Tag: colombia

No Coming Back from Genocide: Israel’s Global Counter-Offensive Has Begun

Colombia’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights marks a dangerous turning point.

By becoming only the second country in the world – after the United States – to endorse Israel’s illegal annexation of Syrian territory, Bogotá has signaled a complete reversal of Gustavo Petro’s foreign policy under new far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella.

However, Colombia is not an isolated case. It reflects a broader, highly aggressive campaign by Israel to systematically dismantle and reverse hard-won pro-Palestine and pro-Arab positions worldwide. In fact, the shift in Bogotá comes alongside dramatic changes in Caracas, where Venezuela’s interim leadership has moved to restore consular ties with Israel after a 17-year freeze.

The same thing is happening in Europe. A prime example is Slovenia, where the newly installed government under Janez Janša removed the Palestinian flag from government buildings and announced its intention to freeze the country’s 2024 recognition of Palestinian statehood and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Israel knows that its so-called ‘PR problem’ is no longer that of a merely tainted image resulting from occasional negative news coverage. The genocide in Gaza, coupled with genocidal discourse and wars of aggression across the Middle East, means that Israel, this time around, will not easily recover from the damage it has inflicted on its global reputation.

Though some circles, including those purportedly critical of Israel, insist that the problem is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of extremists, the truth is far more unpleasant for Israel. Indeed, Israel as a country, as a colonial project and as an ideology is increasingly being questioned.

Even some within Israel’s own mainstream media have begun acknowledging the depth of the crisis. “Maybe it’s time to understand that this isn’t just a PR failure, but a moral failure,” prominent Israeli television anchor Yonit Levi said last year. The Washington Post, meanwhile, described Israel as “turning into a global pariah.”

But Israeli leaders, though refusing to acknowledge the potentially irreversible changes in the global mood toward their country and Zionism as a whole, are comforted by two factors: one, continued US – and, by extension, Western – support; and two, directly related to the first, their ability to shift governments’ positions toward Israel through political, diplomatic and other means.

For Israel, the people never mattered; only governments do.

Colombia illustrates precisely why. Israel did not need to reverse Colombian public opinion or undo years of solidarity with Palestine. It only needed a change of government. The election of the unabashedly pro-Israel De la Espriella provided exactly that.

The political consequences were almost immediate. De la Espriella moved to restore full relations with Israel, withdraw Colombia’s support for South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice, resume coal exports and, most consequentially, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan.

This rapid reversal also gives greater significance to former President Petro’s repeated statements of US and Israeli interference in the election that defeated left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda. Though these accusations remain contested, the outcome itself is unmistakable: a change of government was enough to begin dismantling years of Colombian policy on Palestine and Israel.

The same applies to Venezuela. Many initially viewed the US capture of pro-Palestine President Nicolás Maduro as merely another episode in Washington’s long history of intervention in Latin America. But the speed of Venezuela’s subsequent realignment suggests a broader transformation.

The clearest indication is Caracas’ growing closeness to Tel Aviv. Venezuela severed diplomatic relations with Israel under Hugo Chávez in 2009 over the war on Gaza. Seventeen years later, the two governments have agreed to restore consular services – a significant step toward normalization and a powerful symbol of Venezuela’s changing geopolitical orientation.

Israel’s relationship with much of the Global South has historically been fraught, shaped by its colonial character, military aggression and close alignment with Western power.

Under Netanyahu, however, Israel worked systematically to break that isolation, expanding its influence across Africa, Asia and Latin America as the US-dominated global order began to weaken.

Gaza dramatically reversed those gains, not only in the Global South but worldwide. The challenge now is to make that reversal lasting – and Israel’s recent gains in Colombia, Venezuela, Slovenia and elsewhere temporary.

Keep reading

Colombian Authorities Seize Bus Carrying 420 Kilograms of Explosives Bound for Cali Days Before Presidential Inauguration

Colombian security forces have reportedly intercepted a bus carrying approximately 420 kilograms of ammonium nitrate explosives in the department of Cauca, preventing what authorities believe could have been a major planned large-scale terrorist attack against military and police installations in Cali.

The operation, dubbed Operation Prometeo, was carried out today along the Pan-American Highway near Santander de Quilichao by Colombia’s National Police, with the participation of the Intelligence Directorate (DIPOL), Criminal Investigation Directorate (DIJIN), Anti-Narcotics Directorate (DIRAN), Highway Police (DITRA), and the Southwest Organized Crime Task Force.

Authorities say intelligence indicates the explosives were intended to strike military and police facilities in Cali during the inauguration of President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella on August 7, with the objective of demonstrating the group’s operational capability and disrupting one of Colombia’s most significant political events.

