Music for a Sunday: Como candela que va…

Inti Illimani (Chile) and Milva (Italy) pay tribute to a Venezuelan whom we should all know pretty well by now. Here are the lyrics:

Simón Bolívar, Simón,
Caracan American,
the soil of Venezuela
gave the force to your voice.
Simón Bolívar, Simón,
born of your Venezuela
And for all times, your voice
flies like a flame.
Like a flame that goes
lighting a sure path
on this soil, covered
with the dignified dead.

Simón Bolívar, Simón,
revived in the memories
which open other times of history —
the times await you, Simón.
Simón Bolívar, reason,
deep reason of the people,
before everything is buried,
let’s go again, Simón.
Simón Bolívar, Simón,
in the south, the friendly voice
is the voice of José Artigas*,
who was also in the right!

Translation mine.

*José Artigas is the Uruguayan equivalent to Bolívar; he is one of the Liberators of the Southern Cone (hence the “friendly voice in the South”). He is also a national hero of Argentina.

Share this story:
Posted in Chile Sin Queso, Don't Cry For Argentina, Huguito Chavecito, Music for a Sunday, Paraguay, Uruguay | Comments Off on Music for a Sunday: Como candela que va…

Wankers of the Week: Look! PANDAS!!!

panda-vips.jpg

Crappy weekend, everyone! Well, hasn’t this just been the loveliest week for finding out where our Dear Leader’s priorities lie? He cares more about a couple of imported bamboo-munchers than about all us local folk and our home and native land. No offence to pandas, but seriously, if I were a panda, I’d be offended by Harpo. And as it stands, I’m plenty offended by all the other oily ignorami out there. And here they come, in no particular order:

1. Todd Fucking Kincannon. “What do you get when you combine asshattery and jizzwhistlery with a side of epic douchebaggery”, he asks? Why, you get @ToddKincannon! Yeah, calling an antiwar vet a cocksucker who should have come home in a body bag is totally keeping it classy. So is insulting the memory of the best president in the Western Hemisphere. Todd, do the world a favor: Go skin-diving in Mako Alley. Preferably without a shark cage. You’re not morally fit to lick Mike Prysner’s boots.

2. Gary Fucking Bauer. You think the end of official homophobia is a BAD thing? Bad for you, maybe, because it means you’ll be left without a choir to preach to. But that’s not a bad thing, either. That choir was a bunch of dreary drones, and their hymns sucked.

3 and 4. Scott Fucking Walker and Marc Fucking Thiessen. How fucking perfect is it that a wanker of a right-wing governor hires a ghostwriter who’s a torture proponent? I know, I know!

lets-make-a-panda.jpg

5. Matthew Fucking Heimbach. Just when we Germans were getting set to live that whole Nazi thing down, along comes this assclown with his “White Student Union” (why is that shit allowed???) and their campus night patrols, making the world safer from scary black kids. Dude, change your surname. PLEASE.

6. Robert Fucking Zimmerman. Speaking of people with German surnames making the world safer from scary black kids…aw, fuck it. Dude, why not just join #5 on the peabrain patrol? PS: Nope, still not convincing.

7. Timothy Fucking Dluhos. Can’t stand to see your bigotries exposed in all their Nazified glory? Cry me a fucking river. And thanks, too, for proving the maxim that all bullies are basically cowards.

8. Barbara Fucking Amiel. Congratulations, Lady Blah-Blah, you vile, flyblown twat. You got all those page views by writing stupid fucking dreck about Steubenville, equating rape with sex, and victimhood with sluttiness! And of course, sexual harassment doesn’t exist in your widdle plastic bubble. Good for you. I hope you get your bony ass fired for that, as it should have been long ago. And while you’re at it, fuck off back to England and take your felon along.

rape-usual-suspects.jpg

9 and 10. Geraldo Fucking Rivera and Ann Fucking Coulter. He’s a wanker for having her on his show. Because he really should have known that she would only come to wank…and she did. And of course, since on-air masturbation gets big ratings, it was a win-win situation for everyone but the viewers, who had to sit through that ungodly homophobic drivel that she keeps spewing in her “Right Wing Judy Garland” guise.

11. The Fucking NRA. Because it’s just time that the parents of Newtown got over that massacre and opposed gun control, already. Next thing you know, they’re gonna get all victim-blamey here, too. And I’m only surprised they haven’t done it already.

12. John Fucking Ziegler. Nope, you’re not going to resurrect St. JoePa. And trying to do it by revealing the identity of that poor kid whom Jerry Sandusky raped in the Penn State showers is just beyond reprehensible — not to mention spectacularly stupid. At this point, only an asshole would ever blame those kids, or seek to make others blame them. Which, of course, leads me conveniently back to…well, you guessed it. PS: Claiming you wuz hacked isn’t going to cut it, either. More likely, you got inundated with a flood of new viewers who just couldn’t believe their eyes! PPS: Oh, Lord. Conservative cuckoobird alert!

13. Phil Fucking Pulaski. Wanna cut down the number of domestic abuse cases your cops have to look into? Then don’t bother looking into them. Instead, do criminal background checks on the victims. That way, fewer women come forward, and you manage to make everyone look bad. WIN!

panda-premiers.jpg

14. Chris Fucking Brown. Yeah, sure, you’re not a bad guy. And you’re leaving Twitter, you say? Seems to me you’ve said that before. Dude, you’re not “past the bullshit” now…you’re MARINATING in it. Go the fuck AWAY.

