11.14.2005

"Wake up with freedom fighters!"

It's about time rightwingers got in on the fair-trade coffee business. Contra Café is a new coffee grown by Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Every cup supports these formerly CIA-funded farmers, with a little bit extra going to Oliver North's Freedom Alliance. The product, created as an alternative to left-leaning fair-trade coffee, has been controversial. "So we have a bunch of self-identified former contras and a couple of Dartmouth business school graduates who say they want to make profits for anti-communists and to donate part of their profits to a foundation run by Oliver North," said Mary Turck, newsletter editor at the Resource Center of the Americas in Minneapolis. "I hope people still remember the atrocities committed during the contra wars and say 'no' to any association with criminals of that era." Human Rights Watch says the Contras "were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners."

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