Jesuitical reasoning in Georgetown

[Judi Lynn]

Jesuitical reasoning in Georgetown
Why has the Jesuit university in Georgetown honoured the former president of Colombia?

Hugh O'Shaughnessy guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 21 October 2010 13.29 BST

The 31,000 members of the Society of Jesus (also known at the Company of Jesus in Spanish) make up a formidable, driven organisation. They underline their sense of discipline and commitment so it is not surprising that a group of them electrified the church in 1989 when six of them were murdered by US-trained troops at the university their order ran in San Salvador. The Salvadorean military régime could not stand their criticism of its actions.

It is a remarkable fact therefore that at a very vehement argument has just blown up among them. Father Javier Giraldo, a teacher in the Jesuit university in Bogotá who is probably the finest political intellect in Colombia, fired off a sharp letter last month about the decision of his Jesuit brethren at Georgetown University in Washington. It expressed great concern at their decision to appoint Álvaro Uribe, the outgoing President of Colombia, a "Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership" at their establishment. The move has provoked widespread protest inside and outside the university.

Yet anyone with even the most superficial knowledge of Latin America knows that the files of Amnesty International bulge to breaking point with evidence of atrocities committed in ex-president Uribe's time (Father Giraldo himself has been targeted for elimination by right-wing terrorists).he former leader has for years been widely detested as the principal client of the US and its efforts to recover some of its former political and military influence in the region.

In his letter Father Giraldo recalled how Uribe had founded and protected paramilitary groups in his native province of Antioquia who "murdered and 'disappeared' thousands of people and displaced multitudes, committing many other atrocities." During Uribe's time in the presidency, says the writer, the Colombian Congress and government offices were filled with criminals and drug traffickers while the judiciary was so manipulated by him that "it ended up destroying the moral conscience of the country."

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/21/religion-colombia-jesuits-uribe-georgetown

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x565840

[Peace Patriot]

1. Wow! Thanks for posting! An electrifying article!

This is the first time I've seen Uribe directly accused of forming death squads. And the accusation comes from an impeccable source--Father Javier Giraldo, one of the most respected people in Colombia and in human rights circles worldwide, with personal knowledge of Uribe's crimes.

"In his letter Father Giraldo recalled how Uribe had founded and protected paramilitary groups in his native province of Antioquia who "murdered and 'disappeared' thousands of people and displaced multitudes, committing many other atrocities."

Father Giraldo also blasts Uribe's government with charges that we have already had some inkling of: "During Uribe's time in the presidency, says the writer, the Colombian Congress and government offices were filled with criminals and drug traffickers while the judiciary was so manipulated by him that 'it ended up destroying the moral conscience of the country.'"

The article contains several other bombshells:

"Father Giraldo continued, 'the corrupt machinations he used to obtain his re-election as President in 2006 were sordid in the extreme'. During his term in office the army and its allies in the death squads produced 14,000 extra-judicial killings. Colombia, which routinely escapes Western countries' criticism, is demonstrably a hell-hole compared to the President Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, the subject of a Western-supported coup d'état in 2002 and an orchestrated denigration from Washington and some European capitals."

Like an Old Testament prophet, Father Giraldo raises the cane of Moses, white locks rippling in the stormy wind and lightning, come down from the mountaintop, TO SPEAK THE TRUTH! The U.S. wrongfully demonizes Chavez while having supported, funded ($7 BILLION in military aid) and given protection to the REAL demon, Uribe!

One other bombshell--from my perspective anyway, because I had speculated that Georgetown has CIA plants in its administration or foreign policy school (who arranged this academic sinecure for Uribe, probably part of the payment to buy his silence about Bush Junta crimes in Colombia): The article mentions Jeanne Kirkpatrick (...ahem) teaching there--one of the biggest liars of the Reagan era of mass murder in Latin America. Then it says, "Georgetown's former students include President Bill Clinton; General Alexander Haig, President Reagan's US Secretary of State and George Tenet, a CIA director."

I rest my case.

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(All the above quotes are from the OP and the emphases are mine.)

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[rabs]

2. Uribe, the CONVIVIR death squads and the Narco-state

Al Giordano of Narco News was onto Uribe as far back as 2002, when uribito was first elected president.

Link provides a lot of backgound info that is generally not known to most people.

Some pertinent snips: (Btw Pedro Juan Moreno who is featured in the article was killed in Feb. 2006 when his helicopter was sabotaged and crashed. He and uribe had had a falling out so Colombians suspect uribe ordered his death.)

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Uribe and Moreno, together, were the key movers behind the paramilitary rise in Antioquia in the mid 1990s.

As Uribe's chief of staff, Moreno had many responsibilities: Among them, establishing heavily armed and government-trained vigilantes known as Rural Vigilance Committees (CONVIVIRs, as they were known, and came to be feared, across Uribe's province). These vigilante brigades served, according to Amnesty International and dozens of respected human rights organizations, as thinly-masked and government-sanctioned boot camps and recruiting agencies for Colombia's cocaine-soaked paramilitary forces.

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Uribe's CONVIVIR project did turn, as Mayor Cuartas and many others had predicted, into a Frankenstein monster. The Uribe-backed brigades went on such a bloody rampage of massacres against unarmed civilians that they were banned, even in Colombia, by the end of 1997.

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"Another native of Antioquia is Senator Alvaro Uribe Vélez - whose father, Alberto Uribe Sierra, was a known narco-trafficker - who, when he was director of the Civil Air agency (Alvaro Uribe) gave pilots licenses to many narcos.
"Uribe (the father) was arrested once in order to be extradited, but Jesús Aristizabal Guevara, then government secretary for the City of Medellín, succeeded in setting him free.

Much more

http://www.narconews.com/narcocandidate1.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. This Giordano article really looks good. Going to read it tonight. Never knew what Convivir was.

Have heard the word a LOT.

Thank you for adding some good material here. Really looking forward to it. :hi:

[Peace Patriot]

4. Thanks for the info, rabs! It's hard to keep up with Uribe's long crime spree.

It is utterly disgusting that he is now protected by the US government and the Jesuits!

[pnorman]

5. K & R!

I already knewe much of this, but by no means all!

By coincidence, this was the article I was reading when I spotted this DU thread: http://www.speaktruth.org/defend/profiles/profile_09.asp