Colombia: US suspends spraying after pilots downed
Colombia: US suspends spraying after pilots downed
Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 01/04/2014 - 15:42 Andean Theater
News accounts revealed in December that the US-funded glyphosate spraying in Colombia has been indefinitely suspended after presumed FARC guerillas shot down two fumigation planes—killing one US pilot. One plane came down Sept. 27, killing the pilot, whose name was not revealed. Reports were unclear where this incident took place. The Los Angeles Times on Dec. 17 named the village of Tarra, which is in Norte de Santander, along the Venezuelan border; Bogotá's El Tiempo implied it was in the southern jungle department of Putumayo. A second crop-duster was brought down Oct. 5, apparently at a location in Caquetá—also in the southern jungle. This prompted the US embassy to halt the spraying, according to anonymous sources. Neither the embassy nor the State Department would confirm the report.
At least six US pilots have been killed in the spraying program since 1995. The pilots are supplied by contractor DynCorp in a deal with the US State Department, and the planes have been specially fitted with armor to fend off attacks. The spray program, which comes out of the annual Plan Colombia aid package, costs about $50 million per year. The area sprayed totaled about 250,000 acres in 2012 and 258,000 acres in 2011. At the peak in 2006, more than 425,000 acres were sprayed with variants of glyphosate, which is marketed under the name Roundup (a Monsanto product).
Although cannabis now plays a distant second fiddle to cocaine in Colombia's cartel lucre, the National Police continue to net massive hauls—pointing to a booming trade, especially in the southwestern mountains. On Dec. 19, the police announced the confiscation of 3.6 tons of cannabis in a rural area outside of the city of Medellín. Police apparently staked out a parking lot where they had received a tip of a truck delivering the shipment. The cannabis packages were found hidden under a layer of bananas. According to the report, the shipment had just arrived from the southwestern department of Cauca, a major cultivaiton area. No arrests were made, as the suspects were able to flee. (Colombia Reports, Dec. 19)
http://ww4report.com/node/12895
(Short article, no more at link.)
= new reply since forum marked as read
and we waste $50 million on roundup to mellow some people's high.
pouring down upon the living beings and creatures who live outside the major cities, coming from the government airplanes:
Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 03:38 AM PST.
Bush Policy of Spraying Poison on Children
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Colombia: Chemical Spraying of Coca Poisoning Villages
by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, The Observer (London)
June 17th, 2001
Bogota -- Franci sits on the veranda and whimpers. The little girl is underweight. Her armpits are erupting in boils. Like most of her people, she has suffered from respiratory problems and stomach pains since the aircraft and the helicopter gunships came over at Christmas and again at New Year dropping toxic pesticides on their villages.
The tiny indigenous Kofan community of Santa Rosa de Guamuez in Colombia had it hard enough with pressures from settlers on their reservation, without Roundup Ultra containing Cosmoflux 411F, a weedkiller that is being sprayed on their villages in a concentration 100 times more powerful than is permitted in the United States.
Aurelio, a Kofan village elder, shows us around his village. The Kofan have been here 500 years. Now it looks as though their time is up. Pineapples are stunted and shriveled. The once green banana plants are no more than blackened sticks. The remains of a few maize plants can be seen here and there, but the food crops have been devastated. There is hunger at Santa Rosa. He is close to despair.
Colombian babies and children are falling ill. Peasants, already miserably poor, are getting hungrier. Indigenous tribes are being torn apart and whole communities pushed into exile.
More:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/02/27/464886/-Bush-Policy-of-Spraying-Poison-on-Children#