Keep reading

Report: Colombian Marxist Terrorists Using TikTok to Recruit Children

Armed narco-terrorist groups in Colombia are utilizing TikTok and other social media platforms to push recruitment videos targeting young children and teenagers, the Colombian newspaper El Colombiano reported on Monday.

According to El Colombiano, armed groups such as the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorist group and the Clan del Golfo are engaged in a scheme described by the newspaper as “Recruitment 2.0.” The strategy sees the use of social media platform algorithms to push content towards Colombian children and teenagers in vulnerable economical situations, seeking to entice them into joining said insurgent organizations.

El Colombiano pointed out that the tactic specifically targets demographic groups of children as they are deemed more “influenceable” and because local criminal laws are more lenient towards children in the event of a future arrest.

The contents, which El Colombiano affirmed are mostly found on TikTok, entice Colombian minors with promises of future riches and luxuries. Other pieces of content reportedly used in the recruitment scheme involve deceitful offers such as false “talent-seeking” soccer tournaments and fake job offers promising competitive wages, all with the same goal of luring victims to join their ranks.

El Colombiano explained that it created a fake TikTok profile for the purposes of its report. Within “one hour,” the newspaper said, the TikTok account’s “For You” section began displaying videos of raspachínes coca leaf collectors, young people in camouflage clothing flaunting their affiliation with guerrilla groups, and individuals showing off cars, motorcycles, liquor, and luxuries, accompanied by ninja emojis — a “recurring visual code across various armed groups.”

Although TikTok has allegedly placed content filters blocking certain guerrilla-related keywords, El Colombiano explained that armed groups are completely bypassing the filters by simply using abbreviations instead of the group’s full name, such as “EP” as a replacement for FARC — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Marxist terrorist group, which attaches the EP (“People’s Army”) suffix to its initials.

“TikTok blocked the word ‘gaitanistas,’ for example. That is why digital recruiters tend to be more sophisticated and use coded language involving emojis,” Juan David Velasco Montoya, advisor at the Investigation and Prosecution Unit (UIA) of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP), told El Colombiano. The Clan del Golfo sometimes refers to itself as the “Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.”

JEP is a Colombian transitional justice mechanism established nearly a decade ago after FARC and the administration of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a “peace deal” in 2016 that allegedly saw the “dismantlement” of FARC. In reality, FARC remains active in Colombia ten years after its supposed dismantlement, committing numerous terrorist attacks over the past decade.

A UIA report cited by El Colombiano documented a 66-percent surge in the recruitment of children by Colombian insurgent groups on social media between 2022 and 2025. According to the UIA report, 44 percent of all child recruitment cases documented by the group in 2025 occurred on social media.

UIA reportedly described TikTok as the “most problematic” of the social media platforms for said recruitment. The content allegedly published by the groups on TikTok mainly targets teenagers and predominantly feature messages of money, weapons, and a “life of party and excesses.”

In 2024, Colombian authorities denounced that FARC had been using TikTok to publish content enticing minors to join the Marxist terrorist group. El Colombiano affirmed on Monday that, although Colombian authorities established guidelines to reduce the risk of recruitment by minors last year, “no concrete action has been taken” by the Chinese social media platform.

On the other hand, the recruitment content allegedly published on Facebook targets young adults instead of minors, while content allegedly published on YouTube are instead of a “political” tone. Instagram is allegedly used by Colombian armed groups to push content related to “armed confrontation and the handling of drones turned into weapons.”

UIA also reportedly found that, in addition to organizing the content’s type by platform, the posts also target boys and girls differently by “reinforcing gender stereotypes.” El Colombiano explained that, for example, content seeking to entice girls reportedly centers around the “glorification of physical beauty, dancing, and posing,” while content targeting boys highlights “strength, virility, financial means, weapons, and alcohol as a status symbol.”

According to the UIA report, the group projects that, if the situation were to continue existing as-is, Colombia could face roughly 2,321 new cases of child recruitment between 2026 and 2030 — at an average rate of one new minor every 12 hours.

Luis Fernando Quijano, director of the social services group Corporation for Peace and Social Development (Corpades), explained to El Colombiano on Monday that his organization has been documenting the alarming social media recruitment phenomenon for months.

In some cases, Quijano warned, the recruitment offer is “direct,” with some of the contents directly asking for minors between the ages of 12 and 13 to send a direct message if they want to join an insurgent group. In other cases, the recruitment enlists for international conflicts instead.

“It is recruitment through handouts, through images of young women and young men, and by portraying the illegal military life as very appealing. That is an open invitation for children and adolescents to go there,” Quijano said.