15. Louie Fucking Gohmert. Yep, Gomer’s ba-ack! And this time, not content to say asinine things in the US House of Congresscritters or to the TV cameras and aghast reporters, he’s saying asinine things in his off hours. To cops. Probably while drunk off his ass.

16. Silvio Fucking Berlusconi. There’s only room for one set of gonads in Italy…and it’s those of Old Bunga-Bunga Berluscoglioni. So sorry, Mars…your manhood’s gotta go. And Venus’s hands, too. Otherwise, she might be able to use them to fend of an attack from you-know-who.

17. John Fucking Boehner. Three quarters of a million dollars of taxpayer money, embezzled and wasted on the abomination called DOMA. Meanwhile, WHERE ARE THE DAMN JOBS???

18 and 19. Todd Fucking Starnes and Erick Fucking Erickson. No, Christianity hasn’t been criminalized yet. But seeing as it seems to have become a drug worse than crystal meth (opiate of the masses, ha), maybe it should be. Just look at how it’s eaten these FUX Snoozers’ brains!

panda-tech-difficulties.jpg

20. “Dr.” Joseph Fucking Mastropaolo. Looks like somebody is about to end up at least $10,000 poorer. Because there is no scientific proof that ANYTHING in Genesis ever literally happened. Also, prepare to lose another ten gees on the idea that evolution can’t be scientifically proven…because IT ALREADY HAS. OVER AND OVER.

21. Buzz Fucking Bissinger. You thought shop-‘n’-schtup chick lit was just for young women with a (deplorable) taste for Jimmy Choo and a burning ambition to travel around the world on their backs? Nope, now it’s also for lumpish middle-aged men indulging in the narcissism of shopping addiction and all its weird, quasi-sexual justifications. Equality! PS: Ha, ha. PPS: Well, THAT was predictable. Let’s hope he stays in for a while.

22. Steve Fucking King. He’s dragged up a bunch of bad analogies for marriage, and somehow he missed gun ownership? Oh dearz.

23. John Fucking Kavanagh. Somehow, it’s strangely heartening to know that even the insane ultraconservatism of Aryanfuckingzona has its limits. And one of them turns out to be a desire NOT to see transgender users of public washrooms getting assaulted and killed for needing to pee.

24. Stephen Fucking Woodworth. What the fuck is “abortionism”? I don’t know, and I suspect he doesn’t, either. Because the last time I looked, no one had elevated abortion above democracy here in Canada. The majority of Canadians is solidly pro-choice, we’ve spoken out repeatedly against criminalizing a medical procedure, and that is as democratic as it gets. There is no more need to discuss the matter, in Parliament or out. And there is certainly no popular call for backdoor (back alley?) abortion legislation, either. We’ve done fine with no abortion laws on our books whatsoever for the past 25 friggin’ years.

woodworth-science-superstition.jpg

25. Justin Fucking Bieber. WTF is up with the Bieb this week? Going half naked through Polish airports in cold weather? Spitting on neighbors? Methinks me smells a drug problem.

26. Philip Fucking Penny. Ireland’s bravest son (of a cuss) can’t take a joke. One which, oddly enough, describes him to perfection.

27 and 28. Pat Fucking Robertson and Jim Fucking Garlow. How clever of these two to suss out what the same-sex marriage movement “really” wants! Too bad it’s not at all what they claim. Well, gentlemen, here’s the spoiler: All they want is what you already have. Namely, the right to legally marry the partner of your choice. The “gay lifestyle” that’s most familiar to me is one that looks an awful lot like the “straight lifestyle” most old married straight folk have. Only it’s two dudes (or two dudettes) with the house, the minivan, the cat, the dog, and the 2.5 kids. Shocking, I know. PS: OMG, Patwa’s gone full Alex Jones. How much longer, O Cthulhu, before you take him back into your maw forever???

29. Rob Fucking Ford. Finally, we have insight into what’s ailing Robbo, and, not surprisingly, it’s spelled A-L-C-O-H-O-L. So some Toronto city council members have apparently staged a kind of intervention, which was not well received…not surprisingly either, since the other half of his problem is spelled D-E-N-I-A-L. Which ain’t no river in Egypt, Cleo.

30. Paul Fucking Hewson. Yes, that’s right. Bono has wanked again. This time, with his claim that poverty is almost eliminated in the world. Well, at least it is around HIS house. But his claim would come as quite a shock to his fellow Irishmen. Perhaps it’s just as well that Bono doesn’t live there anymore, and doesn’t pay taxes there, either.

pandas-easy-access.jpg

31. Royal Fucking Mayo. Dude. Have you seen the videos and photos out of Steubenville? Because at this point, you’d have to be blind and deaf, not to mention pretty fucking STUPID, to think that the girl in them was consenting to what happened to her in any way. She was passed out, and apparently roofied. On purpose. By the guys who sexually assaulted her and took pictures and videos of it all, and even cracked horrible jokes about how “raped” she was. She was not merely drunk, and she was certainly not asking for anything. And all she wants now is two things: justice, and to be left the fuck alone. How about you oblige her, and shut the fuck up?

32. Harry Fucking Jackson. Dude. Have you seen the lawbooks? Polygamy is illegal in every state of the Union. In fact, Utah didn’t even become a state until the Mormons agreed to renounce polygamy! Meaning, it doesn’t matter if same-sex marriage becomes legal across the board tomorrow — there is no danger of polygamy “sweeping the land”, let alone “automatically”. That federal polygamy ban will stay. Besides that, basic human nature is largely monogamous. Even in Muslim countries where polygamy is allowed, most Muslim men only have one wife. Shocking, I know.

33. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. Batten down the hatches, people. The Pigman just admitted defeat, and that can only mean one thing: He’s about to blow sky high! PS: Piggish projectionist is projecting, piggishly. PPS: Oh noes, another liberal conspiracy…IT’S TEH TWEETER!!!

34. Veniamin Fucking Balika. Cheesiest. Theft. EVER. (Literally!)

cheese-cat-fail.jpg

35. Ben Fucking Carson. No, of course nobody’s offended that you equated gays with NAMBLA. Don’t bother apologizing! Oh wait…I see that you actually didn’t. It just sucks that your “apology” is conditional on people being offended by sheer stupidity and tired old homophobic stereotypes, which you used to underpin the ridiculous idea that marriage should remain the privilege of the heterosexual…or those willing to fake it. And how is denying same-sex couples the right to marry giving them “all the same rights that anybody else has”? Or to put it another way: What medical school graduated this raging case of cognitive dissonance?

36. Kevin Fucking Cramer. If anyone needs more proof that sexism and racism come from the same place, look no further than this man, who embodies both to a disgusting perfection. I would curse him with something like “May the Windigo eat your brain”, but it seems that this has already occurred.

37. Nick Fucking D’Aloisio. Want to be a successful businesscritter before you even go to college? Then do the following two things: Invent some pointless app, and pester the shit out of others to promote and/or buy your crapp. Works every time!

38. Joe Fucking Concha. So, he’s tired of hearing about gay marriage? Well, that makes two of us; I’m tired of hearing straight dudes (whose rights have not and never will be infringed) whining about gay marriage. Really, people, this problem would all just go away if same-sex marriage were legal everywhere, and anyone who didn’t like it simply stopped yapping about it. See how simple that is? PS: I’m also tired of hearing bigots try to pass themselves off as merely “politically incorrect”. We can haz STFU, pls?

don-young.jpg

39. Don Fucking Young. Yeah, it’s been kind of a long time since it was socially acceptable to call an undocumented immigrant a “wetback”. Come to think of it, I can’t remember that time. Maybe because it was NEVER. But I bet it’s entirely socially acceptable to refer to guys like this as jackasses!

40. Dave Fucking Agema. Bogus murder statistic is bogus. Homophobe citing bogus murder statistic to justify homophobia is a…what? Water wet, Pope Catholic. Wanna know what bears do in the woods? Take a wild guess. PS: Dude, your trophy wife ain’t foolin’ no one. Get out of the damn closet already, you stink of mothballs. PPS: No, you know what’s a joke? Your petition. You’re TOAST.

41. Dana Fucking Loesch. Only in the fever swamp of a right-wing idiotess’s brain could a spoon be characterized an “assault weapon”, and gun control be about the mere “look” of a gun rather than its killing capacity. This dim bimbo actually thinks a semi-auto isn’t a military-style weapon, even though the NRA (and the gun manufacturers) themselves marketed and promoted the weapons based precisely on the fact that they ARE. Guess she missed that little history lesson. And then she went on to project her own side’s bloodlust onto the other. She asked that question only so it would never be asked of her. Chutzpah: What right-wingers have in lieu of a brain.

42. Eric Fucking Bolling. Who’s forgotten Newtown? Nobody. But I know who’s trying to bury it. And he works at FUX Snooze, taking cheap shots at his own president and projecting like mad.

glenn-beck-brain.jpg

43. Glenn Fucking Beck. Honestly, at this point, he’s almost beyond parody. I didn’t realize Chinese Muslims came up with the idea of education standards, but if they did, I’m forever grateful to them…for saving me from becoming a racist, paranoid fucking idiot like him.

44. Thomas Fucking McInerney. Nope, still no WMDs in Iraq. But the lieutenant-general has a brilliant idea as to why: Saddam hid them in Syria! Of course! Now it all makes sense! Only…it doesn’t, because he didn’t, and this is all just an excuse to fund the Syrian “rebels”, who are actually al-Qaida, and say, aren’t those guys supposed to be the bad guys? Ugh, my head is full of fuck. No, wait, that’s HIS head…and mine hurts from trying to follow his nonexistent logic.

45. Wade Fucking McCree. So, “gap tooth skank hoes” is a “compliment”? Well, by that token, Yeronner, I guess so is “sexist-ass philandering fuckheaded good for nothing shyster wanking around on the bench, masquerading as a judge”.

46. Steven Fucking Landsburg. Talk about stoopid questions: “Ought the law discourage such acts of rape [as what happened in Steubenville]? Should they be illegal?” Uh, they already ARE illegal in several countries, and that illegality is a major deterrent, so I guess that answers THAT question! Let’s hear how the boundaries of the body are not so “sacred” again, perfesser…but this time, after YOU have been roofied, passed around between several football players, sodomized for the delectation of the Internets (but without any incriminating “physical damage”, of course), and then branded a fag, a slut, a whore, and every other insult that the girl from the Steubenville trial had to endure. Or that Sandra Fluke had to endure from you, Rush Fucking Limbaugh, and every other conservative male fuckhead in the United States of Amnesia. Maybe THEN, you won’t have to wonder what’s wrong with the idea that a passed-out girl is some kind of “benefit” for assholes to take advantage of while she’s too incapacitated to say no! Actually…y’know what? I’m gonna go right ahead and assume that you’re just not the kind of guy who can get laid on the basis of his looks or his personality or any other redeeming characteristics, which shouldn’t be hard to prove, because you don’t have any. And that it is therefore little wonder you take such prurient interest in asking “provocative” questions which, in fact, reveal more about the asker than they do about the topic.

panda-pipeline.jpg

47. Clark Fucking Aposhian. Now do you see why strict gun controls need to exist, and why semi-autos and full-autos should be banned? It’s to keep guns (like yours!) from ending up in the hands of criminals! Duh.

