FARC organization
also: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, insurgents, fart, resistance, FARC army, FARC campesinos, FARC insurgents, the FARC, FARC rebels, guerrillas, narco-terrorists, FARC gorillas, FARC guerrillas, FARC insurgency, FARC-EP, the park, the FARCs, narco-guerrilla, FARC guerrilla group, narco-gorillas, militia, narco-guerrillas
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Colombiacountry · 77United Statescountry · 27AUCorganization · 10Plan Colombiaoperation · 10Colombian Armyorganization · 10CIAintelligence service · 9Columbiaplace · 8Medellin Cartelorganization · 8Alvaro Uribeperson · 7Venezuelacountry · 7Pablo Escobarperson · 7Andrés Pastranaperson · 6Cali Cartelorganization · 6Bogotáplace · 6Ed Fieldsperson · 5U.S. State Departmentorganization · 5MASorganization · 5Narco Eliteorganization · 5Draining the Sea to Kill the Fishoperation · 4Richard Grassoperson · 4Cubacountry · 4Miamiplace · 4Sandinistasorganization · 4Carlos Castanoperson · 4
Claims (47)
AUC carried_out_attack
FARC host_asserted
“any civilians that they thought were sympathizers. It didn't matter, just like in Vietnam, whether they were or not. You just had to be accused of it. Human rights groups contended that the AUC and Colombian armed forces were responsible fo…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads&The War on Terror Part 8 @ 3:59
FARC member_of
Colombia host_asserted
“And this is where we get into them dealing with the FARC. And keep in mind, in Colombia, the FARC is the resistance to the government. They're the people who saw that their government was corrupted and being ran by the CIA.…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner LIVE RESEARCH INTO OPERATION GLADIO @ 48:23
Manuel Marulanda Vélez founded
FARC book_quoted
“to poke people and move them in that direction. In Colombia, these political developments culminated in the founding of the FARC in 1964. By the resistance to the violence, veteran Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marilanda Velez, then Chief Comman…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 30:37
AUC assassinated
FARC book_quoted
“various people in the Colombian military, it has fielded death squads responsible for murdering thousands of Colombians. The following is from a 2004 report prepared by Congress. Quote, the AUC targets real and perceived supporters of the r…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Great Pretense Part 5 @ 13:41
FARC carried_out_attack
Colombia host_asserted
“integrating drug trafficking into Colombian agribusiness, military defense, and politics. That's almost half of the link. At the end of the 90s, the FARC's power and influence extended over 60% of Colombia. In less than three years, over 93…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 36:23
FARC carried_out_attack
2003 Colombia Plane Crash host_asserted
“Originally, the U.S. and Colombian government said the contractor's plane crashed because of engine failure. However, the FARC claims they shot the plane down. To the FARC, these aerial spying missions over the territory were a threat to th…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Great Pretense Part 7 @ 1:57
FARC member_of
Colombia host_asserted
“FARC was active in 83 of the 116 municipalities. Some areas are formally organized by the FARC with schools, medical facilities, grassroots judicial structures, and social projects. Field work conducted by sociologist James Britton.…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 36:55
FARC carried_out_attack
California Microwave Systems documented
“airplanes not identified by U.S. intelligence are shot down, you know, because they're not ours. Not our drugs ain't going nowhere. On February 2003, Northrop made world headlines when a U.S. biplane carrying four CIA agents and one Colombi…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squad & War on Terror Part 10 Final @ 55:53
Colombia targeted_for_regime_change
FARC host_asserted
“They built a working relationship with the military in the regions of cocoa production to fight increasing influence of the FARC. This opened the door for private clandestine armies that became an integral part of the security network. This…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 6 @ 18:34
Colombia targeted_for_regime_change
FARC book_quoted
“It became the decade when there was a declaration of basically all-out civil war against the FARC in Colombia. So the measures included coca-cocoa cultivation, production, marketing, transportation, and distribution networks for the new pro…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 4 @ 20:41
United States targeted_for_regime_change
FARC host_asserted
“with farms, and it was the only way they could feed their family. And the traffickers in the Medellin and with Pablo Escobar, they all worked for the CIA. This campaign distorted the truth in two respects. It falsely implicated the FARC, an…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner- Drugs,Oil, and War Part 3 @ 37:48
Colombian Army carried_out_attack
FARC host_asserted
“So let's see. When Yarborough visited the Colombian army, there was a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan implemented. And in response, there was a reinforcement of class repression rather than any assistance. The FARC and the ELN.…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 6 @ 34:58
MAS carried_out_attack
FARC host_asserted
“Although the stated purpose of the network was to kidnap, to combat kidnapping, they were the ones actually doing the kidnapping. This is exactly what they do. It's exactly the opposite every day. Most notably, it enabled the army to frustr…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 6 @ 41:43
Colombian Army supplied_arms_to
FARC book_quoted
“In the Army's grounding document, Order 200-0591, some of these units continued to act as paramilitary. They were armed either with Israeli guns or U.S. equipment by the Colombian Army, despite them not being allowed to do that. In a new re…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 6 @ 43:17
Vadimero Montanaz supplied_arms_to
FARC host_asserted
“Sarkis was moved to Los Angeles, where he remained jailed until he was told that the National Security News Service that his Peruvian arms dealer had not gone as planned. The arms had, in fact, been diverted by Monteseros to the FARC rebels…”
▶ The Colonels corner prelude to terror chapter 32 @ 1:05:15
AUC covered_up
FARC host_asserted
“busting or the Colombian government busting, and I'm going to use that in air quotes, a FARC lab was a hoax. What the DEA would do and what the Colombian government, this AUC organization, the real, the Cali cartel and the Medellin cartel, …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 1:12:46
Cali Cartel covered_up
FARC host_asserted
“busting or the Colombian government busting, and I'm going to use that in air quotes, a FARC lab was a hoax. What the DEA would do and what the Colombian government, this AUC organization, the real, the Cali cartel and the Medellin cartel, …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 1:12:46
Medellin Cartel covered_up
FARC host_asserted
“busting or the Colombian government busting, and I'm going to use that in air quotes, a FARC lab was a hoax. What the DEA would do and what the Colombian government, this AUC organization, the real, the Cali cartel and the Medellin cartel, …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 1:12:46
FARC carried_out_attack
Colombia host_asserted
“The FARC did some really bad things. I can understand why they did them. They're still really bad things. They kidnapped people, those elite class of people that were stealing the land of the small farmers and adding to their massive ranche…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Open Mic Thursday 2025-08-14 @ 57:39
Felix Rodriguez supplied_arms_to
FARC documented
“also used the hangar for the helicopter-based counterinsurgency program that was attacking the FARC and the Sandinistas. It was being used by the CIA in support of every aspect of the Contra program. Also, the suspected drug pilot, Carlos A…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 14 @ 42:24
FARC targeted_for_regime_change
Pablo Escobar host_asserted
“Military targets for kidnapping and extortion by the resistance we now know as the FARC. Escobar made his first trip to Bolivia sometime in early 1980, where he met with Roberto Suarez, then a major single supplier of the cocoa paste. They …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads & the War on Terror Part 5 @ 19:38
FARC member_of
Colombia host_asserted
“The locals, when fumigations are coming, so that they can dig up their coca plants and hide them, when the fumigation is over, they let a little time pass and replant. Coca is not eradicated. Even without the fart, peasants can also cut dow…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads&The War on Terror Part 8 @ 38:20
Colombia carried_out_attack
FARC host_asserted
“false flags and would stage, they'd kill a FARC soldier and steal their, you know, distinctive looking garb and plant it in a lab that was being ran by the Cali cartel to say, oh, this is a FARC establishment. So we need more money. Let's d…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Devil’s Chessboard Part 1 @ 1:22:47
Sawyer Miller Group funded
FARC host_asserted
“to wage psychological warfare on Colombia's narco-terrorists, the FARC. So with our tax dollars, we hired a PR firm to go down and basically build out the psychological warfare to create the FARC as the enemy. In the first six months of 199…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 7 @ 44:03
Sawyer Miller Group carried_out_attack
FARC host_asserted
“get good coverage in the media, and nurture contacts with journalists, columnists, and think tanks. The message is that there are bad and good people in Colombia and that the government is the good guy. That's literally a quote. By the earl…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 7 @ 45:05
Colombia blamed
FARC documented
“the FARC insurgency, and support the Colombian government. On February 7, 2003, Colombia and the U.S. blamed the FARC for a bombing at Club El Noble in Bogota, which made world headlines. The event exemplified essential features of the psyc…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 7 @ 51:42
Occidental Petroleum carried_out_attack
FARC documented
“unionizing against them for proper working conditions. Their dual purpose, as we have learned along the way. Oil companies in particular have been part of the state-coordinated campaign against guerrillas. In June 2001, a Colombian court he…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 1 @ 12:11
MAS assassinated
FARC book_quoted
“They would create a false flag, demonize the FARC, and things continued as normal. This time, when President Betancur in the 1980s was trying to negotiate with the FARC, the MAS murdered over 700 FARC members who entered the constitutional …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 1 @ 16:10
Jacobo Arenas founded
FARC book_quoted
“to poke people and move them in that direction. In Colombia, these political developments culminated in the founding of the FARC in 1964. By the resistance to the violence, veteran Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marilanda Velez, then Chief Comman…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 30:37
M-19 assassinated
FARC host_asserted
“And they're setting up a paramilitary force to fight the kidnappers, which is the FARC. So it's crazy. All right. Moss assassinated trade unionists, civil rights activists, and peasants collaborating with the FARC. So the actual drug dealer…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 3 @ 42:35
Reagan administration framed
FARC host_asserted
