News of the Restless

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 02:35 AM | Permalink

...I think you dropped something. Namely, all mention of a tyrannical Latin American president--in PERU!

In view of the protests of 60 ethnic groups from the Amazonian jungle against official decrees, the Peruvian government declared three provinces and one municipality in state of emergency on Monday.

According to a resolution published in the official journal El Peruano, the state of emergency was declared to keep the peace after at least nine people were injured during some encounters between the police and the natives.

The measure provides the suspension of constitutional rights which prevents the exercise of certain rights like the freedom of assembly and movement, and gives the police authority to arrest and carry out raids without a warrant.

The state of emergency comprises the provinces of Bagua and Utcubamba, the north of the Amazon and Datem del Marañon, Loreto in the west, and the municipality of Echarate in the southern region of Cuzco.

Well, looky there. Alan Garcia ruling by decree--and not within limitations of constitutionality and basic human decency like Chavecito, either. He's tyrannizing over the indigenous, in particular.

Now: For the entire last 18 months, when Chavecito had power to legislate by decree, there was not a single state of emergency in Venezuela, despite lashings of violence from the opposition which could, legitimately, have resulted in a crackdown. Contrast that with the situation in Peru, where people routinely get their heads busted open for simply protesting!

But will the major media mention it, let alone in the context of tyranny in Peru, the way they often do Chavecito, who has not a scrap of actual tyranny to his name? Noooooo. At most, they only cite this approvingly as an example of his "law and order" program at work. (And get this: they make out like it's the "Indians" who are at fault.) No mention of the suppression of constitutionality. Not a peep from Andres Oppenheimer, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Simon Romero or any other crapaganda-cranker about tyranny. Couldn't be because Peru's tyrant, like Colombia's, passes muster with Big Crapital, while Venezuela's democrat doesn't...could it?

Nahhhhhhhh...of course not.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:23 AM | Permalink

If you ever wanted to know about US mercenaries and just how low they can go, this is the guy who wrote the book. It's called Blackwater, and it's not pretty, but it's one compelling read. It will wake you right up to the dangers of privatizing everything--including the worst of the worst, namely war. So far, Blackwater and all its false fronts have been immune from prosecution, but that could all change if the government of Iraq manages to cut enough of its puppet strings.

Let's hope so!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 03:53 PM | Permalink

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 02:26 PM | Permalink

I'll give you a hint: It's some Venezuelan opposition types, showing their true colors: brown, brown and BROWN. And stinky.

From YVKE Mundial, some choice video:

Some young hooligans protested the final legal decision to disqualify some deserving candidates by dumping cow manure all over the sidewalk outside the Comptroller General's offices in Caracas on Wednesday.

Yes, you read that right: They threw bullshit all over the place.

Somehow, that just so describes them to a tee, no matter how they protest, no?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:29 PM | Permalink

He's got massive support--not only from the majority of Bolivia, but also from Venezuela (which lent Bolivia oil-drilling equipment), from Bolivians living/working in Spain, and from the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, who are watching Bolivian events with great hope for similar developments at home:

On the other hand, the opposition are getting desperate, and violent--so much so that they broke into and robbed a MAS party office:

Some of them don't even know what they're marching for, only that they're marching against "that shitty Indian". Yet they call all this "peaceful and democratic". Pathetic!

These fascists are clearly people who couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight. If they ever manage to extricate their heads from there, will someone please let me know?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:22 AM | Permalink

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

Video (in Spanish) about the prevalence of racism in Venezuela. It's a fact much denied by the upper classes (who are overwhelmingly white), but when seen through "black" eyes, it becomes impossible to miss. Example: A group of young blacks makes the journey into the rich Eastern Caracas district of Chacao, which prides itself on its "security", to go nightclubbing. The doorman won't let them in--on account of age (he says). Yet right in front of them, a much younger group of whites has no trouble getting in, without so much as a request for ID. Yet the doorman denies that race had anything to do with it; he even trots out the "some of my best friends are" line which is a well known cover for all kinds of discrimination (you'll probably recognize it from up here, too).

