BoRev.Net

I’d hate to be the guy with shepherd’s crook at tonight’s Latino Coalition conference. Apparently nobody had asked aging Venezuelan beauty queen Maria Conchita Alsonso for her opinion on anything in years, and the dams are about to burst and flood the valley with paranoid fantasies, delusions of grandeur and a hilariously off-kilter interpretation of current events. Glug glug!

The Coalition’s media advisory is a Faulkneresque three page run-on sentence of Maria Conchita’s increasingly deranged non sequiturs. For instance, did you know:

>>> Che Guevarra was afraid of motorcycles?

>>> Richard Nixon was a Maoist?

>>> Venezuela’s coup was a plot by “Chavez’s assassins” to give him favorable media coverage or something?

>>> Barbara Walters thinks she’s a fucking loon? (Ok that one you could have guessed)

>>> Hugo Chavez is a lot like Hitler? And he wants to “own” children?

>>> Her upcoming movie about Venezuela will be “very different” than movies about Bobby Kennedy?

>>> The script for the movie is held under “tight security” so that “Chavez will not see it in its finished form until he goes to the movie theater like everyone else"?

Oh and of course her life is in jeopardy for all this truth telling.

When she finally stops, The Latino Coalition wraps up with an open invitation for “Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Danny Glover or whomever” to come rebut this lunatic at their next conference. The End.

You may have missed this in the non-flurry of press apathy last week, but Peru’s Congress granted Alan Garcia powers to rule by decree for the next six months. But don’t worry! He won’t use it against multinational oil interests. Just peasant farmers and trade unions and “criminals,” however he defines them.

Did you know that the rest of the world is Communist? It’s true! They celebrate something called “Labor Day” on May 1st, where the sweaty farmers and grubby factory workers get to pretend that they contribute to society or something. We patriotic Americans of course know that May 1st is really supposed to be “Loyalty Day,” where we renew our vows to our president and refuse to think impure thoughts about poverty or health care or Red China. Honestly, it’s more fun than Lent.

So you can imagine what a slap in the face it was that Venezuela chose yesterday of all days to enter into public-private partnerships with multinational oil firms. The symbolism was not lost on Time Magazine, which notes that it was all part of Hugo Chavez’ “garish knack for making the world think he's the most radical of radicals.”

But, Time argues, the move is not radical at all. They note that virtually every oil rich nation on the planet has already done the same thing, and in less U.S.-friendly ways. Frankly, I’m not sure if it’s even ok to think these kinds of thoughts so close to Loyalty Day. If true, it would mean that Neil Cavuto, Bill O’Reilly, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Rudy Giuliani and the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board have been faking this story all along.

For me, it’s easier to believe that Time is has been infiltrated with effete May-poll twirling pinko saboteurs. If Loyalty Day is to mean anything, dear readers, we must be ever-vigilant against this type of unorthodox journalism, for Jesus is not free, and Freedom will soon return.

South America’s tiniest narco-strongman is in town begging for your money again. Apparently this time he’s really, seriously going to stamp out that little drug problem in Colombia if you’ll just agree to give him a few billion more dollars. Personally, I think most of that shit is going up his nose.

Bush was totally excited to have his little buddy around, and praised Uribe’s “good solid record” this morning. I’d like to assume he wasn’t referring to the “record” of levels of genuine terrorists in cabinet level positions, or the “record” numbers of killers who were trained in an acting president’s yard, or even the “record” amounts of cocaine flooding into our country, but it’s Bush, so even he probably doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

For their part, Congressional Dems are acting like pussies (No for real!). They’re pretending to oppose a Colombian trade deal until “stronger labor standards” are written into it. That’d be nice, like if we were talking about wages, hours or working conditions, but this is Colombia, so we’re starting from STOP SHOOTING UNION ORGANIZERS. Which, by the way, is what they want your money for in the first place.

So the only meaningful opposition came from a demonstration organized by labor and human rights groups today. There must have been something satisfying for the real live Colombians whose family members have been murdered by Uribe’s regime getting to shout in his face (see lots of fun pics at Global Trade Watch’s blog), but ultimately, the little Napoleon is probably happy to endure a little heartburn for another billion dollars. Besides, he’ll have their relatives killed the moment he gets back home.

To the extent that I have any sympathy for the nasty, brutal, short guy, it’s because he has no real control over his coke-fueled economy. On the eve of President Uribe’s meeting with President Bush, the Colombian government announced they’d made the largest blow bust in Colombian history. Good news! But today, that projection had been downscaled. In a big way. They are now saying it’s about half of their original projection, and blaming it on “the initial sight count.”

Umm...ok, but Colombian drug officials have been doing this sort of thing for a few decades—they don’t get their “sight counts” off by 100 percent. And don’t you think they’d maybe reconfirm a historic number like this before sending out the press release the night before Uribe comes here to tout his record? All told, the missing coke is worth about a quarter of a billion dollars. Homeboys are selling it.

Christ. Corruption, incompetence and the ritual sacrifice of precious freedoms? These two should get a room.

If you ever wondered how some of the crazier stories from Venezuela make it into the public consciousness, here’s one way: Your tax dollars fund the National Endowment for Democracy. They, in turn, publish a journal on international governance, commissioning “academics” in other countries to float rumors that tend to advance U.S. interests in those countries. Having been legitimized as academic "fact", the rumors are fair game for U.S. academics, journalists and pundits to report as truth.

The Oil Wars blog holds your hand through one recent, egregious Venezuelan example.

Stripped of their power to Rule the World, IMF & World Bank turn out to be just your run of the mill predatory lenders.

Stripped of his power to turn Venezuela into a bloody war-ravaged hellhole, John Negroponte turns out to be just a whiney little bitch.

