Reply #6: Yes, the BBC is backing up the official US corporate media line on Latin America,

[Judi Lynn]

with some occassional exceptions in feature pieces by superior journalists, like Hugh O'Shaughnessy at the Guardian, but they are few and far between. Just like the Mid-East coverage, as you pointed out.

Damned sad. As Mark Weisbrot, who also contributes to the Guardian occassionally said, if you plan to read accurate information about Latin America you will need to use the internet and generally forget the conventional media sources.

As long as the Colombian government keeps putting up people from their power structure to run for election and making sure they get elected they are NOT going to end that war. As it is, as has been admitted, sometimes they simply don't have as many "enemy" bodies as they feel they need to make it appear they are fighting a terrible foe, they just go take young men from the Colombian population, and have them murdered by either the military, or paramilitary, then they claim them as dead FARCs.

This hellish practise is something the Colombian people can't fight! The Colombian people can't successfully revolt against a government with the full force and money of the government of hostage US taxpayers behind it. The US won't back away because it will be using Colombia as a land-based carrier from which, as Rumsfeld stated in his published message, they will be conducting programs to help "protect" governments which "ask" the US to save them from their populist enemies. He refers to countries from which they can move against other countries as "lilly pad" countries.

That makes the Colombian people prisoners of their own government. Many have left years ago, a constant stream. many simply don't have the resources. Some are driven off their land, and magically the government ends up owning their property which gets sold to either agri-busiesses like palm tree plantations for cosmetics, etc., or biofuel, or bananas, etc., or for mining, or manufacturing.

With all those billions of US taxdollars flowing to Colombia, the PEOPLE are not better off in any sense, and serious journalists left in Colombia, so incredibly few, since the rest admittedly self-censor for survival, the remaining working journalists require constant bodyguards, and armor plated cars for all the passages of everyone in their families.

Somehow this kind of information just doesn't make it to the BBC, or to ABC, or cable tv, or any of our newspapers. It's there, they have chosen not to bother us with it. Our tax money is required, but the courtesy of the truth about where it's going is denied.