This is just one of many instances of blatant racism and denial that you'll encounter throughout this 40-minute documentary. In another, a very notorious incident which took place several months ago, a white Televen talk show host and her guest, an Italian woman, make blatantly racist remarks about the "laziness" and "criminality" of the typical Venezuelan (who is not white!), while another guest, a black comedian, just sits there and takes it. You can see the hurt on his face, as clear as the palmprint from a slap. There are also snippets from opposition websites and forums in which President Chavez's face is photoshopped to look like that of an ape, along with more blatant racism. (It's very common among the oppos to refer to non-whites, especially their own president, as "monkeys". It's also common for them to deny, almost in the same breath, that their remarks have anything to do with racism!)

But the part that got to me the most was when the young narrator calls out her grandmother--who is clearly black--and the latter shows off her wedding photo. Talk about photoshopping! It's as if all possible traces of Africa were expunged from the picture; bride and groom have lightened complexions, and their features and hair are carefully "neutralized" to look as little afrodescendent as possible. This, along with all the advertising images of white, blond models selling everything from makeup to candy, all the whiter-than-white beauty queens, makes clear just how prevalent and ingrained the racism is. When you can't "look nice" on your own wedding day without trying to look as white (in other words, as much like the "pretty" models) as possible, you know you live in a racist society.

And only when the denial stops can the real work of change begin.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:49 PM | Permalink

Hebert Veloza, formerly known as "HH", in the hands of the Colombian authorities.

From Aporrea, a shocking revelation by a Colombian paramilitary leader, one that will surely put "El Doptor Varito" in an awkward position (as if he could get any more pretzel-like):

Ex-paramilitary chief Hebert Veloza, alias "HH", admitted that he and his men committed more than 3000 killings between 1994 and 2003. Veloza confirmed in an interview given to the daily El Espectador that there were ties between certain politicians, members of the Colombian military, and police with the AUC paramilitaries. He also said that with his extradition to the US, "the victims will go on not knowing the truth."

The man formerly known as "HH" recognized that in the massacres his organization committed, "more innocent than guilty people died, but that's war."

Continue reading "El Narco's gonna want him dead" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:06 AM | Permalink

El Ecuadorable is so not going to like this:

Translation follows:

The Spanish civil guard is investigating a video made on a cellphone in which one can see the beating of an Ecuadorian teenager by a Spanish girl. The hair-raising recording was taken on July 25, in the Colmenarejo neighborhood of Madrid.

In the video, the aggressor's friends can be heard egging her on amid laughter. The phrases "kill her" and "hit her hard" are repeated several times.

According to sources, a group of girls between 14 and 16 years old lured the Ecuadorian victim, Maria Jose, to a vacant lot. Once there, Belen, one of the teens, began to punch and kick her all over her body, up to the head.

"Kick her in the head" can be heard as the aggressor drags the South American victim to the ground by her hair. Also, while the victim lies semiconscious, Belen keeps hitting her.

The video circulated on cellphones throughout the town, until one person recorded it onto a CD and brought it to a police station.

This isn't the first time this sort of thing happened in Spain; in October of last year, a 16-year-old from Ecuador got beaten up on a train in Barcelona by a racist thug, aged 21, who called her a "piece of immigrant shit" and told her to go back where she came from. It comes at around the same time two Gypsy girls in Italy drowned before the indifference of hundreds of beachgoers at Naples, amid a climate of anti-Gypsy sentiment perpetrated by the right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi. Racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment are all on the rise in Europe, and the new anti-immigrant legislation tabled by the EU has only made it worse. Economic migrants will now have to fear that gangs of thugs like these will act with impunity, seeing themselves as doing a job that the police won't or can't.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 06:24 PM | Permalink

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 05:31 PM | Permalink

You get poopy doody crappy assassination attempts everywhere in Venezuela! I hereby translate:

Parliamentary deputy Luis Tascon denounced that the attempt on the life of ex-defence minister Raul Baduel, which happened last week, was perpetrated by radical sectors of the ultra-right, who are looking for a martyr in this political moment.

"They need a martyr right now, and they have chosen the figure of Baduel," Tascon said.

That's true. The figure of Douglas Rojas certainly isn't enough for them. Especially when it turns out (as it surely will, sometime soon or late) that his own right-wing buddies did him in because they needed at least one death to blame on you-know-who.

There's still the lingering mystery of Hector Eduardo Serrano, the man who died in an explosion in front of the Fedecamaras building, too. Notice how all the maggots inside said building didn't hesitate to come out and dine on his corpse? Well, no wonder. As journalist Alberto Nolia has noted on his VTV show "The Devil's Papers", Fedecamaras is an "unburied corpse" itself. Stands to reason that such a cadaver would be crawling with unsavory critters; who else would touch it but the vultures and the flies?