Business world shocker! Houston newspaper values U.S. oil interests over foreign brown people.

In an historic turn, FBI agents in Havana may be doing something useful.

Oh no, wait. Probably not.

It’s the Iran-Contra Anniversary, everyone! Can you believe it’s been twenty years since those revelations of mass murder and paper shredding shamed and titillated America? Bernardo Ruiz does such a nice job with his “where are they now” piece in the Salt Lake Tribune today that all we have to do is cut and paste. The shame continues! Enjoy!

“During his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, John Negroponte was put in charge of "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua," The New York Times reported. A 1997 CIA inspector general's report concluded that Negroponte covered up reports on human rights abuses committed by the U.S.-backed Honduran military that was linked to "death-squad activities." He was appointed ambassador to Iraq in 2004. Today, he is the U.S. State Department's deputy secretary of state.”

“Under Reagan, Otto Reich headed the Office of Public Diplomacy. "The purpose of his office was none other than to get the American people to side with war over peace, using propaganda methods determined to be 'improper,"' wrote Nobel Peace Prize winner and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez. A U.S. government investigation concluded that Reich's office engaged in "prohibited acts of domestic propaganda," according to The New York Times. Despite this history, Reich was appointed assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere in January 2002”. That’s three short months before the Venezuelan coup!

“During Iran-Contra, Elliott Abrams pleaded guilty on two counts of unlawfully withholding information, but was later pardoned by the outgoing President George H.W. Bush. At the start of this president's second term, Abrams was promoted to the role of deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy - a role that is responsible for advancing democracy abroad.”

“Donald Rumsfeld's replacement, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, served as deputy CIA director while the illegal Iran-Contra operations were taking place. "I was trying to learn the ropes while all this was going on," Gates wrote in his memoirs. But Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group that has collected hundreds of thousands of pages of documents on the scandal, calls Gates "the ultimate hear-no-evil, see-no-evil high official during Iran-Contra."

Alvaro Uribe is like the Incredible Hulk. At least the kind of Hulk that turns bright pink and grows from “dwarf” to “medium sized woman” when he gets torked off. The point is that that he’s got an anger management problem. Now this can be an asset when you are a diminutive leader of a narco-fueled terror state. When you are in Washington pretending not to be a deranged lunatic, though, it’s significantly less of an advantage.

Fabulously, his meltdown took place in the middle of a Congressionally sponsored cocktail party. Even more fabulously, the target of his rage was the Americas director of Human Rights Watch.

According to the Miami Herald, Jose Miguel Vivanco questioned the littlest strongman on some dubious numbers he’d been throwing around in his public presentations. “As Vivanco spoke, Uribe became visibly upset and fidgety, the witnesses said. Uribe then unleashed a long and emotional rebuttal,” which included calling Vivanco a “liar” and accusing him of colluding with left wing guerilla groups.

All together now, people: Finger to temple. Rotate. Repeat: “loo loo loo loo.”

After a scene like this, the Democrats will be forced to hem and haw for at least a week before giving him another fifty million dollars to finish off his war on trade unionists.

You may have heard, but everything changed™ after September 11th. Even the dictionary! This used to confuse the crap out of me because the new definitions are carefully guarded by a select group of Washington insiders and doled out as-needed when stupid people use the old meanings, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

You can image the chagrin that Human Rights Watch must feel today. They’ve been operating for the past 5 years under the assumption that state sponsored kidnappings and murders by the thousands still constitute a “violation of human rights.” Ha ha! Not even close!

As the Washington Post ed board (read: über-insider Jackson Diehl) was forced to clarify today, Colombia’s “so-called human rights ‘crisis’” doesn’t exist, because President Uribe is a “defender of liberal democracy.” In our post 9/11 world, it’s actually countries like Venezuela who are the real human rights violators, on account of their unorthodox economic policies and a president who “portrays the U.S. president as ‘the devil.’”

See? It’s easy. If you still don’t get it, here’s another example. Some America hating “journalist” published another a story on South America’s best ever democracy today. We’ve summarized it below, and included Post 9/11 language for you to study. If you want to read the original story, you can find it here.

More than two hundred farmers evildoers were discovered in a Colombian mass grave detention center today. They had been brutally murdered tried and convicted by right-wing death squads with links to Uribe’s regime liberal democrats who then stole reclaimed their land to produce cocaine create peace and rainbows. The End.

Bill Moyers’ scary-ass documentary of the American media in the run-up to the Iraq War is available online. For fun, substitute the word “Venezuela” for “Iraq” and find out what we’ll all be talking about in 2008!

>>> Pro-Evo Bolivian professor denied visa to teach in the U.S. based on “political views.”

>>> British professor will obviously meet the same fate after writing this must-read piece on Venezuelan politics.

>>> Cutie-patootie boy genius orchestra conductor becomes Venezuela’s latest gift to the U.S.

>>> Midcentury “philosopher” who fetishized rape & kicking homeless people has her own “Institute,” and they’re about as whacked as you would expect.

You may have read about the North-Koreaesque food shortages that Venezuela is suffering from, but you can’t possibly understand the full depth of the horror until you take this photo tour posted on an opposition blog.

Apparently it’s so bad that on some afternoons they are out of the top-shelf mayonnaise and only have “an assortment of other brands.” If that weren’t enough, there are days when generic cooking oil is replaced by row after row of extra-virgin olive oil!

How could it have come to this? The problem is “very complex,” but it’s “greatly aggravated by an increased purchasing power from the lower classes.” Curse you, low unemployment rate! The poor people can afford to shop, and they are hogging the good stuff. That never would have happened before Chavez.

