BoRev.Net

Here's Michael Dwyer, fleshy dead darling of the Irish press corps. According to media accounts, Dwyer was a gentle soul, a loving son, and a naïve dreamer. His only crime? Plotting to overthrow the Bolivian government, kill its president and turn the Amazon into humid hotbed of sweaty Eurotrash gun chubs, is that so wrong?

Sigh. Who's got time/patience to keep up with all this crap? Not us, so thank Jeebus other people are, let's see...

• Otto's got the photos: hot, throbbing shirtless Nazi gun porn.

• El Gaviero's got the (Spanish only) cell-phone video recordings of the douchey plot to blow up Evo.

• Bina connects the dots to local Bolivian skinheads plus a nearly-nude photo of their fat hairy ringleader (you know you want it).

I think my favorite story of all came this morning, after the Bolivians released a damning trove of video and photo evidence against him. The Irish Independent griped that they should've waited till after the funeral to solve the crime. So civilized, the Irish.

The Wall Street Journal ran its semi-annual "Venezuela is anti-Semitic" column yesterday, reviving, as always, the long ago de-bunked quote from Chavez calling Jews "christ killers." And as always, we'll go ahead and provide the link to what he really said. It's a game we play.

This time deputy editorial page editor Melanie Kirkpatrick comes with all kinds of devastating evidence that Chavez is just like Hitler, because:

• A synagogue got robbed ,
• A professor published an ugly anti-Semitic article, "online," and
• The Bush State Department said so.

Anti-Semitism is a nasty virus, which is why we need to stamp it out wherever it rears its head. But as the American Jewish Congress council director David Twersky said the last time this Venezuela BS was aired, "I don't think we should raise the flag of antisemitism when it doesn't belong." True dat.

• The Colombian government officially stopped murdering fake terrorists last week, not really.

• The US Trade Rep will now officially start pretending to believe those murders aren't happening anymore

• Hey wow Hillary Clinton says some not totally terrible things about Latin America

• The Cato Institute just set up some crazy school of government overthrow on a ranch outside Caracas

• The Washington Post Ed Board can't event write about the goddamned swine flu w/out bringing up Hugo Chavez

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has come out of the closet... as a strongman dicto-caudillo! He has been coyly lying to us for many years now about his intentions, but now he will finally, officially, personally amend the Constitution to become PRESIDENT FOR LIFE, removing all barriers to indefinite rule, because democracy demands it. Give this guy a trade deal before he disappears us all!

Did you know that in Colombia, our number #1 ally in the war on terror, the country to which we send eleventy million metric tax dollars each year to kill the poor people who grow the coca plants, that in this very same country, Colombia, cocaine is legal? It's true! It has been since 1994. And if you vote for Alvaro Uribe's third term, after he re-writes the constitution, he'll work to criminalize it make it a misdemeanor!

The more you know, kids.

Awww. Sweet little Maria Chavez, beloved daughter of the big guy, is all growed up. She's got a new "umm, friend" and everything. A doctor! Oh, also: he's the "youngest grandson of the late Chilean President Salvador Allende."

Wait, Salvador who? Oh right the guy the CIA killed when the democracy gods demanded we install Augusto Pinochet and usher in twenty years of military dictatorship because, how did Kissinger put it? Oh right: "l don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." So charming, Kissinger! Anyway, good luck with your doomed relationship you crazy kids!

• Toyota feels bad for assassinating that Venezuelan union leader so they're treating their workers to a fabulous two-day Isla Margarita holiday, w/out pay.

• OMG Jimmy Carter plans to live out his retirement GROWING DRUGS on Evo Morales' Bolivian narcotics plantation!

• Hillary Clinton has been kind of progressive and noble and...un-Hillary Clinton-like lately.

• J'ever notice how the media has been pretty crap about Bolivia? Oh, hey: case in point.

• Alvaro Uribe ain't talking about that whole wiretapping investigation thingy; he's more of a listener, really.

Oh terrif.

The Army has a new "future challenges" training game all about how to invade Bolivia "after the failure of a leftist regime," because the country "is divided between left and right wings" and so naturally somebody has to "provid[e] medical aid and build roads." THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE.

Giiiiiirl the L.A. Times editorial board is stepping to Rafael Correa and I am here to tell those bitches to back the fuck off. Yeah, I know my man has got it going on, ummkay, but I swear I will throw down, they have no idea. Seriously:

"Correa, who took office in January 2007, last month became the first chief executive in 30 years to win reelection without a runoff. And thanks to his abundant spending on social programs and a new constitution that gives him a shot at staying in office until 2017, Correa's popularity and staying power have now coalesced."

