John Karls' Notes of Ingrid's 10-23-2010 SLC Speech

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This section contains, among other things --

(1) The NY Times Book Review of Even Silence Has An End,

(2) The PBS Newshour (aka MacNeil-Lehrer) interview of Ingrid Betancourt after the publication of her book.

(3) Two book reviews of Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia by Ingrid and published only a few weeks before her capture in 2002 by the FARC. Ingrid had been urged to write the book to explain herself and her mission by Dominique de Villepin, her university professor and mentor who, by 2002, was French Foreign Minister and would later become Prime Minister.
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johnkarls
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John Karls' Notes of Ingrid's 10-23-2010 SLC Speech

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John Karls’ Notes From Ingrid Betancourt’s Presentation in SLC = Sat Oct 23

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(A) Background Info From Internet Before Ingrid’s Presentation

Ingrid was born in Bogotá, Columbia in 1961.

Her family was one of Columbia’s oldest – having arrived from French Normandy 300 years earlier. I was unable to find any information whether her family was/is related to Rόmulo Betancourt of Venezuela – known as “The Father of Venezuelan Democracy” who served as President of Venequela 1945-1948 and 1959-1964 (his party, Accion Democratica, was the dominant political party in Venezuela during the 20th century).

Ingrid’s father, Gabriel Betancourt, was a Columbian-Government Minister 1953-1957 and then served as Assistant Director of UNESCO before heading the Education Commission of President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress aimed at all of Latin America.

Ingrid’s mother, Yolanda Pulecio, is a former beauty queen who later represented Bogotá’s poor and dispossessed in the Colombian Congress.

Ingrid was educated in France and, upon graduation in 1983, married a fellow student, thereby becoming a dual French-Colombian citizen. They had/have two children.

Ingrid returned to Colombia in 1989 immediately after the assassination of a candidate for the Colombian Presidency of whom her mother was an ardent supporter (she was standing directly behind him when he was shot).

Ingrid started a new political party (the Green Oxygen Party) to represent the poor and dispossessed (it also opposed corruption and the drug cartels). She was elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1994 and became a Senator in 1998. She was running for President when she was kidnapped in 2002 when the Colombian Government suddenly withdrew her security protection.

After she returned to Columbia in 1989, she and her French husband were divorced. She then married a Colombian businessman. They have no children.

Upon Ingrid’s release after 6.5 years of captivity, the only thing her husband said to her was to ask whether he could continue to occupy her Bogotá residence. This fall, he filed suit against Ingrid seeking 50% ownership of her residences in Bogotá, the United States and Paris – and even 50% of the royalties from her new book!!!

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(B) Salient Points About Ingrid’s Presentation

The drug cartels run Colombia.

She was kidnapped by the FARC (the so-called Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) which was only a revolutionary group for a short period of time before becoming many years before Ingrid’s kidnapping in 2002, just another conventional drug cartel with no political agenda.

The drug cartels have expanded by driving Colombia’s peasants off the land. Ingrid stated that there are more than 4 million former peasants who have been dispossessed by the cartels and forced to live in poverty in Colombia’s cities (the CIA estimates Colombia’s total population in 2010 at 44.2 million). This is in addition to Colombia’s long-time poor.

Ingrid and her fellow captives were permitted to listen to the radio. One of the Bogotá stations, in the middle of each night, permitted relatives to broadcast messages to FARC captives.

Ingrid’s mother broadcast a message to Ingrid every night for her entire 6.5 years of captivity. Her children and other relatives also broadcast messages – all except her husband who never did and who had moved on to make a new life for himself that would not include her, even if she was still alive and later released.

Ingrid frequently tried to escape and endured unimaginable punishment each time. Her fellow prisoners frequently expressed their displeasure over how her attempts often made life worse for them. Most of them tried to cooperate with their captives and two even became their sexual partners, bearing their children.

Although the FARC had claimed from early on that Ingrid had become the partner of the head of the FARC (a lie) or that she was dead (also a lie), the Colombian Army captured a letter by Ingrid being smuggled to her mother. This occurred after five years of captivity.

