US embassy in Chile apologizes for rude tweet

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Xinhua

US embassy in Chile apologizes for rude tweet
Updated: 2013-03-29 11:28
( Xinhua)

SANTIAGO - The US embassy in Chile has apologized for an earlier tweet indicating it was bored or irritated by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet's bid to run in the November presidential elections.

"Our apologies for the last tweet. An unauthorized user sent the message from this account," the embassy said via its official Twitter account.

The offensive tweet was erased, but the apology was still there Thursday.

The erased message read: -- "Bachelet, Bachelet, Bachelet ... Is there no other news?"

Bachelet, the first woman to lead Chile from 2006 to 2010, was until recently head of UN Women, the United Nations agency in charge of women's affairs.

Read more: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2013-03/29/content_16357211.htm

[TwilightGardener]

1. Now there's other news--an internationally embarrassing apology. Good work.

[Alamuti Lotus]

2. I need to get my resume updated and send it forward

I get the impression sometimes that the only necessary qualities to be in public diplomatic office are: 1) be a brainless asshole and know how to use Twitter, 2) know how to apologize with extreme incredulity when somebody notices the first quality, and 3) expect that the latter means more than the former. I can do that. Fuck you! Wait, some other poster here said that, not me. When's lunch, can I get my bonus now?

[Peace Patriot]

3. Yup, it must be damned annoying to want only rightwing news...

...favorable to transglobal corporations, war profiteers and the uber-rich, and to be forced to endure leftwing news about the popularity of socialist leaders, their numerous victories at the polls all over South America, and the rising tide of the remarkable social justice movement throughout the region!

'Boring, boring, boring!'

Powerlessness, when you think you should be powerful, causes painful ennui and its correlative, boredom. ("Batchelet, Batchelet, Batchelet...&quot We should pity these poor U.S. operatives in our embassies, who long to torture Leftists and throw them out of airplanes, who worship corpo-fascist power and can't find a market for it in newly democratic, progressive South America. 'Oh, for the days when the U.S. embassy called the shots, literally called the shots, that toppled Leftist governments, cancelled elections, instigated riots and chaos, rounded up 'subversives' and disappeared them by the thousands, and installed friendly dictators with their colorful military parades and openness to any kind of plundering and profit!'

"Batchelet, Batchelet, Batchelet..."--'I'll bet she squealed when they tortured her daddy to death. Bet she could be made to squeal now, ha-ha! Look at her mugging it up everywhere for the cameras, smiling royally at her adoring lumpen proletariat, courting students and communists, just like Allende. No, no, no! Think subtle. Think savvy. Think, oh, let's see, lesbian honey trap. Yeah, yeah! Bring her down 20 points.'

Same old, same old. Scripts written long ago. But today, in South America, they don't work any more. Thus, boredom, frustration, ennui, petty-minded complaining, fantasies of power, plots that sometimes turn real but fail, fail, fail.

Sad.

[Judi Lynn]

4. The same embassy liked Pinochet, apparently, a whole lot better than it likes Michelle Bachelet.

For anyone who saw the film Missing, or anyone who has kept track of Chilean events recalls vividly the games the U.S. embassy in Santiago, Chile played hiding the truth about a young U.S. journalist, Charles Horman, who contributed to The Nation and a U.S. news photographer, Frank Teruggi (who both were snatched out of the world, disappeared, tortured, and murdered by Pinochet's agents (US puppet coup President, brought to power through a bloody coup to destroy the leftist President Salvador Allende, by Richard M. Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the CIA)) with the father, and wife of Charles Horman, described in this article:

Is Nick Berg Another Charlie Horman?

I’m not usually into conspiracy theories, but if you read the exchanges between me and Seattle in the Comments section of the previous Nick Berg post, you’ll know I think this whole thing smells like yesterday’s herring. Well, I finally put my finger on what was bothering me: Charlie Horman. I’ve seen this run-around before.

Charlie Horman was a free-lance reporter living in Chile at the time of Allende’s murder and the coup that put Pinochet and the Chilean military in charge of the govt. The date was September 11, 1973, 28 years to the day before 9/11. He disappeared on Sept 12. Two years later, after a prolonged investigation and a whole lot of pressure from Charlie’s father, Ed, a successful NY businessman–and Republican contributor to Nixon’s campaign–the bodies of Charlie and his friend, Frank Teruggi, were found riddled with bullets, Frank’s in the Santiago soccer stadium and Charlie’s in the morgue after being dumped unceremoniously in the street. But before that, Charlie had been buried inside a wall in the tunnels under the stadium. Inside.

At first the American Embassy and the new Ambassador to Chile said they’d never heard of Charlie and had no records concerning him. When Horman proved that Charlie had been to see them a few days before the coup looking for help in getting a friend of his out of the country at a tense time, they suddenly found those records.

And that’s the way it went until the ‘discovery’ of Charlie’s body: govt officials at the US Embassy and US military officials would tell Horman stories, and Ed would painstakingly prove that those stories weren’t true. When Ed didn’t fall for the official fairy tales, they attacked Charlie personally: he was an irresponsible hippie; they’d tried to help him but he wouldn’t listen; he was poking his nose into places he shouldn’t have been and it was too bad but they’d done everything they could; they’d offered to get him out of Chile but he had insisted that he wanted to stay to report on the coup; and so on. In one particularly shameful meeting, the American Consul told Ed that they’d found Charlie and that he was still alive. Ed later proved that he had in fact known of Charlie’s death since a few days after it happened.

http://arran.wordpress.com/2004/05/13/is-nick-berg-another-charlie-horman/