Keep reading

Colombia: Presidential Transition Process Paused After Leftist Refuses to Accept Conservative Winner

Outgoing Marxist President of Colombia Gustavo Petro refused to acknowledge the victory of his successor, conservative President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, on Monday because he allegedly “did not win” the election.

Petro claimed, without evidence, that “algorithmic fraud” with “foreign funding” was committed in the election and that his appointed successor, far-left Senator Iván Cepeda, is the “president of Colombia.” Despite Petro’s wild claims, local and international organizations have confirmed that de la Espriella is the legitimate winner of the free and fair election.

Gustavo Petro is Colombia’s first leftist president ever and a proud former member of the Marxist M19 terrorist group. Petro is presently in the final month of his four-year term, as he is set to leave office on August 7, 2026. On that day, President-elect de la Espriella will take office as the next head of state of the South American nation. Petro is term-limited and unable to run for president of Colombia, as the nation’s constitution strictly states that an elected president may only serve for one four-year term and cannot be reelected.

President-elect de la Espriella defeated Sen. Cepeda in the June 21 presidential runoff election. Electoral observers from international organizations such as the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS) have endorsed the results and expressed that no irregularities were detected in the free and fair election. Colombia’s electoral system has been praised by international politicians — including American ones — for its transparency, efficacy, and expeditiousness, as it is capable of delivering rapid and precise vote counts within hours.

Despite the overwhelming endorsement of Colombia’s 2026 presidential election as a free and fair democratic event, President Petro has repeatedly claimed that “fraud” was committed in favor of de la Espriella during the process. Petro has also accused Israel of allegedly “compromising” the electoral results, based only on the dubious claim that it is “the only entity in the world capable of doing that.”

Most of Petro’s wild accusations — which he has yet to present evidence of at press time — target Thomas Greg & Sons, the private security company that administered the 2026 presidential election process. The company has an over six-decade-old presence in Colombia and has provided numerous services to the South American nation. Despite his refusal to acknowledge the defeat of his chosen far-left successor, Petro reluctantly announced the start of the transition process with the incoming de la Espriella administration in late June — an announcement he made in what is now known as one of his longest and most unhinged social media rants to date.

On Monday, however, Petro published a new diatribe claiming that “philosopher Iván Cepeda” was allegedly the actual “winner” of the June 21 runoff election and is thus the “President of Colombia according to the decision of the Colombians.”

Petro, who once again failed to present evidence to substantiate his “fraud” accusations, claimed to be in possession of information that, according to him, points to an “IP server located in Los Angeles, California, property of the Bautista brothers,” the owners of Thomas Greg & Sons. Said server, according to the outgoing president, was part of the vote-counting process and saw the use of “algorithms” that ” substantially skewed the vote in Abelardo’s favor.”

“The algorithms that rigged the election results were applied to the voter rolls by replacing voters who never vote with voters who could vote multiple times, or by leaving polling stations with homogeneous election committees without any voters at all,” Petro claimed in his rant.

“The polling stations in the area where Abelardo received 177,000 more votes than Cepeda have poll workers from Colombia who are not residents of the U.S. or Spain, which is illegal, as well as voters brought in for the World Cup who were able to cast seven votes at polling stations under the names of people who never vote,” he added.

“The same thing happened in several regions of Antioquia and Medellín, in Norte de Santander, and at polling stations in northern Bogotá. That’s why my son found out that someone had already voted in his name,” he continued.

“The president of Colombia does not recognize the legitimacy of the incoming government. Abelardo did not win the election,” Petro wrote, calling upon his supporters to “to raise the cry for national independence in all public squares” on July 20 — a date he had previously marked for his “early farewell” rally.

President-elect de la Espriella responded to Petro’s claims by ordering the suspension of the handover transition process between his team and Petro’s “corrupt government,” accusing the outgoing Petro administration of seeking to “destroy Colombia” with its actions. De la Espriella emphasized that his duty is to protect Colombia’s interests and guarantee a “serious, transparent transition at the service of Colombians, never to legitimize the disaster or the disregard for the constitutional order.”

“This [Tuesday] morning, I will address the Nation through my social media to explain to all Colombians the reasons for this decision and the measures I will take immediately,” he wrote in a Tuesday morning social media post.

De la Espriella has not publicly commented further on the matter at press time.

Keep reading

Colombia Announces Election Results in One Day… While California Marxists Won’t Report Election Results for 2 More Weeks – Five Weeks After Election Day!

