Preliminary Programme

This paper addresses the controversial and failing agreement called Plan Colombia between the Governments of the United States of America and Colombia. The core of the agreement is to eradicate drugs and an emphasis on developing peace within Colombia. From the outset it was obvious that Plan Colombia would have serious negative implications for human rights, democracy and the environment. This paper aims to identify the implications for the environment the two main minority ethnic groups (indigenous and afro-Colombian) in Colombia have had their rights violated. I will focus on how fumigation of coca crops has caused a subset of internally displaced persons, namely environmentally displaced. In conclusion I put forward recommendations on how the war on drugs, the peace process and internal displacement should be addressed on a local as well as a national level. (Show less)

The paper would discuss the importance of United States capital and foreign policy as causes for the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in l9l0, as well as the impact of U.S. policy and U.S. business interests on the revolutionary process from l9l0 to l940. The discussion would address current debates in the historiography regarding the relative importance of external---principally American---versus domestic causes of the revolution. In doing so, the talk would consider pertinent theoretical and methodological issues, such as the intervention of foreign states as radicalizing forces in nationalist movements, charismatic leadership and self-determination, and economic imperialism.

The paper would consider the impact of U.S. investment in Mexico during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (l876-l9ll) on patterns of land consolidation, displacement of independent farmers and autonomous villages, and the structure of the economy. The paper would also consider the impact of political consolidation and repression as causes of the revolution.

The discussion would also analyze the role of U.S. foreign policy on the course of the revolution, including the controversial role of U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson in the overthrow of the first revolutionary government led by Francisco I. Madero, and President Woodrow Wilson's interventionist policy that led to the occupation of Veracruz in l9l4 and the Pershing Punitive Expedition in l9l6. The paper would also consider the efforts of Wilson and his successors to pressure revolutionary governments to settle debts owed to American investors, and to reject or modify Article 27 of the l9l7 Constitution which granted the Mexican government extra-ordinary control over foreign capital, ownership of sub-soil materials, and the right to nationalize private property.

The talk would end with an assessment of the importance of U.S. capital and foreign policy in the revolutionary process from l876-l940. (Show less)

The research paper analyzes and identifies the need for a United States presence in the Middle East, and more specifically Iraq, through the use of forward deployed bases and permanent overseas assignments as a necessary factor to combat terror and promote democratic values in that region. The authors provide a viable and realistic solution to postwar Iraqi stabilization and reconstruction by coupling ethnic remapping and military force projection to establish and support a central secular confederated government representing all ethnic constituencies of the Iraqi people. The confederation consists of a four-entity/four-state [Arabian, Kurdish, Assyrian, Turkmani] administrative model sectioning the Iraqi nation along ethnic and historical lines and repairing the damage of British and French occupations and mandates circa 1920. (Show less)