BoRev.Net

Andres Oppenheimer’s dumb prayers are about to be answered—to great comic effect! The narcissist-retardist Miami Herald gasbag has been demanding that the Organization of American States investigate the files from the FARC’s magical jungle laptops that ostensibly link Venezuela and Ecuador to armed rebels, in order to “punish” the two countries. Problem is, the Colombians refuse to ask for an independent investigation, which may have something to do with the fact that they’ve recently been caught creating fake laptop-related evidence for select media outlets.

But never fear, because over the weekend the OAS finally received a petition to fully investigate all the allegations—from Ecuador. And now justice will be served and/or Colombia will have to lose those laptops, too.

Hot Tip! If you have no other reason to visit Venezuela this year, do it for the hyper-fertile monkey-eating populace, and their never-ending struggle avoid painful insect bites. But try and avoid Caracas traffic, which is Chavez’s fault, obvs. And soccer stadiums, because those people be crazy.

If only London had “caucus states,” the perhaps Ken Livingstone might still be mayor, maybe. But instead some wild-eyed madman named Boris, who honest-to-God refers to Africans as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles,” is running the show, which is really sort of scary when you think about it.

On the upside, Livingstone now gets to spend his time writing awesome opinion pieces for the Guardian Online. This one is all about the new mayor’s dumb plan to renege on London’s commitments to Caracas, or, as Livingston puts it, “a piece of mindless vandalism” motivated by “petty political vindictiveness,” designed to screw over the most desperate classes in both countries. Massa Boruhs shore don like tha po’ folk much neither, as it turns out.

Now that Hillary has dropped out of the race (Kidding! She’ll never go away!) it is time to reveal the horrifying truth about the Obama campaign. It turns out that America’s first Muslim president is not backed financially by communist Venezuelan petro-dollars after all. Tragically, this was all just a dumb urban legend spread by the internets, and bitter, gullible, elitists like you believed it. But now the terrible rumor has been completely debunked, officially and forever, by Snopes:

The revelation that a foreign leader was funding a U.S. presidential candidate's campaign would be explosive news in any case, but even more so if the leader providing the funding were as controversial a figure as Hugo Chávez. In this case, however, someone has apparently confused Hugo Chávez, the current president of Venezuela, with the late Che Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary.

Well Bolivia’s political scene is maturing nicely. Not only has secession fever swept certain segments of the population, but now it’s got one of those opposition student movements everybody’s talking about. Just last week the two movements joined forces to take on one of the biggest problems facing the Andean nation: brown people! IPS reports...

A mob of armed civilians from Sucre, partially made up of university students, then surrounded several dozen indigenous Morales supporters, including local authorities who had come from other regions to attend the ceremony and were unable to leave the city after the event was called off.

The terrified indigenous people, who had sought refuge in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Sucre, were stripped of their few belongings, including money, identity documents and watches, and forced to walk seven kilometres to the House of Liberty, a symbol of the end of colonial rule in Bolivia, which was declared there on Aug. 6, 1825.

In the city’s main square in front of the building, they were forced to kneel, shirtless, and apologise for coming to Sucre. They were also made to chant insults to Morales like "Die Evo!"

They were surrounded by activists from the conservative pro-autonomy movement, who set fire to the blue, black and white MAS party flag, the multicolour flag of the Aymara people, and colourful hand-woven indigenous ponchos seized from the visiting Morales supporters, as a signal of their "victory" over the president’s grassroots support bases.

The State Department finally figured that Venezuelans aren’t all prostitutes...they just dress that way! Buh dum bum.

It’s official: Americans now despise immigrants even more than we hate Fidel! Up until last year, unofficial U.S. policy allowed creepy old undocumented terrorists to sneak onto U.S. soil and convalesce in godawful places like “Miami” before their souls are sent to a fiery hell, forever, so long as their “crimes” involved blowing up Communist airplanes filled with Cuban teen-athletes.

But today America is changing (for the better?) and our federal prosecutors have their fingers on our collective, xenophobic pulse. So they are revisiting the immigration charges against Luis “Osama” Posada, because he is an illegal Latin, and “a ruling could take several months,” at which point Posada will have been dead for many weeks, and justice served, sorta.

