BoRev.Net

By Revolter

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's been confirmed, the BoRev's faithful editor has tragically been disappeared by Alvaro Uribe linked death squads.

Anyway, hey look "Hillary Clinton" met up with the Hillary Clinton of Latin America and The Times UK is here to clarify for us which one of them is bullshitting, sortof:

What began as a last-minute change to Mrs Clinton's itinerary on her five-day sweep through Latin America has snowballed into a major diplomatic incident that has emboldened Argentina and caught the US largely un- awares. It could force Britain to reassess the level of international support for its efforts to develop a hydrocarbon industry in the Falklands basin.

US officials said privately that British fears of being abandoned by the US over the Falklands were wildly overblown, but any hope on the part of the Administration of staying on the sidelines looked forlorn yesterday.

Eesh, Here goes another day without a BoRev post. Happy first day of the rest of your life! Sorry people. Work is insane. Many hours. Many airplanes. Too little beer. Anyway there is always that nice web site about the Incas, and also Duderwhatsit. And Bina always has funny things to say!!! Come back later? Like next week?

This will not shock you, not even a little:

[The stupid Washington Post ed board] refers to these deals as "free trade" agreements even though an important part of both deals involves increasing protectionist barriers in the form of patent and copyright protection. This increased protection will raise costs and lead to increased economic distortions.

Oh shut up, where have you been? Anyway, here:

• Why is the US is always messing with tiny countries that never hurt nobody? Because they can, bitches.

• Alvaro Uribe just destroyed the entire Colombian healthcare system, BY DECREE.

• Terrible US ambassador to Honduras refuses to disclose how often he talks with Otto Reich, among other things.

• If you didn't wish you were Bolivian before, you will now.

• Lord knows you are probably in the market for a new blog, so here is one, it is about Haiti.

Hey it's been a while since we checked in on our #1 best friend in the hemisphere, so let's take a peek and see what valuable lessons of democracy we can learn from--SWEET JESUS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!?!

Let's see, in the last week alone, The Colombian government has been forced to acknowledge its role in the assassination of an opposition Senator. Then somebody turned up a brand new mass grave chock full of more than two thousand "social leaders, campesinos and community human rights defenders" who managed to piss off the government. Two. Thousand.

Meantime President Uribe unveiled his new plan for infiltrating drug gangs by bribing poor kids into suicide spy cults. And while new stats show that a quarter of a million Colombians were forced out of their homes last year b/c of violence, it turns out that other stats, the ones showing urban murder rates going down, were basically just faked by the government. Oh and Uribe's entire intelligence team is about to go on trial for wiretapping journalists. In other words: situation normal, trade deal by spring!

Yesterday Honduras' pretend President Pepe Lobo was sworn in. Earlier in the day actual democracy president Manuel Zelaya was forced into exile in the Dominican Republic, in a WIN for the United States, yay.

Anyway here is a sad video about the bloodless coup and all the people it killed and maimed. "Never forget," etc. etc.

Cristina, meet PETA. PETA, Cristina. All in all a bad day for Viagra.

Ok listen up 'cause Jackson Peep has something to say again, guys! Today the Washington Post published another hilarious rant from the grumpy old editorial board grumpbutt about how the Venezuelans are just about to turn against Hugo Chavez any minute now--only for realz this time, ok?

Followers of the Jackson Diehl oeuvre will remember that Chavez was totally on the cusp of being shitcanned two years ago over his economic policies. The polls said so! In November 2007 it was the HUMILIATION following dumb comments from the King of Spain that signaled his impending end. In March of that year the RCTV flap was going to do him in any day now. The polls, the polls! Those glorious/portentous/uncited polls! This time (again!) they are irrefutable proof that Chavez is super unpopular this month:

But Chavez's approval ratings are still sinking: They've dropped to below 50 percent in Venezuela and to 34 percent in the rest of the region.

World-renowned fake NGO "Freedom Haus" released its annual fake Freedom Report this week. Once again, Bolivia has been downscaled to "partly free," a designation it has held since earlier this decade. Before that it was just plain old "free."

What changed? In the ensuing years, the country elected its first indigenous president, dramatically increased the economic, political and social mobility of its population and oh yes one other small thing...finally ended the practice of actual RACE BASED SLAVERY that had been in place since the colonial period.

On the other hand, Bolivia has tightened regulations on foreign extractive corporations, et voila: less free! See how this works? Way to go, Freedom! You are totally on the march.

Hey here is something that only happens every other week or so! The news is reporting on something maddeningly crazy that Hugo Chavez has said, only when you conduct your own independent investigation involving sophisticated journalistic techniques (Google) you find out that it is all, in fact, complete bullshit. Here's how it worked this time, pretty much exactly like it works every other time:

1. Some Venezuelan blogger wrote a weird story about the U.S. causing the Haiti earthquake with some sort of earthquake weapon.