Hey parents! Worried about the gathering threat of global antipoverty movements and third-world democracy? Want to make your socially retarded teen part of the solution? Now it’s easy!

Real-life war criminal Oliver North knows that it can be expensive to send your kids to fancy training camps in Kabul or Karachi, so he’s brought all the magic home to the USA! This summer, he will host weeklong “Military Leadership Academies” in Jacksonville and San Diego where your little delinquents can channel their hormonal rage into an American asset!

They’ll learn the latest in improvised explosive technology, counter-insurgency warfare, and the art of circumventing the pussy “human rights” bureaucracy from the men and…um…men who pioneered the field! Space is limited so sign up now!

>>> Miami Herald finally decries the “double standard” in the Posada Carriles trial, but then it turns out they’re just talking about people who want to see him locked up.

>>> DC paper condescends to let the Venezuelan government actually voice their opinion on all this.

>>> John Negroponte will be in Ecuador tomorrow. Rafael Correa must capture his ring, throw it into Tungurahua volcano, save humanity.

>>> How goes that Venezuelan economy? Car sales are up 52%.

>>> 18,000 Messicans get nekkid!

Hey! Check out this cute little kid and her cute little message! She’s totally down with the BoRev, and in our ongoing quest to be all Web 2.0 interactive, you can be too. Hooray!

Here’s how it works: just take a digital photo with your own BoRev message, and we’ll post it here. Arty, sexy or otherwise unique pictures are encouraged. All we need is the pic, along with the name of the city and country from whence it came, and you can join our little photo essay project. Here are a few examples, for inspiration.

Photos can be submitted to borevnet at gmail dot com

Mass murdering airplane bomber Luis Posada Carriles, who was freed last month, was freed freed yesterday when a federal judge dropped all charges against him on a technicality. There’s really not much left for the courts to do now other than absolve him of all past and potential future crimes and land him an instructor job at Ollie North’s Jesus Jihad Summer Camp.

We have a new nominee for USAID’s top spot! The good news is this one isn’t likely to pay Central American sex slaves to fuck her. The bad news is, this is only true because she thinks Central Americans are “lazy.” She also thinks blacks “prefer pushing drugs on the street to working in factory jobs,” and that Asians are back-stabby middle manager types.

Congressman Donald Payne, whose race puts him in the "drug pusher" category, was awesomely understated with his reaction: “I still think that a person that has a background of this nature puts her at a disadvantage, and when you get into something as sensitive as USAID, where you're dealing with developing countries, and people of color.”

Ha ha! You think?

>>> Bush personally threatens Haitian leader not to deal with Venezuela or he’ll…or he’ll…um right we’ve already done everything humanly possible to thoroughly screw this country.

>>> Bush appointee pressures Europeans to pretend that Venezuela, not Colombia, is the region’s major cocaine producer; Europeans tell ‘em to piss off.

>>> Bush appointee met with hostility in Colombia of all places; on his way to Ecuador.

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Since the Washington Post clearly hasn’t convinced you that Colombia is a goddamned Eden of liberal democracy and dancing animals, today they’ve deployed special agent Bobby Novak to drive home their distorted version of reality. It’s all so…Pre-Iraq invasion. The problem is, those “journalistic techniques” he used back in ‘03 now seem so nostalgically bogus today. Let’s take a quick look back at them, if only to recapture our lost innocence for a few fleeting moments.

Create Fake Enemies: Pre Iraq, Novak painstakingly blurred the line between Saddam Hussein and the September 11th hijackers. Today, he quaintly links Hugo Chavez with Colombian “narco-guerillas.”

Emasculate Your Critics: Remember how Democrats were limp-wristed wussies for backing sissy institutions like “UN weapons inspectors” and “France?” Today they are faggy weinerdogs for listening to “human rights activists, environmentalists and labor leaders.”

Cite “Credible Sources” Who Turn Out To Be “Crazy People”: Back in the day, Novak fawned over the likes of Ahmed Chalabi and Richard Perle. Today, God help us, it’s Denny Hastert and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Just Make Shit Up: Why not? It worked in '03! Novak’s claim that Uribe is on the “assault” against “both right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas” is hilariously reminiscent of…well just about every sweetly shameless argument he made before the war. In the case of the paramilitaries, this might actually be true if by “assault,” he means “train them on your own property and then grant them legal amnesty when they commit atrocities.”

Anyway, it’s comforting to know that no matter how quickly this crazy ol’ world changes around us, Bob Novak will always be a douchebag.

Thanks to our sharp-eyed reader who sent us this important journalistic lesson: headline writers are half-assed hacks. Yes, this is ground we’ve covered this before, and yet it stays so relevant!

You may have read, but today Venezuela completed the purchase of a controlling stake in the telecommunications firm CANTV. They paid market rates and all sides expressed their happiness blah blah blah. The AP headline reports the situation: “Venezuela Buys Controlling CANTV Stake.” Fair enough, right? Not for Bloomberg. They needed to sex up the story a bit. And thus: “Venezuela Seizes Largest Telecom.”

Whatever. I’d comment on this but it’s been a long day and it’s getting late, so I’m going to head down to the corner to seize some dinner and perhaps engage in the full-on seizure of a six-pack.

Korrecshun:
A number of readers have pointed out that it wasn't Bloomberg, but the International Herald Tribune, that came up with that stinker of a headline. BoRev.net regrets the error.

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Well at least one U.S. agency recognizes a terrorist for what he is. Sure, mad airplane bomber Luis Posada Carriles had all charges dropped on a technicality earlier this week, but he still had a hard time getting back to his Miami command center. As the New York Times reports, “Mr. Posada and other members of the team were driving the 1,930 miles from El Paso to his family in Miami because he was on the federal government’s no-fly list.” The move places Posada in the same axis of inconvenience as other notable terrorists, including Senator Ted Kennedy, Bush critic James Moore, and the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens.

