The Red Line: Colombia (FARC, Paramilitarios and Cocaine)

 Colombia has always been closely associated with the international Cocaine trade, but the situation there is far more complicated with wider ramifications for the entire region. The government of Bogota has been at war with the rebels in a 6-way struggle for almost 60 years, with a peace deal now sitting on the table. Is this deal a workable peace though, or just the start of the next phase? We ask our expert panel. Alison Fedirka (Geopolitical Futures) Ted Piccone (Brookings Institution) Chris Sabatini (Chatham House) For more info visit - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod or Michael on @MikeHilliardAus

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Wired: Oslo got pedestrian and cyclist deaths down to zero. Here’s how

 Oslo’s achievement means that it is just one step away from “Vision Zero”, an undertaking to eliminate all deaths on public roads. The foundation for reaching Vision Zero is to significantly reduce the number of cars on the road. Oslo officials have removed more than a thousand street-side central parking spots, encouraging people to lean on an affordable and flexible public transport network, and added more bike lanes and footpaths. Significant areas are closed off to cars entirely, including “heart zones” around primary schools. “The wish to pedestrianise the city isn’t a new policy, but it has accelerated now,” Rune Gjøs, a director at Oslo’s Department of Mobility, says. “The car became the owner of our cities, but we’re resetting the order again.”

Despite its success, Oslo’s initiatives have faced opposition from some people who don’t know life without private cars. There’s also a misconception that pedestrianisation hurts local trade, because the data has always been “patchy,” says Harriet Tregoning, director of the New Urban Mobility Alliance, a global group helping cities to integrate more sustainable transportation. But Oslo’s success contributes to a growing body of evidence that pedestrianisation not only saves lives; it’s also good for business. After reducing cars, footfall in the centre increased by ten per cent. [...]

The disruption caused by Covid-19 has catalysed pedestrianisation projects elsewhere. Cologne in Germany and Calgary in Canada are among cities that have closed off large areas to through-traffic to allow more room for pedestrians to social distance. City officials in Bogota, Colombia have extended its car-free Sundays to the whole week, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has banned private cars from the iconic Rue de Rivoli. Hidalgo has said that returning to a Paris dominated by cars after lockdown ends is “out of the question”. Milan will pedestrianise 35 km of roads indefinitely.

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OCCRP: What Lockdown? World’s Cocaine Traffickers Sniff at Movement Restrictions

But OCCRP reporters have found that the world’s cocaine industry — which produces close to 2,000 metric tons a year and makes tens of billions of dollars — has adapted better than many other legitimate businesses. The industry has benefited from huge stores of drugs warehoused before the pandemic and its wide variety of smuggling methods. Street prices around Europe have risen by up to 30 percent, but it is not clear how much of this is due to distribution problems, and how much to drug gangs taking advantage of homebound customers. [...]

As many countries begin partially reopening their economies, traffickers may now be in a position to become more powerful than ever. With economies in distress and many businesses facing ruin, cash-rich narcos may be able to cheaply buy their way into an even bigger share of the legitimate economy. [...]

Exports to the world’s other biggest cocaine market, Europe, have suffered even less disruption. Unlike exports to the United States, cocaine bound for Europe is typically moved in legal air and sea cargoes, especially fast-moving fresh goods such as flowers and fruit. The latter, as food, has continued to move unimpeded during the pandemic, helping feed Europe’s 9.1 billion euro-a-year cocaine habit. [...]

Perhaps as a response to increased seizures, the street price of cocaine has risen by 20 to 30 percent during the lockdown period from mid-February until the end of April compared to the same period last year, according to Sciuto of the DCSA. Six months, criminal groups in Europe paid 25,000 to 27,000 euros for a kilogram of cocaine; they now fork out 35,000 to 37,000 euros, he said, adding that Spanish police have noticed the same trend.

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WorldAffairs: What Comes Next? How the World's Most Violent Places Recover

The most violent places today are not at war. Eighty-three percent of all violent deaths occur outside of conflict zones, and in 2015, more people died violently in Brazil than in Syria’s civil war. Yet multiple places which were once engulfed in violence and instability have recovered and have since formed stable democracies. Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of "A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security", joins Markos Kounalakis, WorldAffairs co-host and visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, in conversation about how violent and weak states transform into stable ones.

