connected entities buy $100,000 worth of Facebook ads commenting on “internal” political subjects related to the 2016 election. 

In the liberal world, Democrats build on racist anti-China sentiments and the identification of China as a national threat, and then pretend they had nothing to do with the wave of anti-Asian racism and violence. 

In the liberal world, liberals are morally superior and defend Black life as long as those lives are not in Haiti, Libya, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, all of Africa, and in the jails and prisons of the United States.

In the liberal world, you can—with a straight face—condemn the retaliatory rockets from Gaza, the burning of a police station in Minneapolis, attacks on property owned by corporations in oppressed and exploited communities, attacks on school children fighting back against police in Baltimore, and attacks on North Koreans arming themselves against a crazed, violent state that has already demonstrated—as it did with Libya—what it would do to a state that disarmed in the face of U.S. and European aggression. 

And in the liberal world, Netanyahu is a democrat, the Palestinians are aggressors and Black workers did not die unnecessarily because the United States dismantled its already underdeveloped public health system. 

What all of this is teaching the colonized world, together with the death and violence in Colombia, Haiti, Palestine and the rest of the colonized world, is that even though we know the Pan-European project is moribund, the colonial-capitalist West is prepared to sacrifice everything and everyone in order to maintain its global dominance, even if it means destroying the planet and everyone on it. 

That is why Biden labels himself an “Atlanticist”—shorthand for a white supremacist. His task is to convince the European allies it is far better to work together than to allow themselves to be divided against the “barbarians” inside and at the doors of Europe and the United States.

The managers of the colonial-capitalist world understand the terms of struggle, and so should we. It must be clear to us that for the survival of collective humanity and the planet, we cannot allow uncontested power to remain in the hands of the global 1 percent. The painful truth for some is if global humanity is to live, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial-capitalist project must die.  

This article was originally published in Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

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Indigenous-Led Occupation in United States Demands City of Minneapolis Call Off Demolition

Niko Georgiades February 23, 2023 Niko Georgiades Admin, Americas, Archives

Editor’s Note: To help our international readers understand this Unicorn Riot story, we provide the following context. Roof Depot is a closed warehouse that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has deemed a Superfund site, which means it has been identified as a candidate for cleanup of hazardous materials. Further, East Phillips is a neighborhood in the U.S. Midwestern city of Minneapolis. Find here a scan of the physical press release that has been cited below.

MINNEAPOLIS, United States—East Phillips residents and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) started an occupation of the Roof Depot site in the early hours of Tuesday morning in resistance to the city’s plan to demolish the site which sits atop decades of arsenic contamination. Demands include an end to the demolition plan, no more additional polluting facilities and an end to evictions of encampments. [After the publication of this article, the occupation was evicted by Minneapolis Police on Tuesday evening. Eight people were reportedly detained and released.]

In the “arsenic triangle” in the most diverse neighborhood in Minnesota, the Roof Depot site is set for demolition next week against the wishes of many in the community who are fearful of the toxic impacts on their health and the health of future generations.

A tipi was erected in the morning, along with over a dozen tents and a sacred fire. In the morning, Unicorn Riot livestreamed the beginning of the occupation as well as an afternoon press conference.

Watch the press conference that took place at 1 p.m. at 27th Street and Longfellow Avenue below.

A press release from Defend the Depot said the community is demanding the city officials cancel the demolition and made seven specific demands. They also provided a brief history of the past century of heavy pollution on East Phillips, where the Roof Depot EPA Superfund site exists.

“For generations, East Phillips, a neighborhood of over 70% residents of color and home to the majority Indigenous Little Earth housing development, has been treated as an environmental sacrifice zone. For the last century, East Phillips has been zoned for heavy industrial pollution. According to US EPA data, the area within a one-mile radius of the Roof Depot site ranks nationally in the 89th percentile for diesel particulate matter, the 99th percentile for Superfund Proximity, and the 96th percentile for hazardous waste proximity.”

