[Singer and right-wing spoke person Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, best known as Shakira, has strong ties to corrupted groups and right-wing politicians in Latin America, the U.S. and Europe. That explains her silence on the brutal human rights violations occurring in her country Colombia during the current Uribe administration.]

Shakira's Silence on Colombian Humanitarian Crisis and Her Close Ties to Corrupted Right-Wing Groups

Wednesday 3rd March 2010, by Carlos Quiroz - Carlos in DC

Shakira was in DC last week. The press releases say that Shakira was in town “to launch a $300 million initiative for early child education”. This program is possible thanks to an agreement between the ALAS Foundation, Columbia University's Earth Institute and the World Bank. The event was held at the infamous World Bank headquarters in downtown DC.

While in DC, Shakira also visited the White House where she met with several U.S. advisers on national security (?) and president Obama received her:
The Barranquilla-born star visited the White House to meet representatives of the National Security Council and the Domestic Policy Council, and was able to drop in on the president for a brief private meeting, according to the Associated Press.
According to a blog, Shakira mentioned Immigration Reform to president Obama during her meeting:
While meeting in the Oval Office, Shakira also took the opportunity to push President Obama to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation, another cause near and dear to her heart.
As an immigrant in the United States, I care about Immigration Reform deeply because the current legislation violates human rights and it’s worsening a nationwide humanitarian crisis. I know personally people who are in this country without proper immigration documents, struggling every day to make a living and to keep their families together.

When I heard that Shakira mentioned Immigration Reform to president Obama, I wanted to celebrate but I was held back. While I applaud every effort towards getting an Immigration Reform legislation passed, I had to wonder if Shakira's intentions were honest.

Considering her record, I even assumed that Shakira met with Obama for other reasons. Now an influential lobbyist, Shakira might have talked about the pending controversial Colombia Free Trade Agreement; or the destructive, corrupting, polluting Plan Colombia. Both are strategic deals for the current Uribe administration, which was recently cut short of running for third-term by the Colombian Constitutional Court.

Dirty Connections

Shakira has been always a favorite singer for many including me. However, her actions as activist and spoke person for certain interest groups, made me distrust the Colombian-Lebanese singer’s real intentions. I have some questions in mind.

How is it possible that a mediocre singer and composer of sex-inducing songs, is now a worldwide role model for children? Why is that this woman who based her success on the exposure of her body is now a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador? Why is that this woman who tries desperately to look White, is now the spoke person for millions of Indigenous and Black immigrants in the United States? Why is Shakira a leader for youth with her biased activism?

How can we explain Shakira's enormous success in the U.S.? Her talent for dancing and good looks do not match her limited singing skills and voice, and her songs are mostly forgettable. But suddenly she has become the "icon" of the Latino culture in this country, she is supposed to represent the millions of Brown people who certainly do not look like her. This might have to do with her powerful connections, and the people behind her career.

Don't get me started on Shakira's racism. This beautiful woman of of Arab and Spanish heritage has changed her appearance just to fit in the U.S. Latino media's Whitening of Brown Latin America:

The right connections will take you places, Shakira knows that.

Shakira started her approach to Obama, when she endorsed his candidacy during the 2008 presidential elections; that was a great strategic publicity move indeed. After Obama’s victory, Shakira was invited to sing at the Inauguration Concert. The deal was closed: Shakira was going to be the next Colombian connection to the White House.

Being Colombia one of the strongest allies of the U.S. military machine in Latin America, the country receives -via Clinton's Plan Colombia- the second biggest U.S. military funding in the world, after Israel. This funding has proven a failure. Immerse in a civil war for the last four decades, two-thirds of Colombia is said to be occupied today by leftist guerrillas and drug cartels.

In one way or another, the Plan Colombia has promoted violence, corruption, pollution of lands and rivers, poisoning of entire communities and the funding of armed paramilitary groups.

As a Colombian, Shakira coould have protested against the abuses ocuring in her home country. But she has never spoken out against the horrendous human rights violations committed by Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe during his seven years in power. Shakira has never protested against the killings of union organizers, being Colombia the world's leading nation where more unionists are assassinated. I don’t recall either of Shakira protesting against the 4 million displaced Colombians, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world after Congo and Sudan.

She has reasons to keep quiet.

In the contrary, Shakira has openly spoken against the violence of the guerrilla group FARC, and in support of the liberation of hostages held by the rebels. This is a legitimate demand, no question about it. But there is not excuse for Shakira’s silence about the crimes of the Colombian paramilitary groups, military and the State.

Shakira and her advisers have created several “charity” foundations, including the Pies Descalzos Foundation which says works in behalf of poor children in Colombia. This foundation has received strong support from the Uribe administration, and it has also received big donations from Bill Clinton. The former U.S. president is a strong Free Trade advocate, is friends with Alvaro Uribe and a lobbyist for Canadian mining companies in Colombia and Peru.

Another strong supporter of Shakira's charity work is the corrupted Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world and who owns part of the economy of Mexico, a country where over 50% of the population lives in extreme poverty. Both Shakira and Slim are of Catholic Lebanese origins.

