I wish the U.S. government, or any capitalist government, would only tax people with assets of $1 million or more!

>’Yearly estimates of FARC funds range between $200-300 million per year from ransom, drugs, crime.’

I don’t know what, in evie’s mind, constitutes “crime”. My main concern would be what FARC does with the money. Presumably, they need a lot of resources to maintain the areas they still govern.

>Why isn’t FARC targeting the Colombia military, major infrastructure and installations, government offices in the capital, etc.?

I can’t answer that. Maybe they’re just trying to defend their territory against much greater force.

>And, FARC will murder “ordinary people” if they do not support FARC, just as the Reagan contras murdered campesinos, teachers, aid workers, etc. The contras gave the young rural Nicaraguans a choice – join FDN or die as a Sandinista sympathizer.

How many “ordinary people” have allegedly been killed merely for not supporting the FARC in the group’s ~45-year history? AmeriKKKa’s Contras killed tens of thousands of civilians in a much smaller country in only ten years. But what’s even more important is that the Contras were fighting for imperialism against a left-reformist government, while the FARC has been fighting against a vicious oligarchy backed by imperialism.

2) So “the rebels have targeted politicians, security enforcers and business moguls as fair game for indefinite sequestration in the jungle” Would it be better if they just killed ordinary people whom they suspected might support their enemies, as the state’s paramilitaries have done for decades — often with the open support of the official military?

While I’m not unhappy about Betancourt’s release, the freeing of those captured U.S. mercenaries was a victory, if minor, for the imperialist enemy and will make it much harder for the FARC to win the release from U.S. prisons of its own kidnapped leaders. Of course, the fate of the latter, and of any leftist Colombians in the hands of the empire or its vassal, is apparently of no concern to the supposedly dissident voices on this page.

The French government also fueled the media’s interest in Ingrid’s plight. So not only is the media pulling for high-profile hostages to be on the news, but so are many people who are concerned for them.

None of that is surprising, but it tends to confirm that the liberation was intended to be carried out behind Uribe’s back, while he was busy in Bogota looking after McCain. Logically Uribe should have wanted Ingrid Betancourt to die in that jungle. Betancourt, the dead martyr, was a political asset to him. Betancourt, alive and free, is a mortal threat to his ambition of a third term. If Uribe really did want to get her out, then he must be the world’s dumbest politician, something his political career up to now tends to contradict. Certainly, the things that Saint Ingrid is saying and doing, or more to the point, not saying and not doing, tend to suggest that she herself thinks he wanted her dead.

The FARC people must be laughing their heads off! They’ve got rid of a political embarrassment, the “screwed” Uribe and the US and, to crown it all, they were paid 20 Mil to do it!

“She was repeatedly advised not to campaign in the DMZ, but nonetheless their warnings went unheeded. Lack of cooperation from the government and military to fly Ingrid into the DMZ at her request brought the candidate to decide that ground travel into the department was her only option, despite the known risks.” —- Lemme see, what’s that phrase the “left” screams a lot? Oh yes, you’re “blaming the victim.”

If the Stockholm syndrome were to kick in and Ingrid defends her captors she’ll be the new darling of the “left.”