Colombia, a country rife with cartel violence, drug kingpins, and political assassinations picked their new leader on Sunday. By early evening, Conservative outsider Abelardo de la Espriella was announced the winner over cartel lackey and Marxist sympathizer Gustavo Petro.

Espriella is a Trump supporter and holds a dual citizenship with the US.

Colombia has an estimated 52,694,952 people according to latest estimates.

Even Colombia, with all of its domestic challenges is able to count ballots in ONE DAY!

Meanwhile, in California, the communists are still harvesting and counting ballots.

California allegedly has a population of 39.6 million but who really knows?

According to the DPElectionResults website they have until July 3rd to issue their final report. Then the Secretary of State will finalize the results by July 10, 2026.

Election results are updated as often as new data is received from county elections offices after the polls close at 8:00 p.m. on Election Day. Ballots continue to be counted after Election Day during the canvass period; county elections officials must report final official results to the Secretary of State by July 3, 2026. The Secretary of State will certify the results on July 10, 2026.

They’re not fooling anyone. Everyone knows California no longer has trustworthy elections. They don’t check IDs and anyone can sign up online or at the drivers license bureau. Democrats are a crime syndicate.

Keep reading

Trump Admin Shuts Down Mamdani’s Attempt to Meet with Foreign Leader

President Donald Trump’s administration has thwarted a planned meeting between two prominent democratic socialists.

According to The Washington Post, U.S. diplomats in the Colombian capital of Bogotá told Colombian officials that a planned meeting between Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro in New York this week would violate U.S.-imposed visa restrictions against Petro.

Colombian officials took that to mean that the U.S. might arrest Petro if he went ahead with the Mamdani meeting.

Petro’s visa restrictions stem from comments he made outside United Nations headquarters in September 2025.

“I ask all the soldiers of the army of the U.S. not to point their rifles at humanity,” the Colombian president said to a group of pro-Palestinian supporters. “Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.”

“A visa is a privilege, not a right,” a State Department official told the Post. “Any individual’s U.S. visa is at risk of revocation if they visit America and outrageously implore U.S. soldiers to disobey orders of the duly elected president of the United States.”

Petro has also accused Trump of being “complicit in genocide” for supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump, meanwhile, called the democratic socialist a “lunatic who’s got a lot of problems, mental problems.”

The two presidents did have what Trump characterized as a “terrific” meeting in February.

Since then, however, Petro has reportedly irritated Secretary of State Marco Rubio by criticizing U.S. boat strikes in Latin America and the capture earlier this year of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

According to The New York Times, the Colombian president’s criticisms of the boat strikes in particular prompted sanctions from the U.S. Treasury. Federal prosecutors also launched an investigation into possible drug-trafficking ties.

Keep reading

Sen. Bernie Moreno: ‘We Can Learn’ from Colombia Election System with Voter ID, No Mail-In Vote

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) applauded the Colombian electoral integrity system following a trip to the country as an observer in Sunday’s presidential election, describing it as “world-class” and a model to learn from for the United States.

Sen. Moreno made the remarks during a call with the media on Tuesday in which he detailed his experiences in the country as an election observer and responded to claims by outgoing President Gustavo Petro, a Marxist who regularly boasts of his membership in a terrorist guerrilla, that the election was fraudulent. Sen. Moreno gave Colombian authorities an “A+” for their handling of the election and dismissed Petro’s refusal to accept the results of the election, noting that Petro’s hand-picked successor, Sen. Iván Cepeda, had publicly come out in defense of the election results.

The Colombian-American senator described an intricate security system in which Colombians are allowed to vote only with a federally issued identification card, ballots are filled out and tallied on paper, and no mail-in voting is allowed. Even abroad, Colombian citizens must visit a consulate in person to vote. Sen. Moreno suggested that America could significantly improve its own election integrity by taking even a small number of these measures, such as requiring identification to vote. Congress is currently debating a bill that would change voting requirements to align more with those of Colombia, the SAVE America Act, which Democrats are loudly decrying as discriminatory and equating to Jim Crow-era bigotry.

Colombia held its first round of presidential voting on Sunday when all 14 candidates were on the ballot. As no candidate obtained 50 percent or more of the vote, the race will go to a second “runoff” election featuring the top two candidates in the first round. Outsider conservative candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round with 43.74 percent of the vote, while Sen. Iván Cepeda obtained 40.90 percent, enough to enter the runoff. The establishment conservative candidate, Sen. Paloma Valencia, came in third place and immediately pledged support to de la Espriella.

“The elections in Colombia were done, actually, extraordinarily well,” Sen. Moreno explained on Tuesday. “The process that they have for elections — I think there are some things that we can learn here in the U.S. They require 100-percent proof of citizenship in order to get a national ID that’s required to obtain before you can vote.”

