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Separately.... I haven't talked to you forever, man. Email me. Same address.
First, the march was explicitly anti-FARC and not pro-AUC or pro-any other right wing paramilitary group. I think it's actually safe to say, given the march's focus on peace, that the million-plus taking part are really against all forms of violence in their country. It was a remarkable event - supposedly the largest protest in the history of Colombia or something like that - focused less on the controversial history of Colombia's paramilitaries and more on the desire of people to finally see peace in their country.
Second the AUC and most other large, organized right-wing paramilitary groups have already been largely demobilized through a massive government effort under president Uribe there. So the right-wing paramilitaries, while not fully eradicated, certainly do not pose the level of threat to national security that the FARC does today. It's a bit old now, but you can read more in an article from the Council on Foreign Relations from January at http://www.cfr.org/publication/15239/colombias_...
It's true that the paramilitaries were partially demobilized... as the report you linked to pointed out, only partially. Some excerpts from the report:
"In addition, new criminal organizations have emerged in the wake of the AUC [the right-wing paramilitary leadership] that bear a striking resemblance to their paramilitary predecessors.
"But it’s unclear if the underlying operating structures of these [paramilitary] groups has been crippled. In February 2006, a senior U.S. military official told the International Crisis Group that many paramilitaries maintained control over drug trafficking and illegal assets.
"In September 2007, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe told the United Nations that in Colombia, “today there is no paramilitarism. There are guerrillas and drug traffickers.” Many observers—from the United Nations to Colombian analysts—disagree. On the contrary, they say, the paramilitaries are smaller, more clandestine, and operating with just as much impunity as before the AUC’s demobilization.
"In the 2008 foreign aid bill, Congress mandated that at least $20 million must go to the office of the prosecutor-general. In the fight against both drug traffickers and organized criminals, “there is recognition in Congress that the weak link is the justice system,” says Isacson. Still, of Colombia’s 2008 aid, 65 percent will be military."
In other words, paramilitaries are still active in various forms, so to single out FARC at this point still comes across as one-sided and political on the part of the protest organizers. If the protestors wanted to send a clear message against violence, they should have marketed the protest as anti-violence, not anti-FARC. This protest is like a group staging a protest against Palestinian "terrorism" or Israeli "terrorism" or Irish Republican Army "terrorism" or Unionist "terrorism."
So, just sayin: The Colombia situation is complex, and everyone seems partially to blame for the ongoing violence.
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It's no coincidence either. Hastert et al. are in league with those folks who said "I made that food stamp cartoon with Obama, watermelon and chicken because watermelon and chicken are food, that's all!" http://tinyurl.com/49jqj8
These people know exactly what they are doing. What's my point? That I'm not so sure Mark Zuckerberg knows what he's doing.
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pacitan