BoRev.Net

Laptops aside, Remember how President Uribe shuttled all those terrorists out of Colombia the other night just as they were threatening to implicate his entire administration as death squad collaborators—wasn’t that weird? Anyway this morning the serious thinkers at the Washington Post knew exactly who the bad guys are in all this, and they weren’t afraid to do something about it. So piss off, uh, Human Rights Watch, for raising questions about it all. And a special fuck you to the head of your America’s division, who was mentioned by name no less than four times, and now will die, like that World Cup soccer guy, because these people are crazy.

Sigh. We’ll be updating until we get bored.

>>> 2 p.m. AP: “Interpol will report Thursday that Colombia did not tamper with computers it says it seized during an attack on a leftist rebel camp.” Duh.

>>> 2:15 p.m. Interpol SecGen: "There was no tampering with or altering of any of the data contained in the user files by any of the Colombian law enforcement authorities following their seizure on March 1."

>>> 2:30 p.m. "But Interpol head Ronald Noble said the report did not seek to verify the validity of charges against Venezuela."

>>> 2:40 p.m. Wow Interpol is efficient! From their press release, the amount of data they sorted through is equal “to 39.5 million filled pages in Microsoft Word and, if all of the seized data were in Word format, it would take more than 1,000 years to read at a rate of 100 pages per day.” It seemed so much shorter than that! Maybe they used robots.

>>> 2:45 p.m. Also from the press release. In handling the computers, the Colombians followed all the international protocols, except for two days, when they didn't.

>>> 6:15 p.m. Ok so we got bored. So we went and did other things. But we're back so continuously hit refresh! Not really.

>>> 6:20 p.m. "John Womack, a professor of Latin American history and economics at Harvard University, warned that the Interpol findings do not necessarily prove any links between Chávez and the FARC. 'But the US and Colombia will try to use this as part of an ongoing propaganda war about Chávez,' he says." Haha no shit!

>>> 6:35 p.m. If you're dying to read the full hundred page Interpol report, knock yourself out. Available in English, Spanish, French or, randomly, Arabic.

>>> 6:45 p.m. Uh, in those two days before the Colombians started following international protocols? They somehow managed to access the computers...48,555 times. Seriously, that's not possible. Is that possible?

>>> 6:50 p.m. Hey whadaya know: "Although Interpol found that the files had not been tampered with, that was no guarantee that the data was accurate. However, the US has already declared that it believes the files to be genuine and is considering what action to take..."

>>> 7:30 p.m. Well that took longer than expected. Tonight's Fox News headline--"Interpol: Chavez Supports Terrorists"

It’s laptop day! But before the shitstorm gets underway, we direct your attention to this report by the Council On Foreign Relations, in which Washington’s premier insider-y, do-nothing suck-up Conventional Wisdom Tank declares the Monroe Doctrine, officially and forever, dead. In other words, Chavez could be assassinated this weekend by Colombian paramilitaries on furlough from their Miami prison cells and he will have already permanently restored Latin America’s sovereignty after nearly two centuries. And also:

>>> “If there was an era of U.S. hegemony in Latin America, it is over,” and:

>>> "U.S. policy can no longer be based on the assumption that the United States is the most important outside actor in Latin America," and:

>>> “Washington must also assume that Latin American countries know what is best for themselves.”

Or are they just idiots? Oil Wars investigates.

>>> Alvaro Uribe’s "surprise" plan to shuttle everybody who was going to testify against him out of his country in the middle of the night called corrupt, “a mockery,” and “a blow against truth."

>>> Drug Czar John Walters called it “A great day”.

>>> The Wall Street Journal thinks we’re all going to fall for it.

>>> Steny Hoyer proves them right.

Sigh.

An island, a wall, and a miraculous, meltless cheese, Cyprus is the pearl of the Mediterranean, where the music never stops and the cats hump all day long in the streets. It’s Shangri-la with a demilitarized zone, and it’s the latest member of the Axis of Evo. This weekend President Dimitris Christofias will join Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa and Evo Morales at a “People’s Summit” in Lima while other world leaders have their dumb meetings somewhere else. But if he’s angling for and oil deal, he’s got to have something to offer. And if I may be so bold, that’s where the cheese comes in. Christ that’s some good cheese.

Remember all of those Colombian paramilitary leaders who were exposing the connections between Alvaro Uribe’s administration and right-wing terrorist groups? They were all extradited to the U.S. in the middle of the night, where they will be tried for drug trafficking...and nothing else.

“Claudia Lopez, an independent investigator who helped uncover the paramilitary-political scandal fears criminal cases against politicians will now end: 'They've taken away all the witnesses,' she said Tuesday.”

So Thursday is the day that the Cato Institute pays that Serbian-trained color revolutionary kid for his efforts to overthrow a democratically elected government in the name of “freedom.” And if all that’s not sufficiently creepy, the $500,000 cash prize is named for Milton Friedman, Augusto Pinochet’s economic adviser.

To commemorate the entire freakshow, the Brecht Forum is hosting this awesomely-titled round table discussion tomorrow night in New York, and you should go if you’re in the neighborhood.