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Vox: Why Colombia has taken in 1 million Venezuelans (Nov 27, 2018)

Colombia is currently dealing with a massive wave of refugees coming from Venezuela. Venezuelans are fleeing their home because of a severe economic crisis under President Nicolas Maduro. There are high inflation rates and there isn’t enough food available for people within Venezuela to even eat. Thousands of Venezuelans cross the Simon Bolivar bridge located at Cúcuta every day and Colombia doesn’t seem to be turning anyone way.

This borders episode looks at why Colombia doesn’t turn away these refugees, the shared history of the two nations and how there may be a limit to Colombia’s acceptance of incoming Venezuelans.

Quartz: Given the chance to ask anything about sex, Colombian teens had three big questions

Teens in Bogotá have questions. Around 1.5 million have logged on and asked an average of three queries since the program was launched in February 2017. The platform is part of a wider initiative to combat teen pregnancy which seems to be working: in the past three years, teen pregnancy rates in the city have dropped 22.2%, with the steepest drop last year. Sexperto is in talks to roll the program out nationally, and one multilateral organization is looking at expanding it to the entire Andean region. [...]

The problem was very real. In 2015, 43 girls under 19 became mothers in Bogotá every day. The city ministry decided any program had to cross sectors, be properly funded, and be ready to deal with the backlash of a Catholic society which does not always welcome talk about sex and sexuality. Indeed, Amelia Rey, head of community health services in the Ministry of Health says Peñalosa became the target of 100 formal inquiries from opposing political parties about the city’s teen pregnancy efforts, including Sexperto, and heavily criticized for installing 300 condom vending machines in public spaces. [...]

Something is working. In 2014, the teen pregnancy rate was 16.4%; in 2018 it was 12.2%. The median age of new mothers, in that time, has moved from 22 to 23. That is clearly not all the work of Sexperto, which is part of a larger strategy which has included condom machines, the appointment of youth leaders who are trained and work with their peers, revamped sex education in 398 public schools, and increased birth control coverage. But Rey says it’s played a big role. “Sexperto.co has definitely been part of this city-wide effort and has been the ‘brand’ and novelty item we have used to speak about this important issue within the health sector and to non-health sector interest groups.”

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Jacobin Magazine: Latin America’s Re-Militarization

Law No. 13.491, passed by the Brazilian Congress in October 2017, gives military courts jurisdiction over their personnel accused of human rights violations. Prior to the law’s approval, the Ministry of Defense publicly made the case that allowing civilian courts to handle such cases would hinder policing operations. Michel Temer’s administration increasingly used the armed forces for domestic policing duties, whether in rural areas against land rights activists or in the favelas and peripheries of major cities.

Brazil’s 2008 “pacification” policy led to the deployment of military personnel to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and the militarization of policing intensified in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic games. According to Human Rights Watch, thousands of civilians are killed by the military and police each year. The new Ministry for Public Security, created in February, is led by an army general, and in May the Brazilian military was deployed in response to the nationwide truckers’ strike that blockaded highways. This was the first time the military had been used in this way since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985.[...]

Brazil is not alone in militarizing its justice system. Military courts are increasingly asserting jurisdiction throughout Latin America. In June 2015, Colombia passed a bill similar to the one adopted in Brazil, shifting jurisdiction for most crimes committed by members of the military to the military courts. The Constitutional Court struck down the first two iterations of the bill, but the government was determined to make the change and crafted a slightly narrower law that has since taken effect. Since 2005, Venezuela has been using military courts extensively to prosecute civilians involved in protests against the government. In Chile, cases of human rights violations committed by the military are still tried in military courts. [....]

Many politicians have run on platforms promising to be “tough on crime” and have deployed the military to conduct domestic policing operations, as in Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Elected leaders, seeking to deliver results for their voters in fighting drug trafficking and gang violence, are turning to their militaries and equipping them with increased legal powers.

