Uribe's sister-in-law and niece to be extradited on drug trafficking charges: Report .
Uribe's sister-in-law and niece to be extradited on drug trafficking charges: Report .
Saturday, 09 June 2012 22:00 Adriaan Alsema
A sister-in-law and a niece of Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe will be extradited to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges, research center Nuevo Arco Iris said Saturday.
According to the research center, the extradition of Uribe's family members was requested by federal courts in south Florida and New York fror their alleged ties to "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of the fear Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.
~snip~
The Uribe family has long faced accusations of ties to drug trafficking organizations.
According to 1991 U.S. military intelligence files, The former President was a "close friend" of Pablo Escobar, who according to Colombian newspaper archives lent Uribe one of his helicopters in 1983 when his father was killed and his brother Santiago was injured by FARC guerrillas.
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/24501-uribes-sister-in-law-and-niece-to-be-extradited-on-drug-trafficking-charges-report.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
[center]
[/center]
Even if Uribe was...errrrr....pure as the driven snow 
this report is certainly unhelpful to him.
The accused and her daughter are somewhat close in age--mom was apparently a teen bride:
What is El Former Presidente up to, these days, I wonder?
...under the protection of Bush Sr.'s close associate (member of his "Iraq Study Group," i.e., "old CIA"
, Leon Panetta, whose first visible action as Obama-appointed CIA Director was to go to Bogota amidst rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in power, where he (my guess) yanked Uribe from the stage (too obviously dirty) but landed him on a silk cushion (knows too much about Jr.'s crimes in Colombia) including these cushy academic sinecures and other perks and benefits of being a Bush Cartel "made man." Uribe is now angling to return his criminal organization to power in Colombia.
All sorts of potential witnesses against Uribe have been removed from Colombia--including the death squad witnesses that Uribe and U.S./Bush Junta-appointed ambassador, Wm. Brownfield, spirited out of Colombia in 2010, on mere drug charges, and "buried" in the U.S. prison system by complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure) out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections; and Maria Hurtado, head of Uribe's vast illegal spying operation, DAS (which Brownfield had a liaison to, and which is suspected of drawing up "hit lists" of trade unionists as well as spying on judges and prosecutors)--she was spirited out of Colombia to the U.S. client state of Panama where Uribe's rightwing pal gave her instant, overnight asylum, also over the objections of Colombian prosecutors, and concerning which somebody (Panetta?) has pressured Interpol NOT to honor a warrant request by Colombian prosecutors (who want her testimony against Uribe). Yet another Uribe crony--his "Justice and Peace" commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo--is reportedly on the lam in the U.S. He is also wanted by Colombian prosecutors on yet another Uribe crime.
THIS extradition (of Uribe's sister-in-law) resembles the death squad extraditions--the use of mere drug charges as the excuse for extradition, to cover up worse crimes by the principles (Uribe, Bush, et al). Once in the U.S., she can be pressured/bribed/forced to keep her mouth shut on certain things.
In addition to these and other witness removals (protection of Uribe), the U.S. State Department recently wrote a letter to the judge in the Drummond Coal death squad case here, successfully pressuring the judge NOT to compel Uribe to give a deposition. (Though Uribe is now a civilian with no office or position in Santos' government in Colombia, Uribe claimed "sovereign immunity" from being deposed in this case. While the State Department didn't accede to this absurd request for royal status, it did the next best thing by getting the judge to back off. One certainly has to wonder what "national security" considerations are involved in a U.S. corporation hiring righwing death squads to take care of their "labor problems" in their operations in Colombia.)
Uribe CLEARLY is under the protection of the U.S. government. Why? is the question. I think the answer is that Obama is under some sort of obligation to prevent investigation and prosecution of Bush Junta principles for their many terrible crimes, which, in Colombia, may include using the U.S. "war on drugs" to consolidate the cocaine trade into fewer hands and control that vast revenue stream, use of Colombia's civil war as "turkey shoot" practice for U.S. military 'contractor' hit squads with possible involvement of U.S. military personnel, USAID/Pentagon-designed "pacification" projects that ended in mass murder, direct aid to Uribe for spying on judges, prosecutors, trade unionists and other "enemies" and God knows what else.