"Just last month, [FARC] rebels announced they would negotiate to release a long-held hostage, partly at Correa's request. Either way, he has influence it would be well worthwhile to cultivate."

Let's say you're one of the fifteen hundred Colombian mothers whose son was kidnapped off the streets recently, shot, stripped, and dressed up in fake insurgent gear in order to meet government kill quotas. Just how annoyed would you be by Alvaro Uribe's brilliant idea to defend your kid's murderer with your tax pesos? Stay classy, Al.

Meet Laurent Frederic Bocquet, the bug-eyed (albino?) sharpshooting Frenchman arrested in Venezuela yesterday, along with three Dominicans, for possession of "sniper rifles, grenades, machine guns and half a kilo of C4," in an apparent terror plot.

This of course is all terribly reminiscent of "Gay Muslo-Hungarian Bolivi-Croat Nazi Gate," which rocked Bolivia last month, only without the catchy name... yet. Get to work, people!

H/T: Otto, who tracked down his freaky face on Facebook. Always with the Facebook, these shitturds.

• Egads! This "Washington Post" news pamphlet just won't give Mr. Hugo Chavez a fair shake, which hardly seems sporting.

• Venezuelan unemployment rates are down, lots. U.S. unemployment rates are up, shitloads.

• Hey Bolivia's finally going to get that beach access it's been hoping for [Spanish only link :( ].

• Zeitgeisty funnyman Stephen Colbert now shares his name with some Venezuelan dung beetle.

• Happy Mother's Day to yo' real mama.

Now lord knows we love Venezuelans, but we'll never understand why they are they so--what's the word?--"weird." Today the first batch of Venezuelan-produced cell phones went on the market. At a cost of roughly fourteen U.S. dollars, they are among the world's cheapest, especially when you consider that they come with a built in camera and mp3 player. No wonder they sold out on their first day, right?

Here's the fun part: somebody decided to name them, "El Vergatario," which literally means, "the place with all the penises," only more vulgar, the end.

Way to go, Peru. Your generous asylum policy extends to, let's see, Venezuelan coup conspirators, embezzlement scam artists, and now a Bolivian minister "charged with genocide in the 2003 killing of dozens of protesters," yikes.

Congratulations, right wing crazies. You have finally achieved an important electoral victory in Latin America, as the free daily Washington Examiner tabloid-paper was thrilled to point out today:

"After seven defeats in eight presidential elections across Latin America, the right results were finally achieved in Panama. The doubters, naysayers and chavistas were wrong: Despite freedom-lover fears, a free market democrat roundly defeated his ultra leftist opponent."

Update: Let's all celebrate by setting up a tax shelter there. It's so easy that it's literally scary.

Here are some terrible truths that somehow managed to appear "in the news" this week. Aliens have kidnapped all the editors, maybe? Take a screen capture of this page b/c this shall never be repeated again, jobs will be lost, etc. etc.:

• Evo Morales is Popular: Don't let John Enders' Heart of Darkness reportage fool you. Most Bolivians love their corner kicking cocalero. Polls show his approval ratings on the ups.

• Hugo Chavez is Really Popular: Opposition polling firm Datanalysis had Chavez' ratings at 59% (the same as Obama's, suck it Davidow) in March. But then they refused to release the results b/c they were so high. But then they leaked, ha ha.

• Venezuela Makes Big Drug Busts: Yes the US is perennially "concerned" about Chavez' "cooperation" on drug interdiction, but the Venezuelans are actually seizing more blow these days than when the DEA was running (over) the country. Another two-ton bust last weekend.

• Ecuador Makes Really Big Drug Busts: What does 17 tons of coke even look like? Crimany.

• Venezuela's Economy Grew: The global economy is collapsing, but Venezuela's managed to actually grow in the first quarter '09. Which means that the IMF is even wrong-er than usual (Take the bet!).

By Revolter

[Sorry, most links in Spanish. Shockingly, the U.S. press hasn't picked up any of this.]

Zulema Jattin is the kinda-sexy close ally of President Uribe, and one of four Colombian congresspeeps, recently charged for their political, financial and murderin' relationships with the paramilitaries. She reacted to her arrest by accusing the Supreme Court of "kidnapping" her and being "poisoned by hate and personal resentments" against the "friends of the President." And then she conveniently, hilariously suffered from "heart palpitations" at her Court hearing, resulting in a postponement of her testimony.