About Bill Clinton’s role as a lobbyist for multinational corporations, and his connections with Carlos Slim and the Canadian mining money-man Frank Giustra, please read this post I wrote when Clinton visited Peru last year.

Another of Shakira’s charity projects is ALAS, or the America Latina en Accion Solidaria Foundation. Among its founders, again is Carlos Slim. ALAS also says they care about children education:

ALAS is a nonprofit organization created by the most prominent Latin American artists, business leaders and intellectuals to mobilize Latin-American society towards the implementation of integrated early childhood public policies, so that every child from zero to six years old has access to health plans, education and nutrition.
Wonderful, I am all for educating our children, especially in racist unequal Latin America, where only the rich get access to quality education. But how can we educate our kids throughout the leadership of a woman who hides her true race, and likes to get almost naked in front of cameras while shaking her behind, just to make profits? I'm far from being a conservative pundit, and I think kids should learn from people making a difference in this world with actions, not disposable music.

Shakira loves right-wing politicians, and they love her back.

Among the strongest supporters of ALAS are included the non-elected King of Spain, Juan Carlos Bourbon, who was appointed by fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. A former vice-president of ALAS is Carlos Clemente Aguado, a Spanish Congress member from the right-wing Partido Popular, who left the ALAS post under corruption charges.

Clemente is said to have boycotted in 2006, an international convention of Afro descendant women in Madrid. Another close friend of Shakira is the former Spanish Justice minister Jose Maria Michavila, of also a rightist of the Partido Popular and ALAS’ founding director.

There is more. Among ALAS advocates are included several right-wing activists including: Spanish singers Alejandro Sanz and Miguel Bose, Peruvian comedian and writer Jaime Bayly, Colombian singer Juanes, and others. These are all well-paid activists who lobby and campaign openly against left-wing governments in Latin America, and most of them are connected to the oligarchy of Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Peru and Mexico, to mention some.

Let’s not forget about Shakira’s fiancé Antonio de la Rua. He is an Argentinean lawyer and publicist, the son of a former right-wing president who was forced to leave power during the 2001 Argentinean financial debacle.

De la Rua –of Spanish heritage- has been Shakira’s manager and the author of her contract with Live Nation, the biggest music producer in Europe and perhaps in the world. De la Rua is one of the founders of ALAS, and yes he owns an entire island in the Bahamas, which he is developing and selling to the world’s richest. In the meeting with Obama at the White House, Shakira was accompanied by Antonio de la Rua.

Parapolitics

Shakira has also some connections to the paramilitary politics in Colombia. Learn this, the current president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe -and his close family and friends- have a long history of close ties with groups involved in the production and trafficking of illegal drugs, and right-wing paramilitary death squads.

In 2003, Uribe announced that he was demobilizing the paramilitary groups, in an effort to bring peace to Colombia. In reality, these violent groups became legal political parties, known today as the parapolitica and which are strong supporters of Uribe’s policies. One of those parties is the Movimiento Apertura Liberal (MAL).

This year, Shakira’s uncle and her father's brother, Felipe Mebarak Chadid, is a candidate to the Senate with the Movimiento Apertura Liberal. This party has had politicians linked to paramilitary groups, including Jorge Luis Caballero and others among its leaders.

Instead of ending violence, the presence of paramilitary groups have increased in some regions of Colombia. This week, Human Rights Watch has called the Colombian government to act in order to protect civilians and to prosecute paramilitary "successor" groups and their accomplices. The report denounces:
The successor groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control. Often, they target human rights defenders, trade unionists, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders.
Many of the victims are Black and Indigenous populations, or mixed Indigenous often called mestizos. Colombia has a critical problem of racism. The country's population is 30% of African descendants, and most of them are now victims of racist displacement, killings and torture. These abuses are committed mostly by right-wing paramilitaries connected to multinational corporations. They take people's lands for agro-business, mining, oil and other extractive industries.

Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, our dear Shakira, has never stood up against these crimes or against the genocide of hundreds of Indigenous peoples in Colombia, which is another of Uribe’s saddest legacies. Why the silence?

Long are the days of the young Shakira who sang about love, passion and hope with a strong American musical influence. Back then she sang about "an old race of barefoot people with white dreams", she was the rebellious, romantic and strong teenager.

As today, there is more to say about Shakira’s connections to rightist and racist groups in Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, England and the United States. These are groups of mostly economic, political and religious interests, and they are interested in our children. These are exactly the same people who are to blame for Latin America's brutal reality, as one of the most racist and unfair regions in the world.

There is a reason why they call it "Latin" to a region of the Americas that is mostly populated by Indigenous and Afro descendant peoples. This beautiful part of the world is controlled by corrupted and racist groups of European descendants, and they love to listen to Shakira's music as much as we love to see her shaking her booty.

Will Shakira ever stop acting like a stripper dancer and break the silence about Colombia? Hey don't get angry at me for saying that Shakira just wants to make money by selling sex and influences. Alanis Morissette agrees with me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjaMa4Tlr9Q&feature=player_embedded

ORIGINAL SOURCE:
http://carlosqc.blogspot.com/2010/03/shakira-meets-obama-not-surprise-si...