“the FARC insurgency to cocaine production and distribution networks when there really was no link at all. This was demonstrated in an account by a joint raid of Colombian police and the DEA in a large complex of cocaine processing labs in t…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 3 @ 1:06:10
Chiquita Brands International funded
FARC documented
“Between 1997 and February 2004, Chiquita, i.e. United Fruit, made more than 100 payments to the AUC, including over 50 payments totaling $850,000 after the State Department had listed it as a terrorist organization. Prior to 1997, Chiquita …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 9 @ 35:43
Colombian Army carried_out_attack
FARC host_asserted
“subchapter is called Draining the Sea to Kill the Fish. It was part of the PSYOPs war against the FARC insurgency. The Colombian military had adopted a method used in America's war in Vietnam, which became known as draining the sea to kill …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads&The War on Terror Part 8 @ 1:26
Alvaro Uribe ordered_assassination_of
FARC host_asserted
“Similarly, in Colombia, this method had been applied to drive all of the rural FARC supporters out of their homes into the countryside in order to separate and isolate the FARC. In 2002, Uribe declared emergency powers, i.e., I'm going to b…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads&The War on Terror Part 8 @ 1:56
United States carried_out_attack
FARC documented
“launched an all-out offensive named Plan Patriot, which imposed Uribe's democratic security measures, viewed by some as a state-sponsored terrorist campaign. In other words, he basically declared martial law. In October 2002, reports were l…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 7 @ 11:59
CIA supplied_arms_to
FARC host_asserted
“is you have the only resistance that has maintained some viability to this narco state called the FARC. The FARC were basically what the CIA would label as guerrillas. They are the people that are pushing back against the government.…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Devil’s Chessboard Part 1 @ 1:22:05
United States trained
FARC host_asserted
“To me, those are the insurgents. And those are all the people that were created by the U.S. government, trained and equipped by us. And the absentee landowners, as you're going to see, are U.S. oligarchs for the most part. There's some Cana…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 38:17
United States funded
FARC host_asserted
“To me, those are the insurgents. And those are all the people that were created by the U.S. government, trained and equipped by us. And the absentee landowners, as you're going to see, are U.S. oligarchs for the most part. There's some Cana…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 38:17
Center for Democracy framed
FARC host_asserted
“A member of the American Center for Democracy advanced this of the narco-terrorists in three books in which Latin American guerrilla movements described as narco-terrorists were linked to Cuba and the Soviet Union, when in fact, they're not…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 40:33
United States covered_up
FARC host_asserted
“have used the narco-terrorism paradigm as a political weapon to both criminalize and wage war against the FARC. The U.S. paradigm has been promoted by the Colombian government through policies and activities to combat, incarcerate, or extra…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 41:01
FARC taxed
Colombia host_asserted
“FARC, once they became like this dual government control mechanism, they taxed the coca leaves that were sold to the people that were manufacturing the cocaine. What we're going to find out later on is most of the historical information tha…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Cocaine Death Squad & the War on Terror Part 2 @ 1:12:16
Colombia assassinated
FARC host_asserted
“The nation was embroiled in its paradoxical war on drugs. The Colombian state continued to target its political opponents under the umbrella of its authority to wage war on drugs with U.S. backing. Colombia's government was empowered by Rea…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and War on Terror Part 3 @ 37:14
Nicolás Maduro funded
FARC host_asserted
“All right, it goes on to say that Chavez viewed Colombia's rebels as allies, famously stating that the FARC was not the enemy of Venezuela while cracking down on right-wing paramilitary in western Venezuela. And by right-wing paramilitary, …”
▶ The Colonel's Corner LIVE RESEARCH INTO OPERATION GLADIO @ 49:52
Jose Nelson Urega Cardenas carried_out_attack
FARC book_quoted
“Oh, big surprise. Eureka helped carry out communication stings that played a role in the article that was ran in Miami Herald, where 50 FARC members were charged for narco-trafficking. You can't make it up. Fields, with the help of the NSA,…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Great Pretense Part 9 @ 9:38
Richard Grasso traded_network_to
FARC book_quoted
“of Grosso. I invite members of the FARC to visit the New York Stock Exchange so they can get to know the market personally, Grosso was quoted as saying. I truly hope that they do this. Media reported that Grosso had asked to meet Raul Reyes…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squad & War on Terror Part 10 Final @ 16:49
Colombian Army trained
FARC host_asserted
“The thinking and nomenclature in these field manuals were translated and cited in the Colombian Army's Counter-Guerrilla Manual. It defined the self-defense groups as an organization of military nature made up of select civilian personnel f…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 6 @ 36:23
FARC framed
Cali host_asserted
“Local police, explosive experts, and dog squads arrive. Then a much larger bomb explodes, killing them all. The Colombian media adopted the official version of these events from military sources, which blamed the FARC, of course. Some varia…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 7 @ 34:30
