Download or read book Plan Colombia written by John Lindsay-Poland and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than fifty years, the United States supported the Colombian military in a war that cost over 200,000 lives. During a single period of heightened U.S. assistance known as Plan Colombia, the Colombian military killed more than 5,000 civilians. In Plan Colombia John Lindsay-Poland narrates a 2005 massacre in the San José de Apartadó Peace Community and the subsequent investigation, official cover-up, and response from the international community. He examines how the multibillion-dollar U.S. military aid and official indifference contributed to the Colombian military's atrocities. Drawing on his human rights activism and interviews with military officers, community members, and human rights defenders, Lindsay-Poland describes grassroots initiatives in Colombia and the United States that resisted militarized policy and created alternatives to war. Although they had few resources, these initiatives offered models for constructing just and peaceful relationships between the United States and other nations. Yet, despite the civilian death toll and documented atrocities, Washington, DC, considered Plan Colombia's counterinsurgency campaign to be so successful that it became the dominant blueprint for U.S. military intervention around the world.
Download or read book The Losing War written by Jonathan D. Rosen and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical analysis of Plan Colombia, a multibillion dollar US counternarcotics initiative.
Download or read book Drugs Thugs and Diplomats written by Winifred Tate and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.
Download or read book International Migration and Human Rights written by Samuel Martinez and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-11-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary group of scholars examines how the actions of the United States as a global leader are worsening pressures on people worldwide to migrate, while simultaneously degrading migrant rights. Uniting such diverse issues as market reform, drug policy, and terrorism under a common framework of human rights, the book constitutes a call for a new vision on immigration.
Download or read book Anti Drug Policies in Colombia written by Alejandro Gaviria and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years after the declaration of the "war on drugs" by President Nixon, the debate on the effectiveness and costs of the ban is red-hot. Several former Latin American presidents and leading intellectuals from around the world have drawn attention to the ineffectiveness and adverse consequences of prohibitionism. This book thoroughly analyzes the drug policies of one of the main protagonists in this war. The book covers many topics: the economics of drug production, the policies to reduce consumption and decrease supply during the Plan Colombia, the effects of the drug problem on Colombia's international relations, the prevention of money laundering, the connection between drug trafficking and paramilitary politics, and strategies against organized crime. Beyond the diversity in topics, there is a common thread running through all the chapters: the need to analyze objectively what works and what does not, based on empirical evidence. Presented here for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this book is a contribution to a debate that urgently needs to transcend ideology and preconceived opinions.
Download or read book Colombia s Killer Networks written by Human Rights Watch/Americas and published by Human Rights Watch. This book was released on 1996 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: VI. The U.S role
Download or read book Aid to Plan Colombia written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Colombian Agency and the making of US Foreign Policy written by Alvaro Mendez and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies a significant event in US relations with Latin America, shedding light on the role of dependent states and their foreign policy agency in the process by which local concerns become intertwined with the dominant state’s foreign policy. Plan Colombia was a large-scale foreign aid programme through which the US intervened in the internal affairs of Colombia, by invitation. It proved to be one of the major successes of US foreign policy, and has been credited with stemming a potentially catastrophic security failure of the Colombian state. This book discusses the strategies and practices deployed by the Colombian government to influence US foreign policy decision making at the bureaucratic, legislative and executive levels, and is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of small power agency. Giving a clearer insight into the decision making processes in both the US and Colombia, this book founds its argument on solid empirical analysis assembled from interviews of the major players in the events including: Andres Pastrana, President of Colombia; Thomas Pickering, US State Department; Arturo Valenzuela, Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the NSA; General Barry McCaffrey, the US ‘Drug Czar’; and Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Approaching the events in question from a bottom-up theoretical perspective that puts the emphasis on the facts of the case, this book will be of great interest to academics, students and policy makers in the field of foreign policy analysis, US foreign policy studies, and Latin American studies.