Oh those bumbling, goofball Bushies and their foreign policy foibles! Today the L.A. Times helpfully details the State Department’s funniest Venezuela-related “blunders, bluster and gaffes,” which include accidentally supporting the violent overthrow of its government, conducting a never-ending psy-ops war, and launching frightening, ongoing military flyovers of the country. Amusing, right? But wait! It is not all fun and games because there is also a serious side to these comical flubs that may be hard for people like you and me to comprehend. You see Hugo Chavez is totally paranoid, and therefore he doesn’t understand that when we accidentally intervene in his country’s affairs that it’s just a big dumb misunderstanding. And also Venezuelans are idiots too, so while we can laugh at these zany mixups, they actually think we might wish to harm their democracy. Can you believe it? There’s no accounting for what gets into the heads of third-worlders! Anyway I just read the stupidest editorial ever.

>>> Peru just recalled its ambassador to Bolivia because Evo called Garcia a fat jerk.

>>> Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba come to world hunger summit with harebrained idea to fight world hunger; global bureaucrats decry the “disruption.”

>>> Colombian government launches legal proceedings against pretty much every major opposition politician and journalist nationwide.

>>> Uribe still wants to amend his stupid Constitution (again) to run for another term (again).

>>> Venezuela economy…parallel exchange rate…international reserves…excess liquidityzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Last Wednesday as Pennsylvania’s beloved retard Congressman John Peterson was giving one of his speeches about how the Sierra Club is destroying America or whatever, he made this important geopolitical observation:

“Recently, as China and India have increased their usage and as many of the countries—Mexico, Chavez, Nigeria, Russia, and all of them—have nationalized their oil companies and are now run by the government….”

You may have heard that Venezuela recently re-vamped its intelligence apparatus. Actually what you probably heard is that a New Spy Law threatened to throw Venezuelans into prison if they didn’t spy on their neighbors just like in Cuba! That was sort of the gist of this hysterical front page New York Times story last week. The Economist, hilariously backtracking on years of hyperventilating over Castro-comunismo in Venezuela, actually noted that the Chavez administration had “never been particularly repressive, let alone a dictatorship.” Until now, that is! The law was going to turn the country into a police state once and for all. It was even drawing comparisons to the Patriot Act, for gawdsakes.

Except that it didn’t quite do that. The law, as originally written, required people to turn over information about terrorism or threats to national security, but even that is moot because the government declared yesterday that it would amend it to remove the passages deemed controversial by human rights groups. Lamest. Dictatorship. Ever.

Just hours after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on FARC guerillas to free all hostages without pre-condition, the Washington Post acknowledged its own longstanding ties to the Colombian rebels in a stunning front-page declaration.

The Post, once considered a respectable journal of record, gushes over FARC leader Alfonso Cano, calling him a “tough intellectual,” “bookish,” and even “meteoric.” The article acknowledges a dialogue between senior staff reporters and Mr. Cano dating to 2000, indicating that the relationship goes back at least 8 years, although the origins and depth of the relationship remain shrouded in mystery. The FARC are considered a terrorist organization by the United States Government, and the disclosure may further pressure the State Department to list the newspaper as a media sponsor of terrorism.

Experts are divided over why the Post chose this timing to release the bombshell disclosure. Critics contend that the emerging story may undermine the disarmament process initiated by Chavez. Venezuelan authorities have declined to comment for fear of disrupting the peace effort. BoRev.Net remains committed to following further developments as they become available.

Those neo-Nazi Bolivian Student movement autonomy creeps had so much fun forcibly stripping the Indian people and frog marching them around town to promote …democracy? ...last week that they’ve decided to take their show on the road. As one of their leaders put it, “We want this to spread not just to the rest of the country but to Venezuela, Ecuador, and Nicaragua as well, to end with this centralism throughout Latin America.” So, like, buy a belt, and weep.

(PS: I stole the photo from Abiding in Bolivia).

Keeping right-wing gun-nut neighbor “Colombia” at bay? Child’s play. Undermining the global reach of U.S. hegemony? In its sleep. Starting today, Venezuela is taking on a far more powerful adversary.

>>> Hugo Chavez is a crazed monkey fucking cannibal, of course, but did you know that also he is a person? The Washington Post investigates.

>>> WSJ columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady is a crazed pistol fucking nazi, of course, but did you know that also she is inaccurate? Adam Isacson investigates.

>>> The United States recently “lost” Latin America forever, of course, but did you know that we permanently lost it 100 years ago, too? Greg Grandin investigates.

>>> Inca Kola News manages to anticipate and contextualize future Chavez dustups, of course, but did you know also they post dirty pictures sometimes?

Hint: He’s a former minor league baseball player/Hollywood executive who used to wear women’s panties to “improve” his “game” and was once actually murdered by Caracas gitteratus Sean Penn. Weird, I know!