The families of his victims should drink-in this special moment, because it's probably the last form of justice they'll ever see in the case.

>>> The New York Times' bourgiest little foreign correspondent gets his latte on as he finds something to rave about in Caracas: gentrification!

>>> The Washington Post’s free-market-iest columnist is worried that free market competition might be crowding out the influence of the World Bank and the IMF, who, you know, are all about promoting free market competition.

>>> The world’s imperial-iest magazine makes another lame attempt to drive a pretend wedge between Caracas and Brasilia.

>>> California’s hippiest college town gets down with the BoRev.

Your bod here! Send BoRev photos to borevnet at gmail dot com

Larry Craig to the rescue! The Idaho Senator has heard the May Day mayday cries of the long-wronged multinational oil firms who now have to pay taxes in Venezuela or something, and totally demands action. And by “demands action,” we are not talking about anal sex, because he’s not gay, ok?

Anyway, Senator Craig (pictured above with cowboy friend) has a plan to wean America off foreign oil, particularly the oil from “leaders such as Hugo Chavez…who loathe all that America stands for.” And he’s written it all up in a format suitable for publication in Idaho’s eighth largest newspaper.

Larry’s piece (we’re referring here to his editorial, not his "piece",) is filled with all kinds of well-researched tidbits. For instance, did you know that Chavez opposes “our ideals and our way of life”? Or that “his goal is to hobble the United States”? Or that the super-straight Senator could go on all day “venting about the hypocrisy of Chavez and other anti-capitalists fueling their regimes with the very same private investment and profit they rail against”? Me neither.

Clearly, Senator Craig is no hypocrite, so it’s a really good thing he’s not a closet case who enjoys anonymous gay sex in the bathrooms of Washington’s Union Station. The very notion is impossible, because he’s a married conservative Republican who is inordinately opposed to gay civil rights. And he comes from a cowboy state. And cowboys are never gay. Or hypocritical. So he’s not. Stop bugging him about it and pay attention to Venezuela.

>>> Florida paper decries Chavez’ “egotistical power play” over Latin American influence; recommends U.S.-sponsored egotistical power play.

>>> Even Alberto Gonzales is pissed that Posada Carriles was released from jail. But then, he just gets off on detaining people.

>>> Of course, the case against Posada is probably “more solid than the secret evidence against most of the detainees at Guantanamo.”

>>> Colombian paramilitary leader promises to name names linking America’s bestest friend to death squads.

What’s the point of owning a multi-million dollar TV network if you can’t even use it to violently overthrow your government? That’s the question posed by Venezuelan media mogul Marcel Granier in his recent trip to the US to shore up support for his…um…plight?

After a number of half-crazed attempts at journalistic jihad, Granier’s TV station is not going to get its government-issued license renewed this month. And of course the Washington Post’s three-quarters-crazed deputy editorial page editor is bravely standing by his side. According to Jackson Diehl, the license issue is an attempt by Hugo Chavez to muzzle dissenting media voices and “proof” that he’s a “dictator.” Diehl longs for the day that Chavez stands trial for “human rights crimes,” over the whole thing blah blah blah.

Diehl, of course, is the same jackass who last week chided Democrats for being tough on Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, just because his government happens to be linked to the little problem of mass graves that keep popping up all over the goddamned place. So you kind of get where he’s coming from: Inverse-Priorityville.

If Venezuela’s private TV networks are a Rupert Murdoch wet dream of smut & barely-there journalistic standards, RCTV has stained the sheets beyond all human recognition. (Gross. Sorry). When African leaders visit, RCTV “news” shows dub “wooga wooga” gorilla noises into the background to joke that black people are monkeys. (Haha!) The station’s graphics department uses Photoshop to digitally fabricate government scandals (The Oil Wars blog has video of one hilariously lame recent example).

Still, in Venezuela, this kind of crap always has and continues to be standard practice for the nightly news. But there are a few obvious-even-to-autistic-toddlers thresholds that productive members of constitutional democracies can’t cross.

Honestly, imagine if Katie Couric had done: this. As far as we’d be able to guess, she’d be in Guantanamo right now thumbing through her precious bible that some solider had peed on three days earlier. But we’d never know for sure because she’d have been denied all access to her family, a lawyer, the media, and the quaint notion of Constitutional protections that we used to enjoy as a society before everything changed™. We’d have nothing but semi-fond memories and a pirated DVD of her colonoscopy to remind us she ever existed at all.

Marcel Granier, on the other hand, is on a worldwide publicity tour. His one-part slimy/ one-part seditious little TV station isn’t even being shut down. He won’t have access to the public airwaves after this month, but he remains free to move his entire apparatus to a private cable station and hire Janet Jackson’s left breast as a foreign correspondent.

Yeesh. I don’t want to give him any ideas.

Korecshun: A sharp-eyed reader noted that it's J.J.'s right breast, not her left, that's the media star (Thanks dad!). BoRev.Net regrets the error.

>>> Venezuelan gals get economic parity, fake boobs. Go feminism!

>>> Pope to Latin America: Fuck you, miserable bastards. Send money.

>>> Florida paper: our lives would improve considerably if Latin America would just give us all their shit.

>>> Think tank looks at Venezuela, gets that creepy tingly déjà vu feeling for Guatemala in ’54.

>>> Kylie Monogue maybe probably messing around with some married guy who used to screw Maria Conchita Alonso.

Build It! Send your BoRev pix to borevnet at gmail dot com

It’s been literally hours since we checked in on the Best Democracy Ever, so you can imagine how much craziness has ensued in the meantime. Colombia, God bless it, never disappoints. In the last day:

Five more of President Uribe’s Congressional allies were arrested for their ties to death squads, bringing the subtotal to 14, but the week is still young.

