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Look out, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio teachers' unions! You're next!
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"More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.
"It also seems that many right-wing warriors are not cut out for the quiet life offered by the Paz Uribista. The Bogotá-based think tank Nuevo Arco Iris reports mini civil wars breaking out among "heirs of the AUC" for control of local spoils. Yet Plan Colombia continues to be hailed. Flying home from a recent Bogotá-hosted GCOIN conference, the former head of Southcom (Pentagon's "Southern Command") wrote on his blog that Colombia is a 'must see" tourist spot, having "come a long, long way in controlling a deep-seated insurgency just over two hours flight from Miami--and we could learn a great deal from their success.'" --from the OP (my emphasis)
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I doubt that a member of the Pentagon elite would openly advocate decapitating union leadership and murdering teachers to create a great "tourist spot." He was probably just studying budgets and thinking up sellable justifications for the Pentagon's backup gravy train--the U.S. "war on drugs" (segued into the "war on terra"). Or, depending on how Bushwhacky he was, believing and privately advocating mass murder of grass roots leaders AND playing gravy train games.
But the horror of what he was saying is nevertheless apparent. This is what our $7 BILLION in military aid to Colombia has bought for our corporate/war profiteer rulers--a 'must-see' tourist spot built on a human landfill of murdered bodies.
If I was an art installation artist and a Colombian, I'd lay out a red carpet for Miami tourists to Bogota, for them to walk on right off the plane into this tourist mecca, and imprint the carpet with the faces, names and photos of shattered bodies of the thousands of teachers and other victims of the Uribe/Bush Jr. terror in Colombia, so they have to walk on them to get to their tour buses or limos to their luxury hotels. Some Miamians would gleefully prance and stomp on such images, I imagine. But I hope that most would "get it" and at least walk off to the side and maybe give a thought or two later on, to what lay beneath the soil in Colombia. As in all other places, fascists never rule because they are the majority. They rule because they have Diebold, as in Florida, or $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid and a U.S. issued "license to kill" in Colombia.
The reason something like this art installation hasn't happened already in Colombia is that you, too, would be shot or hacked up and thrown into mass grave, if you did it. It's not over.
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