48. Mohammed Fucking Morsi. What’s the matter, have you no sense of humor? Apparently not, if a funnyman faces arrest. Meet the new Egypt, same as the OLD Egypt. Time for another round of revolutions? Yeah, I think so. The people didn’t demonstrate to get rid of Mubarak only to usher in a theocracy, after all.

49. Don Fucking Cherry. No, leftists aren’t soft on crime. Sometimes, a cop killer isn’t a criminal, he’s mentally ill. Ever tried being incarcerated for a mental illness? It isn’t a slap on the wrist. And it’s no easy life being mentally ill, either…nothing like being a fucking blowhard for money, hint hint.

50. Russ Fucking George. Haida Gwaii’s waters have been poisoned, and guess who’s to blame? Some quack who once sold the Vatican a nonexistent forest, and who thinks fucking with the iron content of seawater is the way to control global warming. Yeah, that’s right: he’s using one form of pollution to (supposedly) combat the effects of another. Meanwhile, an impoverished native tribe probably won’t be doing much fishing in their ancestral waters anytime soon, thanks to this rust-dumping piece of shit.

panda-photo-op.jpg

And finally, to Stephen Fucking Harper. Is anyone fooled by his “animal loving” façade? Because I’m not, and neither should you be. All those panda photo-ops are just a cover for a heartless robot who couldn’t care less if Canadian animals, fish and fowl are displaced from their natural habitat by a pipeline ferrying oil to the Koch Bros. on one hand, and the capitalist dictatorship of China on the other. Or if that pipeline leaks and kills every lake, forest, river and aquifer in its vicinity. No, let’s just forget about our own natural legacy, and the Nishiyuu Walkers and other Idle No More demonstrations focused on protecting and preserving it — China must have our dirty oil, and we must have their endangered pandas. The fact that pandas and people alike are endangered by heavy industrial pollution in China is just gonna have to remain a dirty little ill-guarded secret. Eh?

Good night, and get fucked!

Share this story:
Posted in Wankers of the Week | Comments Off on Wankers of the Week: Look! PANDAS!!!

Festive Left Friday Blogging: The Day Chavecito Got Out of Jail

chavecito-painting

Painting by Hugo Chávez, while he was still a lieutenant-colonel in the Venezuelan army…and in the clinker for conspiring to overthrow a president who frankly had it coming.

This week, on March 26, Venezuela celebrated a most unusual anniversary. That was the day, 19 years ago, that Chavecito was released from Yare Prison. He was pardoned by then president Rafael Caldera, a man whom he would go on to replace just four years later. Meanwhile, the president whom Chavecito and his buddies had hoped to overthrow (and return to their barracks once a new leader was in place) had been removed from office after being indicted for embezzlement of public funds. Carlos Andrés Pérez would eventually leave jail himself, but he wound up in Miami, from whence he never came back alive. Nor did he ever get a chance to retake the presidency he still (deludedly) imagined was waiting for his return. That seat was occupied by this handsome young guy…who, as you can see, was MEGA-popular on his own big comeback from the stripey hole, unlike CAP:

I’m not sure, but that COULD be his eventual successor Nicolás Maduro beside him, in the white shirt. The height and the mustache make me pretty sure it’s him. Maduro visited Chavecito in prison (see his profile here), and became a close revolutionary colleague from that point on.

Here is Chavecito again, speaking in front of the National Patheon, where Simón Bolívar lies:

And here he is, signing the guest book with a very memorable inscription…

…before heading out to be mobbed by loyal supporters, a scene which was to go on repeating itself ad infinitum.

Hasta la victoria eterna, Comandante.

Share this story:
Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Huguito Chavecito | Comments Off on Festive Left Friday Blogging: The Day Chavecito Got Out of Jail

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 10

ricardo-sanchez

Howdy, folks. In today’s episode of VenOpIronía, we get something really interesting: an opposition deputy giving an interview not only on state TV (VTV), which allegedly “censors opposition voices”, but he reveals something the Chavistas among us have already long known or at least suspected. And it’s a source of great consternation, at least for him. So, let’s hear what he has to say:

Opposition deputy Ricardo Sánchez, who withdrew his support from the right-wing presidential candidate on Tuesday, accused Henrique Capriles Radonski and his campaign command of trying to use student groups only to create violence and thus destabilize the country.

“We uphold the right to protest. What we don’t uphold is trying to manipulate the movement, like they did in 2007, to generate situations with lamentable outcomes,” Sánchez said during an interview on VTV’s Dando y Dando.

“There were interests and actors who wanted to take advantage, and we prevented that from happening. We want to prevent what happened to us from happening now to the young people. They’re trying to use the students as cannon fodder in a plan that began on March 12. A plan of agitation, with demonstrations in the regional seats of the National Electoral Council, in an attempt to discredit the electoral system.