The Associated Press clarifies:

In a June 10 story, The Associated Press reported that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in January urged world leaders to back the armed struggle of leftist Colombian rebels. Chavez said at the time that world leaders should recognize the groups as “true armies... insurgent forces that have a political project.” However, Chavez also said a day later: “I don't agree with the armed struggle” and urged a political solution to the conflict.

"INTERPOL clarifies it never determined authenticity of laptops that implicate Venezuela."

You know how it never gets old laughing about how a group called “Transparency International” is freakishly obfuscatory about how it operates even though its “mission” is to make foreign groups be “transparent” in how they operate? You’ll love this because it involves lies and unreturned phone calls and Venezuela and a hilarious, angry, dishonest “senior press officer” named Gypsy. Gypsy!

Yesterday four men (three of them Colombians, natch) were arrested in Ecuador for “plotting to kill the country's leftist president Rafael Correa” BUT DON’T WORRY because today Correa is dismissing the plotters as “conmen seeking to extort cash out of the authorities” by, um, threatening to kill the president or something. I don’t get it at all, but here.

By now everybody has heard about how Chavez wants the FARC people to shut up and get a real job and it’s all a big huge “flip flop” and “handbrake turn” (?) by a president “humbled” and “in retreat.” This week the Chicago Tribune printed this exact comment: "Hellooooooooooooooooooo? Presidente?” in the name of their entire, retarded, editorial board. Apparently the massive turnaround is “motivated by the embarrassing emergence of evidence that he may have been deeply involved in helping FARC.”

Anyway the whole U-Turn thingy is a widely publicized concept that the Associated Press was forced to retract two days ago, because ha-ha oops it was bullshit. The point here is that if you are at all curious about which parts of the blah blah are true and which parts are made up you can always read this article, is all.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then this moving, talking picture featuring “news” and “analysis” and “a half naked NYU academic” should suffice as a blog post for a Sunday afternoon, right? Please say yes. It includes everything you’ve never heard about Venezuela and the FARC in other news outlets so of course it comes from The Real News, which you probably already watch all the time on the tubes.

And say, did you know that this cartoon maybe has something to do with Hugo Chavez? I can’t tell for sure (nobody can!) but I think it probably does, because it’s embedded in the middle of an interminable article about Venezuela! You heard that right: after ten long years leading a “poor people’s revolution” and changing the face of Latin American politics, forever, Hugo Chavez is finally, officially “relevant!” Journey with us to Caracas, via the Upper West Side, after the jump!

You’ve heard of this Evo Morales fellow right? He’s the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Bolivia and, of course, the first brown president of that country. Is it racist to say that? Probably! It maybe discriminates against the long line of benevolent crackers who came to the Andes to rule the region. These tragic, pasty people wanted nothing more than a better life far away from the repressive continent of Europe, where it would have been illegal to, say, force a system of "debt bondage and forced work" on the less industrious. Why does Europe hate freedom?

Anyway these days with the whiteys taking all of Bolivia’s better landowning / people-enslaving jobs, some indigenous Bolivians are actually moving to Europe. Oddly this is prompting some level of hostility among Indigenous Euro-folk, which in turn sparked today’s Op-Ed in The Guardian by, wait for it, Evo Morales! He’s asking for fair treatment of Bolivo-Europeans or something. Of course none of this matters, except for that the online version has a comments section. Lose what's left of your faith in humanity, after the jump!

Wow. I never thought I’d be saying this but here goes… Congratulations President Uribe! Reuters is reporting that you just secured the release of famous FARC hostage Ingrid Bentancourt. Seriously dude, I’ve always thought you were sort of a dick but I think we can all agree that the most important thing here is the safe return of the hostages (especially the French one and the three Americans!) So, really, man. Good on you. That’s huge, great news. But wait. I’m reading down here and oh my God…

Some analysts questioned why Uribe would make public such a delicate negotiation. "It seems contradictory, announcing this makes it less likely to happen," said Pablo Casas at the Security and Democracy think tank in Bogota. "If there is a FARC front holding Betancourt, everyone in the FARC knows which front that is, and they would take countersecurity measures."

Dear America: You’ve come to this.

Eight years, five billion dollars and many hundreds of dead bodies later, we get this headline:

“Coca Cultivation Rises In Colombia, U.N. Says”

Update: Make that five years, six point seven seven five billion dollars later. Eesh.

