Another Day, Another Bomblet

Shattered BankBoston ATM Kiosk (Photo from La Nacion)

Last night, in another of the aforementioned pre-Summit of the Americas "Polite Anti-Bush Bombings", the Comando Antiimperialista comandante Che Guevara-Maurice Bishop bombed a BankBoston ATM in the nearby city of La Plata (where, among other things, we played squash and drank mate last Saturday). The usual: leaflets, shattered glass, no injuries. But who are these bush0-league pseudo-leftist "revolutionaries" taking inspiration from? Che Guevara is a known entity, but Maurice Bishop?

A little poking around Wikipedia revealed the following resume, which adds grim absurdity to an already grimly absurd situation:

Maurice Rupert Bishop was a Grenadan politician. His New Jewel Movement overthrew the Government of Sir Eric Gairy in 1979 and he became Prime Minister of Grenada. His government started grassroots democracy intiatives and workers' councils while seeking closer relationships with Fidel Castro's Cuba, the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc nations…In October 1983, Bishop was overthrown and executed at Fort Rupert, St. George's along with a number of his supporters after a Stalinist military coup d'état, led by Bishop's erstwhile friend and Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. This event prompted a U.S.-led invasion of the island, "Operation Urgent Fury," to depose the pro-Soviet Coard. Bishop had planned to build a large, controversial international airport on Grenada with Cuban assistance, which was eventually completed with U.S. assistance several years later.

It takes a weird sense of humor to base your movement on a leader whose death inspired that parody of a conflict, the near-forgotten U.S. Grenadan Airport War. And Operation Urgent Fury? That sounds like the gastric distress I feel after eating an over-spicy vindaloo, not a war. But I've said too much already.