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99 Percent Invisible: Post-Narco Urbanism

In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar, the notorious  drug lord, had effectively declared war on the Colombian state. At one point, his cartel was supplying 80% of the world’s cocaine and the violence surrounding the drug trade had become extreme. The bloodshed was focused in the city of Medellin.

As the years went on, Medellin became the most dangerous city in the world. In 1991 alone, around 6,000 people were killed. The murder rate was almost 400 people per 100,000 residents, which is three or four times more than the world’s most violent cities in recent history.

But today, Medellin is very different. In just thirty years, it’s transformed from being the bloody cocaine capital of the world into a place that’s often described as a “model city.” It’s now safer than many cities in the U.S, and, to the surprise of many, one of the things that helped to pull the city out of the violence was a whole new approach to urban planning, including a major overhaul of the city’s public transportation system.

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IFLScience: Colombian National Park Named World’s Largest Protected Rainforest And World Heritage Site

Following an expansion of nearly 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres), Colombia’s Serranía de Chiribiquete National Park is now the world’s largest protected rainforest and the nation’s ninth site to be listed by the United Nations as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The new status protects both natural and cultural values under a “mixed heritage of humanity” designation.  [...]

Indigenous communities consider the region sacred. Over 70,000 paintings are found along the walls of more than 60 rock shelters, making it the oldest and largest pictographic complex in the Americas. Linked to jaguar worship, the symbol of power and fertility, paintings depict hunting scenes, battles, ceremonies, and dances that tell the stories of indigenous peoples that lived there thousands of years ago.   

The park’s remote location and close proximity to armed conflict make studying its biodiversity difficult. However, researchers speculate thousands of species live in this area, dozens of which are endemic and several threatened, including the Amazonian tapir, the giant otter, and the jaguar. More than 700 species of plants, 200 fish, nearly 300 diurnal butterflies, and dozens of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians will be protected under this new designation.

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Jacobin Magazine: Who Fights Colombia’s Wars?

Many nations employ some form of military service, but most are rarely engaged in conflict. Colombia, which has suffered from civil war almost continuously since 1948, is quite different. While the conflict has waxed and waned, with long periods of relative peace punctuated by peaks of violence, serving as an enlisted member of the nation’s military has never been a safe occupation. [...]

A 1993 law states that all Colombian men must “define” their military situation upon reaching the age of majority. This vague term hints at how the law applies differently to men of different classes. The vast majority of the middle and upper class pay to avoid serving. The poorest members of society, especially those from neglected rural areas, are those who are forced to fight because they are unable to pay these legalized bribes.

Even among those who serve, there is legalized discrimination. Soldiers who have finished high school are assigned to non-combat zones and formerly had to serve only one year. Those who have not finished high school, usually from the poorest and most neglected places in the country, must serve between eighteen months and two years, usually in the most dangerous parts of Colombia. Because of this, the vast majority of those killed in the conflict — soldiers, guerrillas, and civilians — are among the poorest people in Colombia. [...]

In the 2014 election campaign, Santos seemingly recognized the unpopularity of military service. He claimed that, should the peace process prove successful, it would be abolished. There is now no sign of this happening. In fact, the period of service for those who have not graduated will be increased, with all such soldiers now serving for two years.

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openDemocracy: Why Colombia is still living in the shadows of war

In spite of the advances in the implementation of the peace agreement with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), Colombia continues living in the shadows of war. Civil society is finding itself in the midst of disputes between armed groups such as criminal gangs, the ELN (the National Liberation Army) and dissidents from the FARC, which has been demonstrated in the figures of the RUV (Single Register of Victims). Throughout December 2017, around 56,000 people were affected by armed conflict according to the RUV. [...]

The RUV shows that forced displacement was the issue that mostly affected Colombians throughout 2017.  This is followed by threats, loss of goods or property at the hands of armed groups, and offences against freedom and sexual identity. Here we identify some of the issues to be worked on throughout 2018. 