The plan “has an international component with the declarations of the US Undersecretary of State, Roberta Jacobson. They’re trying to use the parliamentary tribune so that they can attack Venezuela from abroad. Now we see deputies of the National Assembly traveling out of country to contribute to that component, which is trying to clear the path for the non-recognition of the electoral process.”

Sánchez revealed that “they talk without batting an eye of producing an event in which the aspirations of the ‘Simón Bolívar Commando’ never come about, so they advance a plan of discredit.”

During a speech in the state of Zulia, which was televised, Capriles said: “A young adult who is now 18 years old grew up with this [Bolivarian] project, and has gone astray because of this project, not through any fault of his mother or his father.”

Sánchez responded: “The one responsible is Henrique Capriles Radonski. In everything the student movement did, during the year 2007, we never saw [the opposition leaders] Julio Borges, Henry Ramos Allup, or Capriles Radonski. It’s really irresponsible, daring to say that we have to contradict the revolution with someone else’s skin.”

Translation mine. Linkage added.

I’ve added the links so you can see exactly what’s going on here. This is an old, old tactic of the State Dept., one that hasn’t changed since Dubya tried and failed to derail the Bolivarian project of Hugo Chávez in the noughties of this not-so-“American” century. It’s still trying to use the “student movement” of the Venezuelan opposition (the oligarchy, really) to generate violence, as they did in 2007, when Chavecito was re-elected to his third term. The violence is not the product of “insecurity”, as it is often presented. It is orchestrated and directed all the way from Washington, and its purpose is to derail the Bolivarian Revolution, so that all the good it has done can be undone as quickly as possible.

Of course, there are several things wrong with this plan. Let’s examine them one by one.

Firstly, the Bolivarian Revolution did not begin with Hugo Chávez, it is not limited to him, and it will not die along with him. We are talking here about a liberatory struggle that is no less than 200 years old. Es larga, la lucha. Generations of Venezuelans (and other Latin Americans too) have fought and died defending their country against foreign direction and interference, be it from Spain, from Britain, or from the United States. Their fight did not end when Bolívar died; it had then only just begun. What makes ignorant, ahistorical pipsqueaks like Roberta Jacobson think it’s going to end now that Chávez is physically dead? It didn’t start when he was first elected in 1998, nor when he launched his failed civilian-military uprising in 1992, nor even when he was born in 1954. This revolution began when Simón Bolívar took up his sword against all empires. And by all empires, I really do mean ALL of them…including the sneak-thievish capitalist pillaging made possible by the Monroe Doctrine. Bolívar saw that one coming, too. And generations of Venezuelans have heeded that warning, and taken up the fight again and again. If anyone at the State Dept. thinks they have decapitated a snake and that the path is once again clear for whatever, they are in for a helluva shock. They are in a battle with nothing less than the collective spirits of two centuries of revolution. Good luck fighting against that!

Of course, they’re also dumb enough to think they can appropriate the name of Bolívar, to slap that on their sham of an opposition campaign, and basta. (Jorge Rodríguez made fun of that, and I found it pretty funny myself.) And therein lies another snag. The people of Venezuela are all literate and educated now, thanks to Chavecito’s efforts (and the tremendous support of Fidel Castro, who furnished the teachers). They have become intensely familiar with the reality of what Bolívar strove for, and they aren’t stupid. They won’t be fooled by this transparent bit of crapaganda that Capriles has put on. And apparently he knows it, too; hence the plans for violence.

But here, too, the plan hits a snag. As Nicolás Maduro himself noted the other day, there is no taste for violence among the Bolivarians. He feared a second “Bogotazo” following the death of Chavecito; that never came. Venezuela is not Colombia. History demonstrates as much; the betrayal of Bolívar by Santander prefigures all the profound differences between the two neighbor countries that exist today. Colombia seems condemned to violence as a direct result of that historic curse. Venezuela has taken a different path. Chavecito’s death, while every bit as tragic and untimely as that of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, has NOT unleashed mass riots and decades of civil war. Nor will it, ever. That’s because, unlike Gaitán, Chavecito had power and time enough to put all the crucial and necessary constitutional changes into place, so that his country would be not only transformed, but able to go on transforming itself without him. And in turn that is because, of the two countries, Venezuela is and has long been the more rebellious. While the one falls easily to every manipulation the gringos devise and has dissolved into violence as a result, the other resists and, oddly enough, remains at peace from within, even despite profound internal changes. Venezuela is ready to take its own reins in hand and rebuild itself; Colombia, if it goes on as it has done up to now, may never get there. In fact, Colombia suffers more with Chávez dead, because he has done more than any of its own politicians, with the honorable exceptions of Piedad Córdoba and Gustavo Petro, to secure peace between the government and the FARC, and to bring about peaceful transformation from within.

But of course, the State Dept. is tone-deaf to all this; its own actions reveal as much. It’s had to let the Venezuelan opposition import right-wing paramilitaries from Colombia in repeated efforts to destabilize Venezuela, all to no avail. The Bolivarians have not fallen to the provocations as expected. They have maintained their composure. Time and again, with and without Chavecito, they have stood their ground peacefully, and laughed as the destabilization plans, one after another, lost their wheels and veered off the road, coming to rest ignominiously in the ditch.

This one is bound to fare no differently. After all, the functional definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting the results to just miraculously change. And yet, the gringos think the Bolivarians are crazy, for repeatedly electing and re-electing a certain brown-skinned working-class campesino from the plains who used to be in the army, and getting good results out of him?

