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Since 1980 eight Coca-Cola union factory workers have been murdered by paramilitaries in Colombia. Surviving members of the union SINALTRAINAL claim that Coca-Cola bottlers collaborated with the paramilitaries. Since the murders colleges and other schools around the world have kicked Coca-Cola off their campuses. The Cost of a Coke Revisited
Former union leaders now live in hiding. ibid.
The same night the union office was set on fire, and its leadership ordered to meet a paramilitary commander. ibid.
Killer Cola. The Drink That Represses. ibid.
Coca-Cola hired, contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary forces to murder, torture, illegally detain or otherwise silence trade union leaders. ibid.
Coca-Cola has come under intense scrutiny in India too. They were forced to shut down a plant in India after they had been found guilty of depleting and contaminating the water supply. ibid.
Even in Turkey they have denied workers their rights to unionise. ibid.
The cost of human life has now been calculated into the profits of the Coca-Cola company. ibid.
Coke Further Undermines Colombian Investigation: Employers led by a Coca-Cola executive [Ed Potter] stopped the International Labour Organisation examining violations of workplace rights in Colombia. The Sydney Morning Herald online report 6th June 2007
On 13 January, George W Bush presented ‘presidential freedom medals’, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is ‘responsible for than 90% of all cases of torture’.
As satire was made redundant when Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch were honoured for their contributions to the betterment of humanity, Bush’s ceremony was, at least, telling of a system of which he and his freshly-minted successor are products. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘Come on Down for Your Freedom Medals’; viz also website
Lake Guatavita in Colombia said to be the site of an ancient meteor crater … the search for El Dorado. Ancient Aliens s3e4: Aliens and Temples of Gold, History 2011
Seven-thousand miles from Egypt the dense jungles and rugged mountains of Colombia contain a vast number of archaeological sites. Ancient Aliens: The Evidence, History 2010
The war has claimed over 100,000 victims. Ross Kemp on Gangs s3e3: Bogota, Colombia, Sky 2007
The Sicario Assassin – these men are trained to kill without mercy. ibid.
Medellin – a city made infamous by Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel in the 1980s. Using fear, intimidation and murder he controlled this town. ibid.
30,000 people have been kidnapped in Colombia over the past two years. ibid.
To do the decent thing here you run the chance of being killed. ibid.
Cartagena ... there’s eighty street gangs in those barrios. ibid.
The boys tell me that the reason the paramilitaries are in the barrios is to carry out social cleansing. ibid.
The largest private army in the country – the paramilitaries. ibid.
They may look like soldiers but these are police officers – members of Colombia’s anti-narcotics branch. Colombia’s Drug Wars
Some 90% of all illegal cocaine consumed in the US still comes from or through Colombia. ibid.
Both sides also fund their cause by producing drugs. ibid.
One man – Pablo Escobar – made this country the biggest cocaine producer in the world. ibid.
In many towns and villages outlaws have killed or driven out the police. ibid.
Around the world coffee prices have sunk to historic lows. ibid.
The coke trade’s foot soldier is the mule. ibid.
A sleek supercharged speedboat streaks across the Caribbean on a tropical night. A staggering two tons ... of pure Colombian cocaine is crammed in the hull. Inside Cocaine Wars II: Drug Speedboats
At least eight out of ten boats make it through. ibid.
An estimated $67 billion of Colombian cocaine still moves north every year. Inside Cocaine Wars IV: Drug Mules
Colombia: the tremors in the volcano are increasing, and the heat rising from the fires burning in its heart could explode the ice-cap any day now. Life on Fire: Volcano Doctors: Jeremy Irons narrator, PBS 2013
But if the magma is thick and sticky like toffee the gas bubbles can’t escape so the pressure builds up until the magma explodes furiously like a bomb. ibid.
In a land of lush jungles and fertile soil an ancient crop became a booming business. The deadly underworld was spawned. They grew rich selling escape to the world. And powerful sowing terror at home. With violence and corruption one man hijacked his homeland and became the best known face of organised crime. Organised Crime – A World History: Colombia, History 2001
The cartels emerged in the late 1970s. From the jungle to the cities they quickly established themselves as a new kind of underworld. ibid.
[Pablo] Escobar’s cocaine business boomed in the early 1980s. ibid.
The world’s most dangerous drug boss had moved into America’s back yard, and that’s when the war began. ibid.
The most wanted man in the world was finally dead. ibid.
The new cartels have quietly gone international. ibid.
South America is the perfect place to keep secrets ... Colombia: the land of El Dorado. Dr Jago Cooper, Lost Kingdoms of South America III: Lands of Gold, BBC 2016
Exquisite gold artefacts, infused with intriguing meaning, which drove European invaders into their remote lands. ibid.
One of those cultures – the Tairona – established themselves in the mountains of the Caribbean coast; another, the Muisca, settled five hundred miles to the south. ibid.
A city of gold somewhere in the mountains: the legend of El Dorado was born, and in the years that followed, waves of treasure seekers descended on South America in search of the fabled land. ibid.
The salt trail led the Spanish directly to the Muisca. ibid.
Many Colombians insist that army troops often act as though they were an occupation force in enemy territory. Americas Watch
Nothing reflects on Washington’s fundamental hypocrisy on [the drug] issue as the fact that while it rails against the adverse effects of cocaine in the United States, the number of Colombians dying each year from subsidized North American tobacco products is significantly larger than the number of North Americans felled by Colombian cocaine. Peter Bourne
In the case of Colombia, for example, suspension of the international coffee agreement in July 1988, initiated by US actions based on alleged fair trade violations, led to a fall of prices of more than 40 percent within two months for Colombia’s leading legal export. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
The Colombia operation illustrates other facets of the drug war. The military aid program for Colombia finances murderous and repressive elements of the military with ties to the drug business and landowners. ibid.
On September 3, two days before President Bush's dramatic call to battle, the army and the Department of Security Administration (DAS) ransacked homes of peasants in one region, arresting forty laborers ... In Medellin, seventy activists and civic leaders were arrested in poor neighborhoods. Elsewhere at the same time two union leaders, one an attorney for the union, were assassinated and another disappeared. ibid.
The result of the prevailing misery has been violence, including la Violencia of the 1940s and 1950s, which took hundreds of thousands of lives. ibid.