Panetta would be the monitor and enforcer of any such "deal" that Obama made with the Bushwhacks (to keep them out of court and out of jail, in exchange for some quite limited powers as president). (I DO think that Obama was elected but he was also permitted to be elected, which is the problem. This is the power that Diebold gives to our transglobal rulers and war profiteers.) Panetta is a Bush Sr. close associate, probably tasked with ending the war between the CIA and the Pentagon that Rumsfeld/Cheney started, protecting Jr. and his masters from retribution, getting the U.S. war machine back on track, and covering up Jr.'s trail (as with protection of Uribe).
Right now our transglobal rulers are deciding who will be in the White House next year and whether or not to (or when to) restore Uribe to power in Colombia. I think they have had two broad plans and goals: 1) to prep Colombia for U.S. "free trade for the rich" by murdering hundreds of trade union leaders and other advocates of the poor and the brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands, in favor of the big, protected drug networks and corporate operations; and 2) Big Pharma's big move to take over the drug trade with legalization (which is favored throughout LatAm but has been most visibly advocated, recently, by rightwing leaders of U.S. client states, including Santos in Colombia).
I don't think they are going to let Romney win (as long as Obama keeps his bargains). I think they'll wait out this period of "forgetting" and go with Jeb in 2016, at which point Uribe may be returned to power in Colombia. Uribe says Santos is wrong on legalization but that Uribe (laughable) opinion could change overnight if he is offered power to implement Big Pharma's legalization/monopoly plans. I suspect he's just too dirty, though. LatAm is different from the U.S. these days. There is actually a chance, in LatAm, that major criminal players will end up in jail (or be forced to take refuge in Miami).
Like so much else in our "Alice in Wonderland" culture, "U.S. interests" don't really have anything to do with the U.S. as a country or as a people. The "United States" in the phrase "U.S. interests" means:
1. Transglobal corporations which are like floating countries unto themselves with loyalty to no one;
2. Extremely powerful, transglobal criminal gangs operating as, or within, #1.
3. Extremely powerful war profiteers operating as, or within, #1. (The "military-industrial complex" writ large--which, among other things, will sell arms to anyone, and freely murders anyone they wish, anywhere in the world; and the "prison-industrial complex," which is also, now, transglobal, imprisons millions unjustly and aids in the creation of police states in former democracies, including this one.)
4. Powerful investors (Chinese, Saudi Arabian, et al--by no means limited to billionaire "Americans" .
5. The political/bureaucratic class which serves the above interests in the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, state governorships, etc., in a "revolving door" exchange with all of the above (leave Congress, sit on a corporate board, etc.), their counterparts in U.S. client countries and allied countries and their counterparts in "U.S."-controlled transglobal entities such as the IMF/World Bank and NATO.
6. ALL of the corporate media.
The above entities comprise a very limited number of people, all in all, who exploit and oppress billions of people (not to mention the millions they bomb, murder, torture, imprison or displace--in the thousands in Honduras and Colombia (in the millions as to displacement in Colombia), in the tens of thousands in Iraq, etc.). Up to about the Reagan regime, these entities felt obliged to broadly profit the large U.S. middle class but that "honeymoon" is over, and the U.S. middle class, and of course our increasingly poor working class and their dependents, are now in the same category as the long ago jettisoned poor subclass (the homeless, the "cannon fodder" returnees, the mentally ill, the unskilled, the poorly educated, etc.), to be mercilessly robbed, disempowered and stripped of their human and civil rights.