Download or read book Drug War Capitalism written by Dawn Paley and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though pillage, profit, and plunder have been a mainstay of war since pre-colonial times, there is little contemporary focus on the role of finance and economics in today's "Drug Wars"—despite the fact that they boost US banks and fill our prisons with poor people. They feed political campaigns, increase the arms trade, and function as long-term fixes to capitalism's woes, cracking open new territories to privatization and foreign direct investment. Combining on-the-ground reporting with extensive research, Dawn Paley moves beyond the usual horror stories, beyond journalistic rubbernecking and hand-wringing, to follow the thread of the Drug War story throughout the entire region of Latin America and all the way back to US boardrooms and political offices. This unprecedented book chronicles how terror is used against the population at large in cities and rural areas, generating panic and facilitating policy changes that benefit the international private sector, particularly extractive industries like petroleum and mining. This is what is really going on. This is drug war capitalism. Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from South America, Central America, and Mexico for over ten years. Her writing has been published in the Nation, the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail, Ms. magazine, the Tyee, Georgia Straight, and NACLA, among others.
Download or read book The Aid Trap written by R. Glenn Hubbard and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-31 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past twenty years more citizens in China and India have raised themselves out of poverty than anywhere else at any time in history. They accomplished this through the local business sector the leading source of prosperity for all rich countries. In most of Africa and other poor regions the business sector is weak, but foreign aid continues to fund government and NGOs. Switching aid to the local business sector in order to cultivate a middle class is the oldest, surest, and only way to eliminate poverty in poor countries. A bold fusion of ethics and smart business, The Aid Trap shows how the same energy, goodwill, and money that we devote to charity can help local business thrive. R. Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan, two leading scholars in business and finance, demonstrate that by diverting a major share of charitable aid into the local business sector of poor countries, citizens can take the lead in the growth of their own economies. Although the aid system supports noble goals, a local well-digging company cannot compete with a foreign charity that digs wells for free. By investing in that local company a sustainable system of development can take root.
Download or read book Handbook of Research on Urban and Humanitarian Logistics written by Gonzalez-Feliu, Jesus and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: City logistics is one of the most popular fields of transportation sciences, dealing with sustainably supplying cities and at the same time reducing congestion and pollution related to goods transport in urban areas. Recently, humanitarian, emergency, and crises logistics has been a subject of increasing interest, often seen from an international viewpoint. However, some of the recent natural crises have shown the importance of resilience and reliability of the current urban logistics systems. The Handbook of Research on Urban and Humanitarian Logistics is a critical scholarly publication that addresses urban logistics and resilience, sustainable urban logistics, humanitarian logistics in urban areas both for crisis or long-term, and planning for resilient urban development. Featuring a broad range of topics that discuss the new and future trends in urban logistics and resilient cities, this publication is ideal for public planners; urban planners; company managers in logistics and transport; consulting agencies; regional, national, and international institutions and organizations; researchers; academicians; and students.
Download or read book Walking Ghosts written by Steven Dudley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Walking Ghosts, Steven Dudley, a journalist who lived in Columbia for five years, expertly chronicles the life and death of the Patriotic Union (UP), the party established by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's largest guerrilla group. Through stories of the politicians, drug kingpins, revolutionaries, and mercenaries who play key roles in Colombia's civil strife, Dudley maps out the complicated and murderous absurdity that is present-day Colombia, where daily life has devastating consequences: 30,000 murders per year, 75 political assassinations per week, 10 kidnappings a day. As the conflict gets bloodier, international pressure and influence mounts: Worried about the FARC's strength and its role in the drug trade, the United States has sent close to three billion dollars in aid to help the Colombian government fight the FARC. Steven Dudley seeks to make sense of this complicated conflict by focusing on the stories of key actors in the struggle, from the earliest days to the present. He has seen the civil war up close: dead bodies; paramilitaries; guerrillas; victims; and survivors. He has witnessed political parties grappling for power by any means necessary, and he's spoken to all sides and asked the difficult questions. Fast-paced and informative, with a new afterword by the author, Walking Ghosts presents a window into a conflict likely to shape the politics of this hemisphere for years to come.