But here's the kicker: No one seems to know who is currently president of that discredited chamber of commerce, and no one seems to give a shit either. Fedecamaras is officially irrelevant. VTV sent out a reporter team, sat them right in front of the Fedecamaras building, and had them ask passersby if they knew who the president of that organization was, and no one knew.

Imagine that; Fedecamaras has gone from being "respected advisors" to every Adeco and Copeyano presidunce of the old Puntofijista days, to coup-mongers against Chavecito in April 2002, to...nothing. The only way they can still survive is the way all right-wingers do these days: by eating the dead.

I hope the former general is watching these events and taking note of the general pattern, but it's hard to say. All that gringo dinero may still be flopping around over his eyes like a pair of smelly green horse blinkers.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:58 AM | Permalink

Aporrea has a couple of interesting items. First, the helicopter "accident" of last week:

The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, said on Friday that it was "surely not coincidental" that the helicopter loaned to him by the government of Venezuela for trips into the countryside crashed, killing five soldiers, four of them Venezuelans.

"Something's going on," Morales added during a speech in Cochabamba, where the Venezuelan Super Puma helicopter exploded last Sunday.

Continue reading "Evo's watching his back, and how!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:58 PM | Permalink

Oh, look. The Wall Street Journal seems to have twigged to the fact that their leading "expert" on Latin America, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, is nothing more than a discredited hack parachuted in from the Heritage Foundation to promote far-right "values" at the expense of honesty and reality. So now they're handing the job of slamming Chavecito off onto a new guy. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Mr. Travis Pantin and his stirring rendition of recycled manufactured outrage, "Hugo Chavez's Jewish Problem".

Right away, you can see that Mr. Pantin is one for the loaded language: "preaching a gospel", "blessedly unvoiced", "decisively rejected", "dictator for life", "wild rhetoric and diktats", "by fiat", and oh yeah, that wonderfully well-worn phrase, "questions about his emotional and mental stability."

What a pity that the language-loading Mr. Pantin has only been skimming the surface, and it shows. If he'd sat through as many hours of Chavecito's speeches in Spanish as I have, he'd realize that most of the Venezuelan president's language consists not of "gospel", "wild rhetoric and diktats" OR "fiats", but of quiet, well-reasoned, informative and calm discourse that would put an Oxford don to shame. That's one thing that impresses me about Latin American politicians: despite their "fiery" reputation up here, when you pay closer attention to them, the first thing you notice is the contrast between not only them and the media's reporting of them, but also between them and our own politicians. We Canadians, for example, have a reputation for politeness, yet there is more scandalous language and violent gesticulation in our own mostly-white House of Commons during a single Question Period than there ordinarily is in Miraflores Palace in the space of a month. But you'd never know it from the way Chavecito gets covered in the English-language press. The only time anything he says ever makes the whore media up above the Rio Grande is when it's something that can be spun somehow as outrageous (usually by taking it way out of context), or just outrageously funny, like the time he first caught my attention by poking some badly needed fun at Condi the Shoe Queen--who is, as he says, a woman disastrously out of her depth (and never more so than when writing derivative drivel about the Czechs). And when he called Dubya the devil, I knew he was joking (something the whore media is curiously reluctant to admit), but also that there was an element of truth to it--a truth that the Travis Pantins of this world are overpaid to obscure.

But maybe I'm being too harsh on the WSJ's new boy? Hmm, you be the judge:

Continue reading "The Wall Street Journal's "Jewish Problem"" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:23 PM | Permalink

Verdammt noch mal. You'd think a German newsmagazine could, in the interests of journalistic integrity, at least get its own country's history right. But Der Spiegel is now so far up the ass of neo-con Washington, it's even rewriting that...and in an interview with, of all people, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki:

SPIEGEL: Germany, after World War II, was also liberated from a tyrant by a US-led coalition. That was 63 years ago, and today there are still American military bases and soldiers in Germany.

Funny, but as I recall, the liberation of Germany occurred not "after World War II", but at the moment when the tyrant suicided in his own Berlin bunker. It was the liberation of the concentration camps that took place after the war ended; crucial distinction there, since not all of Germany was a concentration camp. And the coalition in question was not led by the US, which entered the war three years later than the original coalition leaders, Britain and France. The US didn't get into the war until attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. And they are not the ones most widely credited with Hitler's suicidal discouragement; that would be Russia.