Drummond Coal, for instance--to take just one example--is not alone. It operates (from Alabama) in Colombia with the collusion of the "political/bureaucratic class" here, and thus, when Drummond Coal execs hire rightwing death squads to murder the labor leaders in their operations in Colombia, the U.S. (not us, not our people) SUPPORTS them--covers up for them, influences judges on their behalf, writes up U.S. "free trade for the rich" deals and implements them to smoothe their way, and, in every way possible, makes it easy for them to oppress their Colombian workers (including murdering them) and to steal Colombia's rich natural resources.
They do not operate alone as transglobal entities. They operate within a network of transglobal powers, for whom the leaders, here, whom we wistfully believe that "we" are "electing," are the servant class. Our political leaders and the bureaucracies they run serve these transglobal powers, not us. That is why everything is so topsy-turvy--for instance (the most telling example, in my book): the privatization of the very counting of our votes, now controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that we, the American people, are forbidden to review--in almost ALL the voting machines in the U.S., with virtually no audit/recount controls.
THAT is topsy-turvy!
To understand it, you have to understand what "U.S. interests" really means. It does NOT mean OUR interests--the interests of most people in the U.S. It means the interests of this transglobal corporate power network.
I gather that you think that all nation states have always acted in their own "interest"--and I certainly would agree with that--but I think that, in absorbing that reality about nation states and history, we need to beware of minimizing, and even fundamentally misunderstanding, current transglobal corporate power and our situation here and now.
The precedent that springs to mind is the British East India Company--the first transglobal corporate power that spread its influence so far and wide--literally circling the planet--that it, in fact, defined many nation states and installed their governments. They did this tacitly in the interest of the Crown and with (eventually) the powerful British Navy to back them up, but it was basically a phenomenon of merchantmen seeking vast PROFIT. (It was really against this entity--the East India Company--that Americans rebelled.)
But that imperial, corporate, profit-seeking phenomenon--the British East India Company--was nothing--NOTHING!--compared to the current transglobal corporate masters who have hijacked our government and our military, and operate essentially outside the power of any government or people, in the interests of the transglobal few.
The brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands in Colombia, for instance, to make way for Monsanto, et al, to monopolize the marketing of marijuana and cocaine, is not going to benefit us. For one thing, they will mess with marijuana and the coca leaf (highly complex, beneficial, traditional medicine plants--mess with the genetics, patent the DNA, make growing your own illegal). For another, they are already shutting down the smaller operations here--the medical marijuana dispensaries in California, for instance--to monopolize the PROFITS. (Yes, the Feds are serving Big Pharma--in my opinion--helping to eliminate the competition, beforehand.)
Virtually nothing that our government does benefits us.. That is over. Our interests--the interests of the vast majority here--don't matter any more.
We can cynically sit back and say, "'Nations' always do this," and not bother our pretty little heads about it, or we can face up to it--try to understand, for instance, that the very concept of "nation" has essentially been overthrown (and, with it, democratic government)--and look for (and work for) ways to get our power back-- our rightful power as a democratic people. My recommendation: We need to start with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.
...the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.
We're going to see more and more, and even worse, assholes--in Congress, in governorships and state legislatures and in the White House. That's what the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines are FOR.
I'm afraid that the folks in Wisconsin--the most progressive state in the union--were beating their heads against a brick wall, working so incredibly hard to recall Walker, before ripping out the privately controlled 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. People just don't seem to understand what this MEANS. They can't win! That is the point.