A little background on our little drama queen - She won her dad's former seat representing the paramilitary-laden Cordoba Department in the lower house in 1998 (5 of Cordoba's 6 Senators are now under "parapolitica investigation"). He had lost it due to his involvement in the drug money election scandal that rocked the presidency of Ernesto Samper.

Weirdly, in 2002 she was actually kidnapped by the paramilitaries for 20 days. But she's more forgive-y than Jesus, apparently, as she subsequently ran for Senate in 2006 with the paramilitary boss, "Comandante Andres" as her running mate in the lower house.

Zulema is a member of the Partido de la U, the unofficial party of Uribe, whose leaders have reacted to her arrest by calling for a return of Congressional immunity. And if that isn't sketchy enough for you, some of the evidence against her is found in the iPod of renowned terrorist kingpin Salvatore Mancuso, currently on trial in the U.S.

This all bodes pretty badly for Uribe, which is the immediate reason why the Congressional vote on his reelection was suspended yesterday. But you wouldn't know that from reading this AP article, which only mentions the other four explosive death-scandals Alvaro is currently dealing with. Best. Ally. Ever.

Click on the image for a bigger version, or if you think you're ready to try these tips out for yourself, proceed.

Have you noticed that relations between Cuba and the United States have been sort of crap for the past 50 years? Well GOOD NEWS because it's all going to change now, forever!

Get this: Cuba has discovered massive underwater reserves of the good stuff (oil), enough to turn the island into the Abuja Kirkuk "Qatar of the Caribbean." Our relationship will now improve, dramatically, forever, b/c what could possibly go wrong? Nobels & Pulitzers 4 everyone, hooray!

• Uruguay hates freedom so much they'll allow LGBT servicemembers to serve, openly.

• Peru will start firing gay cops, thanks to local hero, "Margaret Thatcher."

• Chile has a modest, bizarre proposal for Bolivians to hit the beach at last.

• The Financial Times has the same Boli-beach story, but with a funny headline.

• So far this year 17 Colombian trade unionists have been murdered, for liberty.

According to testimony from the former head of Colombia's counter-intelligence unit, there were really only two top officials tapping the phones of troublesome political opponents and newspaper reporters: President Uribe's "personal advisor" and his "personal secretary." Guess he's off the hook! No word on whether his nice makeup lady was in on the fun.

"British Government Foreign Office Minister Gillian Merron and over 40 Parliamentarians attended a House of Commons reception on 13 May to mark a decade of social progress in Venezuela under the Hugo Chávez-led government. They were joined by more than 100 personalities from the media, trade unions and the wider Labour Party."

Mercy. Reuters reporter Felix Salmon is a veritable hothouse flower, child, and all this talk of an Ecuadorian debt default has positively given him the vapors. The very fact that it's been condoned, even praised by international financiers and the Obama administration...well it's simply too much for a man of his delicate constitution.

The default is "audacious" and "dangerous," and the reaction from the international community is "absolutely astonishing." Tell me, he cries out, "what message does this send to the rest of Latin America, not to mention Africa and the rest of the world?" Who is lookin' out for the lend-uhs? Felix Salmon is powerful a-feared for the very future of global capitalism itself.

Ladies and gentleman...it's another objective reporter with a flair for melodrama, and a blog!

Update: Mr. Salmon responds, in the comments, although he REFUSES to address the nature of his relationship with Liz Taylor.

Hi everybody, will you do Washington Post reporter Juan Forero a small favor, please? The guy in this picture is a possible FARC agent named Oliver "Fatty" Solarte, and Forero wants him dead. DEAD. The Post wrote a whole long story about him today which concludes, ahem:

"The truth is that catching Oliver or killing Oliver would kill the Southern Bloc," the man said, referring to Solarte by his first name, "because he is the owner of the contacts."

The information is incontrovertible, because it comes from Forero's knowledgeable and 100% disinterested source-base including, let's see: unnamed Colombian intelligence officials, unnamed paid government informers, unnamed "Senior Colombian officials," and Sergio Jaramillo, Colombia's vice minister for defense. Indisputable!

So just like with the cocaine trade, Colombia's civil war is not the fault of the Colombian government, but rather, its neighbors, who must be destroyed. KILL!