The irony of all this may be lost on the State Dept., but it isn’t lost on me.

Share this story:
Posted in El NarcoPresidente, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, The United States of Amnesia, Under the Name of Spain | Comments Off on The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 10

So, a bus driver can’t be president, eh?

Well, these German bus drivers think differently:

These interviews were conducted by a Venezuelan revolutionary group, the Frente Peumayén, in Berlin. The drivers think it’s cool that Venezuela has one of their own as head of state, and that you don’t need a fancy degree to be a good leader (are you listening, Dr. Merkel?)

One of them even jokes that he was born in the wrong country. Yeah, I feel that way too. All the cool things nowadays are happening in Latin America, Venezuela especially. Can I come down and live there? I promise I won’t take up much space.

Share this story:
Posted in Confessions of a Bad German, Huguito Chavecito | Comments Off on So, a bus driver can’t be president, eh?

Meet Gloria Steinem

“Oh, you’re still doing feminism?” Yes. Yes, she is. Because the world is still doing sexism.

Share this story:
Posted in Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off on Meet Gloria Steinem

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 9

censorship-worst-thing

Good morning! And welcome to the latest edition of VenOpIronía, in which we find out that the Venezuelan opposition is now so Bolivarian, so very Chavista, that it is now doing exactly what it always (falsely) accused the Bolivarian, Chavista government of doing. Guess what that is…

Not asking questions of the right-wing candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, is apparently the principal requisite which the media who wish to cover him must fulfill during press conferences given by the presidential aspirant in various parts of the country.

So says the newspaper, Diario El Tiempo de Trujillo, which was allowed at a press conference on Tuesday on the condition that they not ask questions of the candidate.

With a communiqué signed by the president of the paper’s editorial staff, José Luis Mazzari Velasco, and published on a full page of the paper, they announced their decision ot to cover the activity, owing to the fact that “they invited us to a press conference where we were not allowed to ask questions.”

For the paper, the right-wing candidate’s activities inhibit freedom of expression.

On March 13, the minister for Communication and Information, Ernesto Villegas, denounced the censorship of Capriles Radonski and his campaign command of the journalists and press crews of the Bolivarian System of Communication and Information (SIBCI), who were impeded from covering the event.

It bears remembering that this was not only a veto, but an aggression as well. Last May, the VTV correspondent in the state of Guárico, Giovannina Guillén, was assaulted by Capriles’s bodyguards while covering his campaign in that state.

That same month, the VTV correspondent for Barinas, Janeth Suárez, and her camera crew were also assaulted by Capriles’s men on a campaign stop in that state.

In January of this year, journalist Pedro Carvajalino denounced an assault upon himself, again by Capriles’s bodyguards and by those of Metropolitan Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, before the Supreme Court (TSJ).

Translation mine.

Yes, that’s right, kiddies…they’re censoring the news now. Cero Chavismo en pantalla, as they used to say during the coup of ’02. No Chavismo on TV, or in the papers, or anywhere. Only in this case, the “Chavismo” is Majunchismo. And the censorship is the equivalent of an own goal in soccer.

Boy, at this rate, they’ll have that dead guy and his bus driver beat in no time!

Share this story:
Posted in Crapagandarati, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic? | 1 Comment

Nicolás Maduro on the legacy of Comandante Chávez

maduro-panorama

The current (and sure to be future) president of Venezuela recently gave an interview to the Venezuelan newspaper, Panorama, and shared some remarkable insights into Chavecito’s illness, his last days, and the extensive preparations that lay behind it all:

When Nicolás Maduro talks about President Chávez his face changes, his eyes too, he swallows hard at times, like a son when talking about a father who is no longer there.

“Aren’t there risks of fractures within the PSUV to guarantee this triumph you speak of?”

We are in the best moment for motivation, commitment to the ideas of President Chávez, unity amongst ourselves on the politico-military team directing the revolution, among the most distinguished and recognized sectors of the revolution, we have a brotherly relationship.

The blow of losing President Chávez has been terrible, tragic. I, personally, when I wake up in the mornings, I look at the ceiling and think of him, because every morning I got up with the day’s agenda and that was to call him. It’s incredible because he’s not there anymore physically, but that has motivated us a lot in taking on our responsibilities. It’s not easy, because in effect Chávez is a giant and we are ordinary, common, run-of-the-mill people. The only thing that can fill the giant space of Chávez is the people, the other giant. There are those two giants and us, the articulators of the process which is complex but which will work out well.

What our people did 200 years ago is hard to find in the universal history of humanity. President Chávez reawakened it. I remember once, in Lisbon, Portugal, when we were talking about this subject, because we were travelling a lengthy road and he said to me: “Nicolás, what happened is that our people have always had in their genes the glory of the liberators. No one could take it from them, and that glory was only waiting for someone to press a button.” It’s like pressing a button for the genes to activate once more. He pressed the button of the liberatory genes of the Venezuelan people and that button made it possible to build all the consciousness on which this revolutionary process rests.

“There are radicalisms on both sides, especially in Chavismo now. There is so much emotion. It’s a moment that demands responsibility from political actors. What will be your quota of responsibility?”