Stop eating carbs to spite ‘Venezuelan researchers’

Cancel Paraguayan vacation plans

Read U.S. Newspapers

Stick pins into Hugo Chavez doll

Blow up Canadian embassy

It’s Friday! So let’s all enjoy this entertaining and tragic video of Venezuela before Chavez, back when men were men and women were beauty contestants! And did we mention that it’s Friday? So why not let’s turn this into a drinking game where you guzzle every time the creepy Venezuelan “queenmaker “says something embarrassingly racist or hilariously Zoolander-y. (Double shots for “The smile is the cream of the face.” Pervert!) Anyway we’ll all come away from this learning a little something about ourselves, or at least too mercifully drunk to care.

“Two men were arrested yesterday for the attempted assassination of Evo Morales. Evo travelled to Santa Cruz to visit a mine and participate in a ceremony with local Union leaders. Shortly after arriving at the local airport at 2pm, two members on the Santa Cruz far-right wing "Union Cruceñista Juventud" . . . were arrested nearby, one in possession of a rifle with telescopic sight and 300 rounds of ammunition.”

In a stunning three-part series, investigative reporter and graphic artist Stephan Pastis has exposed a U.S.-hatched plot to eliminate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and take control of the world’s 4th largest oil reserves.

Li’l Guard Duck may look harmless, but critics note that his proto-fascist tendencies have never been far from the surface. His adorably undersized WWII-era infantry helmet bears no relation to Allied headwear of the era, neither the famed British Zuckerman, with its distinctive ridge, or its Fixed-Bail American cousin. Rather, Li’l Guard Duck seems to be sporting something akin to a classic German M-38, albeit minus any Luftwaffe decals which would have been a bit obvious.

Here Li’l Guard Duck takes advantage of a classical diversionary technique to execute his bizarre plan. After so many years of neighba-ly squabbling, nobody even remembers why Croc and Zebra were even at each other‘s throats in the first place, yet here they are in “mediation” in an office building that just happens to share a floor with the Venezuelan embassy? Please, it was so obviously a set up, one that any real journalist should have sniffed out. But we’re in the pathetic media era of Judy Miller and Simon Romero and so once again the reading public misses the real story until months later, and even then it’s only covered in the comics section.

What the fuck is up with that duck, anyway?! He leads us to the brink of yet another brutal war and can only manage an infantile version of “shit happens”? Anyone wondering about the lasting cultural implications of the Bush Administration need look no further than the arrogance and sense of accountability in this ridiculous bird. And it’s no surprise that the only moral player in all of this is Pig, a chastened historical figure whose precious Bay has become a virtual metaphor for a dangerously inept U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Latin America. Maybe these disclosures will finally wake America up. Ha ha that would be comical.

The awesomely-titled story “Rich Bolivians Vote for More Autonomy,” explains that those funny/racist separatist votes in the Andes are “a rejection of President Morales' drive to redistribute wealth in Bolivia to benefit the poorer, mostly indigenous Bolivians of the western regions.” Wait, class analysis? Isn’t that even legal anymore? Oh, duh, it’s from Radio Netherlands, so it’s at least tolerated. But then…

“Prison Orchestras Offer Hope in Venezuela,” is funny and uplifting and somehow written by…Simon Romero? Who is also probably stoned? And then….

“Venezuela will replace Chile as the country with the region's highest GDP per capita and Argentina as the region's third-largest economy” according to a …Latin Business Chronicle analysis of data from the…International Monetary Fund? Cough cough CHOKE.

I’ve got to get me some of that, is all.

As everybody knows, the War on Drugs has been a resounding success, especially if you are a drug user, drug dealer, or weapons manufacturer. Also the whole “prison industrial complex” has made out pretty good, too. And given that the price of cocaine today is pretty much the same as it was in 1970, you’d think everyone would be happy, if a bit twitchy, but no.

Apparently those Latin America pink-tiders think they can go around disrupting perfectly good policy just because they are president now, and they’re trying out all kinds of bizarre hippie ideas, which involve not shooting poor people, keeping low-level offenders out of jail, and breaking off drug enforcement partnerships with the United States. And what do they have to show for it? Nothing, except for lower levels of drug production, consumption and associated violence, as if that were the point.

Hey you know how the Congressional Black Caucus is liberal, and how unfair that is? I mean what are you supposed to do if you need to pass right-wing legislation and it has to have the veneer of support from black people? If you are the International Republican Institute, you would just go ahead and set up your own black caucus, made up entirely of foreigners! Today’s edition of the DC wonk rag The Hill, describes the latest scheme to pass a stupid trade deal with Colombia. As far as evil IRI plots go, this one seems pretty mild, even a bit limp-wristed. More on these twat-rockets here.