Your U.S. State Department on the recent “autonomy” vote in Bolivia, in which one state declared its intent to secede from the rest of the country:

"We are committed to the territorial unity of all the countries of the region… At the same time we are in favor of the expression in a democratic manner of the interests of the different groups and sectors."

Look at big, scary Hugo Chavez. He is such an angry and crazy strongman who makes Venezuelan institutions bend to every retarded whim. Anyway he’s got some baby mama drama since his ex wife got engaged to a tennis instructor and began to renege on Chavez’s visitation agreement with their 10-year-old, so he tried to sue in the courts but then gave that up so as not “to put my daughter in the middle of a spectacle” and then…well that’s the whole story.

Seriously Uribe’s reading this and thinking “Why not just have the bitch killed?”

Last night American Dad gave us a musical look at the last time the U.S. “worked together with Latin American countries to deal with common threats and challenges.”

>>> Check out the next member of OPEC: Brazil!

>>> Preview Latin America’s next insurgent president: Lula.

>>> Meet Central America’s next leftist government: …El Salvador.

>>> Check out the latest victim of independent scrutiny: The Magic Laptop!

So the new Bond movie plotline is out! And the bad guys are…Santa Cruz separatists or something! Check it out:

“… Bond discovers that Greene, conspiring to take total control of one of the world's most important natural resources, is forging a deal with the exiled General Medrano. Using his associates in the organization, and manipulating his powerful contacts within the CIA and the British government, Greene promises to overthrow the existing regime in Bolivia, giving the General control of the country in exchange for a seemingly barren piece of land. Bond and the beautiful Camille who has her own vendetta, team-up to throw a wrench into Greene's machine.”

How are you preparing for the results of the Magic Laptop diagnostic due out later this week? If you are one of the busy beavers in the Bush Administration, you’re probably already ahead of the game by moving an entire fleet of warships into the region, armed with bombs, missiles, and plenty of heart! Agence France Presse tracked down three of Washington’s douchiest commentators for their analysis, but which one is the most contemptible? We investigate, after the jump.

Continue reading "Beltway Bloviators: A Reader's Guide" »

Just two days after we published this, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to drop the terrorist designation for the last guy who got on the wrong side of U.S. Foreign policy. So congratulations, Nelson Mandela! You can finally take the great-grandkids to Disneyland, pending Senate approval.

Ha ha, it turns out that the Bolivian opposition is exactly like the Venezuelan opposition which is why they will fail, hilariously, forever. Emboldened by the recent “autonomy” vote in the country’s richest, whitest state of Santa Cruz, opposition parties yesterday introduced a bill in the national legislature requiring a recall referendum against Superstar President Evo Morales. Although it was probably meant to be a wedge to rally the country’s right wing, the measure passed quickly without much dissent from Evo backers because the president is like really, really popular. So Evo’s all bring it on and the opposition is all hey wait and now there’s going to be a referendum and Evo’s going to be king of the Andes.

Hat Tip: Otto

Well this never gets old: today the Colombians leaked the magic laptop documents to the Wall Street Journal—the same documents they already leaked to the Miami Herald last week and the New York Times the week before that. And once again it’s a Breaking World Exclusive all over again!

Ok there is this funny twist this time though, in that an unnamed “senior U.S. Intelligence Official” said that the intelligence community is in “complete agreement” on the validity of the documents, and implies that they’d been talking to the investigators at Interpol. And then the guy from Interpol calls him a liar. And then a “senior Senate Staffer” who has gone over the documents is like, yeah this all nice but like, "We need to see proof of what is mentioned in the reports." Oh, right, proof. That.

Note: If this link to the story doesn’t work, we’ve excerpted the article after the jump, in its entirety.

Continue reading "Third Verse, Same As The First" »

Warning! the following has no humor value whatsoever. If you so much as smirk, you are sick, because this is not funny at all, not even a little bit:

"A member of Colombia's Congress had a heart attack while debating a transportation bill and died hours later in a hospital after having to be transported in a private car because no ambulances were available. Sixty-year-old Jose Fernando Castro, a member of conservative President Alvaro Uribe's majority coalition, collapsed mid-debate in a committee room.

The gray-haired Castro, his polka-dotted tie loosened from around his neck, spent 20 minutes on the floor of the room before those trying to help him decided to move him without the help of an ambulance, which was called but never arrived."

Weird Quote for the Day:

“Human trafficking -– slavery, by another name –- exists not just in places like Thailand, Kuwait and Venezuela. It is a serious problem here in the United States.”
--Crazy old coot John McCain

Um ok, what? Everybody knows that Thailand is an obligatory stopover in the international perv circuit, and that Kuwait is notorious for kidnapping child slaves not just for camel racing but for, like, “building the U.S. embassy in Iraq,” But Venezuela? Oh wait I know. McCain was probably in Caracas and the ladies were throwing themselves all over him and he just assumed…no wait on second thought sex slavery is the only possible explanation here.

Ok, so…not only is the U.S. harboring one of the world’s most notorious superkiller terrorists, but they’re throwing him a “hi I’m gay” party in Miami.

