Yet Another Blow to the FARC
Via the BBC: Farc 'co-ordinator' held in Spain Spanish police say they have arrested the representative of the left-wing Colombian rebel group Farc in Spain. Maria Remedios Garcia Albert, a Spanish national, was detained near Madrid, as part of a joint operation by the Spanish and Colombian authorities. [...] It is claimed that Ms Garcia helped co-ordinate the group's wider activities in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 27, 2008 10:50
Colombia Misused Red Cross Symbol in Betancourt Rescue
The daring rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from FARC terrorists misused the Red Cross symbol in violation of the Geneva Conventions. A member of the military mission that tricked Colombian rebels into freeing 15 hostages wore the insignia of the International Red Cross during the operation, President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday. Mr. Uribe said his government had apologized to the Red Cross for ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 16, 2008 15:20
Ingrid Betancourt Rescued by Colombia Army
Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio was freed yesterday in a daring rescue by the Colombian National Army after more than five years of captivity by FARC narco-terrorists. [S]he and 14 other hostages — including three U.S. military contractors held since 2003 — were airlifted to freedom in an audaciously "perfect" operation involving military spies who tricked the rebels into handing over their prize ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 3, 2008 07:25
McCain Least Worst Alternative?
Thomas Barnett damns John McCain with faint praise saying, essentially, that his foreign policy would be reckless but not as bad as the alternatives. Both Clinton and Obama, if elected, present the frightening spectacle of a pandering Democratic White House looking for easy wins with an angry citizenry on protectionism because getting such wins on Iraq will be almost impossible. Both ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 25, 2008 07:11
Confirmed: Ecuadoran Killed in Colombian Raid on FARC
Here's a follow-up to a story I noted yesterday: (via the BBC), Ecuadorean death report confirmedColombia has confirmed that an Ecuadorean was killed when its troops attacked a rebel camp inside the neighbouring state three weeks ago. Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said his body was taken to Colombia after the raid along with that of top leftist Colombian rebel ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 24, 2008 07:11
Coca’s Continual Comeback: This Time, Peru
Via the LAT: Peru sees cocaine making a comebackPeru's cocaine industry, the world's largest and most violent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is again on the upswing. Plots of coca bushes, whose leaves yield cocaine, have increased by about one-third since 1999, to about 127,000 acres, according to Peruvian and United Nations estimates. And this time, the traffickers ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 23, 2008 16:36
Tensions Continue Between Colombia and Ecuador
Via the BBC: Ecuador warns Colombia over raidEcuador President Rafael Correa has warned of diplomatic tension if an Ecuadorean is found among the victims of a Colombian raid inside Ecuador. Mr Correa said Ecuador would not forgive the murder of Franklin Aisalia, if he had indeed died during the raid on Farc rebels inside Ecuador. But he said he hoped Colombia ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 23, 2008 10:06
Multilingual Blogging?
A few days ago, Aaron Brazell announced that his popular Web 2.0 blog, Technosailor, would start featuring regular Spanish-language posts in the niche by Carlos Granier-Phelps. I found the idea odd at first and then remarkably annoying once implemented. It's not especially hard, frankly, to skip past the odd Spanish language post in Google Reader, yet I find their presence ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 8, 2007 13:35
You Can’t Win with Civil Wars (but You Can Lose)
UC San Diego's Barbara F. Walter has a piece in today's LAT entitled, "You can't win with civil wars: History teaches that conflicts like Iraq drag on and rarely produce peace deals." If the title weren't depressing enough, the inside is even more stark. Civil wars don't end quickly. The average length of all civil wars since 1945 is ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 2, 2007 17:26
Dying Languages – Cause for Concern?
An obsolete language dies every two weeks, a new study reports. When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mungulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 19, 2007 11:43
Shocker! Coca Production Up
Cross-posted from La Política Colombiana: Shockingly, the AP reports that the number of hectares of coca under cultivation has risen, despite the increased eradication effort: Colombia's president says White House survey shows 8 percent rise in coca Despite record drug eradication efforts, a White House survey found production of coca in Colombia rose for the third consecutive year in 2006, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 6, 2007 15:21
Colombia Releases FARC Prisoners–Inlcuding a Key FARC Leader
Cross-posted from La Política Colombiana: Via the BBC: Colombia releases top Farc rebel The Colombian government has released a jailed guerrilla leader in the hope he will encourage the rebels to release the 56 hostages they hold. Rodrigo Granda, known as the Farc rebel group's "foreign minister", was freed as the authorities prepare to release up to 200 guerrillas from ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 5, 2007 13:46
FARC Rejects Prisoner Release Move by Uribe
Cross-posted from La Política Colombiana: Via the BBC: Colombian rebels spurn jail deal Colombia's biggest rebel group insists it will not release any hostages even though the government has announced plans to free some 200 jailed rebels. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, said the gesture by President Alvaro Uribe was a "farce". A Farc statement said the government ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 4, 2007 09:45
Some Recommended Reading
To this point I have been fulfilling my guestblogging duties here at OTB by mostly cross-posting stuff from my blog, PoliBlog. So to remedy that to some degree, I thought that I would try to do a little true value-added blogging and recommend some blogs that are perhaps not well known to OTB readers. The following are blogs written by ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 3, 2007 14:57
The Continuing Turmoil in Venezuela
Cross-posted from PoliBlog: WaPo has a piece on the political fallout from the move by Hugo Chávez to take broadcast rights away from RCTV: Protests in Venezuela Reinvigorate Opposition. The piece notes a number of groups and governments which have protested the move:Spain's Socialist government, in a joint declaration with the United States, called Friday for Chávez to renew ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 2, 2007 12:27