Mentions (120)
▶ 9:42
And when you go down there, it says Bout was accused of intending to sell arms to a USDA informer pretending to represent the FARC. Well, what's the FARC? Well, the FARC is the people that had their farm stolen in Columbia that worked toget…
▶ 10:11
to get the CIA drug growers and drug runners out of Colombia. So wait a minute. We overthrew the Colombian government. We set the entire country up as a drug network. We trained 20,000 paramilitary people for Gladio operators as rent-a-cops…
▶ 10:39
according to these people, the bad guys. And so Bout was the guy arming the indigenous people trying to kick the CIA drug runners out of Columbia. Just want to clarify that. And in 2011, Bout was convicted by a jury where? Oh, in Manhattan …
▶ 6:14
The destruction of the Medellin cartel did not affect the collaboration among the narco elite and the sectors of the ruling class, as well as the military, particularly in the regions where the FARC contested Medellin's control. The cartel …
▶ 18:34
They built a working relationship with the military in the regions of cocoa production to fight increasing influence of the FARC. This opened the door for private clandestine armies that became an integral part of the security network. This…
▶ 23:21
They will go in and burn down entire villages because most of this land was under the FARC protection. And they just keep encroaching and pushing the FARC farther and farther away through the training of those 30,000 paramilitary people. An…
▶ 24:18
and eliminating the FARC, which is protecting the peasants in Colombia. And that production gave us train killers that they can now covertly use all over the world. And that dovetails right into the book we just finished about the private m…
▶ 40:20
aircraft that can detect these submarines. We're seeing that played out today. Colombia has been experiencing a civil war for more than half a century. What was begun as a mission of the Colombian army backed by the United States to attack …
▶ 40:48
are between the FARC and the Colombian state, and the Colombian state, of course, is backed by the U.S. Many analysts from a variety of disciplines contend that the FARC deserves serious examination as a powerful political and military forc…
▶ 41:17
Colombia's central role in the cocaine trade has elevated a decades-old civil conflict to a war. Throughout Colombia's civil war, more than half of the Colombian territory has been contested by the FARC. Apart from the common source of fund…
▶ 41:40
the sale of music, art, and literature films produced by the organization. The FARC funds its military wing through extortion of the Colombian narco elite. They kidnap members of the Colombian government for ransom or prisoner exchanges, ba…
▶ 42:09
that they're all involved in. Given the sophistication and secrecy involved in the political economy of cocaine, the FARC alleged involvement in drug trafficking has been an intensely debated political issue. The claim of extensive FARC inv…
▶ 42:37
Affairs found no evidence of FARC involvement in drug trafficking, but its main finding pointed to an extensive drug smuggling into the U.S. by the paramilitary groups in collaboration with wealthy drug barons, the military, key financial f…
▶ 43:05
complicit, if not compliant, role with the CIA in drug trafficking during the cocaine decade, FARC involvement in the drug trade mainly involved the taxation of the coca leaf, which does not involve any cocaine manufacturing, the traffickin…
▶ 43:36
A former deputy administrator of the DEA indicates that there is little to support the drug trafficking claims about the FARC. Quote, the FARC controls certain areas of Columbia, and the FARC in those regions generate revenue by taxing loca…
▶ 44:06
by Klaus Nyholm, the director of the UN Drug Control Program, which has agents throughout the drug-producing region. He argues that local FARC fronts are quite autonomous, and in some areas, they're not involved at all in the coca productio…
▶ 44:36
of the Transnational Institute, an independent research center that specializes in drug issues in Colombia, describes the role of the FARC as primarily focused on taxation of illicit crops. And of course, coca production was not considered …
▶ 45:02
eradication of coca on the basis of alternative crops. The punitive approach of the U.S. to the problem of the drug industry in Latin America has fostered a new form of cultural imperialism on the continent. Despite recognition of the signi…
▶ 45:25
as opposed to cocaine, much of the literature and popular commentary on the FARC continues to focus upon a group's alleged drug trafficking and terrorism. Those allegations underpin the U.S. role in contemporary Colombia, and in the context…
▶ 45:50
All of our money goes to the production of cocaine, not the elimination of it, which was primarily represented by the FARC. And this is consistent with everything that we've found. All of the resistance efforts throughout all of these conte…
▶ 46:18
That's basically what it boils down to. Okay. The Colombian narco elite at the profit end of the cocaine commodity chain is also determined to defend its political and economic interests through their insurgency strategy, which involves the…
▶ 46:53
For the FARC campesinos, their mantra is not to get rich from coca. The narco elite view the FARC as an obstacle to their source of wealth and, more critically, a threat to their existence as a class. In contrast to Central American peace a…
▶ 47:22
continues to wage a struggle with the support of the poor peasantry and relies on the legitimate production of coca for their substance. If the FARC did not exist, the potential for coca exploitation of cocaine production would be unbounded…
▶ 47:50
and defeat U.S. imperialism. While the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union were widely interpreted as the death of communism, these events did not weaken any of the resolve and in many cases was argued had nothing to do w…