Download or read book Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror written by Oliver Villar and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1990s, the United States has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Colombia, ostensibly to combat the illicit drug trade and State Department-designated terrorist groups. The result has been a spiral of violence that continues to take lives and destabilize Colombian society. This book asks an obvious question: are the official reasons given for the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia plausible, or are there other, deeper factors at work? Scholars Villar and Cottle suggest that the answers lie in a close examination of the cocaine trade, particularly its class dimensions. Their analysis reveals that this trade has fueled extensive economic growth and led to the development of a "narco-state" under the control of a "narco-bourgeoisie" which is not interested in eradicating cocaine but in gaining a monopoly over its production. The principal target of this effort is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who challenge that monopoly as well as the very existence of the Colombian state. Meanwhile, U.S. business interests likewise gain from the cocaine trade and seek to maintain a dominant, imperialist relationship with their most important client state in Latin America. Suffering the brutal consequences, as always, are the peasants and workers of Colombia. This revelatory book punctures the official propaganda and shows the class war underpinning the politics of the Colombian cocaine trade.
Download or read book Emperors in the Jungle written by John Lindsay-Poland and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-11 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emperors in the Jungle is an exposé of key episodes in the military involvement of the United States in Panama. Investigative journalism at its best, this book reveals how U.S. ideas about taming tropical jungles and people, combined with commercial and military objectives, shaped more than a century of intervention and environmental engineering in a small, strategically located nation. Whether uncovering the U.S. Army’s decades-long program of chemical weapons tests in Panama or recounting the invasion in December 1989 which was the U.S. military’s twentieth intervention in Panama since 1856, John Lindsay-Poland vividly portrays the extent and costs of U.S. involvement. Analyzing new evidence gathered through interviews, archival research, and Freedom of Information Act requests, Lindsay-Poland discloses the hidden history of U.S.–Panama relations, including the human and environmental toll of the massive canal building project from 1904 to 1914. In stunning detail he describes secret chemical weapons tests—of toxins including nerve agent and Agent Orange—as well as plans developed in the 1960s to use nuclear blasts to create a second canal in Panama. He chronicles sustained efforts by Panamanians and international environmental groups to hold the United States responsible for the disposal of the tens of thousands of explosives it left undetonated on the land it turned over to Panama in 1999. In the context of a relationship increasingly driven by the U.S. antidrug campaigns, Lindsay-Poland reports on the myriad issues that surrounded Panama’s takeover of the canal in accordance with the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, and he assesses the future prospects for the Panamanian people, land, and canal area. Bringing to light historical legacies unknown to most U.S. citizens or even to many Panamanians, Emperors in the Jungle is a major contribution toward a new, more open relationship between Panama and the United States.
Download or read book The Eruption of Nevado Del Ruiz Volcano Colombia South America November 13 1985 written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 13, 1985, catastrophic mudflows swept down the slopes of the erupting Nevado del Ruiz volcano, destroying structures in their paths. Various estimates of deaths ranged as high as 24,000 residents. Though the nature and extent of risk posed by the mudflows to local communities were well documented before the event and extensive efforts had been made to communicate this information to those at risk, the affected communities were caught largely unaware. This volume analyzes the disaster's many aspects: the extent, constitution, and behavior of the mudflows; the nature of damage to structures; the status of the area's disaster warning system; and the extent of the area's disaster preparedness, emergency response actions, and disaster relief effortsâ€"both at the time of the disaster and in the first few months following the event.
Download or read book Partnership for the Americas Western Hemisphere Strategy and U S Southern Command written by James G. Stavridis and published by NDU Press. This book was released on 2014-02-23 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its creation in 1963, United States Southern Command has been led by 30 senior officers representing all four of the armed forces. None has undertaken his leadership responsibilities with the cultural sensitivity and creativity demonstrated by Admiral Jim Stavridis during his tenure in command. Breaking with tradition, Admiral Stavridis discarded the customary military model as he organized the Southern Command Headquarters. In its place he created an organization designed not to subdue adversaries, but instead to build durable and enduring partnerships with friends. His observation that it is the business of Southern Command to launch "ideas not missiles" into the command's area of responsibility gained strategic resonance throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America, and at the highest levels in Washington, DC.
Download or read book Drugs and Democracy in Latin America written by Coletta Youngers and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the U.S. has failed to reduce the supply of cocaine and heroin entering its borders, it has, however, succeeded in generating widespread, often profoundly damaging, consequences on democracy and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.