Because everyone now knew she was alive, she became a cause célèbre. When Sarkozy became French President, he began vigorously pursuing her release because of her dual French citizenship. He even began communicating directly with the FARC. As a result, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who had been looking for a pretext to invade Colombia and depose its conservative government, took up the cause. However, before he could invade, the Colombian Government decided to liberate Ingrid. It was accomplished by the simple ruse of sending a helicopter to the jungle FARC base where she was being held captive, telling the base commander that FARC higher ups wanted her and 14 fellow captives transferred to another FARC jungle prison, and shortly after take-off the disguised Colombian army manning the helicopter overpowered the two FARC whom their commander had insisted on sending along on the supposed transfer.

Ingrid, not surprisingly, takes the position that governments should bow to whatever demands are made by kidnappers. This position is viewed nearly universally as a recipe for disaster since it only encourages more kidnappings and quickly neuters every country or political group that suffers one of the kidnappings provoked by the policy. However, even Israel which early in its existence had refused to ever bargain for hostages, has begun doing so and at unbelievably-adverse ratios of prisoners released by both sides.

In discussing briefly her second husband, Ingrid stated that his question whether he could continue to occupy her Bogotá residence was the only thing he has ever said to her since her release through the date of her presentation, and the lawsuit he filed for 50% ownership of her residences in Bogotá, the U.S. and Paris, and 50% ownership of her book royalties, is the only indirect communication since her release.

She disclaimed any interest in returning to politics. However, various organizations in Colombia (including, perhaps, the Government) obviously do not believe her because her security in SLC was fairly heavy – two large black SUV’s accompanied her limo and there were numerous security personnel in and around the site of her presentation talking to each other in Spanish on their communications gear. My recollection is that they were heavily armed.

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(C) John Karls Being Quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune on Oct 24

John was quoted by the article’s author, Cathy McKitrick. During the course of ensuing e-mail correspondence covering, among other things, John’s request for Cathy to do an article on Reading Liberally, John said:

[a]lthough I am not a “public figure,” I am used to being quoted inaccurately in the media.

Indeed, my original e-mail to you which is the second item below, chided you for your article about Ingrid Betancourt because it quoted me as being “surprised how mild-mannered she was” when I purposely gave you a much more colorful rendition of the same point by saying a moment later that “she is the most Christ-like person I have ever met during my lifetime!!!”

However, I did not complain that your article proceeded to explain what I meant with false information to the effect that I would have expected her, as a politician, to have many scores she would have liked to have settled.

Nothing could have been further from the truth!!!

My brief research on the internet (since I didn’t even know she existed 3 days prior to her presentation) had not disclosed any scores she would presumably have wanted to settle with other politicians from 6.5 years earlier.

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(B-3-a-i). Instead, I elaborated at length on two points. The first concerned her husband. I was aware from my brief Googling that during Ingrid’s 6.5 years of captivity, her husband had moved on and created a new life for himself which would not include her even if she were still alive and later released. Indeed, when she was released, his only comment upon meeting her was to inquire whether he could still occupy her Bogotá residence.

And I was also aware that her husband had recently filed a lawsuit against Ingrid seeking 50% ownership of her residences in Bogotá, the U.S. and Paris – and, my God, even seeking 50% of the profits from her recently-published book!!!

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(B-3-a-ii) The second point concerned her fellow captives. I was aware from my brief Googling that many of Ingrid’s fellow captives had been very critical of any special treatment that she received because of her international prominence – and that, indeed, her release was finally triggered by French President Sarkozy making her captivity, since she had dual French citizenship, a cause célèbre (even communicating directly with the FARC which had kidnapped her), which in turn caused Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who had been looking for a pretext to invade Colombia and depose its conservative government, to begin preparations for such an invasion, which in turn prompted the Colombian government to free her before Chavez/Venezuela could invade (freeing her was quite simple = a helicopter manned by disguised Colombian army troops landed at her jungle prison, told the camp commandant that they had been sent by FARC higher ups to move Ingrid and a dozen or so fellow prisoners to another FARC prison and, as soon as they were airborne, overpowered the two FARC personnel who had come along on the supposed prisoner-transfer flight).

However, I remember pointing out to you three things = (1) that Ingrid had in fact received harsher treatment than the others in many respects, (2) that several of her fellow prisoners had become sexual partners of their captives and borne their children, and (3) that the Nazi concentration camps were famous for Jewish inmates working for the camp staff in order to survive with the observation that it is human nature to do whatever is necessary to live and very few Jewish inmates refused on principle to assist, or even to volunteer to assist, the concentration-camp staffs.

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