▶ 48:21
leadership routinely. But that's not convenient to our argument here because we want to call them communist. In spite of the narco elite's sophisticated cocaine production and distribution system, the growing of the fundamental ingredient, …
▶ 48:53
fortified by the cocaine industry and its profits. The FARC struggle is waged in an unwelcoming terrain of mountains and jungle that overlooks Colombia in its entirety, favoring the FARC. Figures that indicate the size of FARC-controlled te…
▶ 49:21
was the dominant political force in a thousand municipalities across Colombia, which included rural areas without any coca cultivation at all. The export of cocaine is worth about, and again, it's covert, so who knows what the total, but it…
▶ 49:50
In the insurgency, quote, the guerrillas will be just as strong without coca. They can increase kidnapping and extortion to support themselves. They're powerful in many parts of the country that don't have any coca, unquote. Evidence shows …
▶ 1:32
was the in-depth look at the FARC and what it was really all about. So I just threw it to you again, Renee. And that leads us into, and we talked just briefly about it. I don't know if it's not letting you get it. Hold on just a second. I'm…
▶ 4:41
who argued that the drug crops are a special problem whose solution must pass through the solution to the armed conflict. You know, because we're going to use the FARC as the reason why they're growing their narco state. Developed countries…
▶ 5:40
money ever made it to the local peasants. Pastrana's Plan Colombia did not focus on drug trafficking, military aid, or fumigation, but instead advocated the manual eradication of drug crops. Somehow that never happened, though, despite havi…
▶ 6:10
that specifically served to convene important U.S. aid, as well as that of other countries and international organizations, by adequately addressing the quote-unquote concerns, which were principally focused on the FARC insurgency. Again, t…
▶ 6:41
They were writing it for us. The Clinton version of the plan Colombia focused on drug trafficking and the strengthening of the Colombian military. And it wasn't anti-trafficking. It was just drug trafficking and growing the military in orde…
▶ 7:13
White stated, quote, if you feel the original Plan Columbia, not the one that was written in Washington, but the original Plan Columbia, there's no mention of military drives against the FARC rebels. Quite the contrary. President Pastrana s…
▶ 11:04
Clinton's plan Colombia by international advocates, which resulted in limiting the number of U.S. troops and privately contracted forces, you know, those private military companies, to 800, 400 U.S. personnel and 400 contracted personnel. D…
▶ 11:30
After the terrorist attacks on 9-11, George W. Bush and Colombian President Pastrana intensified the armed campaign against the FARC insurgents' support base within the context of the global war on terror. Because now they're not just drug …
▶ 11:59
launched an all-out offensive named Plan Patriot, which imposed Uribe's democratic security measures, viewed by some as a state-sponsored terrorist campaign. In other words, he basically declared martial law. In October 2002, reports were l…
▶ 12:27
were on orders to eliminate all high-ranking officers of the FARC and scattering those who escaped to the remote corners of the Amazon. But the operation failed to force the FARC into strategic retreat. During Uribe's presidency, coca produ…
▶ 15:19
It was described in Fortune magazine in 1988 that the cocaine industry was probably the fastest growing and unquestionably the most profitable industry in the world. As Plan Colombia targeted the FARC, the narco elite concentrated within th…
▶ 21:05
creating a powerful transnational class of businessmen and investors. One quote said, the notorious frequency with which the paramilitaries situate themselves where drug dealers are active or where there is mega projects such as hydroelectr…
▶ 21:35
There is something other than an altruistic interest in counterinsurgency. In other words, they're basically just using them to protect the oligarchs' investments. To protect and secure its capital in Colombia, the U.S. must promote and pro…
▶ 22:36
Thus becomes a necessary function of U.S. imperialism. Again, you have to create the boogeyman in order to be able to justify sending the arms. So you're always going to have a boogeyman, even if it's not legitimate. And I'm not saying the …
▶ 23:06
when it's supporting a narco state. Behind the official discourse of fighting drugs and terrorism, there remains an agenda in Colombia that is no longer hidden to secure military victory over the FARC and eliminate obstacles to the mega pro…
▶ 24:07
Oil resources in Colombia are as enormous as cocaine. To secure Colombia's resources for American markets, the police, military, and paramilitary forces of the narco-military network have carried out U.S.-led counterinsurgency operations, m…
▶ 25:42
any overall drop in the amount of cocaine. In other words, they're just lying to us. A strategy to take control of territory strategically valued to economic interest of oligarchs and their partnership in Colombia has been imperative since …
▶ 26:15
counterinsurgency, the ELN, contests the counterinsurgency strategy. One displaced activist from the Department of COCO explained in 2001, quote, it's simply a war about land and resources, and the people living in these lands happen to be …
▶ 26:46
labor, popular, and peasant movements that dare to question the development of any oligarch project. Resistance from the FARC would spell further retaliatory action from the narco state. The AUC paramilitary death squads in Colombia are dir…
▶ 27:21
combat quote-unquote FARC rebels. However, the AUC is also an important component of the Colombian narco-military network. The FARC campaign has seen the Colombian state, backed by Washington, adopt a variety of measures to engage the guerr…
▶ 34:30