And then…a plane went down in Venezuela and the guy that owns the Smartmatic voting machines died and the CIA and drugs and Ohio voters and Christ I don’t even begin to get it…

And then…some guy with access to Google has “explosively” connected the dots between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez and posted it all over at this one place on the internet.

And then…another guy who exposed the role of the Albert Einstein Institute in overthrowing governments all over the world got a hilariously bitchy letter from the director about it so he published that too and now he’s going to die.

And then… “Three years after officials hailed his arrest as a major drug war victory, the U.S. asked a judge Tuesday to dismiss cocaine charges against Colombian rebel leader Ricardo Palmera.”

You probably already knew this, but Bolivian President Evo Morales is an Indian, in a country made up primarily of Indians, and in the 170-year history of Bolivia he is the country’s very first Indian president, which is crazy when you think about it. Anyway the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl believes that this is a bad and scary development, because it threatens to inject “ethnocentric policies” into Bolivian politics when everything was fair and square before. Hell even the slaves were probably happy.

All of which got me wondering, how would the Washington Post have covered the fall of apartheid if Jackson Diehl sat on the Ed Board in the early 90s? Haha that’s easy to figure out. Just take today’s editorial and substitute “South Africa” for “Bolivia” and “Mandela” for “Morales.” Oh no wait allow me:

South African President Nelson Mandela claims to be ruling his country on behalf of a black majority whose rights have been denied for centuries by an evil "oligarchy." In fact, Mr. Mandela is pursuing a narrow and divisive agenda that, if continued, will split South Africa along geographic as well as ethnic lines, and possibly trigger a civil war.

Though demographers disagree, a common estimate is that 65 percent of South Africa’s 43 million people are of African descent, while “Whites,” descendants of Europeans, make up the balance. Ignoring this disparity, Mr. Mandela, a black South African and former guerilla fighter, is trying to impose a new political system on the country that greatly increases his own power and that privileges his own ethnic group at the expense of the rest of the country. Worse, Mr. Mandela is an acolyte of the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev and has adopted his potted and authoritarian version of socialism.

Early returns from a white-separatist referendum held recently in Johannesburg’s better white neighborhoods showed that more than 84 percent voted for the autonomy plan. Though the legality of the vote is questionable, the exercise demonstrated beyond doubt that opposition to Mr. Mandela’s program extends far beyond any "oligarchy." If South Africa is lucky, Mr. Mandela will recognize that most of his country will never accept ethnocentric policies or Soviet-style autocracy, and he will begin to negotiate a compromise that allows more rights for South Africa’s white inhabitants. If he presses ahead with black-majority rule, the result is likely to be bloodshed.

Now that was easy, wasn’t it? Everybody was doing just fine in South Africa until the blacks took over and made it all racist with their racism. The same applies to Bolivia today, so go back to India, stupid Bolivian Indians!

Colombia is now the 4th worst country in the world when it comes to killing journalists and then pretending that it never happened, following close on the heels of notable shitholes “Iraq,” “Sudan,” and “Sierra Leone.” I didn’t check who came in 5th but I’m sure it was probably Jesus.

As you already know, there is nothing that Hugo Chavez won’t do hold on to power, because he is a megalomaniacal crazy jerk who is also fat. This week Reuters explains his latest desperate move to maintain popularity, which primarily involves fixing the country’s problems, and if we don’t intervene quickly he may just succeed in his terrifying scheme.

Where to begin? Over the last few years, dirty, poor Venezuelans slowly began to accumulate some walking around money as the country saw a boom in employment, job training, and cash flow. All of the sudden, people who had been subsisting on rotten food scraps and dirt and dried up dog turds began shopping for products like “eggs” and “milk” and “chicken.” In doing so they literally ripped these products out of the mouths of wealthier Venezuelans, 98% of whom agreed that their lives were better off before.

And then it got worse: decent society had to start eating other kinds of meat and drinking soy milk once in a while and this crisis became the second worst problem the country faced, according to polls. And now, rather than simply putting things back the way they were like a normal human, Chavez found creative ways to address the shortages of milk and chicken and now everyone thinks they are content, but by the time they figure out they are not supposed to be happy it may be too late.

"Jesus Christ was also condemned to death, and I understand that his historical popularity remains intact"

Weirdness is going down in Bolivia this weekend. If you haven’t been paying attention, the rich white folk in the rich white state of Santa Cruz are holding a referendum on Sunday to declare “autonomy” from the majority redskins. And while the sponsors are a bunch of scary racists, they wrap their arguments up with declarations of economic efficiency and “states rights.” Sound familiar? Anyway today AP runs a story that barely bothers with the niceties. It begins:

The wealthy white governor stood beneath a giant statue of Jesus and promised freedom to the tens of thousands cheering him on — freedom from a llama herder-turned-president who reveres the Indian earth goddess Pachamama.

"We in this region are positive about the conquest," said Luis Nunez, the group's vice president. "We do not in any way resent what that history meant for us. It reflects who we are now."