Mmmmmmm, I LOVE the smell of fascism in the morning…

…preferably when it’s caught fire and no one is lifting a pisser to put it out. Burn, baby, burn…

And really, what the hell else would you call this strange little Kaffeeklatsch that recently convened in Panama? Sure smells like fascism to me. Hold your noses while I translate, kiddies, you’ll never guess who was there–and who was paying them to attend:

Members of the National Front for the Defence of Economic and Social Rights (FRENADESO) protested on Wednesday against a meeting held by representatives of the far-right in the region, who are looking to attack legitimately elected Latin American governments, which they call “totalitarian populism”.

This meeting was financed by the German far-right, by way of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the auspices of the self-styled “Freedom Foundation”. Among the participants were Carlos Alberto Montaner (of Miami), Hugo Faría and Rafael Alonzo (Venezuela), Eduardo Mayora (Guatemala), Otto Guevara (Costa Rica), Dora de Ampuero (Ecuador), Walter Justiniano (Bolivia) and Luis Callejas (Nicaragua).

Also at the meeting, held during the night, was the opposition student activist from Venezuela, Yon Goicoechea, who recently received the Milton Freedman Prize, worth half a million dollars US.

The dinner cost 100 dollars a plate.

Marco Andrade, Secretary of Education for the Industrial and Similar Construction Workers’ Union (SUNTRACS, of Panama) and of the United National Confederation of Independent Unions, and Ronaldo Ortiz, of the November 29 Revolutionary Student Front, denounced this event as being part of the so-called “Plan Panama”, which is based in that country in order to destabilize progressive, popularly elected governments, particularly the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

It is also linked to the dirty media campaigns being hatched in Miami, linked to the Cuban mafia, as in the case of the channel MegaTV, home to the journalist María Elvira Salazar, on whose program there are frequent calls for the assassination of Hugo Chávez and “intervention” in Venezuela and Cuba. The channel recently divulged accusations by the a military putschist from Venezuela, Bernardo Jurado, against SUNTRACS, claiming the group received money from Venezuela, supposedly to destabilize Panama.

Phee-EW, what a bunch of vile-smelling polecats. I may just have to wash my computer down with tomato juice (which is supposed to neutralize the stinkum, according to an uncle of mine who got skunked one night while hunting and wound up taking a bath in it).

I wonder if that supposedly “liberal” German foundation (rather appropriately, named after a socialist-fearing imperialist) has any idea what terrorists it’s suckling in its bosom? It must. Else they wouldn’t have been invited. I guess they don’t care that they’re nurturing notorious racists and putschists. (Well, why would they–just look at the terminology that’s being bandied about. “Totalitarian populism”? That’s an oxymoron if ever I saw one. The two terms cancel each other out, capisce?)

I also love how they claim Venezuela is trying to destabilize Panama by financing leftists there. Huh? Considering that the presidents of those two countries are on friendly terms (the current president of Panama is the son of a very popular, progressive military leader, Omar Torríjos, assassinated by the CIA in 1981), it seems highly unlikely. If Panama goes left in earnest, it won’t be due to any money from Venezuela–it will be because Panamanians, like the Venezuelans before them, got sick of the unkept promises of so-called neo-liberalism (which is really just corporate imperialism with a kinder, gentler face.)

Of course, neo-liberalism likes to pump vast sums of money into poor countries that just somehow never seem to reach those who really need it, at the bottom. It stays concentrated at the top, making a few very happy and the rest utterly miserable. (Hey Yon-Yon, done anything serious with your half-million imperiobucks yet, or have you already blown it all on whisky for you and Freddy and your pals?)

If they’re really serious about freedom (and I don’t for a New York instant believe they are), they might eventually twig to why their economic theories are so unpopular in the very places where they’re pushing them hardest. Starting with scenes like this:

The “freedom-loving”, “democratic”, “liberal” government of Carlos Andrés Pérez sent the Venezuelan army out to fire on its own people during the Caracazo, February 1989. This rioting occurred in direct response to CAP’s doing a complete 180 after he was elected to kick the IMF/World Bank imperialists out of Venezuela. Instead of telling them to eat shit, he ate it himself and imposed brutal economic policies, followed by even more brutal repression when the people wouldn’t take the brutal economics lying down. Entire apartment blocks in the poorest parts of Caracas were machine-gunned indiscriminately, the better to teach those uppity po’ folks a lesson in imperial economics.

If that’s not fascism, tell me what is. It doesn’t need to wear a swastika to be fascism, although a reasonable facsimile always helps (just ask the UJC).

PS: If you want to see (and smell) more fascism combusting, on this very blog, click here and here. Seems I got a whiff of the brimstone yesterday morning from not one but two of the fine young cannibals who can’t bear to see their heroes stripped. If you feel like schooling them yourselves, be my guest and have fun. I can’t be bothered–this is News of the Restless, not Democratic Socialism for Dummies.