Remember when Venezuelan ladies used to be known for being smoking hot and filled with silicone? Well cherish those memories, because the Venezolanas are starting to get a new reputation. Nowadays they’re “symphonic,” which is way less cool. It all started with that 60 Minutes piece on the ridiculously great music program that saved the lives of thousands of Venezuelan ghetto kids. Fine, whatever. But it’s starting to get out of hand. This week alone we get fawning profiles from AP and the New York Times, and then there’s this Reuters headline: “Rich nations copy Venezuela's Anti-Gang Music Schools.” Rich ones! From boob jobs to band geeks, this revolution may have gone too far.

So in just a couple short days yr editor is going away for nearly a whole month but “Don’t Panic” because in my absence I am leaving behind this nice picture-puzzle to keep you busy. For instance can you find…a train? A magic laptop?? The Go-Go’s???

Ok actually we’ve lined up some awesome guest bloggers to fill the time and they’ll make you wonder why you even bothered reading this crappy website blog before now. So say hello to your new overlords: “Catire,” “Revolter,” “AxisOfEvo,” and “Cochina,” who are coming to you from all corners of the globe but especially the Western Hemisphere. They all have different styles and areas of expertise so this should all be a barrel of leftist monkeys (not guerrillas, lucky you!),

Some housekeeping:

1. You’ll be able to tell which guest writer is writing which guest post by looking beneath the orange line under each post. It will say “By Revolter,” for example.

2. If a post comes from me, it won’t say anything at all “down there.”

3. I won’t be checking the BoRevNet (at) Gmail account very frequently from the road, so please don’t be hurt if I don’t write back right away.

4. If you want to reach one or all of our guest bloggers, you can Email them at BoReVacation (at) Gmail (dot) Com.

5. I promise to be back at the end of July.

See ya, suckas!
XXXOOO

What do Alvaro Uribe, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd have in common? A lot.

According to the AP, Uribe's supporters may have crossed some lines a few years back when they convinced the Colombian Congress to amend the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a second term. They apparently bribed members of Congress for votes in favor of the amendment. Tsk tsk. Now a court is exploring whether to nullify Uribe's '06 re-election, a move that would effectively lose him his job. And Uribe's response? A referendum on whether or not to just travel back to the 2006 elections and re-do them. It's like an electoral version of "Back to the Future," though we're not sure whether Uribe qualifies as wimpy Marty McFly or crazy Dr. Emmett Brown.

If they make it back to 2006 for an electoral do-over, will the Uribe of 2008 have to avoid the younger, more reckless Uribe of 2006? Or will he just run against him? Will the big ol' mean Hugo Chavez, the Biff Tannen of this whole sordid affair, knock Uribe on the head with a cane while yelling, "Uribe? Uribe? Anybody home, Uribe?!?" Will Uribe make it back from 2006 safely to save his family after playing a rockin' rendition of "Johnny Be Good" at a high school prom in Medellin? And will he even be able to find a Delorean that hits 88 mph so he can get himself back to 2008?

This is getting exciting! Thankfully, "Back to the Future" has two sequels, so we'll have two more chances to see this drama unfold. Maybe, just maybe, the second time around will involve hoverboards.

Hi. I'm Revolter. With the U.S. legal system managing to repeatedly piss off leftist Latin American governments, I thought I could contribute to the BoRev by utilizing my lawyerhood for good instead of the usual evil and take a closer look at some of these controversies. To kick things off, I've just done a boatload of research on the legal arguments surrounding the so-called "suitcase scandal," or "malitenazo" or "valijagate." Since December, three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan have been detained in Miami without bail. Their alleged crime involves the supposed cover-up of the delivery of money between the Venezuelan and Argentine governments. There are now allegations that Chavez himself was involved. Interesting maybe, but does it sound like something the U.S. justice system should be involved in? Probably not. Even worse, the U.S. case is sort of laughable. Where to begin?

The four defendants are charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 951 - acting as "agents" of the Venezuelan government, and failing to send a letter, email, or text message to Alberto Gonzalez telling him about their agency. Well not quite, but almost (full text of law). A popular misconception is that they were charged under 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq., the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a similar, better-known statute with a catchier name that largely deals with foreign government lobbyists or public relations firms registering their activities with the Department of Justice (DOJ). Either way, the legal case is slowly proceeding, and the defense has recently submitted a motion to dismiss (full text) the charges to the court. Although it would be a huge political shock for the defendant to win on the motion, the defense has legal precedent on it's side. But it's also just common sense. After the jump, a closer look at the law and the defense motion lends support to Venezuelan and Argentine claims that the prosecution is politically motivated.