Bush is here

We're in Bogota and George Bush arrived this morning. He's having
lunch now at Casa Narino where President Uribe lives. The airport is pretty
much shut down this afternoon and the normal opening of the streets to
pedestrians and bicycles is canceled today so we're just huddling down
in the apartment with delivery pizza. The cnn ticker occasionally flashes
that colombian police are battling protesters, but the local news isn't saying
anything about that, who knows what that means.

Lots of police sirens in the distance, I hope they are just leading the president
to safety.

From El tiempo:

La Policía Metropolitana informó que algunos alborotadores trataron de tomarse la estación de TransMilenio de la Avenida Caracas a la altura de la calle 34, zona donde fueron atacados algunos comercios y sucursales bancarias.

Los disturbios se produjeron tras un mitin de protesta por la visita, convocado por la Gran Coalición Democrática, convergencia de centrales sindicales, partidos políticos de oposición y movimientos de estudiantes y campesinos.

Unas 1.500 personas lanzaron arengas contra la visita de Bush y más de veinte banderas de Estados Unidos fueron quemadas en la plazoleta de La Macarena, en el centro de Bogotá.

[protesters tried to take the bus station, and they attacked businesses and banks the protest was led by varios commie pinkos and poor country people. 1500 people harranged the president and 20 us flags were burnt.

Bogota is laid out on a grid, from south to north, east to west, the government is near Calle 0, streets south of that increment and are called "calle # south", streets north of that increment and are just called Calles, the north south streets start at 0 up against the mountains, and increment to the west. The protests were at Septima & Calle 34, or 30 blocks north of Casa Narino and 70 blocks south of here.]

So the protests were about 70 blocks away from here, and if there were only 1500 people out of a city of 6,000,000 people, it's really not a big turnout. I don't know what they are protesting, cnn showed a grafiti of "yankee go home", and it sounds like if the democratic congress gets it's way, the US will cut aid and leave. Which is a shame since conditions are so much better here since the "plan colombia" was started by Clinton, without US help Los FARC will be back again with the support of Chavez in Venezuela.

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