Both the head of the National Police and the top Intelligence guy were forced to resign after it emerged that they “illegally tapped calls of opposition political figures, journalists and members of the government for the past two years.” Christ, no wonder the Bush administration loves these guys so much, they share similar interests! An AP reporter slipped in this little nugget:

Journalists in Colombia assume their phone conversations are recorded by intelligence agencies, domestic and foreign.

Still, this Stasi-esque hell on earth is sure to be overshadowed by the Venezuelan super-duper scandal of the week: Rich people drive expensive cars!

Adolph Hitler loved babies. Joe Stalin loved babies. Hugo Chavez…loves babies. I rest my case.

This chilling revelation—and accompanying photo—comes from the front page of yesterday’s Tal Cual, Venezuela’s intellectual daily newspaper. Editor Teodoro Petkoff is a former opposition presidential candidate and a frequent Venezuela “analyst” in such venerable media outlets as the Washington Post, USA Today, and National Public Radio, so you know his piece is really well researched.

And that’s not even the scary part. I’ve done some research of my own, and it turns out that plenty of supposedly “respectable” public figures in the United States harbor similar fascist tendencies. Read on…

President Bush? Fascist. President Clinton? Fascist fascist. Mother Theresa? The godmother of fascism.

Who were you thinking about voting for in ‘08? Because Obama is a fascist. So is Hillary. Mitt Freaking Romney? He’s got like 20 of ‘em!!

But there’s more: You can see that Britney Spears doesn’t even restrain her fascist tendencies with a car seat. Here Michael Jackson flaunts his inner fascist by dangling it precariously over a ledge. Madonna is a founding member of Fascism Without Borders. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are stockpiling a goddamned rainbow tribe of fascism hellbent on world domination!!

There’s really nobody left to trust, except of course Teodoro Petkoff—he hates babies! Or Joan Crawford. Or maybe, maybe somebody like Jeffrey Dahmer. Although even he enjoyed fascism with a little ketchup.

>>> Wolfowitz blames Muslims for all his problems; this time it’s the girlfriend.

>>> Leftist presidents top list of Latin America’s most popular, as do rightists.

>>> Financial Times dusts off its quarterly “Venezuelan Jews Say They’re Vaguely Concerned About Chavez’s Relationship With Iran When You Put It To Me Like That” story.

>>> Colombian scandal is just like Watergate, except that the “burglars” are “assassins” and the crimes were repeated thousands and thousands of times and Uribe won't resign until your pry his gun from his cold, dead, coke-encrusted hands.

>>> Rafael Correa can “bust my trust” anytime, if you know what I mean.

Send your BoRev pix to borevnet at gmail dot com!

So yesterday more crazy crap happened in Colombia that was totally separate from the crazy crap that happened the day before. I know. It’s really hard for me to keep up with it all, too.

First: a former death squad leader testified that back in the ‘90’s Colombia’s current Defense Minister met with him “to discuss efforts to destabilize the president at the time.” The minister “would not comment.”

And: Uribe’s Vice President charmingly encouraged the group, which is designated as a terrorist outfit in the U.S., to “tak[e] their operations to the capital, Bogotá.” The VP “was not immediately available for comment.”

Fortunately, the Washington Times is more than happy to do the commenting for them. This morning they posted, nearly verbatim, a “Myths vs. Facts” info sheet written by the Colombian embassy. Oh, and of course they joined the Washington Post and douchebag columnist Bob Novak in opining
that the Democrats are a bunch of limp-wristed America haters for mildly expressing concern about all this.

Because, you know, worrying about the internal politics of Latin American nations goes against our values.

Venezuela’s gross domestic product grew a whopping 8.8% in the first quarter of ‘07! Great news, right? Ha! Naïve readers. You don’t know sheeyit. This is Venezuela we’re talking about, so it’s bad news.

You see, last year’s first quarter growth was 11.8%, so this is a growth slowdown sparked by nationalizations—nationalizations that occurred a month or so after the quarter ended. The Houston Chronicle will set you straight.

Well looky here: some prankster has published a phony version of the Venezuelan legislature’s official bulletin claiming that the government plans to get eliminate private schools, private property, and “replace the Armed Forces with militias.” So this is where Jackson Diehl is getting his info!

I mean, honestly. The Office of Transition Initiatives is spending tens of millions of dollars on undisclosed “NGOs” in Venezuela, and this is the best they can do? It’s the 21st Century people! Can’t they forge realistic Rising Sun style videos of Chavez spitting on a crucifix or smacking around poor children or something? Some empire.

Hey everyone, do you know about the “Business & Media Institute”? Its mission, officially, is to expose the pervasive “anti free enterprise” bias in the press, and it’s about time I say! I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of the mainstream media with their lack of Ipod stories, their “global warming” scare-mongering and their “black people are just like you and me” hippie bullshit. Unofficially, B&MI aims to make the Washington Times look like a reputable news outlet, you know, if the Times wasn’t run by a crazy magical Korean cult leader. Still, they give ‘em a run for their money.

B&MI is seriously none too happy about this “Venezuela” country right now. You can tell, because they've got headlines like “A Thieving Dictator Only U.S. Media Could Love.” But the main point is that today they have an awesome interview with that Republican Congressman who wrecked his home for a piece of Sony Bono’s widow’s cute little behind. Hack or Mack or McGillicuddy or something. The family values guy. Anyway, this Republican Congressman used the opportunity to spark up his one-sided publicity stunt feud with Joe Kennedy, which may one day end in bloodshed or a wrestling match in vat of Jell-O. Recommended reading!

