by Adriaan Alsema October 1, 2019

Sources within Bogota‘s Police department have confirmed that two of its officers took part in vandalism that triggered violent repression of student protests in Colombia’s capital on Friday, according to Blu Radio.

Students on social media said on Friday that they had apprehended some of the rioters, including members of riot police squad ESMAD, and had handed them over to police.

Anonymous sources confirmed that two policemen had been arrested by their colleagues, the radio station reported Monday.

According to the police sources, the officers were throwing rocks at student loan institute Icetex “to remain unnoticed.”

The version given by the authorities is that while the uniforms were fulfilling the objective of infiltrating the demonstrations, they were discovered by several students and the policemen, to remain unnoticed, apparently began to throw stones.

Blu Radio

More:
https://colombiareports.com/bogota-police-admits-taking-part-in-vandalism-that-ended-peaceful-student-protests-report/

I will not exchange my dignity for my freedom, the former president said in a letter

Oct.1.2019 1:37PM

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defied the Car Wash Operation (Lava Jato) and released a letter saying that he will not bargain in order to leave the prison in Curitiba.

"I will not trade my dignity for my freedom," wrote the petista. "I will not accept bargaining for my rights and my freedom."

Lula released the letter after the Car Wash task force recommended that the federal court grant regime progression (from closed to semi-open) to Lula, arrested since April 2018.

Lula has served a sixth of his sentence in the case of the Guarujá triplex, a requirement to leave the regime closed.

The former president had previously said that he intended to leave prison only after being cleared. He also rejects the possibility of wearing an electronic anklet.

More:
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/10/lula-defies-car-wash-and-says-he-will-not-bargain-freedom.shtml

Viva Lula!

by Adriaan Alsema September 30, 2019


Alvaro Cadena is the brother of “gangstattorney” Diego Cadena and poses a “serious threat” to the journalist who exposed his brother’s alleged criminal activity, according to Colombia’s press freedom foundation.

Semana columnist Daniel Coronell has published evidence that could put Uribe and the self proclaimed “gangstattorney” in prison for fraud and bribery.

Miami’s only physical therapist assistant with his own private jet told his brother to “throw a party for that son of a bitch,” wiretaps obtained by Colombia’s Supreme Court and published by Coronell revealed.

. . .

Bock added that this “serious threat” is amplified by the fact that Cadena is the fixer of former President Alvaro Uribe.

Multiple witnesses and potential witnesses against the family of the former Medellin Cartel associate and leader of the far-right Democratic Center party have been assassinated.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/alvaro-cadena-a-serious-threat-for-journalist-who-exposed-uribes-alleged-criminal-activity/

Havana, Sep 28 (Prensa Latina) With a superproduction of Carmina Burana and a symphonic version by Sulkary, the company Danza Contemporanea de Cuba (DCC) is celebrating its 60th anniversary on Saturday.

According to playwright Marilyn Garbey, Cuba's major contempoary dance company is an inexhaustible source of talent that has managed to interact with the latest trends in this art in the world, thanks to an efficient cultural management.

On Friday, the company opened the celebrations for its six decades of existence, and performances will continue on Saturday and Sunday, as well as on October 4, 5 and 6, at the Avellaneda Hall of Teatro Nacional de Cuba, in Havana.

Fernando Rojas, president of the National Council of Performing Arts, and Luis Morlotte, president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), granted two awards to DCC and Teatro Nacional de Cuba for being two emblematic cultural institutions.

According to DCC Director Miguel Iglesias, some 318 dancers, 80 choreographers, 37 musicians and 42 assayers and teachers, totaling 660 artists, have belonged to the company since it was established.

https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=47424&SEO=danza-contemporanea-de-cuba-celebrates-60th-anniversary

by Adriaan Alsema September 29, 2019

Colombia’s Supreme Court was supposed to hear former drug trafficker “El Tuso” on Friday, but the narco who would testify in favor of Uribe reportedly withdrew his cooperation.

Juan Carlos Sierra, a.k.a. “El Tuso,” is a childhood friend of Uribe’s cousin Mario whose stepson is married to Sierra’s cousin. El Tuso currently lives in the United States, after paying his time in prison, and applying for asylum, fearing for his life if he returns to Colombia.

Uribe’s defense attorneys called El Tuso to testify in favor of Uribe to sustain a letter he wrote in August last year, claiming that he received a visit from Senators Rodrigo Lara and Ivan Cepeda, and former Senator Piedad Cordoba in 2009 in which they offered him political asylum in Switzerland.

Additionally, El Tuso wrote that former Prosecutor General Luis Eduardo Montealegre and his deputy Jorge Perdomo would be part of the conspiracy.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/witness-withdraws-testimony-in-favor-of-colombias-president-report/

Colombia misinformed UN over guerrilla activity in Venezuela: report
by Adriaan Alsema September 26, 2019

Colombia’s President Ivan Duque on Thursday misinformed the United Nations about ELN activity in Venezuela, local media reported.

Duque presented a report about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s alleged ties to Colombian guerrillas, but this report contained false information, according to newspaper El Colombiano.

The government claimed that a photo of ELN guerrillas playing with children was taken in Venezuela in 2018, but the newspaper said that military intelligence sources provided the photo to the newspaper in 2015, claiming it was taken in the southwestern Cauca province.

Duque’s misinformation machine crashes
The misinformation given to the United Nations adds to alleged misinformation provided to the Organization of American States (OAS) by Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo.