Local police, explosive experts, and dog squads arrive. Then a much larger bomb explodes, killing them all. The Colombian media adopted the official version of these events from military sources, which blamed the FARC, of course. Some varia…
▶ 35:03
Special operation teams have also targeted FARC sympathizers and supporters with bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations. These activities have created and maintained a climate of fear among all of the civilian population in Colombia. Tho…
▶ 36:38
and was met by a Colombian major coming out the door as I was entering the facility. That still just boggles my mind. Special operation agents, including former Green Berets veterans from covert operations in Central America and the Gulf Wa…
▶ 39:10
and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influence, opinion, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of quote-unquote hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives, unquote. During …
▶ 39:40
In Vietnam, one of which was the recognition of Vietnam Syndrome, the American public had been told that the war was winnable when it was not. The consequence was the heavy U.S. casualties would not be tolerated by people in any future conf…
▶ 7:44
contributing to the Colombian Army's Plan LAZO, a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan implemented between 62 and 65. It was in response to the systematic campaign in the reinforcement of class repression rather than to any outside assistan…
▶ 8:38
And that is the exact date you can trace the creation of the FARC. Because what you find out, as we're going to find out, the FARC rose up in resistance to the very paramilitary thing being imposed in Colombia and the setting up of the Crys…
▶ 13:39
And you guys remember when I was telling you on the Alpha Warrior show, one of the ways the FARC was able to sustain the resistance was by kidnapping both ranchers of the upper elite in Colombia and family members and ransoming them back to…
▶ 14:37
A-U-C, United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia. We'll refer to them in the future as A-U-C. From the U.S.'s perspective, officially, the A-U-C was supposedly the good guys and the FARC was the bad guys. But as you will see, the A-U-C is a de…
▶ 15:08
were also death squads. Although the stated purpose of the network was to combat kidnapping, a preferred fundraising technique of the FARC, MAS played an overtly political role as a criminal extension of the Army. Most notably, it enabled t…
▶ 15:38
They do not want peace. You can't traffic drugs if you have peace. It looks a little odd. That's the whole reason why I posted what I posted this morning about the Taliban. They have to have a boogeyman if they're going to continue to perpe…
▶ 16:10
They would create a false flag, demonize the FARC, and things continued as normal. This time, when President Betancur in the 1980s was trying to negotiate with the FARC, the MAS murdered over 700 FARC members who entered the constitutional …
▶ 19:49
Oh, excuse me. Paramilitaries bring civilian corpses to the army barracks and exchange them for weapons. The officers then claim that the corpses being brought to them were guerrillas killed in battle by them, even though they were brought …
▶ 22:44
by the American ambassador to Colombia, Miles Frejet. But after planned Colombia in 2000, the Pentagon was fully engaged in the quote-unquote struggle against the FARC, a struggle that Congress would support. Aid to the Colombian army, cut …
▶ 23:14
In the resulting symbiosis between the military assistance, the FARC, and a flourishing narco economy, the CIA became more and more directly involved in drug trafficking. For example, it is not disputed that in 1993, while working for the C…
▶ 14:52
Latin America. Narcotics agents were expected to fabricate evidence against communist drug trafficking and suppress any evidence that the CIA was involved in it. So again, this is very applicable to what we're going to discover in Colombia.…
▶ 22:57
of U.S. interventions under American policy of anti-communism. As in Indochina, the anti-communist crusade was characterized by counterinsurgency, subversion, intervention, public propaganda, etc. The U.S. counterinsurgency policy implement…
▶ 37:45
Wellenstein, a U.S. Army counterinsurgency expert, used to capitalize on a popular fear of terrorists and drug traffickers, thus mobilizing support for foreign intervention against regimes in Latin America that the CIA wanted taken out. Col…
▶ 38:16
even though it had nothing to do with the Soviets or the Cubans. They just said it looked like that. You know, like Brennan's famous, it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. This had the hallmarks of Soviet influence. CIA Director W…
▶ 38:44
sought to capitalize politically on the FARC's alleged links to cocaine trade in Colombia. Their arguments about the FARC as narco-terrorists were drawn from studies by Rachel Efrenfeld, who criticized the FARC links to the Medellin cartel …
▶ 42:07
A paramilitary organization called MOSS, meaning Death to Kidnappers, was also established at this meeting. Now, keep in mind, who's the kidnappers? The FARC is. So they're creating a paramilitary force against the FARC. And we're told the …
▶ 42:35
And they're setting up a paramilitary force to fight the kidnappers, which is the FARC. So it's crazy. All right. Moss assassinated trade unionists, civil rights activists, and peasants collaborating with the FARC. So the actual drug dealer…
▶ 43:08
The FARC's not the bad guys in this story. I'm not saying they're good, but they're not the bad guys in this story. Or at least they didn't start it. They weren't even the bad guys. All of the trade unionists that tried to organize against …
▶ 43:37
The peasants who had their land stolen, they were going to murder them. They went and hid with the FARC because the FARC was the only ones that protected the little guys. So the FARC becomes the enemy of the drug cartels because the FARC st…
