I’d like to see the world rioting in perfect harmony…

I don’t drink coke at all, and very seldom beer
but I’d like to buy GW a coke and shove it in his ear

Thanks Shifty – for your diligent posting!

I hate to sound like I’m defending Coke here, but this is pretty standard practice in Colombia. There is a civil war going on down there, and the paramilitaries view any organizing done outside of the government as “communism” and treat the organizers accordingly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Jesuit priest, a community leader or a union organizer, they’ll beat you up or kill you just the same. The article makes it sound like the paramilitaries are doing this because Coke has asked them to, but in reality I’m not sure they’d stop if Coke begged them, because they see any independent organization as a threat and possible FARC foothold.

Of course, Coke should be clean up its labor practices so that its workers aren’t clamouring for a union in the first place and makes its displeasure with the paramilitaries known, and this campaign is a great way to do that and it’s something we should all support.

But Coke isn’t the cause of this problem, the cause is the Colombian government, which is indistinguishable from the paramilitaries. The Colombian government, of course, recieves the second largest amount of US military aid, after Israel.

Coke brings life …

Lar de dar.

The tobacco industry got busted because executives discussed the death their product would bring people. That is, they believed some of their industry’s own research to that effect. I’d bet that the soft drink industry considered the damage their products would do in similar ways.

Scene: The Cola Club, NYC, around the turn of the penultimate century.

Paul “Pespi Paul” Seltzer: You know, Caleb, this shit of yours will work with plenty more sugar, like that coke crap.

Carlos “Coca Carly” Caramelo: Shut the fuck up Paulie. What the fuck do you know!

Caleb: It’s going to rot everybody’s teeth anyway; might as well give them diabetes, too.

Caramelo: Shut the fuck up Caleb. What the fuck do you know!

Seltzer: No. He’s right. He’s a druggist. All of this shit is going to fuck people up.

Caramelo: Not if they’re addicted to it you assholes. As long as they’re addicted they’ll be fine. As long as they never stop taking it until they’re dead.

Caleb: Yeah, Paulie, he’s right. They’ll be okay if we get them addicted to it. Then, with the sugar load, they’ll probably die before all their teeth rot anyway.

Seltzer: Don’t we lose business that way?

Caramelo: We’re going to make a big effort to keep people with diabetes alive longer and longer.

Caleb: I have a nephew in that already.

Seltzer: So, we know what we have to do.

Caramelo: Shut the fuck up Paulie. You don’t know a fucking thing.

Caleb: That’s what we’ll say, then. We never knew a fucking thing.

“Ray Rogers, a veteran union organizer and head of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. “I want to know what [Coke is] going to do to regain the trust and credibility in order to stop the growing movement worldwide…banning Coke products,” boomed the 62-year-old.”

—Unless it has something to do with disentagling Coke from the C.I.A. then it’s all hogwash.

If the workers could replace the shareholding owners with some kind of reimbursement scheme, then own, run and work the company, provide reasonable warnings about the addictiveness and other health problems and stop advertising, I’d consider accepting the continued existence of such products. In the meantime, it’s insane to forgive Coke for allying with or using the death squads in Colombia no matter what they might do without Coke’s participation.