The minister was forced to retract his unsubstantiated claim made at the OAS that a reintegrating FARC rebel leader took part in alleged activity of dissident FARC leader “Ivan Marquez” in Venezuela.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/duque-misinformed-un-over-eln-in-venezuela-report/

by Adriaan Alsema September 26, 2019

The political dynasty that has controlled Colombia’s port city Cartagena as if it were family property is in trouble after the family patriarch was recorded explaining how to get rich through rigging elections.

In the phone calls that were leaked to W Radio, family patriarch Vicente Blel discussed kickbacks and vote-buying, and complained his city’s impoverished black lower class is “too lazy to work,” which is driving up the cost of corrupting democracy.

Acting Prosecutor General Fabio Espitia on Wednesday announced criminal investigations against Blel and the current governor of Bolivar, Dumek Turbay, that could include Senate president Lidio Garcia.

Prosecutors raided Bolivar’s public works company, Aguas de Bolivar, which is run by Blel’s cousin Miguel Torres. He is also suspected of corruption after he too was recorded talking about kickbacks.

. . .

The latest disgrace of a disgraced dynasty
In the phone calls revealed by W Radio, Blel openly reveals how “the system” works; private contractors provide the funds to buy votes and are granted government contracts once one of Blel’s henchmen is put in power, thus creating the revolving door that has allowed the convicted criminal’s family to stay in power.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/dynasty-patriarch-facing-charges-after-exposing-the-system-behind-colombias-democracy/

history, long enough to realize what has been passed off as authentic, truthful information on this long history has been close to a fairy tale.

Taking the time to start your own search for the facts will bring you to a totally different awareness which you will not regret.



William Blum
Cuba, 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States Government, was a situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook an invasion of Cuba.

But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of the Russians’ mortal enemy, NATO, since 1951.

In 1962 during the “Cuban Missile Crisis”, Washington, seemingly in a state of near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing “offensive” missiles in Cuba. The US promptly instituted a “quarantine” of the island – a powerful show of naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.

. . . .

In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there are good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a result of it.

But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions worthy of the name: Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place. (Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: The Bolsheviks sought “to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth.”)

More:
https://williamblum.org/chapters/killing-hope/cuba

Castro waving to his adoring fans upon his arrival to New York City in 1959 (Credit: Credit: New York Daily News/Getty Images)

New York New York City
History
Fidel Castro’s secret love affair with NYC
The unlikely story of how one of the world’s most committed Communists fell in love with the global epicentre of capitalism.

By Tony Perrottet
26 September 2019

On a recent sun-drenched afternoon, I was wandering the leafy blocks of West 82nd Street near Central Park, when I came to number 155, a stately Victorian brownstone with a carved stone stoop. Not so different from 1,000 other addresses on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I thought – except that this is where the young Fidel Castro, a then-unknown 22-year-old Cuban law graduate, stayed on his honeymoon in 1948.

Castro had been a vocal student leader back in Havana, but there was nothing in 1948 to indicate that he would soon lead a revolution on his home island and become one of the most famous and divisive figures of the 20th Century, thrusting Cuba into a bitter Cold War feud with the United States that continues to this day.

It was Castro’s first visit to the US and he fell in love with New York immediately. He was fascinated by the subway, the skyscrapers, the size of the steaks, and the fact that, despite the rabid anti-Communism of the US during the Cold War, he could find Karl Marx’s anti-capitalist jeremiad, Das Kapital, in any bookstore. Castro and his alluring high-society first wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart, stayed for three months in this charming apartment building, which still stands opposite a Ukrainian Orthodox church and close to bars filled with Columbia University students. Nothing much has changed on the quiet block in seven decades – except, of course, the rent.



In 1948, a 22-year-old Castro stayed in this Upper West Side brownstone during his honeymoon (Credit: Rachel Mishael)

This Cuban love nest was a key first stop in my quest to piece together a series of forgotten visits Castro made to my adopted hometown before he became demonised by Americans in the 1960s. His left-wing reforms would soon bring him into the arms of the Soviet Union – an alliance that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the closest the world has ever come to nuclear annihilation. But my excitement at finding Castro’s long lost tryst pad paled in comparison to what I was about to discover only a short walk away on Amsterdam Avenue: his revolutionary office.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190924-fidel-castros-secret-love-affair-with-nyc

by Adriaan Alsema September 25, 2019



Former President Alvaro Uribe (Image: Democratic Center)

Colombia’s latest fashion appears to be trolling campaign rallies of former President Alvaro Uribe.

The far-right politician is campaigning with local and regional candidates of his Democratic Center party while his lawyers try to keep him out of prison.

This doesn’t seem to be working out very well.

Even in his home province Antioquia, the stomping ground of “Uribismo,” the former president is confronted with young people shouting “assassin” and “paraco” at him.

“Tell me something new”
As his fraud and bribery trial progresses, the protests are becoming so regular that they are increasingly agitating the once revered Uribe.

“Tell me something new and imaginative!” Uribe shouted back at protesters in Marinilla, a town 10 kilometers from his estate in Rionegro on Sunday.

Uribe’s trial is increasing suspicions that the Uribe family founded the Bloque Metro, the paramilitary group that committed a massacre in Marinilla in 2001 and left 4,000 victims in Antioquia.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/hot-in-colombia-trolling-uribe-rallies/