For those of you who’ve been following the situation in Chile for awhile, you’re probably aware that Chilean students are unhappy with their minister of education, and that they have good reasons to be. Yesterday, all that frustration spilled over, literally:
A protesting high-school student, frustrated that the minister isn’t listening to her, picks up a pitcher of water and flings its contents over the minister. Naturally, the AP (via Yahoo) sides with the minister, who claims (rather melodramatically) to be the victim of “violence” allegedly “incited” by the teachers’ union.
BTW, here’s the vital context the AP has left out: The students, who cannot afford the excessive costs of a privatized education and who are protesting because of that, have been blasted with water cannons for having the audacity to speak their minds. And the minister claims they prefer “violence” over dialogue. Seems to me that they’ve already tried dialogue, and been violently rebuffed by a ministry hellbent on keeping the “reforms” of the Pinochet era of massive privatization. So hellbent, in fact, that they’ve resorted to awfully Pinochetist-looking tactics to inject a little “dialogue” into things.
Indeed, Bachelet has been very much a disappointment.
However, not as bad as others.
Correa criticizes Ingrid B. in a letter for her condoning the illegal attack on Ecuador’s territory. This lady is self-centered and not very politically astute or informed.
Give her a bit of escargo and a couple of nights at a posh hotel in Paris and she reverts to her true form.
You ain’t kiddin’ about Ingrid, Slave. A Mexican EPR guerrilla communique (on Aporrea) calls her the “heroine of the modern far-right”:
http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n117042.html
These guerrillas have seen severe repression from their own government, so I guess that says something about where they’re coming from. They say Felipe Calderon has no moral authority to negotiate with the FARC to give up their Mexican hostages, and that’s undoubtedly true. After all, he’s not legitimately elected.