Press release from Defend the Depot – Feb. 21, 2023

The list of demands includes an end to encampment evictions and the creation of a new ‘navigation center’ for the unhoused people to access support, referrals, and resources:

  • Total relocation of the Hiawatha Expansion Project
  • Hand over control of Roof Depot site to the community
  • Plans to remove of Bituminous Roadways and Smith Foundry [Bituminous Roadways and the Smith Foundry are sources of legacy contamination near to the Roof Depot]
  • Enact a moratorium on encampment evictions [According to a Wilder Foundation Study Indigenous people make up 1 percent of Minnesota’s adult population, but a disproportionate 13 percent of the houseless population. A survey of a large encampment in Minneapolis in 2020 found that nearly half of the 282 people living there were Native.]
  • Provide funding for peer support workers
  • Invest in pilot programs to provide shelter and services to the houseless community like the former navigation center
  • Provide funding for the community’s vision for an indoor urban farm at the Roof Depot site

“The area around the Roof Depot warehouse is a former Superfund site, and the Depot building itself sits atop a reservoir of legacy arsenic contamination. Public health and environmental experts have spoken out about the risks of demolishing the building and exposing arsenic beneath the site and releasing it into the community. The city’s own Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) acknowledges the risk of “fugitive” dust, which experts say will likely contain arsenic and other contaminants, but the city declined to carry out more intensive environmental studies and has delivered no information about protection plans to those living near the demolition site.“

Press release from Defend the Depot – Feb. 21, 2023

On Sunday, a protest at the Roof Depot site brough together the resistance against the planned ‘Cop City’ in the Atlanta Forest and the East Phillips struggle against the Roof Depot demolition. At the action, AIM member Rachel Thunder told people to be expecting actions at the site and that “you’re gonna know in our words and our thoughts and our prayers and our songs, that we’re not gonna back down. We’re gonna make a stand here.”

During Sunday’s protest we heard from Cassie Holmes, an East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) board member, about some of the history of the East Phillips community dealing with the Roof Depot site over the last several years.

In late January, the Minneapolis City Council voted 7-6 that the site was to be demolished. Unicorn Riot has been covering this story for several months, documenting protests and city hall meetings.

Daniel Schmidt, an organizer with the EPNI’s Communications Team, provides insight on the history of environmental racism in Minneapolis, including the origin of the arsenic plume that lays dormant underneath the East Phillips Roof Depot site.

 

A map of countries where the United States has militarily intervened / credit: Congressional Research Service
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U.S. Launched 251 Military Interventions Since 1991, and 469 Since 1798

Benjamin Norton September 14, 2022 Benjamin Norton Admin, Americas, Archives
A map of countries where the United States has militarily intervened / credit: Congressional Research Service
A map of countries where the United States has militarily intervened / credit: Congressional Research Service

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Multipolarista.

The United States launched at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022.

This is according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a U.S. government institution that compiles information on behalf of Congress.

The report documented another 218 U.S. military interventions between 1798 and 1990.

That makes for a total of 469 U.S. military interventions since 1798 that have been acknowledged by the Congress.

This data was published on March 8, 2022, by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), in a document titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022.”

The list of countries targeted by the U.S. military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single county in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent.

From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the U.S. military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS.

That number grew to 200 military interventions between 1991 and 2018.

Countries US military interventions

The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of U.S. unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased.

Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the U.S. government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars.

The data exclude the independence war been U.S. settlers and the British empire, any military deployments between 1776 and 1798, and the U.S. Civil War.

It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include U.S. special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments.

The CRS report clarified:

The list does not include covert actions or numerous occurrences in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations.

The report likewise excludes the deployment of the U.S. military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion.

CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.”

The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University’s Center for Strategic Studies has documented even more foreign meddling.

“The U.S. has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60 percent undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.”

The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the U.S. to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite—the U.S. has increased its military involvements abroad.”