During the year of 2017, the RUV recorded 54 thousand cases of forced displacement, which represents 79% of all victims in the last year. The most affected regions are Chocó (with 9684 cases), Nariño (with 7776 cases), Norte de Santander (5512) and Antioquia (5904). [...]

Delinquents and armed groups have taken advantage of the post-conflict situation to carry out their land-grabs. It was only in September of 2017 when the government managed to take down a criminal gang dedicated to the theft of hectares of land that were due to be returned to victims. Through corruption, the capturers became creditors of more than 10 plots of land whose collective value exceeded 120 thousand million Colombian pesos.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Narco-State to the North

The result was, as we could have predicted, an escalation in the violence. Conservative numbers now put the number of dead since 2006 or 2007, when this began, at more than 125,000 people. Something like 30,000 people have been forcibly disappeared. Their families don’t know where they are. The result is massive levels of violence and destruction in places where drug trafficking had been centered: in the north, in Sinaloa, in what we call the Tierra Caliente, where much of the marijuana and opium poppies are grown, in Veracruz, which is a port city on the eastern side of Mexico. [...]

The state is deeply implicated in this and the massacres that we have seen: the disappearance of these students at Ayotzinapa, the killing of twenty innocent civilians at Tlatlaya, another massacre in a town called Apatzingán. There have been multiple places where innocent civilians were killed at the hands of security forces in execution-style killings. We see the Mexican security forces implicated in this violence, in these killings and disappearances. [...]

These Central American migrants are themselves fleeing violence having to do with the destabilization of their societies, which goes back to the US-backed wars in Central America in the 1980s and more recently the overthrow of the Honduran government in 2009. The role of the US in creating the conditions of violence in Central America and then militarizing the southern border has created incredible opportunities for the criminal organizations, particularly a ferocious group known as Los Zetas who emerged from the Mexican special forces and recruited Guatemalan Kaibiles, Guatemalan special forces, and are deadly killers. [...]

One of the biggest problems in Mexico is impunity. Something like over 95 percent of crimes aren’t investigated. People don’t call the police because often the police are corrupt and on the payroll of cartel members. When a family member disappears, for instance, it’s difficult to know who can help you because often the security forces are on the payroll of the people you suspect may have disappeared your loved one. [...]

That’s something that has been pointed out by observers across the political spectrum to Donald Trump. Mexico could stop agreeing to cooperate with the US. They could decide that they do not want to be the proxy militarization of the southern border, for instance. They could decide they no longer want to prosecute a militarized drug war. They could stop cooperating with the US in any number of ways, and that would have incredible consequences for the US, particularly the opposite of what it is that Donald Trump thinks that he is here to do.

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The New Yorker: Colombia's Guerrillas Come Out of the Jungle

By the terms of the peace treaty, which he had helped negotiate, some seven thousand farc fighters will submit to a process of transitional justice. In exchange for full confessions and reparations to victims, those who committed war crimes will receive “restorative sanctions,” which offer the possibility of community work rather than prison. The farc will become a political party, and, before long, former guerrillas will be able to run for public office. [...]

As the conflict dragged on, successive Colombian governments held peace talks, but the state did not always operate in good faith. In the mid-eighties, the farc agreed to call a truce and to recast itself as a political party—only to see thousands of its loyalists murdered by government death squads and paramilitary vigilantes. But the farc did little to maintain moral superiority; at one point, it was kidnapping as many as three people a day, including landowners, military officers, tourists, congressmen, even a Presidential candidate. Some were held for years, in appalling conditions. Eventually, the farc moved into Colombia’s booming drug business, levying taxes on coca growers and cocaine traffickers. After a new round of peace negotiations failed in 2002, the fighting became more vicious; Lozada moved from Bogotá to the jungle, and began leading combat operations. [...]

