{"id":188705,"date":"2021-07-12T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=188705"},"modified":"2021-07-11T05:57:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-11T04:57:43","slug":"activism-uncensored-colombia-in-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/activism-uncensored-colombia-in-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Activism Uncensored: Colombia in Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As protests erupt on the streets of a longtime U.S. ally, the Biden administration and the American media wait to see whose side they’re on.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N86O93NYf9Y<\/p>\n

10 Jul 2021 – <\/em>Any American correspondent working abroad will tell you: coverage of in-country upheavals are dictated by the nature of the government\u2019s relationship to the United States. If they\u2019re technically allies, protests tend to be portrayed as illegitimate. Hence the dilemma in Colombia, as depicted in this episode of Activism Uncensored.<\/p>\n

Colombia for some time now has been considered America\u2019s key strategic ally in South America \u2014 \u201cthink of it as similar to Israel in the Middle East,\u201d says correspondent Maranie R. Staab, above. Colombia is the top recipient in the region of American aid, collecting $800 million<\/a> in 2020 alone, being central to multiple American objectives, from drug interdiction to opposition to the left-wing government of Nicolas Maduro. The State Department last year issued a fact sheet explaining<\/a> the relationship:<\/p>\n

Colombia is a key U.S. partner in ongoing efforts to help Venezuela in its return to democracy and economic prosperity. Colombia\u2019s leadership has been essential in coordinating regional support for Interim President Juan Guaid\u00f3, as well as condemning Maduro\u2019s misrule and adopting policies to isolate his regime\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The usual \u201cDemocracy Promotion\u201d script involves the U.S. backing this or that politician with money, weapons, and sometimes even military manpower, turning a blind eye to corruption or other excesses connected to that politician, then ultimately being forced to double down on the money and weapons when anti-American protest movements rise in response.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t exactly that situation, but close: a government in America\u2019s good graces largely thanks to its role as a launching pad for the dubious effort to install Guaid\u00f3 in Venezuela, under pressure from a frustrated and impoverished population reacting in this case to a proposed tax hike on basic goods.<\/p>\n

Foreign news outlets like Al Jazeera <\/em>have openly described the Colombian protests as a \u201cclass war<\/a>,\u201d while groups like Amnesty International have tried to bring attention to the fact that the Colombian police suspected in the disappearances of some of the protesters may be armed with American weapons<\/a>. Outlets like the Washington Post<\/em>, meanwhile, have used more neutral language in describing \u201canti-government protests,\u201d almost describing the Duque administration as a bystander to the chaos:<\/p>\n

The White House has taken notice. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki urged authorities last month to \u201ccontinue to work to locate all missing persons as quickly as possible.\u201d The government of President Iv\u00e1n Duque has said it\u2019s doing all it can.<\/p>\n

The Colombian attorney general\u2019s office says it received 572 reports of people \u201cnot located\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In most cases, the office told The Post, the reports \u201ccorrespond to the normal dynamics of people who voluntarily left their family circle\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The footage gathered by Staab, Ford Fischer, and News2Share <\/em>above shows a different picture: the Colombian protests as a serious foreign policy dilemma for the Biden administration, which finds itself caught between its strategic sponsorship of the Colombian government and pressure to respond to wide-scale accusations of human rights violations.<\/p>\n

When the U.S. doesn\u2019t have a clear horse to back in these standoffs, coverage tends to be muted. Here we at least get a long look at the scene on the ground, where over 1,000 have been injured and at least 50 have been killed.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Matthew C. Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for <\/em>Rolling Stone, author of several books, a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary<\/em>, co-host of <\/em>Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on <\/em>Substack.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 taibbi.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Jul 2021 – Any American correspondent working abroad will tell you: coverage of in-country upheavals are dictated by the nature of the government\u2019s relationship to the United States. If they\u2019re technically allies, protests tend to be portrayed as illegitimate. Hence the dilemma in Colombia. As protests erupt on the streets of a longtime U.S. ally, the Biden administration and the American media wait to see whose side they’re on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":39943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[867,1661,267,1126,1050,541,287,880,70,92],"class_list":["post-188705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-anglo-america","tag-colombia","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-power","tag-state-terrorism","tag-usa","tag-violent-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}