By Marc Cooper

There are many of us with a direct connection to the Chile of the 1970s who have waited a long time for Sunday, for the death of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. We awaited only the day of his arrest with more anticipation.

I first heard the general's name when, as a young man in late 1971, I was working as a press aide for his predecessor as leader of Chile, Salvador Allende.

A Greek Orthodox priest was threatened with a knife and robbed of his large gold crucifix he wore around his neck in an incident Tuesday afternoon in the 3100 block of Hampton Avenue, St. Louis police said.

The priest, 46, was standing next to his car on a resturant parking lot about 1:15 p.m. when a man approached, pulled out a switch blade knife that had tape around the handle, and said, "Who do you think you are? (Blanking) Nelly?"

The advertising blitz before the holiday shopping season seems to come earlier and earlier, and this year is no exception, with more retailers than ever seeking to tap into the seemingly limitless spending power of the highly desirable dicktard demographic.

"Since Thanksgiving, the advertising industry has spent over $1 billion to influence what American dicktards, asswipes, and cock-knobs will put under their Christmas trees."

Hercule Poirot descubre que el “médium” , en este caso la señora Maigret, no ofrece solamente el soporte del descubrimiento del crimen, que es, en suma, el descubrimiento del autor del mismo, sino que conduce al planteamiento del acto criminal, en este caso, la conspiración mediática; la ya tan mencionada y anunciada “batalla mediática” de la operación Libertad Duradera. En esta carta, el detective sugiere que es necesario, ahora, avanzar en la terapia.

The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards — and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.

You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq — even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.

According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.

The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.

"if used properly"
"if used properly"
"if used properly"
"if used properly"
"if used properly"
"if used properly"

Does a beer magnate have more power than a dean who oversees medical breakthroughs? How do you compare the civic power of a CEO with the political power of an eloquent preacher; the power of a brilliant behind-the-scenes strategist with the power of a philanthropist whose money works obvious miracles? All developers make buildings rise and fall—but which of them seriously changed the landscape in 2006?

Institute for Policy Studies, gave its annual human rights award this fall to Maher Arar, an innocent man the Bush administration falsely accused of being linked to Al Qaeda. His chilling case represents an opportunity for the new Democratic leadership in Congress to show the world that America has not entirely forgotten its proud history on human rights.

The ‘political show trial’ of Simon Trinidad is a striking example of the threats to constitutional freedoms, which we and the citizens of the world face before the unbridled power of the American President to overrule all the rights of sovereign states and their citizens, international law and constitutional freedoms.

Equally important is the current reality of ‘extraterritorial, lawless seizures, abductions and kangaroo proceedings at the service of bloody imperial policies and client rulers whose actions have devastated Colombian society. More than 2.5 million Colombian peasants and urban slum dwellers have been displaced by the savage counter-insurgency program called ‘Plan Colombia; the number of displaced persons is second only to Afghanistan.

The counterinsurgency programs, variously called ‘Plan Colombia’, ‘Plan Patriótica’ and ‘Democratic Security’ are financed and directed by the United States and promoted by its client President Álvaro Uribe. The US AFL-CIO documents over 4,000 trade unionists assassinated between 1986-2002; the Colombian government has only investigated 376 of which only 5 cases led to a conviction of the killer. According to Colombian human rights groups, between 2003-2006 Uribe’s military and paramilitary allies have murdered nearly a thousand more trade unionists. Over the past 5 years, 30,000 peasants, rural teachers, and peasant and indigenous leaders have been killed with impunity. State repression (‘Democratic Security’) has been directed at weakening trade union resistance to the US-Colombian Free Trade Agreement, not at countering guerrilla armies.

With over 68% of the Colombian people living under the poverty line of $2 dollars a day, and land seizures by paramilitary leaders, cattle barons and military officers concentrating land ownership to an unprecedented level, it is no wonder that the guerrilla resistance is recruiting and successfully countering Government-sponsored military campaigns, each bearing a triumphalist title and all ending in abysmal failure. Without fundamental political and social reforms and lacking an economic model that integrates the millions displaced, terrorized and excluded, there is no military strategist or strategy, no matter how well funded and directed by Washington which will end the civil conflict.

The first step toward a resolution of this half-century conflict is the recognition that Colombia is in the midst of a civil war, not a ‘war on terror’. The second is to release the protagonists of the peace process, Simon Trinidad and his comrade ‘Sonia’ as a concrete move toward a humanitarian prisoner exchange and confidence building measure opening the way to full-scale peace negotiations.

Paradoxically, the end of the Colombian blood letting could begin in Washington, in a Federal Courtroom, or possibly in the US Congress with the recognition that the US is an armed party in Colombia’s civil war, that their combatants are prisoners of war and that their ultimate release depends on recognizing the limits of US military power (and that of its Colombian client) and that a diplomatic, negotiated agreement is the only realistic option.