News of the Restless

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Chavecito's glad!

2008-07-04T15:43:28Z

And why not? Ingrid Betancourt is finally free, albeit under very sniffy circumstances. But since the objective of all his work was peace in Colombia and a release of all hostages, not scoring political points, and since she's safe, he can still say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. After all, it was his success in freeing others, such as Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, that helped spark this happy reunion between Ingrid and her family. And it was his words to the FARC that sparked this major release, as subsequent news will show (and I'll blog it if the lamestream media goes on failing to report!)

17 seconds to moral clarity with Christopher Hitchens

2008-07-03T04:03:38Z

If you haven't seen this video yet, you simply must. In the space of five minutes, you get to see how Christopher Hitchens saw the light on waterboarding in an undisclosed location somewhere in North Carolina. Not only does he admit that it IS torture, he also admits that it's not "simulated" drowning, it IS drowning--of a particularly terrorizing kind. And it takes him just a few seconds to "break". He flings away the metal object (poetically called a "dead man's handle") that the torturers have given him to signal--simply by dropping it--that he can't take the torment anymore. It all looks so unceremonious, which makes you wonder how long anyone can withstand such a treatment.

Here's Hitchens in his own words:

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You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it "simulates" the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The "board" is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don't want to tell you how little time I lasted.

This is because I had read that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, invariably referred to as the "mastermind" of the atrocities of September 11, 2001, had impressed his interrogators by holding out for upwards of two minutes before cracking. (By the way, this story is not confirmed. My North Carolina friends jeered at it. "Hell," said one, "from what I heard they only washed his damn face before he babbled.")

It certainly doesn't look like they did much more than that to Hitchens, if you watch the video. I was surprised at how soon he dropped the metal thingie. It was almost immediate.

But of course, some of you lurking rightard sadists out there may be wondering if this technique "works". If by "working" you mean does it supply accurate and actionable evidence that will stand up in a court of law or assist in the search for terrorists, or will it defuse a ticking bomb, the answer is a resounding NO. But on the other hand, if you consider "working" to be defined as terrorizing the victim and making him/her say whatever it takes to make it stop--that is, if you consider the objective of the torture to be not gaining information or evidence, but simply to physically and mentally destroy the victim, then yes, it certainly does work. And it goes on working long after the torturer's part of the job is done. Here's Hitchens again:

Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it's of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass. As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, "Any time is a long time when you're breathing water." I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured.

[...]

I am somewhat proud of my ability to "keep my head," as the saying goes, and to maintain presence of mind under trying circumstances. I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word. I had activated the "dead man's handle" that signaled the onset of unconsciousness. So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion. What I do recall clearly, though, is a hard finger feeling for my solar plexus as the water was being poured. What was that for? "That's to find out if you are trying to cheat, and timing your breathing to the doses. If you try that, we can outsmart you. We have all kinds of enhancements." I was briefly embarrassed that I hadn't earned or warranted these refinements, but it hit me yet again that this is certainly the language of torture.

"We have all kinds of enhancements" = "Ve haf vays of makingk you talk." Nice, eh? Of course, a wily enough victim could still find ways of resisting the "enhancements". But even if no one could, the torture still doesn't make people say anything particularly useful. Hitchens notes that one torture victim "confessed", falsely, to being a hermaphrodite. Torture may make 'em talk, but it does not guarantee that what they say will make sense.

And speaking of making sense: Maybe it's the residue of Hitchens's own residual lack of moral clarity. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome. I don't know what this passage is...

The team who agreed to give me a hard time in the woods of North Carolina belong to a highly honorable group. This group regards itself as out on the front line in defense of a society that is too spoiled and too ungrateful to appreciate those solid, underpaid volunteers who guard us while we sleep. These heroes stay on the ramparts at all hours and in all weather, and if they make a mistake they may be arraigned in order to scratch some domestic political itch. Faced with appalling enemies who make horror videos of torture and beheadings, they feel that they are the ones who confront denunciation in our press, and possible prosecution. As they have just tried to demonstrate to me, a man who has been waterboarded may well emerge from the experience a bit shaky, but he is in a mood to surrender the relevant information and is unmarked and undamaged and indeed ready for another bout in quite a short time. When contrasted to actual torture, waterboarding is more like foreplay. No thumbscrew, no pincers, no electrodes, no rack. Can one say this of those who have been captured by the tormentors and murderers of (say) Daniel Pearl? On this analysis, any call to indict the United States for torture is therefore a lame and diseased attempt to arrive at a moral equivalence between those who defend civilization and those who exploit its freedoms to hollow it out, and ultimately to bring it down. I myself do not trust anybody who does not clearly understand this viewpoint.