Keep reading

Colombia to the Right? Anti-Crime Outsider Crushes Election Expectations.

Up until 2022, Colombia had never had a left-wing president, at least not in modern history. But, for some reason, it tried to experiment with one between 2022 and 2026. Not only did they vote in a leftist, but they voted in a corrupt socialist clown. Four years of Gustavo Petro was, apparently, enough. 

As I wrote on Friday, the Colombian presidential elections were held on Sunday, May 31, and it was down to three candidates:  

On the left, you have Petro’s hand-picked candidate, senator, and human rights activist Iván Cepeda. He’ll be more of the same: heavy spending on social programs and pointless peace talks with gangs and guerrillas that go nowhere, instead of actually cracking down on crime. He’s leading in the polls right now, anywhere from 35 to 42%, depending on which poll you believe. 

But don’t panic. One reason why he’s leading in the polls is that the right is split between Abelardo de la Espriella, aka “El Tigre,” and Paloma Valencia. El Tigre is the outsider, a bombastic lawyer who has a little Trump and a little Nayib Bukele in him. He’s promising mega-prisons to deal with the criminal groups that plague the country and a crackdown on drugs and crime. And he’s gaining a lot of enthusiasm right now. Most of the emails I receive from Colombians want him to win. 

Valencia, a center-right senator, is more of an establishment conservative. She’s a big Petro critic and campaigns on stabilizing the country’s economy and restoring security. 

Valencia actually won the nomination as the right-wing candidate in the country’s primaries earlier this year. Cepeda was the left-wing winner. El Tigre (“The Tiger”) had to kind of do things on his own. And boy, did he. Even as I wrote about the election on Friday, he was not projected to perform as well as he did on Sunday. 

I should have know better — I’ve receive so many emails from Colombians over the last few months telling me that he was their guy.  

Going into, it looked like Cepeda would receive the most votes, and that the rest would be split between de la Espriella and Valencia, but de la Espriella actually came out on top with about a 3%-ish lead. 

Keep reading

Countries Plan “Fossil Fuel” Phaseout at Colombia Conference

Nearly 60 countries met in Santa Marta, Colombia, on April 24-29 to participate in the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, where they agreed to take steps to phase out so-called fossil fuels.

The conference, organized by Colombia and the Netherlands, was intended to facilitate a hastened phaseout of fossil fuels by countries already committed to implementing a radical climate agenda. A second conference is planned for next year in Tuvalu.

The Guardian reports:

Governments have been asked to develop national “roadmaps” setting out how they will end the production and use of fossil fuels, after a landmark climate meeting involving nearly 60 countries.

The voluntary plans will form the bedrock of a new initiative to wean the world off coal, oil and gas, the focus of two days of intensive talks in Colombia this week….

Colombia published a draft roadmap during the conference and set up a scientific panel to advise countries. On Tuesday, France became the first developed country to release a national roadmap to phase out fossil fuels….

While countries already publish climate plans under the Paris agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), [Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Irene Vélez Torres] said these were not sufficient to serve as roadmaps because they addressed only countries’ domestic greenhouse gas emissions, allowing fossil fuel producers to sidestep the climate impact of their exports.

The Gulf states and countries such as China, Russia, and India did not attend, while the United States was not invited. A list of participating countries, which includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, can be found here. The European Union also participated.

Keep reading

Colombian Lawmakers Approve Bill To Legalize Marijuana

Lawmakers in Colombia have advanced a bill to legalize marijuana through its first step in the legislative process.

The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved the measure from Rep. Alejandro Ocampo on Tuesday, sending it to the full chamber for consideration. If approved there, the legislation would then go to the Senate for two additional votes.

“We just approved the regulation of cannabis in the first debate. It’s time to regulate. We’re going to regulate everything from seed to finished product,” Ocampo said in a social media post. “We’re going to keep marijuana off the streets so that it can only be sold in places where you have to show your ID, have a permit, and have a license.”

The bill will “help homeless people, help farmers and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who have lived with this plant for many years,” he said.

Colombian lawmakers have considered cannabis legalization legislation over multiple recent sessions, with one such proposal to insert the reform into the nation’s constitution falling short at the final stage of the process in 2023.

A separate bill to legalize marijuana advanced through the first stage of the process last year, but then stalled.

President Gustavo Petro, for his part, is supportive of legalizing cannabis—and he’s put pressure on legislators to advance the reform. He said in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization bill that year only helped to perpetuate illegal drug trafficking and the violence associated with the unregulated trade.

Keep reading