Ok close your eyes and think back, way back, to the spring of 2008. You were probably listening to your favorite song, Paper Planes, over and over again and I don't know, watching Heroes maybe? And those laptops! Those magic laptops were all the rage b/c Interpol was teaming up with the Colombian intelligence service, DAS, to verify their validity (they couldn't) meanwhile DAS was leaking selected contents to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and even planting fake "laptop" photos in Colombian newspapers. Those were the days, right?

Well now, many months later, Interpol has finally decided to sever its ties with DAS, forever, because DAS is unethical. But just because mommy and daddy don't love each other anymore doesn't mean they don't still hate you as much as they always did.

The tech blogosphere is all abuzz over whether Venezuela's hot new cheapie mobile for the masses is actually a penis phone. It is? It isn't? Who knows! It seems to be getting good reviews, and it probably won't be used to spy on people (?).

But the real takeaway here is that after a decade in Latin America, McClatchy correspondent Tyler Bridges has finally learned how to say "cock" in Spanish. Every day is a voyage of discovery for this noble expatriate!

Reporter Chris Kraul just cold breaks out with this in an article about a potential US-Panama trade deal:

With its canal, growing transportation infrastructure and booming U.S. tourism and trade, Panama has taken on an important profile, said one person familiar with the Obama administration's thinking. Panama is also a staunch ally in the U.S. war on drugs, U.S. counter-narcotics officials say. "If we alienate this country, it does matter," said the person. "For them, the free-trade agreement is a sign of friendship."

Every year Zogby unveils its annual Arab Public Opinion Poll to show us what an awesome a job our great nation is doing winning over the hearts and minds of the Arabs. This year, like every year, the answer is "meh." But say, who is this handsome gentleman burning up the Arab charts? Holy crap, Hugo Chavez!? WTF?

Apparently Chavez gained some "Arab street" cred last fall when he protested the Israeli invasion of Gaza, and then of course there was the whole revitalization of OPEC thing which has rocked everyone's economic casbah. Naturally the US press has no idea what to make of this, so they take the easy way out, through (no judgment, we do this all the time!) "snark."

The Christian Science Monitor gets laffs by saying Chavez is "so big that he's surpassed the usual favorites: Osama bin Laden, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedenejad." Get it? B/c they're bad guys!

Of course when you look at the chart, three of those four aren't even in the top half. In fact the #2 most popular leader is.... geriatric Frenchie Jacques Chirac? Ok that could use some explaining. Click here to see a bigger version of that chart.

In case you were wondering how US journalists were going to deal with the fact that the Venezuelan judiciary was investigating corruption against pro-Chavez officials too, rather than leading an "opposition crackdown," Miami Herald correspondent Phil Gunson has the roadmap: from here on out, investigations of chavista officials will be known as....preemptive retribution against possible future challengers.

No wait. Gunson puts it better: "Like the Roman god Saturn, the revolution has begun devouring its own children." That is his actual sentence, published in a newspaper. Somebody got a Goya calendar this year!

To recap: Venezuela was corrupt because it wasn't investigating authorities. Then it was repressive, for investigating corruption. Now it is an epic passion play of paranoid hubris, for investigating itself, the end.

• After 10 years, 90 kajillion dollars and many thousands of deaths, we may have finally put an end to Colombian trafficking...of coffee.

• Paraguay's playboy president takes issue with that one archaic Catholic property-transfer policy, "celibacy."

• Simon Romero manages to compare Caracas motorbike couriers to "Hitler's SS motorcycle squadrons."

• The Washington Post thinks it odd that even Colombian newspapers who support Uribe have reported on his illegal wiretaps. Strange, this journalism!

• Influential revolutionary Bolivian hip hop artist Abraham Bojorquez was hit by a bus and killed this week. You can check out his work on the YouTubez.

Psyche, not really. According to the Associated Press, Venezuela hasn't ever even tapped its uranium reserves, much less refined uranium in any way, but that hasn't stopped crazed war nut/Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu from circulating some "secret Israeli government report" to the press citing other, anonymous-er "reports" that Venezuela (and Bolivia!) might be supplying uranium to Iran.

AP wonders aloud if this is just part of Netanyahu's crazy scheme turn the entire Middle East into Bomb-bombzistan, or whether it is maybe ALL TRUE. But, um, no: "The Israeli government report did not say where the uranium that it alleged the two countries were supplying originated from," since again, nobody is mining Venezuelan uranium. At any rate Jackson Diehl must be sporting one hell of a "nuclear" erection today, is the point.

Update: You're not the only one who's skeptical.