>>> A statesman to the end, Paul Wolfowitz sez, “If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

>>> But despite his best efforts, the end is nigh.

>>> IMF officials to “cooperate” with Bank of the South, mainly because they may need a job there soon.

>>> That whole “training and supporting Luis Posada Carriles” thing sort of backfired on the CIA.

>>> Never heard of the Human Rights Foundation? That’s all about to change now that Venezuelan good time gal Maria Conchita Alonso is coming on board.

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Congratulations, Simon Romero! As we’ve observed in the past, the intrepid New York Times correspondent normally waits to see what everyone else is writing about and then publishes a similar story a few days later. Today, though, he’s managed to publish his similar story on the same day as the Wall Street Journal. An impressive feat, really. Good on ya, dude.

So what is this burning story? Land Reform, natch. Yes, I know this process has been going on since President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress movement in the 60’s but today its really got resonance because…well just because.

And to be fair to Romero, the two stories take a bit of a different tack: the Journal says the reforms are stupid and riddled with corruption, and the Times says they're violent and riddled with commies.

By way of background, land reform is actually a huge issue in Venezuela. A handful of families own 80% of the rural land, and peasant farmers generally act as sharecroppers. In Venezuela, the idea was to divide up a portion of idle land so that campesinos can break the cycle of poverty.

But it’s the video that accompanies the Times story that’s particularly gag-worthy. Through most of it, Romero follows a wealthy landowner on a tour of his properties as he discusses his fears of the unwashed masses in perfect, un-accented English. The article itself notes that at least 160 campesinos have been murdered by paid hitmen in recent years, but Romero forgets to ask about that little development, although he does track down another large landowner whose husband was killed by poor people—one of eight in recent years. Her story is quite sad, but really, could he really not find any poor victims who are being killed 20 times more frequently?

But hey, we’re just happy that Romero got out of Caracas on a junket that doesn’t appear to be a package tour. It’s a start.

>>> Chavez cedes power to local communities; opposition predictably finds something to complain about.

>>> Former U.S. spy in Venezuela still bitching about getting fired, budget cuts.

>>> Wolfowitz spends another day crying over how unfair life is.

>>> Miami columnist compares Venezuela with countries where journalists are murdered by the dozens, still likes those countries better.

>>> Venezuelan art museums design innovative programs for the disabled to create opportunities and combat discrimination; article retardedly annoyingly refers to “the plastic arts” again and again.

Goodbye.

WaPo: “He will be treated like a leper now”

BBC: “"He has demeaned the Bank, insulted the staff, diminished its clients, and dragged this institution through the mud.”

Bank Information Center: “The World Bank's housecleaning has only just begun.”

NYT: ““His style was seen as an ad hoc subjective approach to blah blah blah…” (fucking New York Times…)

Oh! And Shaha Riza sez: “I don't have a man taking care of me.”

True dat, sister.

As detestable as Paul Wolfowitz is, the self-absorbed World Bank staff is almost as contempt worthy. The WaPo's Style section today looks at what’s been keeping them busy over the last couple of weeks: hand crafting blue ribbons! The ribbons of course symbolized their opposition to Wolfie. A noble cause, but they’ve been filling break rooms taking shifts folding, pinning and distributing them by the thousands. Why?

"The staff needed a challenge," she says. "They needed something productive."

At some point the Bush Administration has to admit that when they’ve lost Costa Rica, they’re sort of totally SOL in terms of Latin American influence. Yesterday it became the 3rd country to follow Venezuela’s lead and refuse to send troops to the Columbus, Georgia-based dead-ender terrorist training camp formerly known as the School of the Americas. Turns out, the Costa Ricans are no longer into learning the finer points of waterboarding their own populace to find out who supports universal health care.

Sure, the move seems somewhat symbolic, what with the whole “Costa Rica doesn’t have a military” thing, but still, they’d been sending select police officers to the SOA for years. Let’s just say that San Jose is the last place you want to be caught with a baggie of pot. Or a copy of “Hegemony or Survival.”

That’s what the Bushies get for backing a Nobel laureate for President, suckers! Sanctions will begin next week.

In case you are naïve enough to think that providing education, medical care and job training to poor people was a positive thing, the Associated Press helpfully explains to readers that Hugo Chavez has been an utter failure because poverty has not been yet been eliminated in Venezuela.

On a related note, Chavez claims to prioritize health care, yet after 8 years he still hasn’t found a cure for cancer.

Have you noticed this never-ending war against a country that never had a military to speak of hasn’t completely destroyed our armed forces yet? Don’t worry! The Unrepentant NeoCon Club met last night to discuss the next steps.

The keynote speech came from cartoonishly ill-tempered “diplomat” John Bolton. It went something like this: “You’re next Iran, Burma, Syria, and Venezuela. The end.”

If I were Venezuela, I wouldn’t be exceedingly concerned. By the time they get to Syria, the whole fucking world will be blown up. We all win!

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As longtime readers know, BoRev.Net ain’t one to gossip, so you didn’t hear this from us, ok? Lean in close now. Did you hear about the latest scandal that has shocked, shocked the Caracas country club set? The one involving the expensive cars?

No no. This isn’t the one about three billion Hummers that was a totally true sign of Chavista corruption until it turned out that the story had been faked and Photoshopped by an RCTV “news” program. That story was so April. Keep up.

We’re talking about the granddaddy of conspicuous consumerism: the super-duper counter-revolutionary fancy mustard swapping from the back seat Rolls Royce scandal! Last week, the always-accurate Caracas fishwrapper “Tal Cual” reported that a full two hundred Rolls Royce Phantoms had been imported into the country in the past year to pleasure the corrupt government-backed nouveau riche tacky-tacky thief people. Two hundred! It’s a huge deal because it would mean a full quarter of the Phantoms produced in the last year were going down Venezuela way.