▶ 44:05
And the FARC would go and kidnap that person's family and make them pay to get them back. Now, did they kill some of those people? Yes, but very rarely. And usually only if they didn't pay. Because again, these people have billions of dolla…
▶ 1:06:10
the FARC insurgency to cocaine production and distribution networks when there really was no link at all. This was demonstrated in an account by a joint raid of Colombian police and the DEA in a large complex of cocaine processing labs in t…
▶ 1:06:40
They believed the snipers who fired at them at the lab, the Colombian police, were members of the FARC. They believed they were members of the FARC, the armed wing of the Colombian, quote-unquote, communist party. You know, because we have …
▶ 1:07:09
In another large lab complex, they found 300 empty ether bottles, an arsenal of weapons, and a FARC uniform. For the Reagan enthusiasts, all this was proof that the narco-terrorism marriage had been consummated, and the U.S. ambassador, Lou…
▶ 1:07:41
After the raid, Tamba flew to Washington and offered a background briefing to American reporters and emphasized the presence of gorillas, even though there wasn't any. The New York Times echoed Tam's story that the Colombian police had seiz…
▶ 1:08:06
Another article repeated the claim made by the Colombian military that smugglers hauled cocaine out of the country and returned with Cuban arms for insurgents. Another made-up story. Analysts of various journalist accounts and statements ma…
▶ 20:41
It became the decade when there was a declaration of basically all-out civil war against the FARC in Colombia. So the measures included coca-cocoa cultivation, production, marketing, transportation, and distribution networks for the new pro…
▶ 25:33
was linked to the cartel operations. Paramilitary militia were set up by the lower class to target their traditional enemies that were the peasants fighting back against them, which the FARC represented, but also any other obstacle to econo…
▶ 33:49
The military and police assumed a prominent role as defenders of a Colombian state enmeshed in the cocaine trade. High-ranking military officers and paramilitary leaders began to buy land close to areas controlled by the FARC in an effort t…
▶ 36:15
the paramilitary groups. They were basically leading the paramilitary groups under the guise of them being in the military, but because they were death squads, they wanted to keep the appearance of them being separate. In that area, the Cas…
▶ 39:41
Sierra became a household name when he was indicted for his involvement in the widely reported raid on a cocaine processing laboratory. According to Colombian investigative journalist Gomez, the police had tried to pin the laboratory on the…
▶ 40:11
CIA Director William Casey contended at the time that the laboratory was guarded by the FARC and planned by the Medellin cartel. But it was later revealed that the laboratory was being ran by the Cali cartel and protected by the Colombian a…
▶ 35:43
Between 1997 and February 2004, Chiquita, i.e. United Fruit, made more than 100 payments to the AUC, including over 50 payments totaling $850,000 after the State Department had listed it as a terrorist organization. Prior to 1997, Chiquita …
▶ 43:20
or a radical Islamic terrorist, and becomes a target. So the author goes on to say, alongside Cuba and FARC, Venezuela then became part of the axis of evil. Because you can't have anybody speaking out about U.S. imperialism in Latin America…
▶ 46:31
involving the use of the Red Cross emblem used during military rescue operations against the FARC. So, in other words, Uribe was putting the Red Cross flying military missions on helicopters while they were attacking the FARC. Yeah, but hey…
▶ 19:38
Military targets for kidnapping and extortion by the resistance we now know as the FARC. Escobar made his first trip to Bolivia sometime in early 1980, where he met with Roberto Suarez, then a major single supplier of the cocoa paste. They …
▶ 1:26
subchapter is called Draining the Sea to Kill the Fish. It was part of the PSYOPs war against the FARC insurgency. The Colombian military had adopted a method used in America's war in Vietnam, which became known as draining the sea to kill …
▶ 1:56
Similarly, in Colombia, this method had been applied to drive all of the rural FARC supporters out of their homes into the countryside in order to separate and isolate the FARC. In 2002, Uribe declared emergency powers, i.e., I'm going to b…
▶ 2:56
Uribe justified these measures as a means to fight terrorism and to confront the FARC. What was unofficial policy became formalized, according to government-funded studies by the Commission on Ways to Overcome Violence. Politically motivate…
▶ 3:27
and more than 20 per day in 2002. Doubled. The commission was set up in the early 1990s following the elimination of the EPL, which aimed to identify perpetrators of violence while ignoring state officials committing it. When unable to atta…
▶ 3:59
any civilians that they thought were sympathizers. It didn't matter, just like in Vietnam, whether they were or not. You just had to be accused of it. Human rights groups contended that the AUC and Colombian armed forces were responsible fo…
▶ 4:30
the people in the rural area. Others targeted in urban areas included trade unions, university lecturers, and students, human rights workers, they killed Catholic priests, and anyone supporting or even thought to sympathize with the FARC. C…
▶ 6:56
led to further investigations by human rights groups and Montoya's eventual resignation in 2008. 2008 from 93? Really? The reason why he resigned became known as the false positive scandal, inflating body counts by shooting innocent civilia…
▶ 7:32
to isolate the FARC from their rural support base as part of an official counterinsurgency strategy. This is an actual quote. The security forces acted under the premise that gained currency in El Salvador of draining the sea, which means t…