...but I can tell you unequivocally that the torturers who "belong to a highly honorable group" are just as indoctrinated and brainwashed as any al-Qaida terrorist, and, notwithstanding all protestations of "lame and diseased attempt to arrive at moral equivalence" by sophists like Hitchens, it is all for the exact same purpose. The only difference is which side one is on. Both groups perceive themselves as the righteous guardians of an order which is under threat from an enemy. And that enemy is out to kill them with the moral equivalent of tooth decay. Suddenly, the local high-fructose corn syrup diet must be maintained at all costs, including the very worst.

Maybe Hitchens doesn't understand this because, as an outspoken anti-theist, he's blinded by the blatant religiosity of the Islamists (as opposed to the much more subtle kind that prevails among the Americans), but if you go him one better and strip away all the religious trappings from the basic beliefs of the two tribes, you get the exact same thing. Each side perceives its own ungrateful, lazy, decadent civilization to be under threat from the other. And the threat can only be countered, at least in the minds of the "threatened", with murder and torture. Yeah, I can "clearly understand this viewpoint", too--but even more clearly, I can understand that it is bullshit, and I myself do not trust anybody who does not clearly understand that incontrovertible FACT.

And in fact, even Hitchens, in his roundabout and bumfuzzly way, finally comes out and admits...well, ALMOST as much:

One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words "waterboard" and "American" could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.

I don't know if he will go on to have more such episodes of genuine moral clarity, but it's a good start.

I could get smart-assy and suggest that he be waterboarded some more, but I think we already know where that road leads. Plus, I think that he might just be amenable to reason if treated more humanely. At worst, we could just, er, assist him by taking his bottle away.

Memo to the Media Luna prefects: You're toast!

2008-07-02T04:55:19Z

As if it weren't enough that popular opinion is going to broom these "autonomist" butts out of office (and a landslide is going to confirm Evo), there's this little bombshell from off the coast of, of all places, Uruguay:

Uruguay says it may have found a large natural gas field that would change it from an importer to an exporter of gas.

The announcement of the possible find, which could also contain oil, was made by President Tabare Vazquez in a note on his official website.

Local reports say that the field could contain as much as three trillion cubic feet (85bn cubic metres) of gas but there has not yet been any drilling.

Link added.

The Beeb goes on to note that the gas field could provide for as much as 827 years' worth of domestic needs, based on the amount of gas Uruguay used last year. This means Uruguay will not only become a net exporter; it could become to natural gas what Venezuela is to petroleum. If Tabare Vazquez is as smart as I think and hope he is, he'll copy Chavecito and put the proceeds from that gas to use serving the Uruguayan people, who have been hit hard by the vagaries of the markets over the last 40 years. All in all, it looks very good for Uruguay.

But what, you ask, does this have to do with the Media Luna in Bolivia?

]]> Good question, and I'm glad you asked.

Take a good look at any map of South America, and you'll see that at least one of the Media Luna provinces of Bolivia borders on a very large country: Argentina. Which imports a lot of its natural gas from Bolivia via pipelines through...drumroll please...the Media Luna region.

And since the Media Luna prefects are trying to claim "autonomy", meaning absolute control over Bolivian natural gas resources, that presents a problem. Not so much for Bolivia as for the Media Luna, since Argentina will buy gas only from the feds in La Paz, not some provincial prefect in the Media Luna. That means they deal with Evo, not the "autonomists"--and will go on doing so.

But, if Uruguay gets in the business of selling natural gas, guess where else Argentina could go to buy? Uruguay, if you consult your map, is also parked right next door to...drumroll please...ARGENTINA!

And do you know what means for the Media Luna?

Well, even if their "autonomy" drive succeeds--which is highly doubtful--Argentina could still turn its back on them and go to Uruguay for natural gas. And that would put the Media Luna prefects in a most uncomfortable spot.

Assuming, of course, Evo doesn't put the boots to them first.

(h/t The Scarlet Pimpernel for the news link.)

A stupid note on Canada Day

2008-07-01T23:39:21Z

And who struck it, albeit inadvertently? The CBC. They interviewed a group of new immigrants (there's a special citizenship ceremony for some of them on Canada Day), and who did they interview? Some twit from Venezuela who claims he came here because of "political instability" back home.

Talk about desecrating the day. Can we please leave the political bullshit out of it and just interview someone who came from a REALLY unstable place next time, CBC? Like, oh, I dunno, COLOMBIA?

Jesus doesn't like it when you lie!

2008-07-01T23:35:00Z

At least, that's the impression I got last time I thumbed through any of the four Gospels. Too bad this site, calling itself the Catholic World News, hasn't gotten that message...and apparently, neither has a politically uncelibate Venezuelan archbishop, who routinely violates his vows with the opposition:

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A spokesman for the Venezuelan bishops' conference has denounced the formation of a new religious sect called the Reform Catholic Venezuelan Church, which has pledged its support for the country's President Hugo Chavez.

Archbishop Roberto Lückert Leon of Coro, the vice-president of the Venezuelan episcopal conference, told El Nuevo Herald that the new sect is "a parallel church that Chavez has created." The group is being subsidized by contributions from Venezuela's state-owned oil company, the archbishop said, and is recruiting priests who have been disciplined by their own bishops because of "scandalous" behavior.

The Reform Catholic Venezuelan Church does not require priests to be celibate. The group also allows divorce, and proclaims that "homosexuality and bisexuality are not sins in and of themselves.' But the sect is uncompromising on one issue: "We completely support the socialist project led by Chavez," announced one of the group's leaders.

Funny, I haven't heard anything about a new religious sect forming in Venezuela--not from any reliable source, anyhow. But, according to El Nuevo Herald, there IS a new church...IN MIAMI. And it is under the auspices of the Anglican Church, run by a primate of Venezuelan and Canadian nationality. So much for it being a breakaway Roman Catholic sect in Venezuela. It's a Protestant one! Just like what Martin Luther did in Germany in the 1500s, albeit on a smaller scale. And in Miami.

Which begs the question: What is the archbishop getting his cassock in a twist about? If it's not his church, it's not his problem. Hell, it's not even based in his country.

Oh wait, I see: They allow divorce, they're not anti-gay, they don't demand celibacy. Well DUH! They're Protestants, and those things are all pretty mainstream for Anglicans, especially here in Canada. Even if they still are anathema to Roman Catholics, though, there are still plenty of rank-and-file Catholics who disagree with those prohibitions. (Consider the number of Catholic women who are on the Pill, or who have had abortions--and whose priests know it, and refuse to kick them out of the church.)

The accusations of government funding, I predict, will prove to be lies. This is not about a new church receiving government funding, it's about the Catholic church being cut out of it. And also about it being cut out of the status of power-behind-the-throne. Archbishop Lückert, thanks to his virulent anti-Chavismo, apparently believes he'll be absolved, but history will not be kind to him.

And, if Jesus is listening, I'm pretty sure he's pissed, too.

PS: On a related note, Venezuelan political analyst Vladimir Acosta notes the obvious...that the Roman Catholic Church is playing dirty politics in Venezuela, specifically on behalf of the rich exploiters. And on a more disgusting note, here's a recent example of what the professor is on about: a priest haranguing his parishioners using an upside-down Venezuelan flag on the altar. His sermon? Something to the effect of "What, don't you sinners have the balls to kill your duly elected president?" And this at, of all opportune occasions, an infant baptism!

WW4 Report screws the pooch over Tibet

2008-06-30T18:46:44Z

Oh noes, indeed. What is it lately with all these otherwise decent independent news sites going over to the stinky? In the case of the latest from WW4 Report, it seems that a number of Tibetan prayer flags have landed on the eyes of the editors, blinding them to the obvious. They've gotten real snotty with their readers who take exception to them for uncritically publishing Nik Kozloff's "revolutionary" hit piece on Chavecito.

In all the back-and-forth between the WW4R snotballs and those who rightly take them to task, I found this...

From Russ Hallberg, somewhere in cyberspace (who slugs his e-mail "don't repudiate chavez"):

Hugo Chavez should be criticized for his support of China's occupation of Tibet. However, Tibetan nationalists and the Dali Lama are backed by the CIA. It is unlikely a "free" Tibet would be anything more than a puppet for Western interests. Tibetan nationalism is a psyops to solicit the support of the US left for CIA agendas.

World War 4 Report replies: You know, that's pretty paranoid, dude. But we're heartened that at least you think Chávez should be criticized (if not "repudiated").

...which made me wonder: Is it really paranoid to suspect such a thing, considering the CIA has had its tentacles around just about every anti-communist "freedom fighter" in the world since the end of World War II--many of them downright unsavory? In other words, could Russ Hallberg be onto something?

]]> Well, Tim Boucher has found out that in fact, Russ Hallberg is not paranoid; he's right. The CIA is backing the Dalai Lama. Why not? He's a very useful tool to brandish against the "red menace". And the fact that many well-meaning westerners are unaware of it is testimony to the blinding powers of organized religion and theocracy. All we see is poor oppressed Tibet, under the thumb of Chinese imperialism, struggling bravely to free itself in the name of religious freedom--and, supposedly, "democracy". Who could be opposed to such a struggle--particularly we of the anti-imperialist left? And who wouldn't feel like a shit to dare slaughter such a cherished sacred cow as the peace-loving, freedom-seeking image of the Dalai Lama?

What we don't see, because we don't want to and because someone has ensured that we won't want to, is that Tibet, just like Russia, Ukraine and the WW4R editors' other pet hate, Belarus, has no tradition of free democratic rulership. That's right. None. The people of Tibet were serfs long before China annexed their country. The only difference is that previously, they were serfs to their "spiritual" leaders. The Dalai Lama is not elected by the masses, or even selected by an oligarchy (at least, not that anyone would cop to the fact); he's allegedly reincarnated from every previous Dalai Lama that ever there was.

In fact, the monks who seek out the reincarnated one are an oligarchy, and a very rarified one at that, but their traditional high status renders them unquestionable. And their unquestioned "holiness" loses its lustre when you see how rich the monasteries are, and how poor by comparison is the average Tibetan--impoverished, as Boucher says, by the monks themselves.

But don't take my word for it; the Green Left Weekly has the details:

The Tibetan "government'" in Lhasa was composed of lamas selected for their religious piety. At the head of this theocracy was the Dalai Lama. The concepts democracy, human rights or universal education were unknown.

The Dalai Lama and the majority of the elite agreed to give away Tibet's de facto independence in 1950 once they were assured by Beijing their exploitative system would be maintained. Nine years later, only when they felt their privileges were threatened, did they revolt. Suddenly the words "democracy" and "human rights" entered the vocabulary of the government-in-exile, operating out of Dharamsala in India ever since.

Dharamsala and the Dalai Lama's commitment to democracy seems weak. An Office of Tibet document claims "soon after His Holiness the Dalai Lama's arrival in India, he re-established the Tibetan Government in exile, based on modern democratic principles". Yet it took more than 30 years for an Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies to be directly elected from among the 130,000 exiles. Of 46 assembly members, only 30 are elected. The other 16 are appointed by religious authorities or directly by the Dalai Lama.

All assembly decisions must be approved by the Dalai Lama, whose sole claim to the status of head of state is that he has been selected by the gods. The separation of church and state is yet to be recognised by the Dalai Lama as a "modern democratic principle".

Imagine that--the Dalai Lama willingly handed Tibet over to Mao, and didn't protest until he perceived his own authority to be under threat. So much for the myth of the brave freedom struggle. Tibet may as well be a Czarist monarchy. After all, the Czars and other royals used to claim a divine privilege, too.

One doesn't have to be a Maoist to see that (and I'm most emphatically not; I've read Son of the Revolution, and I suggest you do too.) One has only to be willing to look past the sacredness and see the cow--dung and all. A sacred cow drops as much dung as any beast of pasture or barn. Treat the Dalai Lama to the same critical eye that you would Chairman Mao himself, and then you won't go through the mental conflicts about Tibet that I have (and that a lot of other leftists are also finding themselves in).

Personally, I've always been secretly puzzled by the widespread and unquestioned fetish for Tibetan Buddhism. As a Wiccan and a longtime New Ager, I find that trend disturbing. Aside from all the names I can't for the life of me pronounce, there are all those hells--through which the souls of all the dead must pass, no matter how much good they did in their lives. Why would a religion of compassion be so ridden with hellfire and demons? And what's so compassionate about such an authoritarian rule here on Earth? If I wanted that, I'd just convert to fundamentalist Christianity. The only difference I can see, other than the language and the lack of saffron robes, is that the fundie-Christers don't lay claim to reincarnation.

I've also long felt guilty for not owning any of those best-selling Buddhist books on compassion, pacifism, etc.--particularly the ones written by the Dalai Lama. But I think I can lay that guilt to rest now and realize that I'm not suffering from myopia; I'm rightly skeptical of sacred cows, ALL of them, including Buddhist gurus. Sacred cow, like revenge, is a dish best eaten cold, and I've just slaughtered a big one here.

Would that the WW4R editors could do the same, instead of falling straight into the CIA's best-laid trap--the ahistorical fetish for Tibet.

File this away for future reference...

2008-06-30T16:34:10Z

...because kiddies, you're gonna be laughing at all this about six months from now. David Blair of the arch-conservative UK Telegraph is putting all his wishful thinking out there right now for you to mistake for Serious Political Analysis.

At home, however, Mr Chavez is in trouble. State elections are due in November and Venezuela's opposition, which now includes former followers of South America's standard-bearer for socialism, is expected to perform well.

"Expected" by the State Dept. and the blinkered likes of David Blair, perhaps. But to anyone who's seriously paying attention, this opposition is a joke. The turncoats Blair is lauding here, who are expecting to siphon off the "pro-Chavez, BUT" vote, didn't do so well in the last referendum; it was won by abstention, not a resounding majority of anti-Chavistas. Given that there have been so many votes in Venezuela since Chavez came to power, that's kind of understandable. Voter fatigue can so easily set in--especially since voters have to get up early and queue up for hours before they can drop their ballots in the box. Still, one can't deny that there has been a democratic process--in fact a democratic surfeit.

But Blair hasn't been paying attention, so of course he can't be expected to know that.

What has he been paying attention to? Well, seriously silly stuff like this amateur psychoanalysis from one of the turncoats:

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General Raul Salazar, once a close friend who served as the president's first defence minister, said that Mr Chavez suffers "many hells or infernos inside him".

"Perhaps he feels a real social resentment because of the poverty of his upbringing. That becomes a nightmare for any human being," added Gen Salazar, who campaigned against Mr Chavez in the referendum.

"Political leaders go through three stages. First they are governors, then they are statesmen and then they think they become God and they decide they don't need anyone's advice. I hope to God that he doesn't get to the third stage, but he's probably close."

Funny, but that last paragraph sounds to me like Dubya. He started out as governor of Texas, then he became (illicitly) a "statesman" (or at least a wooden figurehead on the prow of a ship), and now he thinks he's God. And I'm sure he has his share of "hells or infernos inside him", too--but he is not, thank heaven, the president of Venezuela, who, contrary to the general's comic-opera Freudianism, retains his good humor and firmly planted feet even in the face of all the private hells and infernos raging around him, and trying (without success) to win votes away from him.

Then there's this character, who is less funny, but still plays a role in the farce:

General Raul Baduel, who served as defence minister and rescued Mr Chavez from an American-backed coup in 2002, said: "The person who's in charge of the destiny of our nation has become focused on one aim: to perpetuate himself in power even when this damages the country. Actually, damaging the country favours his aim, because each day we depend more upon the government."

I've already disclosed who paid the general to say things like that, so I shan't repeat it here. But there's no evidence that he's actually damaging the country, and in fact, he's delivered what the people expect of him and then some. Far from the "one-man show" hypothesis being touted by Blair and his sources, we who are paying attention get realities like this one from the independent IPS news service, showing how Venezuelans are becoming self-sufficient through co-operative farming--facilitated by the man at the top who is expropriating wasted large estates and turning them over to collectives who will, if things keep up at this rate, eventually make Venezuela self-sufficient in food. As it used to be before the oil industry came to predominate--and with them, foreign interests, who are the real ones that reduced Venezuela to dependency and who thrive on its continuation in a state of ruin.

Funny how the former General completely discounts all that. But I guess it's understandable when one is newly in the business of marketing oneself as a messiah.

Funnily, in spite of the "damaging" quotes he gets from the coattail-riders turned turncoats, Blair has to admit the obvious when there's no way of denying it:

Transforming an avowedly consumerist country like Venezuela into a socialist haven is probably impossible.

But Mr Chavez has genuinely succeeded in helping the poor. Of Caracas's five million people, about half inhabit slums, known as "barrios".

Before Mr Chavez took office in 1999, Venezuela had always been ruled by the white descendants of Spanish settlers. They monopolised wealth and power, creating one of the world's most unequal, divided societies.

Mr Chavez sought to redress the balance. He built clinics in the "barrios", staffed by Cuban doctors, giving the slum-dwellers free health care for the first time. State-owned shops sell cheap food and public banks lend the oil money to the poor.

Mr Chavez, who is a twice-elected leader, not a dictator, has won a genuine popular following. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the impoverished majority feel they have a leader who is on their side.

Yes, and they still do. Their feelings for him haven't changed, except to intensify, because they know what a struggle he's been in. They've been in it with him, and many of them have been in it even longer than he has. The reason they vote for him is not because he's a messiah (he has never claimed or tried to be), but because he's the guy who is finally doing something--something the people have asked him to do. When he was first elected in late 1998, he ran and won on a platform that included a rewrite of the old Venezuelan constitution. The new one--written by an elected assembly, not himself--won a popular ratification. The people voted not only on who would write it, but on the final document itself. Which is exactly what they asked for.

They also asked for, and got, land reform, public healthcare, public schools, public infrastructure, and an end to the creeping privatization of the state oil firm, PDVSA. They asked for, and got, affordable food, lands to farm, and a greater say in the running of the country.

And they keep on asking, because they know he's gonna keep on delivering. Which is why they, in turn, will keep on returning him to office--or, if they can't have him, they will vote for those who haven't turned against him. And they know who those people are, and no amount of NED money will convince them otherwise.

And neither will any top-loaded ignorance coming out of Britain.

John Fund: So stupid in so many ways

2008-06-30T01:16:58Z

How wrong can one man get in three paragraphs? How low can the Wall Street Journal sink? Kiddies, you're about to find out...Dr. Becker has her dissecting gloves on.

It's not been a good month for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. He had to do an about-face and call on the Marxist guerrilla group FARC to stop trying to overthrow the government of neighboring Colombia, lay down its arms and release its 700 hostages. But that head fake came only after evidence surfaced that Mr. Chávez had actually offered FARC leaders $300 million to support their terrorist operations and had even given them their own nameplate on an office in Venezuela's Pentagon.

Now Mr. Chávez has trouble on the domestic front. Marisabel Rodríguez, the former first lady of Venezuela whom Mr. Chávez divorced in 2004, announced she will run for mayor of one of Venezuela's most important cities in November local elections. She will run as an opposition candidate because she wants to "change the face and way of doing politics in this city and this country," she told reporters.

The candidacy of Ms. Rodríguez, a public relations executive, will no doubt revive stories about the couple's messy divorce. She is apparently a past master at psychological warfare against her ex-husband. "Marisabel doesn't hesitate to talk about Chávez on TV while holding their daughter, and that is the kind of tactic the opposition likes because to fight a media figure like Chávez you need to shock people in some way," says Arturo Serrano, a political scientist, told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Idiocies in italics.

Memo to Rush Limbaugh's ghostwriter: Gawd, you suck. Let us enumerate the ways...

]]> 1. The "dictator" was elected. Repeatedly. What the hell kind of dictatorship is that?

2. Chavecito did not "have to do an about-face", because he has never been pro-FARC. If anything, it's the other way around: the FARC are pro-Chavez. His position on the Colombian guerrillas has remained the same since he was first posted to the Colombian border regions in his military days. He's not happy about their violence spilling over into Venezuela, any more than he likes the fact that wealthy Venezuelan land-owners are using Colombian paramilitaries as mercenaries and to help plot coups against him. He also has proof that the Colombian army has invaded Venezuela, illegally, on numerous occasions. Why would he be in favor of a group that brings so much trouble into Venezuela?

3. The $300 million bullshit is long debunked. Get with the program. The entire laptop story is a fake, and I have proof.

4. A "nameplate on an office in Venezuela's Pentagon"? What corner of your colon did you pull that one from? There's nothing of the sort at Fuerte Tiuna. But there did use to be a US military office in there, which is very sniffy; does Venezuela have an office in the actual Pentagon?

5. Who divorced whom? And when? According to Bart Jones's book, it was ~~Madame Nhu~~ Marisabel who walked out, less than two months after the coup in April 2002. (She buggered off in June.) I don't know who filed the papers, but the point is probably moot.

6. Marisabel doesn't want to "change the way politics works" in Venezuela, unless you mean she wants to go back to the way it was. Which is to say, corrupt, slow, and generally dumber than dog snot. A change of face never meant anything under Puntofijismo. All it meant was the same shit from another asshole. Guess who is really changing the way politics works in Venezuela? Hint: He's big and sassy and wears a red shirt. And the way he's changing things will certainly clash with Marisabel's bid to return to the old status quo.

7. And anyway, what change could she make as a mayor? That's hardly running at the federal level, where the big-time action is. If she had to go up against him for president, she'd lose so badly that it wouldn't even be worth laughing at.

8. Chavez is a "media figure"? No, he's a PRESIDENT. She is the media figure. And if the comments I've seen on Aporrea are any indication, she is not exactly a wildly popular one. Her "psychological warfare" is deeply reviled, and her use of her own daughter as a pawn is also illegal under the Venezuelan child-protection law; it's considered an invasion of privacy.

Perhaps you might want to learn Spanish, Mr. Fund. Only, if you did, you'd be redder than Chavecito's shirt with humiliation to learn the awful truth.

And speaking of humiliation and awful truths, I still remember a juicy tale from your own past. Glass houses, Mr. Fund.

Festive Left Friday Blogging: "A man of some charm", for sure...

2008-06-28T03:41:21Z

Congratulations are in order for Evo Morales. This month, he and his indigenous/socialist fusion revolution made it into National Geographic--and, unlike Chavecito, he didn't get his ass slammed. This even though the same author wrote both pieces. (I know! How strange! Even stranger, Chavecito isn't mentioned in there at all, and neither is Fidel Castro--even though they're Evo's #1 and 2 allies, respectively!)

Anyhow, there's only one pic, showing Evo as he normally dresses: baseball-type jacket, button-down shirt, black jeans, sneakers--and a whackload of confetti overtop of it all. Boring. But I guess they just didn't want to supply y'all with Evo-cheesecake. For which onerous task there is Yours Most Sincerely, showing how Evo got to be cautiously termed "a man of some charm" by the Geographic's writer:

Okay, so his cute legs aren't in it (damn AP photogs!), but we can see the charm, can't we?

(Bonus: More Evo on the Geographic's website, here. And yes, he puts his charm on display for the photographer who wrote about him, too.)

Prettyboy Lopez is now SERIOUSLY disqualified...

2008-06-28T02:13:41Z

And boy, am I ever laughing my ass off over this.

The Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Diaz, informed that the Public Ministry has opened an investigation against the mayor of Chacao, Leopoldo Lopez, for allegedly attacking an agent of the National Guard at the International Airport at Maiquetia.

The incident allegedly took place in the early morning hours on last Wednesday, in the hours after Lopez returned to Venezuela from New York.

Translation mine. Link added.

And in other bad news for Pretty Leo, we have this item from Venezuelanalysis, which shows that he's no match for...A BLACK MAN!

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's candidate for mayor of Caracas, Aristobulo Isturiz, is the front-runner ahead of the November election, according to the first poll of city voters.

Isturiz, a former education minister who now hosts a show on state television, had the backing of 39 percent in the June 6-19 poll by Caracas-based Hinterlaces. Leopoldo Lopez, a Harvard-educated opposition leader who met with Barack Obama on June 21 in Miami, trailed with 30.1 percent.

The show in question is Dando y Dando, on VTV. Aporrea occasionally shows clips of it, and it's always an enlightening treat for me. Too bad it's not subtitled and more widely distributed on the Internets. Then you'd see why Aristobulo Isturiz is such a terrific candidate, and why Prettyboy has no chance against him...even assuming his disqualification doesn't hold up (which it will).

More hilarity from Paraguay

2008-06-27T20:29:48Z

This one just speaks for itself:

U.S. Ambassador James Cason's singing isn't music to the ears of one Paraguayan senator.

Cason released a CD two weeks ago of himself singing Paraguayan folk songs in the local Guarani indigenous language.

Cason tells the newspaper ABC Color he recorded the CD titled "The Field of Promises" because his wife says he has a beautiful voice.

But opposition Sen. Domingo Laino begs to differ and has asked Paraguay's Congress to denounce the diplomat.

Laino told Uno Radio on Thursday that the ambassador "sings horribly and his pronunciation of Guarani words is stammering. It is an offense to the Paraguayan people."

Cason's term as ambassador ends in August.

Which will undoubtedly be a great relief to Guarani ears. Just as no longer having to listen to John Ashcroft's croonings was a great relief to my US friends.

Prettyboy Leopoldo Lopez is at it again

2008-06-27T20:15:52Z

Once more, a fascist makes all kinds of bogus claims, including that his human rights were violated. Aporrea has the details of the lie--and the video to refute the liar:

On Thursday, Mario Silva, host of the VTV show "La Hojilla", showed some video footage taken at Maiquetia Airport that refutes the accusations made by the mayor of Chacao, Leopoldo Lopez, who recently claimed he had been held illegally and been physically attacked by five or six members of the DISIP (Venezuelan federal police) in the airport.

The events occurred last Wednesday, when Lopez returned from a trip to the United States where he went, among other reasons, to denounce his political disqualification for receiving illicit donations when he worked at the state oil company PDVSA and received money from the company on behalf of the party Primero Justicia, which was then a "civil society" organization. Lopez also claimed he met with presidential candidate Barack Obama.

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The video shows the arrival of Lopez at the airport. In it, there is also a person, possibly a DISIP agent in civilian clothes, who takes some photocopies of Lopez's passport, but at no time assaults him physically. Totally to the contrary, it is Lopez who launches himself at the other man, intending to attack him.

Lopez, for his part, also provoked other officials at the airport by trying to photograph them with his cellphone, and enters a restricted area in pursuit of one of the officials, who do not respond aggressively.

The video also shows Lopez leaving the airport, getting into a truck, and departing. The mayor later claimed that the officials had torn his shirt pocket, but the video shows it intact to the very end.

Afterwards, Lopez returned to the airport at Maiquetia with a team from the opposition TV channel Globovision to make his denunciation, showing the ripped shirt pocket and with a photocopy of his passport, which supposedly had been taken away from him by DISIP agents.

Translation mine. Video (in Spanish) at the bottom of the page.

You can see that Prettyboy (in a light blue shirt, white pants and dark belt) is very aggressive throughout it, particularly from the midway point of the roughly 20-minute first clip, when he starts chasing after the airport functionaries brandishing his cellphone and trying to take their pictures in order to provoke them into a fight. He also starts trying to shove them around. The security men, as you can see, refuse to bite; they just turn away from him and fend him off without throwing a punch. One of them is wearing a striped polo shirt; another, a dark suit. At no point does Lopez get attacked himself, nor is his shirt pocket ever damaged--UNTIL he drags in Globovision to "document" his tall tale of an attack that never happened, in the second clip, in which we suddenly see the pocket hanging by a thread. But in the first video, he's completely unrumpled. Which means that sometime between the first set of videos and the time he dragged in the Flojovision flunkies, he must have done the damage himself, or maybe he had his pal (with the knapsack in the airport video) do the job for him.

Aporrea also notes that Lopez recently claimed to have visited with Barack Obama, and had his picture taken with him. The pic in question, though, is very dubious, since both men seem to have the same skin tone in it. This even though Lopez is clearly a white man, whereas Obama definitely isn't.

One thing that is consistent about all these pics and videos, though, is the glassy, fanatical look of Leo's eyes. Scary little señorito refuses to blink. He reels off his spiel (just the usual blahblah about tyranny and how "we are not afraid"), all without pausing for breath. He's downright hyper. Is he on drugs, is he a religious cultist, or just a paranoid schizophrenic? Maybe any or all of the above; maybe none. One thing's for sure: As Mario Silva notes, he's a clown, but a dangerous one. He never loses an opportunity to make crapaganda, and the disociado minority, the Venezuelan ex-ruling class, never fails to believe him--even when he's caught in a lie, as here.

And of course, the lamestream English-speaking media will probably repeat his lies uncritically, too. He's their darling, after all--a young, superficially very good-looking white guy who "dares" to "stand up" to the non-white "dictator/tyrant/demagogue" Chavez (although, strangely, he's never had the 'nads to confront him directly on anything--probably because the Evil Big Red One would mop the floor with him without so much as raising his voice.) You'll note that they make a big issue out of the "blacklist" of candidates who have been found in violation of the law, Lopez among them--but they won't do any digging into what Lopez did that got him disqualified from running for office again.

And of course, they won't take a critical look at the airport video, either.

El Ecuadorable gets armed

2008-06-27T17:29:55Z

Looks like the Colombia problem is heating up on more fronts than one. Here's what's going on in Correa-land:

Colombian rebels in northern Ecuador are an old problem that previous governments failed to confront, Ecuador's defense minister told The Associated Press, announcing additions to a growing arsenal aimed at securing the Andean nation's borders.

Defense Minister Javier Ponce said in an interview that the government is buying six Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles and new radar so it can get a better handle on its borders, especially the troubled frontier with Colombia.

The acquisitions are in addition to 24 Super Tucano warplanes announced in May.

He said he does not consider Colombia a national security threat, though the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that dominates the northern border zone — and the illegal drug trade that fuels its insurgency — are a danger.

"We are not able to impede the establishment of guerrilla camps or drug labs, but to the degree that we have been dismantling a series of labs and camps we are establishing a certain capacity to prevent this from getting out of control," Ponce told the AP on Tuesday evening.

Incidentally, Colombia and Ecuador are still not talking to each other over the illegal bombing of a FARC camp on Ecuadorian turf this past March 1. But hey, at least Manta will soon be a thing of the past, at least as far as gringo incursion forces go.

And here's a cool factoid: Minister Ponce is also a poet! A few satirical verses excoriating El Narco would therefore be in order, yes?

Why is Washington not alarmed at this?

2008-06-27T17:00:19Z

Oh, surely not because it's only El Narco and not Chavecito calling for this rather unusual measure...

Colombia's president on Thursday called for a referendum to decide if new presidential elections should be held in the wake of a court decision that is questioning the legitimacy of his 2006 re-election.

President Alvaro Uribe said he will ask the country's congress to approve the referendum.

Uribe's demand came after the Supreme Court called Thursday for the re-evaluation of the congressional act that changed the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a second term. The Supreme Court questioned the act after a former representative was found guilty of having changed her vote in 2004 to support the president's bid for re-election.

Yidis Medina, who was sentenced to 47 months, claimed senior members of the government offered her supporters jobs in exchange for her key vote. Uribe's administration has denied the charges.

But of course, he IS looking to change the constitution and run. Even his own defence minister, the most likely successor, is being blocked by El Narco, who wants to hang onto power, it seems, for life.

The ghost of Pablo Escobar must be rolling around the bowels of hell, laughing his ass off.

Aww, too bad!

2008-06-26T01:10:13Z

What a shame. Lord Blah-Blah has to serve out his full sentence:

Conrad Black's conviction on fraud and obstruction of justice charges has been upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The court said today that defence lawyers' arguments weren't strong enough to topple Black's conviction.

Black has been at a minimum-security prison in Florida since March serving a 6 1/2-year sentence.

Minimum security, such a light sentence--and he still appealed it? What a self-important wanker.