2. A website operated by a Venezuelan state TV channel included a link to the post in their roundup of Haiti coverage from all over the country.

3. Some right-wing newspaper in Spain published a story about the link, referring to it as a Venezuelan state "press release."

4. Fox News reports the Spanish story, saying the earthquake weapon claim comes from "Hugo Chavez' mouthpiece."

5. Randomly, Vladimir Putin's English language teevee channel Russia Today claims that Chavez himself made the statement. This video report is picked up all over the fucking place, Drudge sirens!!

6. Right wing news "analysts" opine about what level of threat this represents to the United States.

"Latin America is not swinging in one direction or another; it is swinging in many different directions at the same time," said Michael Shifter, the vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy research group in Washington.

Did you know that the election of right wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera in Chile is evidence of a growing Latin bi-curiousity? Haha... Shifter's normally just a banal quote machine but sometimes he's an anal quote machine...Swingers parties and fascist sympathies? It's like the 70's never ended down there...we could go on all night....

Time was, you'd have to wait months following a major global tragedy before the douchebag commentary started to flow (Haha not really--how many Challenger Astronauts will fit in a Volkswagen, anyway?) It's been just one short week after the most devastating natural disaster our Hemisphere has ever seen, and everybody is just awful. But who is the worst? Here's a rundown of the contenders:

Jesus Freaks. Forget Pat Robertson. Today the president of Compassion International (!) helpfully explained the upside of this mindboggling tragedy. It might end voodoo! Naturally this "could only come about through an interruption like this and only happen through the glory of God." Interruption. FYI these are the same fucknuts who criticized an aid cutoff to the Honduran coup gov't.

Immigration Asshats. Steve King wants to deport all the Haitians in the U.S. immediately and make them act as aid workers for their own good. Fox News was basically Fox News, also.

Rush Limbaugh. He was all blah blah blah don't send money to the Negros because it helps Obama. Whatever. Rush Limbaugh. You will not be in our poll.

The IMF. Ah yes, let's take this opportunity to fundamentally completely screw over the Haitian people for another 200 years and make ourselves richer in the meanwhile because why not let's just be comic book supervillains.

Haiti opportunism, everybody's catching the wave! Sure, we all shared a collective groan this week when we heard the medieval philosophy ooze from Pat Robertson's pustuled piehole, or the casually repulsive xenophobia from shitbags like Steve King or Fox News, but let's be honest. Those assholes are amateurs. The Nation reports on the big-league game going on:

To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF's extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low.

PS: Naturally there is a Facebook group to gripe impotently stop this terrible injustice.

Oh my gosh, guys! Elder Tate Brinton from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints "Mission to Tegucigalpa" totally met Honduran strongman Roberto Micheletti this weekend and it was so neat! See what happened is that Brinton's got a friend who has a friend who cleans the dictator's house, right? So they got a tour and the fake president--who came to power in a coup last summer--even came out and shook their hand and everything! But like a lunkhead Elder Brinton totally forgot to have a Book of Mormon on hand and wasn't able to give one to the guy who officially ended democracy in Honduras, forever. Sheesh, guy, what a fudge-up! Anyways then they went and ate. It was a fun day!! More pictures here!

So for the last 2 years the Wall Street Journal has been predicting the total fucking COLLAPSE of the Venezuelan economy because they stubbornly refused devalue their currency. Well guess what? Over the weekend Venezuela finally bit the bullet and devalued the bolivar, so today the Wall Street Journal took their predictable victory lap by running this story about...OMG THE VENEZUELAN ECONOMY IS ABOUT TO COLLAPSE, because of this devaluation! PS none of this will ever happen.

Oh and BTW: "Older Venezuelans are accustomed to sharp losses in the value of their money, with numerous devaluations and currency regimes over the last three decades of economic turmoil. Inflation, the highest in the Americas, at 25 percent last year, reached 103 percent in 1996 after a previous president lifted exchange and price controls."

Can you believe it? It's been three and half months, and Honduras' president remains holed up inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, but DON'T WORRY because he is being protected from all possible threats: real, potential, or Mickey Spillanesque.

As reporter Belen Fernandez reports, the Honduran military is not allowing ballpoint pens into the embassy, because "embassy guests might use them to harm each other." Also pillows were prohibited for months, to prevent guest-on-guest smothering. Guards stick their fingers into all food deliveries, just to be dicks safe, and new shoes remain prohibited on account of something that happened a hundred years ago (I skimmed that part).