Well, some of the little people were skeptical of the story, because they are too stupid to trust the infallible truthiness of the Venezuelan press. So as further evidence, this video was posted a few days ago that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Rolls’ arrived in Venezuela last February. It even identifies a generically fat old government official personally inspecting the fleet and driving one home himself! A smoking gun!

And yet, the unwashed masses remained unconvinced. They kept pointing to little details of the video, like “the signs are all in English,” or “that doesn’t look like Venezuela,” or “that generically fat old government official doesn’t look anything like the guy they claim he is.” I didn’t believe them of course, because the story was in Tal Cual!

But then they found this video. It’s the same footage, but it was posted from Hong Kong last December! Frankly I don’t know what to think. Either this story is a fake, or even more sinister, the Chavistas have discovered the secret of time travel to further their nefarious goals. So of course I’m conflicted.

---
(Special thanks to the commenters at Oil Wars to the hot scoop).

Colombian president doesn’t much care for Democrats, accountability.

Pope Benedict doesn’t much care for Indians, historical accuracy.

Ozzie Guillen doesn’t much care for Wrigley Field, Slurpees.

Get yo' ass up here! Send your BoRev pix to www.BoRevNet at Gmail dot com

Note to Democrats: You snubbed the wrong dictator. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, God help us, is trying to work on his image. And as everyone knows, the first rule of public relations is “Play Up Your Strengths” (Whatever. It’s in the top ten).

Unfortunately, Uribe’s primary strength seems to be “generally being a lunatic.” So just as the press was beginning to delve the depths of his double life as a phone-tapping death squad smoocher, the little strongman decides that now would be a good time to send his military out on a harebrained misión imposible to rescue hostages kidnapped three years ago by leftist guerillas. But only the foreign ones.

France, of course, is begging him to drop the 24 shtick, what with its whole “unmitigated disaster” potential. But Uribe knows that no matter how it plays out, the crazy scheme is enough to get him a trade deal and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Besides, he’s already on to second rule of public relations: distract the shit out of everybody.

>>> If you are at all interested in Venezuela, or pooping, go out and buy this book.

>>> Land Reform Week continues! It’s just like Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, in the sense that it’s hyping and spinning shit that’s been going on every day like, forever.

>>> The Financial Times serves up a sort of fair and nuanced analysis of the whole RCTV flap. It’s actually painful for me to admit this, but maybe thats just the pigs flying out my butt.

>>> As Chavez battles the Vatican for your very soul, the pundits are siding with Chavez.

>>> Venezuela is turning the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture into a major Hollywood movie. I think it was inspired by my 5th grade term paper on the guy. I got a B+.

Stop the presses! Somebody in the Venezuelan opposition has developed a sense of humor. Hands down the best English-language Venezuela-themed blog name ever. Welcome to the world, BCSF!

Will somebody please pay attention to Connie Mack? Jesus, the South Florida Congressman gets into bar fights and high profile road rage incidents, and yet only tools like Neil Cavuto seem to consider him interesting enough for prime time? Honestly, who’s a guy gotta cunniling to get into the papers these days? Besides Cher’s dead ex’s widow (pictured!), that is.

Anyway, today the little prince is all up in arms over “opportunism.” Mack, who changed his name from Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy IV to not sound like such a prissy little Fauntleroy, is against it.

Specifically, he’s outraged that some Hollywood guy has accepted financing from Venezuela to make movies about Latin American heroes, because you see, that is opportunism.

Here’s what’s not opportunism, in the Little Lord Connie morality playbook:

· Trading on your famous family’s name & fortune to get a seat in Congress;

· Trading in your no-longer-hot wife for a sexy youngish Congresswoman; and

· Umm… issuing a freaking press release telling actors you’ve never met who they should work with. Specifically, “investors and financiers who value freedom, [and] treasure our nation.”

Let that last one sink in. “investors and financiers” who “treasure our nation.” Maybe my vocabulary is not so good, but isn’t there some link between “opportunism” and “way lame platitudinous political pandering”?

The Economist would like you to know that even though all the headlines are about "Uribe's Vice President met with the Paras to destabilize the government"-this and "Uribe's favorite General and the Paras depopulated the Uraba"-that, Colombia's President is getting a bad rap.

You may have heard that in Colombia, impunity is the norm in cases of murdered union activists. But you should know that Uribe is a man of action, and he's knocked some heads together and demanded results and so on, and the problem has improved:

"In 98.8% of cases, nobody has been punished, according to Domingo Tovar of the CUT, the main trade-union confederation - though that is down from 99.9% last year."

Fair enough.

SIR - BoRev takes due note of the improvement in the impunity rate from a clearly unsatisfactory .1% to a robust 1.2%. But wasn't it George W. Bush who said something once about "the soft bigotry of low expectations?"

>>> Bush, Chavez subvert the nanny state together.

>>> Helmet-headed Senateresse knows how ‘merican ingenuity can kill off the triple threat of Hugo Chavez, gas prices, and caribou in one fell stroke.

>>> Oil Wars parses Venezuela’s GDP data; it rocks, if you happen to be a Venezuelan.

>>> It’s the most detailed analysis of Colombia’s nightmare paramilitary freakshow ever, and it comes from…Reporters Without Borders?

>>> Rush Limbaugh uncovers extraordinary Glover-Gorbechev-Gore-DiCaprio-Chavez commie conspiracy. Good night and good luck!!

