Remember during the debate over the Colombian trade deal when the Administration swore up and down that they would, as a condition of putting the free trade agreement forward, insist on an “action plan” that would end the murder of trade unionists in Colombia and bring about justice for those already killed? Yeah, so, we’re several months beyond the passage of those trade deals – Obama highlighted them in the State of the Union on Tuesday. So how’s that action plan going?

As Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach explained yesterday, the three trade agreements passed Congress in a whirlwind of activity last night, because a present for the President of South Korea’s visit to Washington today is more important than a considered debate about the role of neoliberal trade agreements and what they have traditionally done to US exports. In addition, the House did pass Trade Adjustment Assistance, with every Democrat supporting and about half of Republicans. This had already passed the Senate, so the entire package goes to the President for his signature, and he is pleased about this:

We have known for years about the dangers of being a trade unionist in Colombia, of the murders of organizers and labor officials. The murders have increased in frequency in the years since the US negotiated a trade deal with Colombia. They are well documented. Now Rich Trumka has sent the President a list of victims.

Speaking of Congress, they may be getting themselves in a position to actually pass those three long-stalled trade agreements The Senate passed a bill providing assistance for workers displaced by trade agreements, but its prospects in the House are uncertain.

At trade talks in Chicago, the Obama administration will work with other officials to develop a trade agreement that will incorporate Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Peru. Labor, environmental and human rights groups will gather in the city to warn that the structure, and guiding ideology, of the emerging trade deal could expand a model of free-marketeering that has displaced masses of workers across the globe and granted multinationals unprecedented powers to flout national and international laws.

Another Colombian labor leader has been gunned down, a chilling reminder of the realities of organized labor in that country. The killing comes just weeks before the US Congress will vote on a trade agreement with Colombia.

Antiwar and international solidarity activists, subjects of a federal grand jury investigation that alleges they may have provided “material support for terrorism,” uncovered documents on FBI guidelines and investigation practices left behind in an activist’s home that was raided in September of last year. The documents illuminate how the FBI has conducted surveillance of the activists being targeted in the investigation and further prove the grand jury is being used as a tool to go after political groups.

The Obama Administration intends to meet Congressional demands to move all three pending NAFTA-style “free trade” agreements with Colombia, Korea, and Panama by an arbitrary deadline of July 1

The South Korea deal could cost 159,000 jobs in the first eight years, and the Colombia deal 60,000 jobs.

The Obama Adminstration announced today it intends to move to Congress a NAFTA-style trade deal with Colombia (better known as Colombian “Free Trade”). The hold up for the last five years has been the little issue of union members being assassinated in Colombia. Specifically, 2,850 trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia in the last 25 years, including 52 murdered in 2009.

Good news! The Obama Administration and Colombia have agreed to an “Action Plan” to reduce those assassinations in the next 3 months before Congress ratifies the NAFTA-style trade deal. As Marcy Wheeler noted, those checkpoints are essentially “assassination stress tests” – a meaningless series of goals without real enforcement, and without a requirement that the number of murders is actually, you know, reduced.