That's an awful lot of revisionist lies the slick Spiegel interviewer told right there in the first sentence. What about the second one, about US military bases and soldiers? Well, there are still some (68,000 at last count), but most are gone. First there's no more need for them (Germany can police her own damn Nazis, thankyouverymuch), and second, Donald Rumsfeld--a source of shame to his German relatives--threatened to pull all the remaining ones in a grotesque form of economic retaliation for Germany's pacifist stance on Iraq. The ones still there aren't protecting Germany from tyranny; they're just there to provide operational support...to the war on Iraq. So that one is, at best, only a half truth, expressed to a disingenuous end.

I guess Der Spiegel, whose name means "The Mirror", really lives up to it. The paper just reflects...not reality, but what Washington thinks: that the sovereignty of other nations doesn't matter, but that Neo-Con America's will is supreme. So supreme, in fact, that history has to be rewritten in deference to its current war plans.

Schade!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 02:15 AM | Permalink

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 01:48 PM | Permalink

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 01:13 AM | Permalink

For those of you who've been following the situation in Chile for awhile, you're probably aware that Chilean students are unhappy with their minister of education, and that they have good reasons to be. Yesterday, all that frustration spilled over, literally:

A protesting high-school student, frustrated that the minister isn't listening to her, picks up a pitcher of water and flings its contents over the minister. Naturally, the AP (via Yahoo) sides with the minister, who claims (rather melodramatically) to be the victim of "violence" allegedly "incited" by the teachers' union.

BTW, here's the vital context the AP has left out: The students, who cannot afford the excessive costs of a privatized education and who are protesting because of that, have been blasted with water cannons for having the audacity to speak their minds. And the minister claims they prefer "violence" over dialogue. Seems to me that they've already tried dialogue, and been violently rebuffed by a ministry hellbent on keeping the "reforms" of the Pinochet era of massive privatization. So hellbent, in fact, that they've resorted to awfully Pinochetist-looking tactics to inject a little "dialogue" into things.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"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)

"Fascism may be a purer evil, but empire is a more pervasive one, and ultimately more dangerous because it's able to call on the loyalties of well-intentioned people who'd never go near fascism. But if you're a Vietnamese kid napalmed in 1968, or an Iraqi kid with your hands blown off in 2008, empire is every bit as bad as fascism. Or, for that matter, if you're a Bangladeshi or a Chinese sweat shop worker or an Afghani forced to grow and process heroin to survive, the economic ramifications of empire are as bad as the explicit political repression of fascism. And for decades, what traditional fascism has cropped up around the world — in Central America, in some African nations, for instance — has been made possible only through the support of empire."

--Jeff Sharlet, interviewed at The Wild Hunt Blog

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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:

Continue reading "17 seconds to moral clarity with Christopher Hitchens" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:03 PM | Permalink

...it's all of Mercosur rejecting that draconian, disgusting European "Return Statute"--you know, the one that deprives undocumented immigrants of all legal rights, including recourse to an attorney before the country they're in decides to boot them out--after a prison stay of up to a year and a half?

On Friday, the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and its associated countries expressed their "firm repudiation" of the discrimination supported by the European Union's directive of return for irregular immigrants, approved this past week by the Europarliament. The law decrees incarceration of 18 months for the undocumented.

"The governments of the participant and associate states of Mercosur deplore the approval on the part of the European Parlilament of the "return directive", announced a communication from the Argentine Chancery, which heads the South American union at this time.

Argentine diplomatic sources say that the EU's measure will be debated at the Summit of Heads of State of Mercosur, which will take place on July 1 in the Argentine city of Tucumán.

Continue reading "It's not just Evo or Chavecito..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:26 PM | Permalink

This is too juicy to pass up. Aporrea.org, the Venezuelan news/opinion site I enjoy most, has uncovered some skulduggery published at an opposition forum called Noticiero Digital. It's an e-mail from Alfredo Rangel, the director of the "Security and Democracy Foundation" in Colombia. According to Aporrea, "this organism is a facade for the intelligence community of the US in that country." The e-mail is to Juan Manuel Santos, the defence minister of Colombia.

