As Venezuela’s neighbour it is important for those interested in solidarity with Venezuela to understand what is happening in Colombia as well. The struggle in Colombia cannot be separated from other struggles in Latin America. This film lets the FARC speak for themselves.
Hope to see many of you there,
Hamish
Direct Action Cinema:
Into the Jungles of Columbia: The FARC speaks
In this film from the jungles of Columbia the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) an armed insurgent group, speak about fighting for social change and social justice in Columbia. The US Treasury Department has put them on the list of terrorist organisations. The FARC reject that label and expose Columbia’s history of US-backed injustice.
Saturday July 3, 7pm
(cheap meal available at 6:30pm)
Direct Action Centre, 8 Gillingham St
Woolloongabba (next to Buranda railway station)
Editor’s Note – this book has received strong recommendation. I include the notice hear because it relates to a film that comrades organised a couple of years ago about the FARC in Colombia. Please note it is a book launch only in Melbourne – the film was shown long ago.
U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia
with co-author Oliver Villar and with Colm McNaughton
On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at 6.30pm, The New International Bookshop hosts the Melbourne launch of Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror, an incisive new study of Colombian politics and modern US imperialism by Australian scholars Oliver Villar and Drew
Cottle.
The book examines the real motivations behind the US
Government’s funnelling of billions of dollars’ worth of aid into Colombia since
the late 1990s. Ostensibly to combat the illicit drug trade and State
Department-designated terrorist groups, the result has been a spiral of violence
that continues to take lives and destabilize Colombian society. The book asks an obvious question: are the official reasons given for the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia plausible, or are there other, deeper factors at work?
Viller and Cottle suggest that the answers lie in a close examination of the cocaine trade, particularly its class dimensions.
This revelatory book
punctures the official propaganda and exposes the class war underpinning the politics of the Colombian drug trade.
Journalist, activist and
academic Colm McNaughton will join co-author Oliver Villar in launching the book on:
Wednesday, March 21
at 6:30 pm (for a 7 pm
start)
in The New
International Bookshop Meeting-room
Basement floor, Trades Hall
54
Victoria St
Carlton South
Entry is by gold-coin donation to the Bookshop. Drinks and snacks will be available by donation.
This event is part of
The New International Bookshop’s Underground Talks series
**********
We look forward to
seeing you there. On behalf of the NIBS Co-operative, thanks.
In
Solidarity,
Sharne Vate
**********
Dr. Oliver Villar is a
lecturer in Politics at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst. He has published
broadly on the Inter-American cocaine drug trade, the U.S. War on Drugs and
Terror in Colombia, and U.S.-Colombian relations.
Dr. Drew
Cottle is a senior lecturer in
Politics at the University of Western Sydney. He has written extensively on international political economy and revolutionary struggles in the Third World. His book, The
Brisbane Line: A Re-Appraisal was a study of inter-imperialist rivalry and potential collaboration in Australia prior to the Pacific War.
Dr. Colm McNaughton is a freelance radio documentary producer and a lecturer in radio journalism at Swinburne and Monash Universities. His first documentary Awakening from
History? won the 2008 Walkley award for best radio documentary or feature.