Colombia's Laboratory of Failure (The NYT Comes Out for Corporate Profits Over Human Rights)

[Judi Lynn]

November 21 / 23, 2008

The NYT Comes Out for Corporate Profits Over Human Rights
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure
By JAMES McENTEER

The New York Times November 18 editorial urging passage of a free-trade agreement with Colombia is factually challenged and wrong-headed – politically, economically and morally – in many ways. The editorial’s expressed sense of false urgency (“There is no more time to waste”) sounds like the Bush administration beating drums for war in Iraq. Remember the administration mantra: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”? There was no smoking gun in Iraq. And there is no pressing need to pass a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Quite the contrary.

The Times says that rejecting the trade pact “would send a dismal message to allies the world over that the United States is an unreliable partner…” But the world already has the message that the United States is willing to support a corrupt, murderous regime – such as that of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe – as long as their own largest corporate sponsors (e.g., Coca Cola, Occidental Petroleum, Chiquita Brands) – can make big profits there.

Hollow U.S. rhetoric has achieved new hypocritical heights under the Bush-Cheney junta. A free-trade pact would only license the Uribe regime to continue its human rights abuses, ceding any leverage to pressure Colombia for positive change. The U.S. has long abetted the crimes of its own companies, supplying Occidental with funds for their own paramilitary troops. Chiquita Brands paid a $25 million-dollar fine last year for hiring paramilitaries to kill union leaders who wanted better wages and working conditions. Such practices send a “dismal message” indeed.

The Times claims falsely that the murders of trade unionists are “down sharply,” whereas in fact, by August 2008 the number of union leaders assassinated in Colombia had already surpassed the 2007 total. “Washington must keep pressing Bogota to reduce abuses by Colombia’s Army, ensure the prosecution of paramilitary thugs and further rein in violence against union members,” says the paper of record. But a free-trade agreement would forfeit that pressure. Instead, the U.S. should make its ongoing “$600 million a year in mostly military and anti-narcotics aid” contingent upon radical government reforms in Colombia. Time for the moral stick, not more financial carrots.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcenteer11212008.html