Full text follows, translated by Your Humble One:

Continue reading "Well, well, well. What have we here?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:37 AM | Permalink

I'm always amazed that the same people who bawl over baby seals in some other part of the world have so little regard left over for abused humanity coming to their own shores. Take (please!) the example of Brigitte Bardot, recently convicted of racist hatemongering:

A leading French anti-racism group known as MRAP filed a lawsuit last year over a letter she sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The remarks were published in her foundation's quarterly journal.

In the December 2006 letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts."

Bardot, 73, was referring to the Muslim feast of Aid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep.

Continue reading "Brigitte Bardot, phoquez-vous!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 05:07 PM | Permalink

Aporrea reports:

Last Saturday, far-right groups attacked, punched and battered a group of peasants who had come to a stadium in the city of Sucre, where president Evo Morales was to deliver 50 ambulances and several thousand homes to local residents.

About 20 Quechua peasants were humiliated and forced to march semi-naked toward the central square of Sucre, where they were forced to kneel and chant slogans against President Morales.

These violent events left 27 wounded, according to local authorities.

Translation mine. A longer version of the day's events, plus backgrounder, courtesy of IPS, can be read at Bolivia Rising.

Aporrea calls Sucre "the kingdom of the Ku Klux Klan in Bolivia"; a somewhat confusing take, since the ringleaders of this violence are not white but mestizo. It is difficult to tell them apart from their victims just by looking; I could only tell who was who by who was standing and who was kneeling; who was yelling triumphantly, and who was silent and miserable; who wore a shirt, and who did not. That's not a whole lot of outward difference. And yet these mestizos identify more with their white ancestors than their indigenous ones, no matter how much their own appearance says otherwise. In Bolivia, it seems, your socioeconomic status is directly dependent on how much European blood you have. Which explains why the local white oligarchy hates the president so; he's a full-blooded indigenous. In their eyes, he's not a popular, elected leader; he's just a dirty Injun.

Here's Nick Buxton's take, from Bolivia Rising:

Continue reading ""Autonomous" fascism in Bolivia" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ohmygawds, don't you just love what Dubya said about Barack Obama in the Israeli Knesset today?

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals," said Mr Bush in his speech.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement."

This from a man whose own grandfather banked for Hitler, thus violating federal law. I shit you not.

Worst. Godwin. Violation. EVER.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:55 PM | Permalink

But of course, the US has the adults in charge of the government, so none of this would EVER happen. Right? RIGHT???

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:22 PM | Permalink

...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

From the color-me-SO-not-surprised files, a little something on the kind of people who are eligible not only for hiring, but RE-hiring by Kellogg, Brown & Root...

In 2006, while working in Iraq for the U.S. military contractor now known as KBR, Ira L. Waltrip was caught in possession of suspected child pornography and fired, according to a federal court affidavit.

He returned home to Lampasas and by the end of 2006, the affidavit said, was rehired to work for the company, previously a subsidiary of Halliburton known as Kellogg, Brown and Root.

Continue reading "KBR = Kid Buggering Rapists" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:49 PM | Permalink

You did, Tweety...you DID tee a coup d'etat!

Roto-Reuters UK and the Washington Whore Post are both cheerleading quite blatantly for Evo's opponents, undoubtedly to soften up us gullible anglophones for the "inevitable", undemocratic outcome of a deeply antidemocratic, unilateral (not to mention illegal) "referendum". Gee, where have we seen this before?

Too bad for this cutesy little media offensive that some of us can read Spanish, and one of us has seen fit to translate...this:

Continue reading "Santa Cruzin' for a bruisin'" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:39 PM | Permalink

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

Yep, Alvaro Uribe really IS a lawless, psychopathic little thug. Get a load of his latest bons mots:

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday that he doesn't regret ordering a cross-border raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador, despite the death of four Mexican students there.

Uribe told Mexico's Televisa network that the students were seen in a video with the guerrillas, indicating they were in league with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"They were not doing humanitarian work. They were not hostages. So why were they there?" Uribe said. "They were there as accomplices of this activity. They were there as agents of terrorism."

Continue reading "They were accomplices, so they had it coming" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Rick Astley probably never thought his song would become so useful, but it's the perfect illustration of why John "Insane" McCain should never become president of the US of A.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:53 PM | Permalink

I've long wondered what could have induced no less a figure than the former Venezuelan minister of defence, Gen. Raul Baduel (retired), to suddenly abandon both his post and his good friend. Now, it seems, we have an answer. From Aporrea:

The Vice-President of the Interior Politics Commission of the National Assembly, Iris Varela, denounced Gen. Raul Baduel on Thursday for having presumably received $1.277 million dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

[...]