Stop hatin'. Send your BoRev photos to BoRevNet at Gmail dot Com

After a few weeks of huffing and puffing about the impending End of RCTV As We Know It, press freedom groups were finally asked a pertinent question: Under similar circumstances, “Would RCTV have had its license renewed in the United States or Europe?” The answers:

* Reporters Without Borders: I think so.

* Human Rights Watch: Probably not.

* Committee to Protect Journalists: No.

I’m sure Simon Romero is kicking himself for not asking the question himself. But hey! Why not just copy the story and publish it next week?

>>> Wolfie may have to spit shine his own hair again after Shaha dumps his ass and his wife won’t take him back.

>>> Pope: I was wrong, Chavez was right; I don’t do apologies.

>>> RCTV reporters have been on the U.S. State Department payroll all this time. Duh. [link in Spanish]

>>> Dem leaders kept their colleagues in the dark on LaAm trade deals so they can hog the K Street kickbacks, avoid the pesky “human rights” discussions.

Yo people. Your editor will be on vacation for the next couple of weeks. But don't panic! We've recruited a couple of guest posters to cover in the meantime. So while the postings may be slightly less frequent in the days ahead, they'll probably be a whole lot better. I may pop in for a post or two as well to make sure that the standards remain as low as you've come to expect.

Wow, just as our fearless editor heads off for vacation, things start to heat up! Not that they were ever that cooled down over here at BoRev.Net. The AP reports:

Lawmakers have called for the dismissal of the head of the Organization of American States' peace mission in Colombia, accusing him of standing by as paramilitary warlords held orgies in a government-granted safe haven set aside for peace talks...

Jose Castro Caycedo, the pro-government legislator who sponsored the nonbinding resolution, told The Associated Press that paramilitaries made a mockery of the peace talks by "holding orgies on the negotiating table," excesses which he said Caramagna should have denounced.

The resolution referred to media reports that paramilitaries held all-night, whiskey-fueled orgies with costly prostitutes and which soccer players and famous Mexican mariachi bands also attended.

Revelations made by respected weekly newsmagazine Semana earlier this month also describe how the warlords — who are accused of being among Colombia's biggest drug-traffickers — spent their days motocross racing, caring for exotic pet tigers and tending to business with unidentified Mexican partners.

Hmm, I had always wondered what the link was between the paracos and Michael Jackson.
Now I know.

A wise friend once told me that thanks to America's military industrial complex, anyone running for office must have at least one war per candidacy. We've already seen this with all the dick-waving on Iran. Now the cocks are pointed at Venezuela, thanks to a horrifically ignorant Senate resolution sponsored by '08 hopefuls and potential hopefuls Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Hagel, McCain, and Obama.

The resolution just got unanimous approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (just to jog your memory, that includes all of these people, among them Biden, Dodd, Obama, and past presidential would be dick wagger John Kerry...). The Venezuela Information Office is asking for you to make calls before it gets to the floor (their "ask" is reprinted after the jump). Go ahead, give those schlongs the Bobbitt treatment.

Well RCTV is off the air, and the U.S. press is reacting with typical nuance. Just don’t don’t go outside today or you might get your lights knocked out from the skychunks falling to the ground.

In case you think today’s coverage in the New York Times might be lacking some key context, media watchdog group FAIR pieces some together for you here.

You've heard of the Shitty Crescent, right? It's the crescent shaped geographic range of congressional nutcases that stretches from Miami up through New Yawk/ New Jersey, with some other scattered points spewed like evil stars in between and all around. And they hate the BoRev.

The Shitty Crescent is in full shit with this latest resolution courtesy of Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), among others. These and the other co-sponsors, no populists on pocketbook issues, have gone positively John Birch on this resolution connecting Iran to Venezuela.

The Whereases make for such wacky reading, I think Klein and Company should go into business as a specialty company that you can hire for parties. Just imagine the fun your guests would have! "Whereas you just did 3 tequila shots; whereas you followed it by a beer bong hit; whereas you posed for Girls Gone Wild; be it resolved that you will wake up hungover next to a total stranger!" Only problem is, that line of random assembled facts at least is a plausible narrative. BoRev going Hiroshima? Think not.

Read the full spew after the jump. While you're at it, pick up the phone and call our friends at extension 202-224-7701... you'll know what to do.

Bart Jones has practically the only mainstream U.S. media analysis of what really happened with the RCTV license over at the Los Angeles Times op-ed page. Jones concludes:

Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States? The U.S. government probably would have shut down RCTV within five minutes after a failed coup attempt — and thrown its owners in jail. Chavez's government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves. It can still broadcast on cable or via satellite dish.

Granier and others should not be seen as free-speech martyrs. Radio, TV and newspapers remain uncensored, unfettered and unthreatened by the government. Most Venezuelan media are still controlled by the old oligarchy and are staunchly anti-Chavez.

If Granier had not decided to try to oust the country's president, Venezuelans might still be able to look forward to more broadcasts of "Radio Rochela."

The Onion does its hilarious "man on the street" bit about the golpista licensegate.

The best one? "It's heartening to see people take to the streets over something they're so passionate about, like television."

We're gonna have a TV party tonight. Who's bringing the brews?

Who's got Venezuelan cable? I totally can't wait to see what RCTV says on its free and uncensored cable show, which will operate without any interference from the government. It was such a drag having to see them on the PUBLICLY subsidized PUBLIC airwaves... yeah, that 20 year PUBLIC concession was such a drag. It was pretty fuckin rad to see a PRIVATE TV station aid a coup against the PUBLICLY ELECTED government on the PUBLIC airwaves, but I'm sure anyone rich enough to think that was a good use of the PUBLIC airwaves can afford the PRIVATE cable fee.

Jeez, putschists ain't what they used to be. They're always wantin a government handout to do their putschery. Whatever happened to DIY?