Everything, and we’ve already demonstrated it. Remember, since the day the president was operated, on December 11, we started. Review all the videos. Between Ernesto [Villegas] and myself, who were the official spokespeople, we started by sending a message of peace. We knew it was in the hearts of the people and we knew that the irresponsibility of the opposition, of some of its spokespeople, joking about the president’s illness, prognosticating and making fun of the possible death of the president, could have provoked in Venezuela a “Bogotazo”, a “Gaitanazo”. We faced that possibility every day, and we came out to tell the people and the Bolivarian National armed forces: peace, peace, peace.

That day, March 5, we held a meeting because the doctors had told us that his symptoms were grave. That had already happened in December and January as well, and the Comandante had always overcome those symptoms but this time the doctors told us: “It’s a special situation now”. We ourselves had always believed and prayed to God that he would recover again, because weeks before we had seen him in good spirits. We took precautions, we met with the Military High Command, the entire political-military directorate of the revolution met and we said: “All right, we have to prepare.” If it happened, we would have to deploy all the Armed Forces, all the directors of the revolution in all the states of Venezuela, to talk to the people and make sure that they, in their grief, would not fall into frustration and a desire for revenge. We were very close to that happening.

On March 5, at 5:15 in the afternoon, I gave the news, that sad and painful news. I almost lost my voice, and when I was done telling the first part, I heard a cry, a scream, and I was afraid. I thought: The violence is exploding, the people’s anger. Fortunately, it was only a cry of grief.

For that reason, when that gentleman candidate of the opposition, whom I’ve called the Pharisee of the hour, the Pontius Pilate of the hour, started to mess with the President, we were in full mourning, holding a wake over the body of the Comandante, Hugo Chávez, and he started talking insanities about the day of the Comandante’s death, meddling with his family, with the honor of our Comandante, with the moral purity of Hugo Chávez, I left immediately. If I had stayed one hour longer on Sunday night without leaving, violence could have broken out on the spot.

“You were one of the people closest to Chávez from June 11, 2011 (when he announced his first operation) to March 5, 2013. Looking back on his illness, what was the hardest part? Did you prepare mentally for these challenges? How was thhat year and a half with the president ill?”

The spirit and strength of the president at all times was impressive. He underwent some very deep, hard operations, and he always recovered quickly and with great strength. Fundamentally, through his will to live, an energy, a call to life. When he went for chemotherapy, there were five sessions, the first three in Havana, one here in the Military Hospital, and the last once again in Havana. I recall that he called me at 6:00 in the morning, and told me: “Come here”. I arrived at 7:00 and he was in the middle of chemo, which was administered via saline solution, and we stayed nearly till 10 o’clock that night without resting. Around 2:00 in the afternoon he had lunch and rested half an hour, then immediately we started talking, reading, studying. I telephoned Caracas, to give orders, then passed on some messages to him. He got busy painting; he painted a portrait of Néstor Kirchner, a picture of the Moncada Barracks, and one of the Cuartel de la Montaña, where he is now.

Later came the other big blow, in February. We saw he was so strong that no one could have imagined that there had been another recurrence. He had talked for nearly 10 hours in the National Assembly, I believe on the 15th of January. They operated on him and that week we were doing a program in the room right next to his, live. And another, and another, and another.

Then came the radiotherapy, and that was very hard. It was the hardest moment, very hard, but he was undaunted. He completed the radiotherapy, they did tests and he was fine, perfect, and June 11, a year after the first operation, he signed on as a candidate. The campaign was intense, clearly, as he said, he went into the ring with his hands tied, that’s why he campaigned like a machine.

The elections happened, a great triumph and, immediately, maybe because of the sudden drop in adrenaline after the election fight, he started to feel a lot of pain.

Every time we talked, he was in a lot of pain. That was a second hard time, after the radiotherapy, after the elections. Because of the pains, he decided to undergo hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy. Sadly, in the middle of that treatment, they examined him, and found, in the same place, a recurrence.

I remember that on Sunday, December 2, I haven’t told this before, he called me. I was in the National Pantheon conducting an inspection of the repairs to the Pantheon, etcetera, for the ceremony on December 17, hoping that he would be done his treatment and coming back. In the afternoon I got the call and he told me, “There are complications.” Well, that was a tremendous blow, and he asked me to assemble a commission. There were Diosdado [Cabello], Rafael Ramírez, Cilia [Flores, Maduro’s wife], and Jorge Arreaza, and I told them what the experts had found. He always asked for all the details from the doctors, he had the intuition that he would not come out from the operation.

Whenn they told me upon his return that he’d had that intuition, I was almost certain that he would not be wrong and, well, I cried for a long time one morning because I knew it would be that way.

He called me and I went on December 5 to talk, from 10 at night to 6 in the morning, we talked a lot. He would never have told me this, that if he were to die, or something would happen to incapacitate him, I would take the reins of the revolution, that I would assume the presidency and the possibility of a candidacy. He called me in to tell me this personally, during more than six hours of conversation, in the early morning of December 6, in Cuba.

Then we left, in separate airplanes, I arrived first, and he arrived later. He told me: “I’ve decided, and I told the doctors to guarantee it because they wanted to operate on me right away, that I could come back to talk to the people, to tell them all these things. He told only a small part, barely what he wanted to say, because we recommended it, I said, “President, don’t tell this to the people,” and he told me: “It’s my historic responsibility, it’s the least I can do.”