The assemblywoman made the denunciation in the legislative chamber and asked that Assembly President Cilia Flores order an investigation on behalf of the Public Ministry against the ex-minister of defence. She assured that she had the transfer numbers of the accounts in which Baduel received the money.

"From a bank in the United Kingdom, $2.144 million dollars were transferred to Hermagoras Gonzalez Polanco, who has been arrested for drug trafficking and is linked to Interpol. The bank transaction number is 0895801004865, dated September 2007. The other transfer, dated November 2007, is for $1.277 million dollars, to Raul Isaias Baduel, and the transaction number is 0895209039485."

Continue reading "The $1.2 million traitor" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I showed this article to the friendly BoRev guy to see what he thought, and go figure, he couldn't do nothin' with it. His precise words were, and I quote,

Wow. This is really dishonest reporting. Jesus I can't even mock this piece of shit. Congratulations Miami Herald, I CAN'T EVEN MOCK THIS PIECE OF SHIT. You win.

So you know it's gotta be good, right? Or bad. Or superfly.

Anyhows...I figured this might be a job for Your Humble One. After all, she never met a piece of shit she couldn't mock. Especially meretricious and blatant shit like this:

Continue reading "U can't mock dis..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 05:07 PM | Permalink

Poor John Yoo. Once BushCo goes, he'll be out of a job, I'll bet. And what do you suppose he will have to white out from HIS résumé before he starts sending it out again?

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."

Continue reading "Somebody's boilerplate is missing a few screws" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:57 PM | Permalink

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)

Obvious to you, me, and Noam Chomsky, obviously. But to the hawkish disaster-capitalist types, maybe not so:

"Aggressors have no rights. Responsibilities, maybe, but no rights."

I wonder what PNAC, BushCo, Halliburton, etc. will all do when they find out that they have no right to be in Iraq. Something tells me they will only find it out the hardest possible way.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Pat Buchanan is always good for shits 'n' giggles, if your idea of shits 'n' giggles is blatant racism, ethocentrism, xenophobia and general kookoobananarama. It's a mystery to me why this guy gets any media play at all, but I've come to the conclusion that the US mainstream media is just basically a Barnum & Bailey bigtop without the sawdust, greasepaint, and tutu-clad girls doing handstands on prancing Percherons. How else to explain the fact that a sucker there is born every minute, and a clown who says things like this gets no laughs?

In a March 21 syndicated column headlined "A Brief for Whitey," conservative commentator and MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan asserted, "America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known." Buchanan was discussing Sen. Barack Obama's March 18 speech addressing race and controversial comments by his former pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright. He continued, "Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American." Buchanan then asserted that "no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans." Later in the column, Buchanan added: "We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?"

No gratitude? Well, how do you like that--Pat thinks those uppity niggruhs are ingrates. Hey Pat, since none of them will thank you, maybe a white Soviet Canuckistani can do it in their stead. So, I got your gratitude right here:

Continue reading "I got your gratitude right here, Pat..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

(Translation: "Gimme everything you got under your belt." The belt in question is the Orinoco Belt, a region rich with extra-heavy crude oil.)

Pardon me for the Schadenfreude, but this is just too sweet...

Continue reading "ExxtortionMobil fails!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

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 01:31 AM | Permalink

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

Well, some of them are.

Carlyle Capital shook financial markets last week after missing margin calls from banks on its $21.7 billion portfolio of residential mortgage-backed bonds. It said some $5 billion in securities held as collateral may have already been sold.

The fund, an affiliate of the U.S.-based private equity firm Carlyle Group, warned that if it fails to reach an agreement with remaining lenders, all of its securities may be liquidated.

"While these talks continue, the company has discussed and requested a standstill agreement whereby its lenders would refrain from foreclosing and liquidating their collateral, and we are awaiting responses," the fund said in a statement.

Okay. I'm gonna clench my eyelids here, chop some onions, think of kittens getting their cute widdle fuzzy mewy heads bitten off by Alvaro Uribe, and just try really really REALLY hard to squeeze out a few crocodile tears.

