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Every Friday, USA Today has a separate Weekend section featuring “Destinations & Diversions.” Normally, we enjoy reading this relaxing section, which features exotic Americana plus charming, glamorous locales we’ll never get to see.
But not this past Friday. To mark the Friday just after Independence Day, USA Today’s Travel page featured the article, “These Tours Explore the Harsher Side of Reality,” a page on travel tours that allow you to:
* Live as an illegal immigrant;
* See how U.S. drug and military policy have “hurt” Colombia (we learned a new word, “counter-narcotics”–their word for the drug war);
* Explore “Sexual Rights” (their euphemism for gay marriage) and “Social Justice” in South America; and
* Build “Peaceful Resistance” to the “U.S. War” on Colombia.

On Your Vacation, Live Like an Illegal
We can’t believe these trips are tax-deductible, but they are. That means you, the U.S. taxpayer, are subsidizing them.
Check out what you are paying for. Here are more of the details of what you get to see on trips ranging from $750-$2,900. It’s really unbelievable:

Mexico: Beyond Borders: Health, Labor and Environment
Length: Four days
Organizer: Global Exchange
Details: The non-profit human rights group takes participants on a tour of the U.S.-Mexican border around Tijuana, showing working conditions and evidence of environmental degradation. Stops include a foreign-owned maquiladora assembly factory on the Mexico side of the border to see working conditions and a meeting with women’s rights groups to learn about abuses. Global Exchange’s Reality Tour division offers similar trips to more than two dozen other troubled areas, including Afghanistan, Guatemala and Iran.
Cost: $750

That one is supposed to convince you that the illegal alien invasion is okay. We wonder what the tour of Iran is like? Perhaps to convince us that Iranian nuclear weapons and wishes to wipe Jews off the map are okay, too?

U.S. Policy in Colombia: Drugs, Military Aid and Human Rights
Length: 11 days
Organizer: Witness for Peace
Details: The faith-based non-profit organization [DS: Actually, wacko far-left] aims to show the brutal effects of four decades of turmoil. . . . The tour will include visits to communities affected by U.S. military aid and counter-narcotics efforts, along with meetings with U.S. and Colombian government officials. Witness for Peace also offers trips to Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico with a goal of providing U.S. citizens with the tools they need to create positive social, political and economic change through non-violent advocacy and action.
Cost: $1,275

Question: Which U.S. “officials” are idiotic enough to meet with these twits? Nothing better to do at the office that day?

Sexual Rights and Social Justice in South America
Length: 7 days
Organizer: MADRE
Details: The women’s human rights organization visits Buenos Aires during the Gay Pride celebration to examine the successes and challenges of South America’s burgeoning sexual rights movement. Participants will meet with lesbian, gay, faith-based and community activists, and explore the relationship of sexual rights to other social movements gaining momentum throughout South America. MADRE, which works with women’s community-based groups worldwide, also offers Voyages with a Vision trips to Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Kenya. They are designed as an opportunity to learn about women’s human rights struggles.
Cost: $2,900 (estimated), including airfare from New York.

Oh, I get it: Women’s rights = gay rights. $2,900 to find that bunk out? Gee, someoneone has money to burn.

Building Peaceful Resistance to the “Other War”: A Human Rights Delegation to Colombia
Length: 15 days
Organizer: Fellowship of Reconciliation
Details: The non-profit human rights group offers trips to examine the ongoing drug war, U.S. military intervention and the growing peaceful resistance movement. Meet with indigenous, Afro-Colombian, youth and women’s organizations, as well as Colombian and U.S. government officials, and travel to the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.
Cost: $1,300

Gee, when did President Bush say he was recruiting for a “human rights” delegation to Colombia? Does Juan Valdez know about this? Again, who are the “U.S. government officials” that are wasting time meeting with these trouble-makers? We’d love to know.