▶ 15:19
Current and former members of Congress were implicated. Nearly all members of President Uribe's governing coalition were indicted. Uribe denied all involvement. Billions of dollars of U.S. capital had been pumped into Colombia to supposedly…
▶ 18:54
Any territory they didn't control. Washington and Bogota justified the aerial fumigation strategy as a way of taking away the resources of the people allegedly supporting the FARC. The spraying is part of a relocation strategy for those tho…
▶ 26:43
to establish the narco-terrorist state. The report lists mostly unknown members of a Colombian narco-elite linked to the Medellin cartel, as well as a number of hitmen used to assassinate anyone they didn't like, including members of the Un…
▶ 37:51
from FOIA request. The spraying of herbicides is a grave risk to humans and their environment. The chemical efforts on Colombia's ecology remain unknown. Yet this compound contained over 250 enzymes that may be activated or deactivated depe…
▶ 43:04
Unending demand for control over cocoa production has forced many peasant families from their land. The narco-military network orchestrated this forced relocation through tactics such as fumigation backed by terror. Fleeing from war and lac…
▶ 43:59
provoked mass demonstrations, according to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, were sustained by funds from coca production. Embassy officials saw these kinds of operations as proof that, in cases where peasants and FARC threatened mission success,…
▶ 52:27
And basically, it says that the bottom line was that the fumigation promoted cocoa production in areas that were not controlled by the FARC. They just continued to grow and harvest, and none of their areas were ever sprayed.…
▶ 30:37
to poke people and move them in that direction. In Colombia, these political developments culminated in the founding of the FARC in 1964. By the resistance to the violence, veteran Jacobo Arenas and Manuel Marilanda Velez, then Chief Comman…
▶ 31:07
the Popular Liberation Army, EPL, and M19, soon after. So the very creation of the FARC is to represent the people that have been displayed by the oligarchs. That's where the FARC came from. And the FARC, we're told, is like the devil reinc…
▶ 31:33
And they kept using the communist label for the FARC when you can clearly see what I just read to you. The creation of the FARC had absolutely nothing to do with communism. It had everything to do with trying to get the people who were stea…
▶ 32:03
of the death squads that we helped create, to an army of 3,000. The cappuccinos stood at the forefront of the Colombian struggle, the emerging cocaine phenomenon provided by Colombia's poorest cappuccinos, cappuccinos, sorry, cappuccino, wh…
▶ 34:20
the area, this FARC conference proposed a clear strategic and operational concept for insurgency and changed its mechanism of leadership and command. The conference announced, from now on, we officially call ourselves the Revolutionary Arme…
▶ 34:52
The U.S. political and economic support for Colombia created a form of Colombian dependency on the U.S., which is exactly what they want. Colombia's political dependency on the U.S. deepened the four-decade war against the FARC and continue…
▶ 35:25
That was great for them to use as the talking point while the real narco-terrorist was being cultivated by the CIA. 48% of Colombian land is owned by wealthy absentee landlords who make up 1.3% of the population. That's crazy. Half of the l…
▶ 36:23
integrating drug trafficking into Colombian agribusiness, military defense, and politics. That's almost half of the link. At the end of the 90s, the FARC's power and influence extended over 60% of Colombia. In less than three years, over 93…
▶ 36:55
FARC was active in 83 of the 116 municipalities. Some areas are formally organized by the FARC with schools, medical facilities, grassroots judicial structures, and social projects. Field work conducted by sociologist James Britton.…
▶ 37:17
indicated that, quote, the FARC, unlike many recent revolutionary movements and struggles in Central and South America, was peasant based, organized and maintained a revolutionary organization. The revolutionaries were not formed within cla…
▶ 37:45
from which it provides its substance. For the insurgents largely consist of peasants from rural Colombia who account for approximately 65% of the members. And again, I'm pointing out the use of words. These were not insurgents. These were t…
▶ 38:45
The current consistency of the FARC organization has grown from its base in the peasantry to include indigenous people, Afro-Colombians, landless rural laborers, intellectuals, unionist teachers, and sectors of the urban workforce. 45% of i…
▶ 39:08
What began as a primarily peasant-led, rule-based land struggle in the 1960s has been transformed into a political movement, attempting an alternative development to that control by the U.S. By constructing a substantial support base with e…
▶ 39:34
the exception of Cuba, become the largest and most powerful revolutionary force politically and militarily in the Western Hemisphere. Narco-terrorism was a term first used by the Reagan administration during the Cold War to condemn the left…
▶ 41:01
have used the narco-terrorism paradigm as a political weapon to both criminalize and wage war against the FARC. The U.S. paradigm has been promoted by the Colombian government through policies and activities to combat, incarcerate, or extra…
▶ 48:19
Try to find a more comfortable, you know. They collect the cocoa paste and deliver it to state facilities under high level of protection by the Colombian military. You know, the ones we trade, we train. So again, even if you have cocaine ki…
▶ 48:49
complexes in Colombia, and they're under the guard of the state. But even the ones that are under the FARC control, so to speak, that's all they do. They sell that then to these narco-traffickers, which are all part of the CIA apparatus set…