Turns out there's all kinds of shit that can hurt a president! Fernandez provides a handy list of other potential safety hazards that have been denied entry:

"...blankets, toothbrushes, milk, razors, oranges, batteries, vitamins, medicines without a prescription, jackets, lotions, pants, tin foil, USB devices, peanuts, paper, chocolate, juice, canned soda, CDs, radios, New Year's cards for Zelaya [which were eventually let in with his daughter], cigarettes [which police are said to hawk to embassy guests at inflated prices], hair dryers, shampoo, socks, curtains, mattresses, sleeping bags, gum, alcohol, pastries, markers, pencil sharpeners, hats, staples, energy drinks, glass plates, metal spoons and forks, shoelaces, tamales, cell phone chargers, shaving cream, and the Bible."

Slavery is almost over in Bolivia, yo. I mean life still sort of sucks for most of the Guarani people and it ain't going to be easy in the next year or generation or two or whatever but can we just all take a deep breath and acknowledge that fucking race-based SLAVERY, which has existed in Bolivia since colonial times until like LAST YEAR, is just about gone now? And guess who is super unhappy w/ this development? The comic-book-evil white slaveowners quoted in this AP story. Shocking.

Congratulations to reporter Frank Bajak for this honest and deep story. Maybe one day you'll learn to write about class the way you write about race but, haha no. That would be Communism, probably.

For the last thousand years or so, the United States has led the world on its March toward Freedom with such unique innovations as the free market and the three-fifths compromise and the Snuggie, only to find that sometimes the Free World just cold stabs us in the back or otherwise tragically refuses to embrace our awesomeness.

Now we find out Brazil is inexplicably ignoring its Jeffersonian values by...talking with Chinamen? This is an utter betrayal, obvs, but also it is super confusing, for journalists. Honestly sometimes there is no helping these coloreds.

Jesus, we'd thought we'd been slacking lately, but a full month into the nominations process the 2009 Weblog awards have been canceled, basically because they are too much work. You got off easy this time, Otto.

Hey will you check out this brutal image of police repression in Iran? It is very terrifying, yet strangely inspiring, what with the brave idealistic kids facing down the armed goons of dictatorship.

When it ran on the France 2 teevee channel last it was meant to document the widespread human rights abuses carried out by the Baseej at the behest of an illegitimate government only.. haha oops. Turns out the picture is from Honduras, and the abuses carried out against the idealistic kids are coming from our new Central American allies. Awkward. Anyway the point is there's nothing to look at here folks, carry on.

Oh look. It's "Coca Cola," from Bolivia. Only with an extra "l" and um maybe more real coca leaf then the regular/imperialist kind?

Sigh, who knows? I was going to investigate and write a really hilarious post about it all but then I realized that somebody already did. Thanks a lot, jerk. "Happy New Year" etc. etc.

• Wall Street Journal crazylady declares WAR, on PEACE, in Colombia.

• Chaos, death, and military coups for Latin America: Newsweek has published its annual Christmas wish list!

• Florida Senator is deeply inspired by Honduran example, particularly the "constitutional process that resulted in the removal of its president and elections."

• Hey look it's a Colombia vs. Venezuela chess set! On the Uribe side, "the rooks are represented by U.S. government aircraft platforms," heh.

• Venezuela's own Maestros del Joropo Oriental are nominated for Latin Album of the Year at the Independent Music Awards, and you can vote. Seriously are you going to let some fucking Texans win?

Shut up, ok, it's Christmas, and we've been "busy." Anyway we're coming out of hibernation because gay banking pamphlet The Financial Times published something funny yesterday! Apparently the board game Eternal Debt (tag line: "Can You Beat the IMF?") was a top Christmas seller in Argentina again this year.

The point of the game is to help your country survive by avoiding the world's largest predatory lender, only this is made difficult by the fact that the IMF is fucking everywhere, right? Sounds like fun! So just how big a seller is this hilarious game? Let's see how the FT puts it:

"Eternal Debt has remained a niche favourite among those who still blame the IMF for leading the country into a nearly $100bn default eight years ago."

Back in late November, when the illegal Honduran coup regime held their pretend "election" thingy, nobody bought their shit, right? The whole entire world refused to recognize the result b/c duh it was all run by a massively oppressive police state and without any international observers. At the time, only the U.S. State Department spoke out in favor of the vote. Of course normally they wouldn't endorse such a sketchy-ass plebiscite, but this one was different, see, because of the participation. Specifically:

"Turnout appears to have exceeded that of the last presidential election. This shows that given the opportunity to express themselves, the Honduran people have viewed the election as an important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country."

Now, one month later, CNN reports that the voter turnout was only around 50%, "a figure much lower than the 61 percent officially estimated by the electoral tribunal on election day." Haha "much"!

So how could this have possibly happened? Basically it was all complex serious of events mainly involving "lying" and "nobody asking questions". Or as one anonymous "electoral consultant" puts it:

"They gave out those numbers without any substantive evidence...there was no substantive methodology behind their projections."