Translation mine.This hasn’t made the lamestream media yet; I googled. The closest thing to it I could find was this Peruanista entry from three years ago. So, obviously, this has happened before. (Gee, I wonder why.)Sure must suck to be you, Alvarito. And it sucks to see the media being such fucking toadies, too. But it’s nice to see students holding you accountable, even if they don’t succeed in getting your war-criminal ass kicked out of the country or into a nice, cushy cell at Club Fed where it belongs.The former president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, was booed on Thursday by a group of students at Georgetown University, in Washington DC, where he had come to teach his first class as professor of International Leadership Practices.A group of students, calling itself the “Adios Uribe Coalition”, invited the ex-president to leave with placards reading “Ciao”. They had met by way of e-mail, according to Caracol Radio. “We are putting out a call for six or more students who are prepared to be arrested for sabotaging the class from within,” read one of the e-mails.Already within the lecture hall, a student from Ecuador accused the ex-president of being “a perfect assassin” before Uribe could resolve any doubt that the young woman might have had. Then the girl asked him about the “hundreds of extrajudicial executions committed by your government”, whereupon the former president replied with “an historical argument which dates back to the 1920s,” according to the student.The US press been an echo to the polemics surrounding Uribe’s contract as professor of the university, even though, according to the LA Times, “not everyone on campus was happy with the presence of the ex-president of Colombia”. Various messages from students, addressed to Dean Anthony Clark, reflected that, according to the paper.“Uribe created the ‘Convivir’ paramilitaries during his time as governor of Antioquia, a group which later became the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia),” recalled a student, who criticized the fact that “Georgetown is legitimizing Uribe and his legacy by giving him an opportunity to present himself before the students”, considering that “it’s an offence to the thousands of victims of his administration and for the human-rights communities in the United States and Colombia.”
Yeah, don’t expect to hear about this story from many others outside of Democracy Now!
The US lamestream is, well, lame-ass to the core.
Our local NPR station is in fund-raising mode, using the notion of guilt to conjure monetary support. Their ploy is to equate listening without contributing to a type of ‘theft’. I am not exaggerating.
But these fucks let corporations off the hook for stealing from US all the time. They are collaborators in myriad crimes. Honduras is just one example.
More, they engage absolutely no community programming featuring Hispanics, workers, gay folk, African-Americans, etc. You get the picture. White bread is bad for a people’s general health.
Pacifica, on the other hand, while not without issues, is the difference that makes the difference.
I reserves my limited dollars for community radio linked with Pacifica.
I digress, Uribe is still a bastard, and it is not surprising that he ends up at Georgetown University.
Re: so-called public radio–you’re right, corporations only “contribute” ad revenues. To talk shows that don’t challenge the status quo (or actively promote a worse version of it, eg. Rush Limbaugh.) Instead of guilt-tripping the listeners, how about listening to THEM for a change? Too obvious? Guess so…
What’s frightful to me is how the major media simply won’t cover Uribe’s crimes. They are complicit to the eyeballs, because they legitimized this little thug and all his antidemocratic mayhem. If they had covered him honestly and comprehensively, he’d never have made it through his first term, much less a second.