On December 7, we met again, and on the 8th he said what he said. He went, the operation was very hard, as you know, and later came the worst part of all he had lived through. Nearly 90 days of ups and downs, sometimes more downs than ups, of grave situations, managed scientifically and medically the perfect way, correctly. In that moment, all the people who supported us in the world knew that he was in the hands of the best doctors and scientists in the fight against cancer that Cuba had taught, but with the help of many scientist from all over the world.

On December 30, when I read the communiqué, he almost left us, he was very close to it. Suddenly, in January, he miraculously recovered. Until the very last day he wanted to live and believed he would go on living, and gave orders up to the end. That spirit is an immortal spirit, really, and the recognition, the homage the people of Venezuela paid, has been extraordinary. The opinion polls say 70, 80% of Venezuelans recognize that Hugo Chávez has made history i our country. And now it’s up to us, he fought his battle up to the last second, he left a mission yet to be finished. Now it’s up to me to complete this mission as President of the Republic, it’s up to all of us who loved him, this country, to complete that mission.

“And what did you feel about witnessing that?”

It’s a very hard responsibility.

“Were you afraid?”

No. I’m not afraid. The only fear I could have is of failing, but I sense that I’m not going to fail. I’ve come to think that President Chávez prepared me for this. I didn’t know it, but he was preparing me, and I won’t speak individually, he was preparing us to be a cohesive team: Rafael Ramírez, Diosdado, Cilia, all of the Armed Forces, the military chiefs of the High Command, all the young militaries who rose to all the ranks, the PSUV, the Great Patriotic Pole — Comandante Chávez did what was impossible for Bolívar to do. The Liberator could not prepare the country for life after his death. He couldn’t. First they killed Sucre, who was like his son, and who was going to be his political and military heir; then everyone betrayed him — Juan José Flores in Quito, Santander in Bogotá, Páez in Valencia. Urdaneta was the most loyal of the loyal, and he would have been president, had Bolívar lived after 1830 it’s for certain that Urdaneta would have been his new Sucre.

Comandante Chávez believed he would live a while longer, and be at the head of the nation. As well, he believed he would be at the head of the nation without being president of the Republic. He came to think that at a given time, he would do what Fidel has done, and direct with his authority and gigantic morality the new phase of the revolution, and prepare for his departure, but, well, he couldn’t get to that point. He called that the third scenario.

He left us prepared with the Constitution as of 1999, he left us his political testament, it’s an extraordinary document to study, he left us precise orders for the work teams, he left the will in my hand, which is not the hand of just one man, or just one human being. I don’t know why he made that decision, I never asked him, my voice wouldn’t come out, it wasn’t pertinent to do so, it never occurred to me to do so. But, well, I took the will of President Chávez, which is a collective will, my hand is that of millions, of a team. He left a prepared team, which is the one we call the politico-military directorate of the revolution, the political high command, the Government, the governors, the Great Patriotic Pole, the Military High command, and our Armed Forces on the whole.

When has this country ever had so much strength? Never, ever. He also left the country’s finances organized, the funds, the income, now everything’s transparent, so now we have no more excuses for failure. We’re prepared for a victory, it’s what I feel in the streets…

In Venezuela I saw an effervescence, I lived it, what I’m seeing now in the streets is the highest level of popular effervescence since 1994. I can only compare it with 1994 and 2006, two peak moments in the mythical and historical leadership of Comandante Chávez. The people are converting their pain and their feelings of having lost their father, their orphanhood, into fervor. I have no vanity of any kind, my ego doesn’t exist, I know these displays of love are not for me, they’re for Chávez. The people look at me and say “We’re voting for you for Chávez, for Chávez’s sake we’re voting for you…” We can’t fail, I’m sure we are going to win by more than 10 million votes, the only thing left is what the people will give us on April 14.

Translation mine.

So that was what Chavecito meant when he said “Viviremos y venceremos” (“We will live, and we will conquer”). It was no empty slogan; neither was it entirely literal (although Chavecito did expect to live and overcome the cancer, at least until things got really bad!) Nor was it limited to himself alone. He used the first person plural, meaning, as I understand it, that he meant to live on with and among the people of Venezuela, like Fidel in Cuba. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way. But he still lives on WITHIN them — which, while sad in the here and now, as a nation grieves (and so does the world!), is also going to be their greatest strength in due course.

As I wrote on the day he died, he is now beyond reach of his enemies. They can try to smear his memory, sure, but they can’t rub him off the page of history. His mark is already indelible, and it refuses to be so much as blurred. And the empire that tried to kill him, can’t do it anymore.

And even if they did, and succeeded, with bioweapons such as a souped-up cancer virus or pneumonial bacterium — a theory which, at this point, is only a speculative possibility — their efforts still backfired. Remember Che? Yeah. It’s like that. If they did murder him, they failed to get rid of him; they only succeeded in making him immortal. Either way, the empire loses.

And on April 14, guess who’s going to win?

maduro-latest-survey

Share this story:
Posted in Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), Huguito Chavecito, She Blinded Me With Science, The United States of Amnesia | 1 Comment

Quotable: Gloria Steinem on the importance of questioning

gloria-goddess-questions

Share this story:
Posted in Quotable Notables, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off on Quotable: Gloria Steinem on the importance of questioning

Quotable: Evo Morales on the crisis of capitalism

evo-on-capitalist-crisis

“Europe and the US are in a crisis because now they’re not robbing us anymore.”

Share this story:
Posted in All About Evo, Economics for Dummies, EuroPeons, Quotable Notables, Socialism is Good for Capitalism!, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Quotable: Evo Morales on the crisis of capitalism