As President, Uribe negotiated with the paracos, even as he escalated the war against the farc. One of his schemes, which offered rewards to soldiers who killed guerrillas, led to the murder of more than two thousand civilians—a campaign that became notorious as False Positives. With the aid of a multibillion-dollar U.S. program called Plan Colombia—which included financial and intelligence assistance, a fleet of Blackhawk helicopters, and a contingent of American advisers—Uribe began landing decisive blows. During an Army attack in 2007, Lozada was shot in the back. Unable to walk, he crawled through the jungle as soldiers combed the area for survivors. In agony, he contemplated ending his life, until he was rescued by a guerrilla named Isabela. In Yarí, he lifted his T-shirt to show me the ugly scar on his back. [...]

On the show, Lozada and Timochenko spoke of the threat of renewed violence. A few months earlier, one far-flung rebel unit, linked to drug trafficking, had announced that it would remain in the jungle, rather than join the peace process. More pressing, as the farc withdrew from territory, the paramilitary narco-gangs were moving in, killing as they came. A pamphlet had circulated in San Vicente del Caguán, a town near farc territory, bearing a stencilled machine gun and the insignia of the fearsome paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The text read, “We have arrived . . . and have come to stay,” adding that the group’s purpose was to purge the town of farc supporters. Three local peasant leaders had been shot, and left-wing activists accused the mayor, a follower of Uribe, of ordering the murders. (The mayor denied involvement.) According to human-rights observers, more than seventy such activists were killed last year, inspiring fears of an extermination campaign. “A culture of violence has been formed,” Timochenko said. The society itself needed to change.

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Jacobin Magazine: A Second Chance

However, in spite of the setback, government and FARC negotiators managed to quickly make changes to the agreement, and it was signed in Bogotá’s Teatro Colon on November 24. While Uribe’s Democratic Center party has maintained its opposition, the new deal will be ratified by Congress, where Santos’s ruling coalition has a commanding majority. Uribe’s populistic and often truth-distorting campaign managed to derail the previous version but it appears that the new deal will pass a congressional vote on December 1.

It is a pity, then, that the new version is in many ways a worse deal.

Businessmen who funded the right-wing paramilitaries, who have crushed Colombian trade unions, displaced millions of peasants from their land, and have been responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, will now be shielded from prosecution. While the previous deal allowed for the redistribution of idle land from ranchers to peasants, such moves will now be illegal.

Foreign judges in the transitional justice system will not have sentencing power, only acting as advisers to Colombian judges. And the government will be able to employ the dangerous practice of aerial fumigation to combat coca cultivation. These changes make the transitional justice system less effective and more open to corruption, endanger the health of Colombians living in coca-producing areas, and fail to address Colombia’s appalling inequality and uneven distribution of farm land.

Nonetheless, this deal is still better than the return to conflict which many feared.  With thousands of FARC fighters awaiting demobilization, any delay could prove costly and lead to more breakaway groups such as FARC’s first front, who rejected the peace process and are still engaged in fighting.

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Quartz: A conspiracy theory about sex and gender is being peddled around the world by the far right

In Mexico, thousands of protesters denounced the spread (link in Spanish) of “gender ideology” in marches against same-sex marriage this September. Weeks earlier, religious groups in Colombia accused the government of wanting to indoctrinate children by teaching “gender ideology” in schools; weeks later, they would accuse officials of injecting similar forms of treachery (Spanish) into an attempted peace deal to end the country’s half-century of civil war.

Activists in Spain and Poland have used the same phrase to combat efforts to recognize that gender identity and sexual orientation go beyond heterosexual men and women. In France, the idea has circulated (link in French) under the slightly different “gender theory.” Even Pope Francis raised the notion last month, urging priestly compassion for individuals grappling with their gender identity or sexual orientation but rejecting “the indoctrination of gender theory” and its “ideological colonization.” [...]

In fact, “gender ideology” is an invention of the right. It’s a hodgepodge of disparate ideas developed by a diverse group of thinkers over the past 50 years, linked mainly in the minds of its opponents. It doesn’t really exist beyond its creators’ manifestos and protest banners, but it’s already helped them score some very real victories. [...]

“Gender ideology” has been a very effective communication and persuasion tool. It helps its “fighters” to avoid overtly homophobic language—which is prohibited by law in some countries—and to frame their arguments in secular terms. For example, instead of saying that same-sex marriage goes against religious teachings, opponents argue that it threatens the natural order of things.

