{"id":3296,"date":"2008-09-19T14:11:38","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T18:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=3296"},"modified":"2008-09-19T14:46:51","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T18:46:51","slug":"protest-against-uribe-at-press-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=3296","title":{"rendered":"Protest against Uribe at Press Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My buddy Kate from A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective<\/a> just called me after she returned from the National Press Club this afternoon, the site of a protest against Colombian president ALvaro Uribe who is visiting the US today to promote the US-Colombian trade agreement that Congress has ignored this legislative session. Kate told me that there were about 60 people protesting (and only 8 supporters of Uribe) at the press club, but that most of the protesters were only as smart on the subject as their signs. Kate also reported that she saw chavista<\/em> Venezuelans in crowd of protesters that she recognized from an earlier encounter.<\/p>\n

Kate told me that she asked one protester if she even knew where Colombia is and got a dumbstruck look in reply. Reuters wrote<\/a> about the protest;<\/p>\n

Teamsters, with members of other unions and Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, held signs and passed out fliers in front of the National Press Building. Uribe spoke at the National Press Club to a luncheon gathering.<\/p>\n

“We join with our brothers and sisters in Colombia in strongly opposing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “It’s a disgrace to even consider an agreement with the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists.”<\/p>\n

Colombia is getting even more dangerous. This year, 40 unionists were murdered with impunity, already more than last year’s total of 38.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, but last year the AP wrote <\/a>that the Colombian government is doing everything it can to prevent unionist deaths;<\/p>\n

Jorge Sanchez, the vice minister of labor, told The Associated Press that unions inflate the numbers of slain members “because they thrive on violence and blood.”<\/p>\n

Protecting labor leaders does appear to be a government priority, however. Guarding them _ with bulletproof vests or bodyguards _ consumes 40 percent of a nearly $20 million security program for human rights activists, journalists and other threatened individuals.<\/p>\n

But labor unions, and their Democratic allies, demand more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course they do. Colombia is a violent country and many of the unionists have ties to Maoist narco-terrorists FARC – and that’s the real problem that Democrats and union organizers in this country have with the deaths of unionists in Colombia. As I wrote in July on Tall and Rich<\/a>, there are direct connections between US Congressional Democrats and FARC opposition to the Uribe government. They don’t like that Uribe has gone further to destroy FARC than any Colombian president before him – it probably has to do with the fact that Uribe’s father was murdered by FARC.<\/p>\n

But idiot US union thugs who probably can’t even spell Colombia, chanting empty slogans are now driving our trade policy.<\/p>\n

Kate has promised pictures when she gets a chance to post them, so I’ll update this then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My buddy Kate from A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective just called me after she returned from the National … Protest against Uribe at Press Club<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}