Nope, sorry, can't do it. Here's why:

Continue reading "The rich are about to get poorer..." »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yes, Foreign Policy is a smelly rag with some pretty horrible biases and outright distortions. (Their blog also sucks because it can't keep the most basic facts straight, such as the identities of non-white supermodels.) But Jack Cloonan's words to them on the subject of torture are well worth hearing:

BTW, he totally shoots down the "24" scenario of the "ticking bomb" that can only be defused by a torture-obtained confession. He also points out that torture victims tend to become martyrs to their supporters, even if they are "the bad guys" to those on the other side. Not to mention that it really, REALLY makes the torturers look like shits.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 08:01 PM | Permalink

And if you have to ask what "it" is, here's a hint: It's brown, it steams, it smells bad, and you don't want it all over the bottom of your shoe. Unfortunately, that's exactly where Alvaro Uribe is wearing it right now, in light of the following:

One of the three female FARC guerrillas wounded in the Colombian military operation in Ecuadorian territory last Saturday said today that there had been two bombings against the clandestine encampment in the border region of Angostura.

Continue reading "Colombia: Even deeper in it than originally thought" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:36 AM | Permalink

...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

Once more, the FARC release some hostages in the Colombian jungle.

And guess who got them sprung? And, evil mean tyrannical bastard that he is, even sent Venezuelan search-and-rescue helicopters to collect them, with the Red Cross logo on board?

You'd think the Venezuelan lamestream media would for once be bursting with pride in the influential skills of their president, who really seems to have a knack for getting the FARC to play nice, but oh noooo. Instead, they're reporting a completely irrelevant whimper from the Spanish prime minister (not president, Spain is not a republic, it is a monarchy--get a clue, El Luniversal!) saying you have to play nice with the opposition.

What a strange thing to say, considering they are fascists who refuse to play nice themselves. There they are, once again, trying so hard to draw attention to their own nonexistent oppression. What a pity it's not very convincing. It's awfully hard for them to argue that they are oppressed when this same president they so love to hate is now working to assure that Venezuelan players in big-league baseball are NOT oppressed, and is even hauling ass to make sure there's milk in Mercal for the traditionally oppressed (who voted for him repeatedly because he's the one guy who made good on his promises to un-oppress them).

Of course, the thing setting these fine young fascists apart from their predecessors is that the current crop have no sense of style whatsofuckingever. But hey! You can trust even their "educated experts" to get things oh, so wrong. With such a Simple Simon act to follow, is it any wonder the ol' goose-step has turned into a bit of a limp?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:36 PM | Permalink

Okay, you wingnuts--you screamed about Muslims protesting against inflammatory 'toons in Denmark. Where's your outrage over this? Last Sunday, the YouTube videos all over the Internets went dark, and nobody said boo...and now we know why:

Pakistan has blocked access to the popular YouTube website because of content deemed offensive to Islam.

Its telecommunications authority ordered internet service providers to block the site until further notice.

Reports said the content included Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many.

But one report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the ban.

"They asked us to ban it immediately... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers.

Hmmm. I guess the reason for this strangely selective lack of outrage is over the fact that Pervez Musharraf, who is STILL, er, "president" of Pakistan, is the one behind all this. And since he's Dubya's good buddy, of course anything he does is all right. After all, Pakistan is Teh Bestest Democracy Evah!

And besides, the Muslims in Denmark only protested. They didn't actually censor anything. Everybody knows that dissent, not censorship, is the real evil! When in Denmark, your duty is to conform to the American global standard, Citizen!

Now, for another round of "look how brave we are, fighting Islamofascism with IslamoBASHism!" Coming soon to a wingnut site near you...

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:28 AM | Permalink

Remember Fedecamaras? The Venezuelan chamber of commerce that basically made caca all over itself during April 2002, when its then-president illegally declared himself president, not merely of Fedecamaras, but of the entire blessed country? Yeah, that Fedecamaras.

Well, Fedecamaras has changed presidents since then, but it hasn't really changed its stripes. According to the Canadian Press wires, it's still as eager as ever to present itself, not as a treasonous aggressor against the legitimate president of Venezuela, but as his hapless victim. And how better to do that than to plant in the media and the minds of the public a strangely pat conclusion about a terrible tragedy that just so happened to take place on Fedecamaras' own doorstep, so to speak?

A small bomb exploded outside the headquarters of Venezuela's leading business chamber Sunday, killing one person, police said.

The blast occurred near the entrance of the Fedecamaras business