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The Economist: Will the Nobel prize bring peace to Colombia?

By entering talks the FARC implicitly recognised that they could no longer win the war. But they view themselves as an undefeated army motivated by communist ideology, rather than as the drug-trafficking terrorists other Colombians perceived them to be. They were determined not to be the first guerrilla leaders to disarm in order to serve long prison sentences. And they wanted things they could claim as political conquests, such as a government commitment to land reform. But the FARC’s arrogant insistence on presenting the talks as being between two equally legitimate sides was a political mistake that made the agreement look more generous to them than it actually was—and made winning the plebiscite harder. [...]

Salvaging Colombia’s peace will not be easy. The No campaign and the FARC will have to find common ground. Mr Uribe has adopted a conciliatory tone since the vote, even meeting Mr Santos for the first time in six years. On October 9th he set out the changes he wants to the peace agreement. Some echo what is already the government’s position—that the pace of rural development and land reform will take into account fiscal constraints, for example. Others are points on which, in light of the plebiscite, the government should press the FARC: Mr Uribe wants the “effective restrictions on liberty” that would apply to those who confess to war crimes to involve confinement, though not prison, and for these to be incompatible with a seat in congress. Harder to accommodate is Mr Uribe’s insistence that FARC leaders should be tried by Colombia’s supreme court, rather than by the special tribunal, the centrepiece of the agreement’s chapter on justice. [...]

Whether or not the government holds another plebiscite on a revised agreement, it is clear that peace requires a broader political accord. That is where the Nobel prize might just help. It is encouraging that 400 business leaders this week called for a “swift search for a definitive, inclusive and sustainable peace”. The world is watching Colombia, and thus Mr Uribe’s and the FARC’s next moves. But its attention span is short.

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CityLab: The Golden Age of Gondolas Might Be Just Around the Corner

The gondola renaissance began, more or less, with Medellín. In 2004, the Colombian city built a gondola to connect one of its sprawling hillside neighborhoods to the trunk line of the Metro, which runs along the fold of the valley. The success of that project inspired the construction of two more lines, which in turn helped make the city an international destination for mayors and urban thinkers, and the winner of the Urban Land Institute’s Innovation City of the Year last month.

Medellín had imitators. In 2007, Portland, Oregon, built a tramway to connect a university campus to downtown. New York City renovated its Roosevelt Island Tram in 2010. In 2009, Manizales, Colombia, installed a gondola system in imitation of Medellin. The next year, Caracas built one; the year after, Rio de Janeiro did too.

Last year, London built an aerial cable crossing the Thames, and in the fall, La Paz announced it will build the world's largest gondola transit network, with eleven stations and over seven miles of cable. The French cities of Brest and Toulouse will complete cable transport in 2015 and 2017, respectively. [...]

And beyond that, according to Assman Ekkehard, a marketing director for Doppelmayr, there was an image problem. "Most people — politicians, the public itself, architects, the people who are doing the plans for cities, traffic specialists — they also had, and still sometimes have this association: ropeways are good for tourists, they're good for bringing people up the mountain, but they're not a good means of transport."

That's beginning to change, Ekkehard believes. "People see cities with ropeways and they see it works," he says. "It’s a very reasonable means of transit – you don’t need a lot of infrastructure. They need very little space. They're very environmentally friendly."

But perhaps more importantly in an era of diminished public funds, they can be built quickly and cheaply.

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The Conversation: I’m right, you’re wrong, and here’s a link to prove it: how social media shapes public debate

Now, within minutes of any event, announcement or media appearance, we are able to get those perspectives thousands of times instantly via social media. There are constant reactions and debates, often repeating the same arguments and information.

It’s the communication equivalent of being at a football match compared to a dinner party. While meaningful exchanges between individuals are possible on social media, there’s so much noise that it’s difficult to make complex arguments or check the validity of information.

Social media is a superb medium for immediacy, reach and intensity. This makes it a great asset in situations where timeliness is important, such as breaking news. But it has serious limitations in conveying tone, nuance, context and veracity. [...]

Nonetheless, with the dedication and commitment of a few passionate supporters, small and more marginalised groups are able to create a public presence that previously would have required years to establish through community meetings, lecture tours, fundraising events and lobbying.

A group like the Free West Papua movement, established in 1965 but outlawed by the Indonesian government, has successfully used social media to generate global support. [...]

But while political organisations and the media emphasise the volume of emotive, ephemeral and instantaneous messages produced for social media, they increasingly overlook context, complexity and causation.

So, the Australian election result, for example, was a surprise, particularly the level of support for One Nation. Similarly, the UK referendum result on its membership of the European Union was a shock. The US election is covered as though the tweets of candidates are providing the policy settings for an entire administration. The outcome of a referendum in Colombia was a surprise.

These outcomes are not directly caused by social media – they’re far too complex to make that claim – but social media is a powerful contributing factor. [...]

The recent power failure in South Australia showed the best and worst aspects of social media. It allowed people to communicate useful and important information quickly in the midst of the storm, but a political debate began almost immediately, and just as quickly devolved into binary positions. A complex issue was reduced to a slanging match, and the real issues were obscured.

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The Guardian: Just like the Brexit vote, the Colombian referendum was corrupted by lies

The rejection of the Colombian peace deal took us all by surprise. It surprised, first of all, those who rejected it, for they had already voiced their conviction that the country was a dictatorship and the referendum was rigged. [...]

The Democratic Center, a rightwing party of ultra-Catholic positions and intolerant manners, has spent the last four years opposing the very possibility that the guerrillas could participate in politics, and quickly corrected the spokesman. The simple truth is they didn’t have a plan B in case they won. The simpler truth is they didn’t even have a plan A. This is not the only similarity between our referendum and the Brexit debacle. [...]

No one has pointed out that what really bothers those of us who supported the peace deal isn’t the defeat – it’s the fact that so many people rejected this chance under the influence of lies and superstition. It is self evident that rejecting the agreements, to many, was the same as rejecting the guerrillas, whose criminal record is a long inventory of pain and suffering, and who were late in assuming their guilt with something resembling humility. But the days to come will have to see a national debate about the weight of lies in our final decision. [...]

One of his most powerful allies is Alejandro Ordóñez, whose CV includes burning copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude in his youth. Ordóñez, who used his considerable power as head of the public ministry to condemn homosexuality and try to ban abortion, got the Colombian people to believe that the peace deals were a secret strategy to impose a “gender-oriented ideology” on the country. He then said that the deals would abolish the Catholic family model; he then accused the government of negotiating his dismissal with the guerrillas. Of course, none of this is remotely true. But people voted with these fears in their minds, and openly said so.

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The New York Times: Colombian Opposition to Peace Deal Feeds Off Gay Rights Backlash

When Colombians last weekend rejected the peace deal between Mr. Santos’s government and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the decision shocked the region and laid bare generations of anger at the rebels. Many Colombians felt the guerrillas would have gotten off too easily in a deal that would have allowed a vast majority of them to avoid prison.

But critics of the agreement appear to have harnessed something else as well: a resurgent conservative movement, angered by Colombia’s socially liberal tilt in recent months.

“The opposition used that argument regarding gay marriage, abortion, religion to attract and rally against the peace accords,” said Juan Carlos Garzón, a researcher at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a research group in Colombia. “It was an effective strategy to drive the most conservative voters against the peace agreement.” [...]

In April, Colombia’s highest court legalized same-sex marriage, and last year it removed barriers to adopting children for gay individuals and couples. The country, torn by long drug wars, legalized medical marijuana late last year. A push to lift restrictions on abortions also emerged this year as the Zika virus spread.

Then came the deal with the FARC. For some conservatives, it was bridge too far: a pact with a Marxist guerrilla organization that had terrorized Colombia for decades.

“People have used the reaction to the peace agenda to talk about a larger conservative rollback in Colombia, a broadened cultural war,” said Winifred Tate, an anthropology professor at Colby College in Maine who studies Colombia.

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