Confidential To The Readers Who Expressed Surprise To See Simon Romero Write an "Original" Piece on Caracas Motorbike Couriers: Yeah it turns out that his story was lifted entirely from this fascinating journal article that came out a few months earlier. Author Luis Duno Gottberg was quoted in the Romero story, but his article wasn't referenced. Hooray, all's right in the world again.

You know how Venezuela's oil industry has been "on the border of collapse" due to "corruption and inefficiency" for the last ten years, even though the economy just kept growing like crazy? And how anti-poverty programs "chavista thieving" had so "squeezed" the oil sector that state petroleum company, PDVSA, had actually been "going down the drain" but we were all kept from the TRUTH because of a freak oil boom and black-people voodo, and how the government's frequent "denials" were just a tragic cover-up of the real truth: PDVSA was, for reals, a "starving giant"?

Heh. Somebody finally decided to do an actual, whatsitcalled, "study" on all this, using empirical data from some fancyland college course. They discovered that the Venezuelans have been telling the truth all along, but that the English language press had been only too happy to "deliberately underestimate Venezuela's oil production numbers." Shocking, I know.

Ask about the arepa-lafel!

After forty-seven years the Organization of American States may finally allow Cuba--the "American State" that's never been an "American" "State" if ya knowwhatImean--rejoin! You can imagine the Miami Herald coverage. Turns out everybody is real excited about it...except for one. holdout. Although!:

"In the bid submitted Tuesday evening by Washington's deputy representative to the OAS, W. Lewis Amselem, Washington acknowledged that 'some of the circumstances since Cuba's suspension from full participation in the OAS may have changed.'"

"Cuba was suspended from the OAS in 1962, officially because of its alliance with the Soviet Union."

You already know Plan Colombia as a $75 million annual tax boondoggle, a brutal military campaign against poor brown people, and a hilariously inept anti-drug program that's kept cocaine production at record highs, but did you know that there is a "Dark Side" to this brilliant slice of Clinton-era strategery as well? It's true!

A jaw-dropping new investigative report from Teo Ballvé turns up a metric shit-ton of evidence that Plan Colombia has been funneling millions of dollars directly to drug traffickers and paramilitaries, who in turn use it for their "legitimate" business interests: biofuel production on land that they've stolen from campesinos! It's a win-win situation, for evildoers!

Correction: That should read "$500 million annual tax boondoggle." The numbers, they make my head explode.

Simon Romero's actual New York Times front page headline this morning: "Chavez Seeks Tighter Grip on Military."

Yes, that would be Venezuela's own military, the one that Chavez ostensibly heads. Apparently in other people's countries military officers are supposed to be allowed to be disloyal to their civilian-led, democratically elected governments.

By Revolter:

So Salvador Mancuso, the notorious paramilitary leader on trial in the US for selling drugs rather than answering charges of massacres and political corruption back home, has now directly implicated his "friend", President Alvaro Uribe, for collaborating with the paras. Mancuso claims that in 2002, "there were direct arrangements" between his AUC death squads and Uribe's presidential campaign, with the paras even transporting people to the urns to vote for our top Latin American ally. Why? Because:

"The ideological discourse of Uribe seemed modeled after ours, but within the law - we supported him immediately."

Lovely. Many of Mancuso's prior claims have proven to be credible, and Colombia's Attorney General now publicly admits that Mancuso and other paramilitaries should never have been extradited to the US in the first place because there was no evidence against them to be sent here. Basically they started to jettison them out of the country once they started blabbing about their Uribe connections.

This, by the way, is all over the Spanish language press, but alas, no one (except Colombia Reports!) breaks it down for the English speakers. But don't worry, Uribe's office is now doing its own English language news reporting so that you'll never be left in the dark again!

Remember this Maria Corina Machado lady? She is a woman of many personas, like Madonna! Starting out life as an unsympathetic Gloria Vanderbilt-y child-scion, she quickly blossomed into a short-term palace courtesan who took tea with the new Venezuelan empress during a coup. Soon she rebranded herself as a "democracy activist," which was funny, until she got herself busted by the Carter Center for rigging exit-polls. Next she became a US spy, accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the US to fight Chavez, before turning into that weird skanky MILF lady who wore a miniskirt w/ no panties to meet President Bush (pictured!).

This year, Machado takes on a brand new role, perhaps the most challenging of her career: she'll be a visiting professor and "world fellow" at Yale this fall. God bless Yale, where social class still trumps smarts or scandal, redemption at last! Confidential question to the people who go around throwing pies at douchey people--takin' requests?