Some say, well, Obama got elected. I think that is true, though neither I nor anyone else can prove it. And that IS the problem. 99% to 100% of our votes are tabulated with no auditing, by machines that are privately controlled (largely by one corporation with far rightwing connections). With that kind of power--the power to pick and choose our leaders, to shave their mandates (which I think they did to Obama), and to time their moves perfectly according to a plan that we are not privy to--our transglobal rulers can play our system like a piano--can PERMIT an Obama to be elected depending on the deals he agrees to make--for instance, not to investigate and prosecute the members of the Bush Junta for their many, many terrible crimes, or agreeing to Air Force predator drones murdering "suspects" in half a dozen countries, or turning "health care reform" into an insurance giants' boondoggle--and they can also UN-elect him, if they think the time is ripe for Bush Junta II. Obama also serves the function of helping our people to "forget" all that went before--horrible unjust war, horrible torture and other lawlessness, mind-boggling theft, mind-boggling malfeasance--our government run by the most savage bunch of criminals we have ever seen in higher office.*
'TRADE SECRET' vote counting is a malevolent tool--the cleverest one ever devised for controlling people, money, the law and government resources, without the victims of the control understanding their powerlessness. We jabber on about what we think the public can do--to influence Congressional assholes, for instance--and I've done it myself in the past--without realizing that most of them were not elected and do not, and will not, answer to us. It's not just the money--the lobbyists, the filthy campaign contribution system, or the corporate media--it's DIRECT CONTROL of election outcomes. Money, lobbyists, media can be overcome--as the Latin Americans have done, time and again (with seriously leftist, "New Deal"-type governments elected in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua and other places). They have done their civic homework on honest, transparent elections. We need to do ours.
This is NOT to say "be silent" or "don't bother to vote." Please don't misunderstand me. We must not be silent. We must continue to vote--if, for no other reason, than to remember who we are--the sovereign rulers of this land. But we need to do these things--to keep exercising our rights and duties as citizens--with OPEN EYES, and the main thing we need to SEE, right now, is that OUR VOTES ARE NO LONGER COUNTED IN THE PUBLIC VENUE.
-------------------------
*(I think there is another reason that an Obama was needed in the White House--that is, a pliable, "feel good" president without much power, as an interim figure, while behind-the-scenes powers ended the war between the Pentagon and the CIA that Cheney and Rumsfeld had started. This "war" was quite a serious thing, from the point of view of our transglobal corporate rulers and maybe from the point of view of all of us, in that the main issue seems to have been a Cheney/Rumsfeld plan to nuke Iran at the risk of armageddon the Middle East, especially if China and/or Russia got into it. The military brass opposed nuking Iran, and so did Bush Sr. (armageddon being bad for business) and likely the CIA opposed it as well. This is likely WHY Cheney/Rumsfeld outed not just one CIA agent but the CIA's entire WMD counter-proliferation project worldwide.
(These outings put Bush Jr. himself at risk of retaliation by the CIA. (I think they were moving on impeachment.) That is when Bush Sr. stepped in, with his "Iraq Study Group" ("Old CIA" , of which Leon Panetta was a member. The ISG allied with the military brass and ousted Rumsfeld in late 2006 and curtailed Cheney in the final two years of Jr.'s term. This is why Nancy Pelosi announced, virtually at the same moment, that "impeachment is off the table." The ISG and ES&S/Diebold vetted and approved Obama who agreed to, a) appoint Leon Panetta as CIA Director (direct Bush Sr. link), and b) no investigation/prosecution of the Bush Junta principles ("We need to look forward not backward." . Obama may have made other agreements but those two are quite obvious.
(Panetta was tasked with ending the war between the Pentagon and the CIA, and monitoring the no investigation/no prosecution deal (by which Cheney agreed to back off and Rumsfeld agreed to resign). Panetta also seems to be tasked with cleaning up Jr's trail wherever necessary (as in Colombia--a situation I've watched closely). Panetta was welcomed with wild happiness and champagne corks popping--according to reports--on his first day at the CIA (no "novice" he). He spent a year there, straightening things out and smoothing very ruffled feathers, and now is doing the same at the Pentagon. Notice how Bush Sr.-like U.S. foreign policy has become--subtler, more sophisticated, not the blunt object it was with Cheney/Rumsfeld. Still evil, greedy and lethal, as well as imperial and anti-democratic, but not so overtly ugly not to mention hugely dangerous.)
