Colombia trade agreement as a precedent - the Ludlow massacre

[Joanne98]

Ninety-four years ago on April 20, America made international news when a government-sanctioned paramilitary unit murdered Colorado union organizers at a Rockefeller-owned coal mine. The Ludlow Massacre was "a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare," wrote the New York Times in 1914 - and the abomination was not just the violence, but the way political and corporate leaders colluded on their homicidal plans to protect profits.

Sanitized history teaches that our government has since changed. Quite the contrary, as the Bush administration attempted this week to legitimize the methods of Ludlow through its Colombia Free Trade Agreement. That attempt failed when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the House to a vote that indefinitely postpones consideration of the pact.

Colombia resembles Colorado in the early 20th century, only with more frequent slaughters. In the last two decades, more than 2,500 Colombian labor organizers have been assassinated, making Colombia the world's most dangerous place for unionists.

This violence is underwritten by companies like Chiquita, which has financed Colombian death squads that "destroyed unions, terrorized workers and killed thousands of civilians," according to Portfolio magazine. The brutality deliberately depresses labor costs in a country where business analysts cite exploitative conditions as reason to invest.

This situation, like Ludlow, developed not in spite of the governing elite, but thanks to it. As the Washington Post reports, Colombia's "most influential political, military and business figures helped build" the killing machine. Recently, prosecutors connected these paramilitaries to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's allies.

Colombian labor leaders have begged the White House to drop the deal, saying it will undermine their struggle for human rights by validating Uribe's thug-ocracy. Nonetheless, President Bush bolstered Uribe with a pact giving corporations incentives to leave America for the corpse-strewn pastures of Colombia - a union hater's paradise.

Bush justifies the deal as "urgent for our national security." The rationale asks us to believe that in backing tyrannical regimes, we will quell anti-Americanism among the oppressed, rather than sow it.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/10/EDK6103CKL.DTL

[Demeter]

1. There Is No Depth to Which the BFEE and GOP and Their Hangers On Will Not Sink

But is there some point at which the outsiders will stop them? Or can?

[Judi Lynn]

2. This is an excellent article. Why is it we don't see more truth-based reports on Latin America?

Articles like this could work as a reminder to people to look into America's own history against workers, themselves. It appears far too much was avoided in writing the history books used to educate American students, and it's a real handicap. They are raised to believe a picture of the country which has never existed.

No wonder there are so many idiot freeps.

Serious information on the incredible hardship which American workers had to cope with must be deliberately sought. When the opportunity arises to learn the names and places and dates of specific conflicts, openings are created which can be pursued through simple research which will lead to a far different view from the almost cartoon-like perceptions gained in childhood and high school in classrooms.