More on the Columbia FTA

Colombia trade agreement as a precedent - the Ludlow massacre
David Sirota, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Friday, April 11, 2008

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.

Congressional Democrats voted down the agreement 224-195, overcoming the
pernicious forces in their midst. Specifically, the Colombian government and
corporate groups have hired former Clinton administration officials to champion
the deal, paid off former President Bill Clinton with an $800,000 speaking
contract, and employed Mark Penn - Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief presidential
strategist - to push the pact.

Oh, how we've regressed from Ludlow, when mere Rockefellers owned everything.
Today, Dubai princes purchase our stock exchanges, Chinese communists buy our
banks, and now Colombian goons bid on our politicians - and the results are
trickling in.

When Bush dropped the deal on Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained
only that his tactics are "jeopardizing prospects" for the pact's passage.
Instead of blocking the accord, she postponed it - a maneuver that could ensure
its approval. National Journal reports that Democrats are considering "delaying
a vote until after the November elections." The scheme would let Democratic
candidates campaign as aw-shucks populists promisin' to fight for the little
fella, and then head to D.C. to do the bidding of lobbyists and ratify the deal
in a lame-duck session.

Between equivocating press releases, Pelosi said she worries that if voted on
now, the pact "would lose, and what message would that send?" For starters, it
would say the Democratic Party joins most Americans in opposing job-killing
trade policies. It would also declare the party against rewarding murderous
regimes on behalf of Clintonites now living large off of Colombian blood money.

But, then, such principled stands are considered uncouth in this, the Ludlow
renaissance.

Calendars may say it is 2008, but the Establishment mentality is 1914. On the
anniversary of the butchery in Colorado, we see the hideous power of corruption
in all its pathological glory. Our government is showing that it views the
Ludlow Massacre not as an embarrassment, but as an ideal to be embraced and
exported.


David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," will be
released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a
board member of the Progressive States Network - both nonpartisan
organizations.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/11/EDK6103CKL.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle