News of the Restless

James Petras, eminent social historian, has José Miguel Vivanco's number...and he calls it:

José Miguel Vivanco served as a diplomatic functionary under the bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1986-1989, serving no less as the butcher's rabid apologist before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. His behavior was particularly egregious during the regime's brutal repression of a mass popular uprising in the squatter settlements of Santiago in 1986-1987. With the return of electoral politics (democracy) in Chile, Vivanco took off to Washington where he set up his own NGO, the Center for Justice and International Law, disguising his right-wing affinities and passing himself off as a 'human rights' advocate.

Read the whole thing. You'll never be fooled by the words "human rights" in an organization's name again.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From Aporrea, one of those things that make you want to crow...or just watch somebody else eat it:

Attorneys belonging to the American Association of Jurists rejected the content of the report on human rights in Venezuela presented by José Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch, on Monday.

On the VTV program Dando y Dando, the jurists advised that the sources mentioned in the report were all based in stories from opposition media and NGOs, as well as references to private institutions.

Carlos Chacón, president of the association, said that the report is politically motivated and that the executive secretary of Human Rights Watch is a member of the CIA directorate and that the government of Venezuela is in their crosshairs.

[...]

For his part, the vice-president of the organization, Ernesto Amezquita, emphasized that this precedent would serve to unmask many "self-styled human rights institutions" who have made a business of this topic and who "sell themselves to the highest bidder".

Translation mine.

BTW, if you haven't yet read Michael Barker's excellent exposé of HRW, who's in it and who's behind it, now would be a good time. I frankly wasn't surprised to find out that the infamous Ford Foundation is a major contributor. The Ford Foundation has long used "human rights" in Latin America as a mask for their corporate founders' distinctly antidemocratic, anti-rights activities, and of course, their ties to the CIA as well.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 3:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...singin' doo wah ditty ditty dum ditty doo...

José Miguel Vivanco and Daniel Wilkinson, on their way out of Maiquetía Airport in Venezuela, en route to São Paulo, Brazil, looking like two walking peptic ulcers.

So, some people are wringing their hands about how Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolás Maduro just flat-out told the guys from Human Rights Watch that the door's over there, and not to let it hit 'em where their mamas done split 'em? And oh, how bad this looks on Venezuela? Like it confirms every bad thing HRW has said?

Continue reading "There they go, with their tails between their legs..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What century is this again?

Rev. Sergio G. Roman sounded the alarm against miniskirts in an online publication to prepare Catholics for a church family-values forum next year in Mexico City.

"When we show our body without prudence, without modesty, we are prostituting ourselves," wrote Roman, a Mexico City priest.

Continue reading "Yep, that Catholic church is sure progressing..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Found something interesting and curious at Aporrea and just had to translate:

"For 60 years, we of GMV have been working with Venezuela and its people; it's our fundamental job to think of this organization as a great human team, which has the right to exercise its functions to contribute to the well-being of the country, of business, of its families, and ourselves." (El Nacional, Page 1-21, Sunday, August 17, 2008)

Some older workers will recall that during the first administration of Rafael Caldera, General Motors had an assembly plant in La Yaguara, Caracas--surrounded by high electric fences and watchtowers with reflectors, in order to defend itself against guerrilla attacks.

A rebellious worker, detained by company security and the National Guard, was incarcerated and tortured for several days in a dungeon on the premises, before being handed over to the DIGEPOL, the infamous political police of those days. When he was finally freed, the worker took his case to the Ministry of Labor whose head, Tarre Murzi, ordered an inspection of the GM plant.

The Ministry inspectors weren't allowed to enter, on the grounds that GM was a US business, so the Ministry had no jurisdiction over it. The minister, indignant, called a press conference to which, strangely, no one came. When a second such conference was similarly boycotted by the official and private media, Tarre Murzi took up the embarrassing matter with President Caldera--who, true to his "principles", fired the minister.

Continue reading "What's good for GM ain't so good for Venezuela" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First, they made an attempt on the life of the president of Ecuador:

Continue reading "Oh, those "pro-life" Catholics!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looks like the "new" Conservative federal government up here is getting old awful fast. They're a minority, but they bully like they're the only game in town, and a Globe & Mail editorial calls them on it:

Last year, the governing Conservatives prepared a secret handbook on how to disrupt parliamentary committees and create chaos. No mere pamphlet, the book ran to 200 pages.

It instructed committee chairmen to select blatantly biased witnesses and tutor them in advance. It gave the chairmen pointers on how to obstruct parliamentary business, to storm out of meetings if necessary.

Team Harper never expected its opus to be made public. But the media got hold and the headlines poured forth - "Tories blasted for handbook on paralyzing Parliament" and the like.

Liberal Ralph Goodale noted how it was rather peculiar to see the government getting its knickers in a knot over a dysfunctional, chaotic Parliament when, in fact, "the government's deliberate plan is to cause a dysfunctional, chaotic Parliament."

We thought the Grits were bad, chimed in the New Democrat, Libby Davies. But these guys, she said, were taking the gutter stuff to a new level. "They've codified it."

Continue reading "And this is why I call them SupposiTories" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jayzuz. What is it with all these right-wing shit disturbers? They get people all riled up, and then they don't even show up to their own demonstrations? Case in point: Two rather prominent Venezuelan business leaders who keep trying to topple an elected president. From Aporrea, a parliamentary moment of truth:

Dario Vivas, PSUV deputy of the National Assembly, denounced Miguel Henrique Otero, owner of the newspaper El Nacional and spokesman of the "2D Movement" for having left the country for Puerto Rico after having called for demonstrations against the Enabling Laws and in support of disqualified candidates.

Vivas showed a video of Otero abandoning the country from Maiquetia airport, and said that the departure took place the day before the demonstration which Otero had called for in a furious manner, causing indignation in those who had seen him leaving the country after having called on citizens to "take the streets" and "not recognize the Enabling Laws" in the name of the "2D Movement, a supposed group of opposition intellectuals.

Vivas denounced Miguel Henrique Otero for publishing a call to mobilize "for the Fatherland, for the disqualified, and against the 26 Enabling Laws" in his his own newspaper. But then "he caught a plane, boarded on Saturday, and headed for San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the company of a young woman named Antonieta." Apparently, Otero returned a few days later.

Deputy Vivas compared the behavior of Otero to that of Carlos Fernandez, who was president of Fedecamaras in 2002 during the oil lockout headed by the opposition. Fernandez called for a demonstration on the last day of the year against the government--at the same time as he was celebrating New Year's Eve in Aruba.

Translation mine. Video at the site.

Fat chance that we'll ever see an Otero or a Fernandez on the frontlines along with the "students", taking a bullet from their own side in the name of "the fatherland". These guys are more than content to call the shots from a safe distance--like oh, say, as far away as Aruba or San Juan, Puerto Rico. What sort of person does that make them?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Armando Valladares: from false invalid poet to business speculator".

According to Aporrea, this video got yanked from YouTube on the grounds that it is "false and defamatory". I watched it and can't for the life of me see what would be false or defamatory about it. If anyone's false and defamatory here, it would be Valladares; after all, why would a former policeman under Batista, anti-Castro bomb-planter in Havana, and later darling of the freedom-loving Reagan administration, lie?

Sheesh. Most disabled people I know tend to stay that way, especially if their problem is a pair of bad legs that lands them in a wheelchair, as Valladares insists happened to him (which, according to a book he wrote for the US Information Agency, resulted from malnutrition and mistreatment after his imprisonment for, get this, dissent. Yeah, that's right, bombing Havana for Batista is just "free speech".)

In all current pictures of him, Valladares looks remarkably hale. He is still able to stand and walk. A miracle of non-socialized medicine, no doubt. Either that, or Fidel must be the Second Coming of Christ, because so far's I know, Jesus was the only guy ever to tell a paralytic to get up and walk, and actually get results. Because, you see, the main condition of Valladares' release was that he walk onto the plane that carried him out of Cuba. Apparently, he managed to summon up the ability right in time!

BTW, in case you're wondering, the video was ordered yanked by the so-called Human Rights Foundation--that organization run by ex-Venezuelan no-'count Thor Halvorsen, whose sole purpose seems to be the defamation of Cuba and Venezuela. Certainly it hasn't upheld human rights worth shit, or the Iraqis might now be free of occupation, and Afghanistan ditto. But then again, I guess Iraqis and Afghans aren't human, so they don't have rights. Problem solved!

Oh, and apparently Vcrisis nutjob Alek Boyd is in on the yankage, too. He's now decided to join forces with the un-thundergodly Thor. Surprise, surprise.

Jeez, what is it with all these bogus "human rights activists"? Are they all trying to out-Kissinger each other in their quest for a Nobel peace prize, or what?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Poor Yon Goicoechea. Such a cute young guy, such high hopes attached...and what are they coming to? A few months ago, the Cato Institute paid him half a million dollars to spread neoliberal/neocon/neofascist crapaganda and astroturf all over Venezuela. Playboy's Venezuelan edition also obligingly gave him huge fanfare (between pictures of silicone-stuffed bunnies, natch.) Do you think they're getting their money's worth? Aporrea doesn't:

Yon Goicoechea, opposition youth leader and student at Andres Bello Catholic University, said on Wednesday during an opposition demonstration that the movement he heads is disposed toward "setting this city on fire" if the State doesn't backtrack on the decision of the Comptroller General to uphold the disqualifications of some 270 would-be political candidates on the grounds of irregularities in the exercise of their duties.

Draped with a Venezuelan flag like a superhero's cape, Goicoechea declared on Globovision that "this Chavismo, which is filling our city with trash, deaths and blood, is impossible to sustain. People need to solve their problems by way of votes. They want to solve their problems the peaceful way. They want to solve their problems by way of justice.

"What are they looking for? That the people set this city on fire?" he continued. "What are they looking for? They're looking for violence! If they don't catch on and let Venezuelans express themselves freely at the polls...if they don't let us demonstrate our enormous non-conformity with the government by way of regular channels, then they must be looking for us to burn up this city. What's the matter with the government? Don't they care that the disqualified candidates are suffering human rights violations?"

Continue reading "Yon-Yon's big yawn-yawn" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow, talk about CHEAP...

He insinuates that Obama forgot Latin America. That's not quite true--Obama's a sucker for the whole Monroe Doctrine thing--but it's very easy to accuse him of not talking about Latin America when you are doing the exact same thing yourself!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This just in, from Aporrea:

Just minutes ago we were informed that Gonzalo Gomez, co-founder of Aporrea and currently a member of the Regional Political Committee of the Capital District of the PSUV, was attacked by followers of Leopoldo Lopez and the opposition party, Un Nuevo Tiempo. The incident occurred in Colombia Street in the populous neighborhood of Catia, Caracas.

Gonzalo Gomez was on his way back from an event in support of the victims of April 11-14, 2002, when he encountered a group of UNT supporters. The member of the Aporrea editorial team said to his companions that they reminded him of those who had been the authors of the coup d'etat and the killers of innocents in April, 2002.

Upon hearing this, an intolerant member of the opposition group recognized him and began to assail him physically, hitting him in the mouth. While trying to defend himself, Gomez was jumped by various others, who also attacked him and threatened him with death.

Fortunately, the PSUV member emerged in good condition from this situation, despite the blows he received. At the moment he is denouncing the perpetrators before the local police.

Translation mine.

The article ends with a call for calm from a source which the media up here would call unlikely:

This is an appeal to those who defend peace and non-violence before the media, and call those who support the revolution "aggressors" and "savages". Stop these fascist actions and this violence. Today, we have seen that the "aggressors" and the "savages" were not the revolutionary people but those who, from day to day, keep trying to impede the advance of the social justice which the less fortunate have been clamoring after for so many years.

No reasonable person could disagree that social justice has been a long time coming to Venezuela, or that anyone who stands in its way is the real savage.

But of course, I fully expect to see the media here, taking their cues from El Nazional and El Luniversal, report this incident only as a case of Chavista provocation and attack, if they report it at all.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Venezuelan opposition is so rabid and so bloodthirsty, they'll stop at nothing to get Hugo Chavez out of office. They'll stage violence as a way of "protesting" it. They'll even kill their own. We saw that already on April 11, 2002, when they staged a coup in which rooftop snipers and undercover sharpshooters, in concert with Metropolitan Caracas police officers (controlled by an anti-Chavez mayor, Alfredo Peña) fired on Chavista and anti-Chavista demonstrators alike. In the final death toll, there were more Chavistas than anti-Chavistas killed, but the point of my mentioning it is this: They will even kill their own if it "helps" them politically. They have absolutely no compunctions about it.

Here, however, is one example of such terror tactics backfiring, badly. In recent violence at the University of Los Andes (ULA), a young anti-Chavista demonstrator, Douglas Rojas, was fatally wounded by shrapnel. 48 hours later, he was declared dead. His fellow M-13ers were quick to blame the death on the police, who they say fired on them with shotguns full of the stuff.

But the following video tells a different story:

Continue reading "M-13 terrorists kill their own" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Only one paragraph from the head of a news item in Venezuelanalysis, but oh my...

A notoriously violent Venezuelan student organization aligned with the Venezuelan opposition known as the March 13th Movement (M13) fired gunshots and threw Molotov cocktails at police officers, blockaded streets using seized university buses, and ransacked sections of the Andean town of Mérida on Thursday and Friday, to protest crime and insecurity in the city.

Did you get that? The M-13 "students" are "protesting crime and insecurity"...by resorting to crime and creating insecurity.

And just to compound the irony, there's this: the murder rate is down, and drug interceptions are up. Uh, what's that the M-13 thuggies were saying about crime and insecurity, again?

Meanwhile, in other utterly unironic news, we get this snippet from the BoRev guest blogger, El Catire:

Opposition Just Can't Decide: One day they call Chavez's government corrupt, next day they march to criticize a measure that would stop corrupt people from running for public office. What gives?

Hey Blond Guy, I'll tell you what gives: This is just more made-for-the-media whackjobbery from a faction that is entertaining to watch sometimes, if only for its utter lack of a sense of irony. The fact that nearly half of the "blacklist" consists of crooked, opportunistic and coattail-riding "Chavistas" (in name only, not in spirit) goes forever unmentioned in the lamestream media.

But hey, at least Chavecito's drama-queeny ex is predictably down with all the latest ruckus. So I guess that means they must have a point!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Oh God, I won a rhinestone tiara for one whole year! All the torture has been worth it!"

Well, here's a foregone conclusion that I wish the world could forego: Once again, a totally un-Venezuelan-looking Miss Venezuela has been crowned a very un-universal Miss Universe. And some brave "independent" Australian kookaburra has seen fit to lay an egg on the Internets about it. (Insert obligatory reference to communism and tyranny anywhere you like, mate. And don't forget to totally ignore the distinctions between communism and socialism.)

Meanwhile, for the real lowdown on this ultra-hyped pseudo-event, we turn to Aporrea, which has the scoop on where the real tyranny lies--and no, it ain't communism or even socialism. Here goes my rough translation of selections from the article, with commentaries in between:

Continue reading "Hideous tanorexia strikes again!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

...well, I was gonna say "go fuck a dog", but they've already done that. Here's what was actually said:

President Chavez has repeatedly denied that Venezuela provided any kind of material support to the FARC and that the only contacts his government has had with the FARC was to facilitate the release of hostages held by the FARC. In early 2008 Chavez managed to convince the FARC to release six out of 45 of its high profile hostages.

Two weeks ago, Interior Minister Rodriguez Chacín said he had met personally with FARC leaders during the negotiations of hostage releases which Colombia invited Venezuela to help mediate last August. Rodriguez Chacín assured that the "only contacts" President Chávez had with the FARC were at the request of the Colombian government for the sake of the peace process.

There. So, what's this about a need to "clarify" something? It's been clear for, oh, like FOREVER.

On the other hand, it looks to me like HRW has some clearing-up of its own to do:

Continue reading "Venezuela tells Human Rights Watch to..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Human Rights Watch has totally screwed the pooch where Venezuela is concerned.

I know, they're supposed to be a serious human-rights organization, but it's kind of hard to take seriously an organization that gets used so often to promote the State Dept.'s war plans over actual human rights (such as the fundamental right not to be killed by Washington's allies, for example). And every so often, they betray their true nature with hysterical press releases that might as well have been written by Andres Oppenheimer or Simon Romero. They'd be great comic fodder, if only people learned to take them the right way--namely, with a truckload of salt on top and a whoopie cushion underneath.

The part of this particular one that makes me laugh loudest is this nifty juxtaposition right here:

Continue reading "It's now official..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colombian journalist and former TV anchorwoman Virginia Vallejo, now living in Miami, has written an explosive tell-all book about her lengthy affair with drug lord Pablo Escobar, titled Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar. Here, in an interview with a Brazilian TV reporter, she reveals Escobar's corrupting connections with a man you may recognize today. He used to be the mayor of Medellin, the cocaine capital of Colombia and the murder capital of the world. Later, he was the governor of the state of Antioquia. Today, Alvaro Uribe is the president of the land.

Video in Spanish and Portuguese.

Escobar's thugs murdered at least three presidential candidates who refused to take his drug money, including the liberal, Luis Carlos Galan. His saying was "Plata o plomo"--silver or lead. Bucks or bullets--those were your choices if you crossed paths with him. If you didn't take his money and do him favors, you were a dead man. He later crossed over into outright terrorism--exchanging bullets for bombs. Virginia Vallejo, fearing for her life, broke off all relations with Escobar and fled to Miami, where she sought and received federal protection.

And Alvaro Uribe, who is the US's "ally" in the "War on Drugs" today, was far from being the enemy of this feared and powerful drug lord. On the contrary, they were very buddy-buddy--to the point where Escobar lent him a helicopter after the death of his father (at the hands of the FARC, his pet hate today--whom Uribe, ironically, accuses of being "narco-terrorists", with nary a peep about his own considerable past in narco-terrorism.) Uribe, in his gubernatorial capacity of okaying aviation licences in his state, handed them out like Halloween candy to Escobar's lackeys. Guess what use they were put to. And all this while the crack-cocaine epidemic in the US raged at its height, and the War on Drugs made no progress. Gee, is it any wonder?

And Escobar's thugs were not the only ones who enjoyed impunity under Uribe. The right-wing paramilitaries, whom the drug lords and large landowners alike employed to terrorize whole communities and suppress the left, also benefited from Uribe's official string-pulling and lever-pushing.

Isn't Uribe a fine one to call the FARC "narco-terrorists", when some of his closest friends and allies...would fit that description even better?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...stuff David Horowitz in it. His "Campus Crusade for Fascism" is so over.

I'm guessing his real objection to this 'toon is that it's too accurate.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Auntie Condi's double-talk just jumped up to bite her.

Now, when will it do the same for Dubya and the Big Dick?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a Canadian, I must say reading things like this makes me hang my head in shame. See if you can guess why:

Canada is often thought of as a land of bland consensus and multicultural harmony - the last place where you would expect to see a religious minority up in arms, and journalists accusing the state of gagging freedom of speech.

Yet in recent months, these have become fixtures of the country's public debate.

The opening shot was fired by Mark Steyn, an outspoken conservative columnist regarded by supporters as the Canadian equivalent of Denmark's cartoonists or the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Continue reading "They call THIS upholding free speech?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I see that somebody has the same sense of unaccountability as her Commander in Thief does.

Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.

In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant — and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.

"I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved," she was quoted as saying.

Continue reading "Lynndie England's Nurnberg Defence" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My American friends, it's time to take yet another lesson from Venezuela. This one, in particular, may interest you...

Venezuelan prosecutors have summoned former President Jaime Lusinchi to appear in court next month to face accusations in the 1986 killings of nine people.

The attorney general's office said in a statement Friday that Lusinchi has been called to appear in court on April 1 "for presumably being linked to the act."

Continue reading "Memo to the US: This is how you handle bad presidents!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, you read that correctly. Dubya, that great champion of freedom, is a would-be censor, making sure the people of the United States stay in the dark about what's really happening in Iraq. Here's the video:

Ahahaha...I think I know why he doesn't want you to see this. The Iraqis want the Dems to win, and they like both Hillary Clinton AND Barack Obama. They have nothing good to say about the situation the war has plunged their country into. And it is SO OBVIOUS from this that the Iraqis are not the backward stupidheads BushCo wants us to believe they are.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can you believe this bit of breathtaking logic?

The Colombian defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, justified at a press conference on Friday the killings of four Mexican students during the attack by Colombia on Ecuadorian territory.

The minister assured that these young people "were no little angels", and attempted to link them to the FARC guerrillas in order to defend the murders.

Continue reading "They were no angels, so we killed them" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

And they've committed two hacks. One on the website of a certain Ecuadorable president:

The official website of the Presidency of Ecuador (www.presidencia.gov.ec) was blocked today for the second time by a hacker who left it out of service.

The info-pirate left a message, "Don't mess with Colombia", and blocked all access to infromation on the portal, which remained disabled for several hours until, around 2 p.m. local time (7 p.m. GMT), it came back online but with error messages.

Continue reading "Uribe's thugs are on the Internets" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does this sound like the behavior of anyone you know?

Continue reading "Oh look, the world's #1 terrorism sponsor is projecting again" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...and of course, it would have to be Colombia, deciding to repeat not-so-ancient history and once more, conduct a raid on foreign soil without having the common decency to identify that soil's government about its intentions ahead of time.

Continue reading "So this is what John Perkins warned Rafael Correa about..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Note: I totally respect John McCain's bipartisan work (with fellow senator Russ Feingold, D-HotStuff) on campaign financing reform, even if it never went anywhere (because the Bushpig Party just ran a big-ass dollar-driven steamroller right over it). But this is just ridiculous--and Fidel Castro has called him out for it:

Continue reading "Fidel to McCain: Bitch, please!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looks like Alvaro Uribe has some unsavory company.

Although it's undeniable that most of those who marched this past Monday in Bogota and other Colombian cities were ordinary people demonstrating their indignation or rejection of the FARC, groups of skinheads or neo-Nazis also took advantage of the day to march against the irregular army, as you can see in this video of the march, taken by the daily El Tiempo de Colombia newspaper and available on their YouTube channel.

The far-right youths shouted slogans against communism, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and the FARC.

"No to communism! No more Chavez, no more FARC" can be heard in the YouTube video. So can shouts of "Uribe, friend, we're with you till the end", this in spite of the fact that the demonstration was supposedly convened by independent youth, without political banners, via the Internet.

Translation mine. Here's the video:

The Nazis appear at about the 2:20 mark.

Hey Alvaro, is the enemy of your "enemy" your friend? Better find some other friends, then.

And hey! So much for the common complaint from the Venezuelan right that Chavez's supporters are Nazis. Turns out, the Nazis hate him, in both Colombia AND Venezuela--they all think he's a commie. Go figure!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Warning: Extreme victim-blaming by someone who probably does EVERYTHING he accuses Those People (i.e. the poor and blacks of New Orleans, whom he calls "GARBAGE") of doing...

Malmö Blue writes:

YOU, the consumer can do something to protest this smut and get this guy off the air!

Do like Nancy, a regular caller to KPHX, who has already announced that she will cancel her cable service provided by COX Communications Inc., owner of WSB 750 AM! Good for you, Nancy!

Be sure to let them know in writing that you disapprove of such hate mongering and will not have any business dealings with any company who supports it...

Address:

Cox Communications Inc.

1400 Lake Hearn Drive

Atlanta, Georgia 30319 U.S.A.

Telephone:

(404) 843-5000

Cox subscribers, please exercise your wallet power. Get this racist scumbag off the air. He is a useless, worthless parasite of the public airwaves, and it is time to kick this pile of trash to the curb.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

And of course, since this happened in Cuba, we only get to hear about it after the fact...

Former CIA agent Philip Agee, a critic of U.S. foreign policy who infuriated American intelligence officials by naming purported agency operatives in a 1975 book, has died, state media reported Wednesday. He was 72.

Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged CIA misdeeds against leftists in the region and included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.

[...]

Agee's U.S. passport was revoked in 1979. U.S. officials said he had threatened national security. After years of living in Hamburg, Germany — occasionally underground, fearing CIA retribution — Agee moved to Havana to open a travel Web site.

The site, cubalinda.com, is designed to bring U.S. tourists to Cuba, offering package tours and other help that is largely off-limits to Americans because of the U.S. trade embargo. Agee opened the site in 2000 with European investors and a state-run travel agent as his partners.

There was no mention of Agee's death on the site Wednesday.

Continue reading "Philip Agee has died" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...and neither does he, nor any of his lackeys, have the slightest concept of a little thing known as reading comprehension.

Think Progress has ferreted out the real source of Dubya's antipathy to embryonic stem cell research--a total misinterpretation of an improbable scenario from Aldous Huxley (read aloud to him, of course, by one of his loyal flunkies, since Dubya can't be bothered to bestir himself):

Continue reading "More proof that Dubya doesn't read" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mario Silva of La Hojilla points out the neo-Nazi skinheads amid the anti-Chavez hordes in Venezuela, along with their connections to the "Tradition, Family and Property" movement (gee, even the name sounds fascist!) led by a leading oppositionist (and according to two Italian sources, a bona fide nazified thug complete with antisemitism), Alejandro Pena Esclusa. You can see they're busy during one of their "nonviolent" demos, throwing rocks at the police.

This is that "peaceful anti-Chavez youth movement" we keep hearing so much about in the lamestream media up here, folks.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"So far I've found him to be a man of his word. He's done more for democracy in Pakistan than any other modern leader has."

--Dubya, talking about you-know-who.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...see, he's legally elected!

Pakistan's new Supreme Court has - as expected - dismissed the final legal challenge to the recent re-election of President Pervez Musharraf.

Gen Musharraf's opponents had argued that his election was illegal because he was still head of the army.

The move clears the way for the general to resign as army chief, as promised, and be sworn in as a civilian leader.

Continue reading "No, he's not a dictator..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does anyone seriously believe this will lead anywhere productive?

Continue reading "Ruling with a fist of irony" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"History teaches us that underestimating the words of evil, ambitious men is a terrible mistake."

--Dubya, who would know that from personal experience, today at a meeting of the brownshirt clans

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Democratically elected, ratified, signed, sealed and delivered Hugo Chavez of Venezuela: BAD.

Despotic, nasty, homophobic real, live dictator of Uganda: GOOD.

President Bush met at the White House on Tuesday with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for talks that focused on trade, HIV/AIDS but seemingly ignored alleged human rights abuses of gays and lesbians.

The two emerged from the meeting to appear for a camera opportunity with Bush praising Museveni for his push to lower the AIDS rate in the African nation by emphasizing abstinence until marriage.

"Uganda is the epitome of how one can implement a comprehensive ABC strategy to achieve concrete and specific results for the sake of humanity," said Bush.

Continue reading "...but he's OUR sonofabitch!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And for confirmation of the above, check out Wonkette's account of what sex with Larry Craig was like 20 years ago, at least for one then-young, naive lad unfortunate enough to experience it.

(Actually, it rings rather true, given that this IS a deep-closet toilet troller we're talking about. He and everyone around him are still in ye olde denial mode.)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, it is!

Do you know what your wealthy right-wing media robber barons are doing this week? Well, one of them is getting divorced from Trophy Wife #2. It is delectably messy, and there's too much juicy stuff to excerpt here, so I'll just give you the linky to clicky. And remember, character counts!

Meanwhile, speaking of character, you may also want to check out what Jonathan Schwartz of Tom Tomorrow has found on the company King George the Dubya keeps. Not for nothing is Hosni Mubarak's crypto-dictatorship in Egypt credited (or blamed) for the rise of the terrorist wing of Islamism. When a country's leadership has no problem ordering the drugging, sodomy and execution of 13-year-olds, a backlash is just bound to arise. Character counts!

You might also enjoy Joan Walsh's laundry list, on Salon.com, of GOP flip-floppers. Once again, character counts!

Also on Salon: Gary Kamiya's devastating dissection of the real character of Dubya, by way of examining what he's done in the name of "moral clarity"--surely THAT has something to do with character, does it not? Remember, by their fruits shall ye know them--and character counts!

Finally, you know all you need to about the character of these people when they gang up to attack 12-year-olds. Character really counts there.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Pilger's documentary, broadcast on British channel ITV in 2000, explores just how old the "Saddam had WMDs" fallacy was, and how destructive. And also how hypocritical was all the tut-tutting on the part of the US and Great Britain. Both countries were responsible for the ascension of Saddam as well as for the WMD stockpiles he did possess--the same ones which were destroyed later on under the UN's eyes.

Judging by the sudden jumps in cancer rates and birth defects, related by the doctors you see here, it's a no-brainer that Iraq was nuked with the ultimate dirty bomb--the "depleted" uranium shell. Yet another layer of Anglo-American hypocrisy reveals itself. Just who were these people to try to starve out Iraq in the name of eliminating a dictator they created and armed? And what right had they to use WMD on Iraq--in the name of eliminating Saddam and his WMD, which they themselves supplied?

Bear in mind that this is the country PNAC urged Bill Clinton to bomb in 1998, feeling that what was going on, though devastating to ordinary Iraqis, was just not devastating enough. Clinton declined to bomb--but over half a million sanctions-related child deaths were, apparently, quite acceptable to Madeleine Albright's State Department. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein and his cronies were demonstrably NOT affected in the slightest by the sanctions. Gee, maybe PNAC was right about bombing and full-scale war (i.e. more death, more destruction, and even less humanitarian aid getting through) being needed to dislodge him.

Oh wait, there was bombing, too. It was still not enough to appease PNAC. Maybe because the targets were a few shepherds, their children...and sheep.

And don't forget, this all happened BEFORE Gulf War II and the current occupation.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Young Turks take on an old jerk--Oral "I need $8 million or God will call me home" Roberts:

You can tell he really put a LOT of thought into that sermon.

A lot of icky, icky thought.

Now, look at his photo, and imagine someone letting him put his "man's male organ" in the place where he claims is the only part of a woman designed for it.

That's a pretty damn icky thought too, no?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Incredible!

It may be more than a year away, but Americans already think they know what the big issues of the 2008 presidential election will be.

On the thousands of web pages, acres of newsprint and hours of airtime already devoted to the long race to the White House, two subjects get most attention: how and when to end the war in Iraq and how healthcare should be paid for.

But another issue is gaining prominence, one which is of much greater significance to the rest of the world.

Indeed, it is one that could have profound implications for the global economy.

The issue is free trade.

President Bush devoted his most recent weekly radio address to lauding the benefit America gets from free trade deals.

"Millions of American jobs depend on exports," he said.

"More exports support better and higher-paying jobs - and to keep our economy expanding, we need to keep expanding trade."

Continue reading "An election issue, you say?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Really!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

"Way to support the troops, Boil Butt!"

Anthony from Sweden, aka Malmo Blue, calls in at about 5:30 in this YouTube (which he made and posted.)

Way to give ol' Boil-Butt the red-ass, Anthony and Mike!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looks like that whole immunity-for-ex-paramilitaries thing isn't working out so well in Colombia. Whatta surprise:

A US court has requested the extradition of former Colombian paramilitary boss Carlos Jimenez.

The move comes a few days after Jimenez, alias Macaco, was stripped of his preferential prison treatment afforded to demobilised fighters.

Colombia said Jimenez violated a peace agreement by continuing to organise cocaine shipments and run a criminal empire from prison.

Jimenez is wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges.

Continue reading "Well, that didn't take long..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:17 AM | Permalink

How else but with a "free" trade agreement?

Congress will give priority treatment to approval of a trade pact with Peru when it reconvenes in September, the head of the House Ways and Means Committee said Monday.

"It is a priority when we return to the Congress in September," Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, told reporters after meeting with President Alan Garcia.

Continue reading "How to enable a tyrant" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(Translation: "Alan's back, let's get out of here!")

And now he's got the entire country on strike against him, not even one year after taking office for the second time in his very checkered career. This has got to be some kind of record.

Continue reading "Oh darn, there's that Peruvian tyrant again!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

First, there's this little gem from La Hojilla, VTV's excellent news-dissection show:

Continue reading "Two fresh bombshells on the Keystone Koup of 2002" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...in Peru.

The Peruvian government declared a state of emergency on Thursday for 15 days in the province of Coronel Portillo, Ucayali department, because of violent confrontations between strikers and police. The decree suspends constitutional guarantees of liberty and personal security, the inviolability of the home, and the freedom to meet and travel.

From Aporrea; translation mine.

Incredible. And yet, not a word about it in the US media. They're too busy trying to tar Hugo Chavez with the dictator label and make it stick. Meanwhile, Alan Garcia is acting the part much more closely, and do you think anyone says boo about him? No. Why? No oil. Or at least, not enough of it...and no resistance to international vampire corporations on the part of Garcia. In fact, he's more than happy to repress strikers and suspend constitutional liberties in an entire region.

Lovely!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You can always tell what side a newspaper is on by how they choose to present any given story. Take this, for example, from the Washington Post...the paper that has the dubious distinction of having bogged down in complacency since its Watergate glory days:

It was a tiny gesture of protest: a dozen college students flagging down cars for an hour on Embassy Row this month, wearing symbolic white gags across their mouths and holding up posters that quoted Albert Camus and Walt Whitman on the importance of free speech.

But the anger of these Venezuela-born young people -- furious at the shutdown of a popular private TV channel in Caracas -- reflected the fast-rising political fervor that is gripping Venezuelan immigrants in the United States after years of private frustration over the tightening revolutionary grip of President Hugo Chavez.

Continue reading "Washington Post sinks into the oil-soaked swamp" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:44 PM | Permalink

Luigino Bracci, a popular Chavista blogger (El Espacio de Lubrio), has had his YouTube channel killed. The reason is not what you might expect. Luigino published neither an incitement to violence, nor hate speech, nor pornography, nor a recipe for Molotov cocktails. His no-no? Posting a debate originally broadcast on the Spanish TV channel Antena 3, in which a Globovision "journalist", invited to a panel discussion, got her past handed to her:

(Video posted by Radioaporrea. Watch your backs, folks, you might be next.)

Continue reading "Censored by YouTube--but why?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You better kiss my boots for this, people, I had to go all the way to Cuba to get it.

(Well, all right--to Granma.)

Throughout the world, many countries have adopted sovereign decision to not renew [broadcast] concessions or to allow them to expire. For example:

Peru, in April 2007, decided to shut down two television channels and three radio stations for incompliance with its Radio and Television Law, expired licenses and utilization of non-homologous equipment.

Say, who is the president of Peru? A communist? Nope...Alan Garcia. The "neo-liberal" darling of the newspaper neo-cons.

Continue reading "More untold news about TV licence revocations" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No shit--this really happened!

An opposition student leader named Stalin Gonzalez (I'm not making this up--that is his real name!) accuses Hugo Chavez of being a "right-wing military". He also thinks his infamous namesake was a "leftist". Um, that would come as a considerable shock to the original Left Communists, whose democratic stance Chavecito greatly admires (and often cites), and who would probably see that Stalin quite differently, especially in light of his supplying the Nazi war machine in the early days of WWII. (His famous purges and blatant nationalism would only have confirmed his identity as being of the far right wing of the Communist Party.)

Continue reading "Stalin calls Chavez "right-wing"" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 2:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)