Liberté, Fraternité....

Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped Colombian ex-reform party presidential candidate , was liberated last week, along with fifteen other hostages, from six years captivity at the hands of FARC. These recently freed hostages have been the FARC's major bargaining chips for a few years and the subjects of ongoing controversies––these were the hostages who Chavez was mediating talks about freeing between the Colombian military and the FARC. The official story is that the Colombian military rescued the hostages in an operation which involved soldiers disguised as FARC members and tricking the captives' guards into handing over the hostages to be taken to another FARC camp. There have been rumors circulating that the U.S. and Colombia secretly paid 20 million ransom for the hostages, although both U.S. and Colombian reps have vehemently denied that any ransom was paid.

Taking into account the usual bumbling incompetence of the Colombian military, it's difficult to pay no heed to these claims. Also, as I've stated here before, Colombia (as an unofficial colony of the U.S.) is a country so in tune with the vicissitudes of American politics that the release of these high-profile hostages could be connected to the upcoming regime-change here in the states. It's in right-wing president Alvaro Uribe's best interests that the Republicans win the 2008 elections. McCain visited Colombia July 1st (just two days before the release of the hostages) to promote the free-trade deal he's been trying to get approved by Congress (with strong opposition from Obama and other leading Democrats like Nancy Pelosi). McCain flew to the resort town of Cartagena to give a speech warning Colombia to clean up their (completely appalling) human rights record so that this free-trade deal could be passed. With so much of Colombia-U.S. relations being one extended p.r. campaign staged for the public to hide what deals are going on beneath the seamy surface, this really makes all parties involved look a little too photogenic.

Daughter of the Colombian oligarchy–Betancourt has gotten the lionshare of media attention since the hostages were freed because she was the most high-profile of the detainees, and her story has been particularly big in France. Betancourt is a citizen of both France and Colombia, due to her previous marriage to a French diplomat. On a visit to Paris to meet Sarkozy, Betancourt stated, “I owe everything to France. France is my home. You are my family.” Well, at least we know that she's still Colombian enough to consider herself French. The whole thing could not be any less maudlin.

Corporation for Public B.S.

I'd been hearing what I thought were rumors about the Republican takeover of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, though until recently I hadn't noticed very much of an ideological shift in PBS's programming, so I hadn't had a real reason to believe the rumors. But a quick google search reveals that it's true: in 2005, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's funding apparatus was basically handed over to the right wing on a silver platter. Eric Alterman's piece in The Nation is really informative on the matter. Yes, Bill Moyers (American Hero) had been fired and then eventually reinstated due to Bush administration pressures, but once this grave wrong had been righted, I thought things were copacetic again. The only channel I get at home with any clarity is PBS, so I end up watching it pretty regularly (just as in Philly the only TV I had was NPR, so I could tell you what was on at almost any hour of the day, even though NPR is basically loathsome too). If you're a regular watcher, you'll probably have noticed the quite odd law-enforcement turn the channel's taken, the FOXnewsification of PBS has been slow but insidious. Two weeks ago, I watched stupefied as Frontline informed me of the dangers that Mexican immigrants pose to national security, an argument whose rhetoric has always struck me as positively hilarious. A deep voiced authoritative sounding narrator states, "Just one illegal alien crossing the border undermines all of our national security efforts, yet more than five hundred aliens a day manage to pass the border patrol." When has a Mexican immigrant ever turned out to be an operative for a terrorist cell? In reality it's more like, "We must keep our borders safe from all these illegal Mexicans who might mow all our lawns and bus our tables!" The tone of this Frontline special was positively alarmist and the last thing I'd expect from a channel like PBS, except it was actually worse than anything you'd hear on an infotainment channel like Fox because PBS documentaries are cloaked in pseudo-factuality and trumped up "accuracy."