• Panama was a Colombian district until the USA, taking advantage of Colombia’s internal strife, orchestrated it’s separation in 1903 to facilitate construction of the Panama canal
• FARC, while officially distancing themselves from all tendencies, were closest to the Maoists in tactics by virtue of the largely agrarian nature of the Colombian economy
• the ELN, another armed revolutionary group, are largely Catholic and seem to practice some form of revolutionary theology (this one took me by surprise; I would’ve never associated Catholicism with revolutionary mindset)
• Yair Klein, an Israeli mercenary (seems redundant), played a major part in the training of right-wing death squads who were responsible for a wide variety of atrocities from assassinations to large-scale massacres (even academics/teachers were not spared since they formed such a large part of Colombia’s unionized workforce)
• Book Recommendation: Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century; a US veteran’s memoir with a critical view on the US’s imperial ambitions that also covers their interests in Colombia

Some unrelated things that I found interesting:

• Alexei Nalvany, the Russian opposition leader and darling of liberals everywhere, was a key ally to Russia’s anti-immigration and skinhead elements
• The American Civil War saw the use of IEDs in the form of booby-trapped artillery shells by the Confederates (this apparently made Sherman pretty mad)