Sunday 2 October 2016

Another expert



The same edition of The World This Weekend, incidentally, discussed the present Colombian referendum to ratify the peace treaty between the Colombian government and the communist FARC rebels. 

This segment took the form of a talk by a professor of Latin American studies at Newcastle University, Nick Morgan. 

Prof. Morgan said of referendums, "Appeals to emotion rather than to rational argument are typical of campaigns of this sort", thus echoing, in advance, the programme's closing discussion.

His take on Colombian affairs sounded anti-American, anti-Uribe (the previous right-wing Colombian president) and pro-FARC. He talked of how the Uribe government had "demonised" the FARC, for example. 

That quickly led me to guess that he was a rather one-sided kind of professor, and probably a far-left one. and checking who he follows on Twitter (ranging from Seumas Milne to Owen Jones, from Occupy Newcastle to the Cuban news agency) only reinforced my initial impression of him.

An interesting choice of guest lecturer from The World This Weekend.

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