BoRev.Net

• Another day another murder in Honduras' world renowned bloodless coup. The death toll now stands at 14-ish.

• Level-Four Wizard John Kerry casts a block spell on Honduras-bound Carrion Crawler Jim DeMint...

• ...Sadly his powers don't work on Miami Cuban succubi.

• "Honduras Iran Venezuela Jews BOMB BOMB BOMB." Hey look John Bolton was on the Greta Van Susteren teevee program.

• This time next year Barbados, Dominica, and Grenada will be buried in a mass grave outside Medellin, dressed in fake FARC fatigues.

So Senator Jim DeMint and a gaggle of Congressmen you've never heard of have heroically defied the Obama Administration, flown to Honduras, and established talks with illegal coup gnome Roberto Michelleti. Until this week, DeMint had been best known for exposing President Obama as 1) a Socialist and 2) a Nazi (simultaneously!), but now he'll be famous forever for setting U.S. foreign policy violating the Logan Act, punishable up to three years in prison.

Meanwhile Michelleti's 45-day crackdown on Precious Freedoms remains in effect, so this was a particularly genius time for Republicans to affirm their support. DeMint promised, via spokesman Wesley Denton, that he'd received assurances that Michelleti would restore press and assembly rights "soon," although, as AP hilariously notes, "Denton wasn't certain how Micheletti intended to restore the freedoms." These people suck donkey balls, the end.

Way back in May '08 the Washington Post was very concerned about this Human Rights Watch group and their unhealthy preoccupation with Colombia's nice president, Alvaro Uribe.

At the time, Uribe had just extradited dozens of death squad leaders to the United States in a surprise overnight move, and Human Rights Watch thought maybe this had something to do with their impending testimonies, which were about to link Uribe's government to their political assassination racket. So crazy, these hippies, because "under the terms worked out by Mr. Uribe's government, Colombian prosecutors will continue to have access to the paramilitary commanders in U.S. prisons." See? No problem.

Anyway now it is 18 months later and today the Washington Post is reporting that there's been a problem with these killers, which is mostly that they are no longer talking to prosecutors, because they don't have to, because they are in the United States. WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THAT?

The kids, they love their top 10 lists! For the last few years, the United Nations has even gotten in on the act, ranking the "livability" of countries with some complex quality of life algorithm called the Human Development Index, which measures "life expectancy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita," among other things.

The point is this one country, "The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," is just fucking surging in livability this year, with the second largest ratings leap going. So keep your stupid Olympics, Brazil, cause Venezuela got health care, booyah.

• Sure it must be tough for a country to lose its democratic government, for an elected leader to be forced into humiliation and squalor, but can we pls stop for a moment and reflect on how difficult this must be for the reporters?

• How awesome would it be if the archenemy of terrible comic book supervillain "Alvaro the Uribe" won the Nobel Peace Prize?

• The hallmark of Honduras' brutal coup regime has been torture and murder, the New York Times has noticed.

• Do you speak Spanish? Hmm then you may enjoy this video that puts the lie to internet rumors about Venezuela banning cartoons.

• Deranged psycho killer will never understand why the orphan child of the mother it once strangle-raped cannot return its love.

Can I level with you guys? It's been a long day, and I'm tired. I really would rather just drink a beer or whatever. So anyway here's a video that is vaguely Latin I guess, what with the Samba and all. It also involves evil Texas eunuch Tom Delay, dressed up like some De Stijl Boss Hog, and "dancing" alongside some Star Spangled hottie. Some pact with Satan is involved here, obviously.

1) Bloomberg: Zelaya's return was the result of a destabilization pact conspired by Chavez, Lula, and whatshisname, with the ears.

2) NPR: Hmm there may be some elements of class divide that sparked the problems there.

3) Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: "ppl...don't want Z back"

Benevolent Honduran anal yeast Roberto Michelleti offered to restore the country's press freedoms yesterday, hooray! Yet somehow those ingrate reporters are still angry at him.

Apparently the coup leaders have yet to return the broadcast equipment they confiscated from Radio Globo after Micheletti made his press decree. Oh and "As for Canal 36, its broadcast equipment was completely destroyed when soldiers raided its studios on 28 September."

@Ileana: Ths ppl wl nvr b stsfiid!!!!

"Finally, hard and reliable data - by a legally certified Honduran polling company - provides a clear measurement of how the Honduran people view the June 28 coup d'etat, its 'president' Roberto Micheletti, President Manuel Zelaya and the national civil resistance.

The polling data - which we make public for the first time here - shows that Hondurans widely (by a margin of 3 to 1) oppose the coup, oppose coup "president" Micheletti by a margin of 3 to 1 and favor the reinstatement of their elected President Manuel Zelaya by a clear majority of 3 to 2."

With a "repulsive Iran-Contra figure" here and a "close confidant of Hillary Clinton" there, sometimes it seems like half of Washington is working for the illegal Honduran coup regime! Is your plumber on the payroll? Your hairdresser? It can be hard to keep up, but fortunately the New York Times has published a handy rundown of Washington's top coup enablers. It is thoroughly, one zillion percent, unsurprising:

Roger Noriega: This former Bush "diplomat", eventually drummed out of the State Department for being too much of a hardline prick (even by Bush Administration standards) is now a lobbyist for the "Honduran business group" that organized the coup.

John Timmons: A former John McCain advisor whose firm, The Cormack Group, holds the dictatorship's lucrative P.R. account.

Daniel Fisk: Until two weeks ago, Fisk was the Congressional staffer organizing Hill support for the coup government, now he is the "Coordinator for Governance" for the International Republican Institute (!!)

Lanny Davis: Famous for organizing the race-baiting portion of Hillary Clinton's doomed presidential bid, devil-rodent Lanny Davis is now a lobbyist for the coup-hugging Latin American Business Council of Honduras.

Otto Reich: A Reagan-era slimeball and general coup hobbyist, Reich supports the military dictatorship for ideological, not financial, reasons.

• Famous rich person sport "golf" was described as being a sport, for rich people, by Hugo Chavez last week, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? Fortunately the Washington Post was on hand to give this scandal the nine hundred seventy-seven word treatment it deserves.

• Hondurans are probably clamoring to hear about this terrible "bad-mouthing-of-golf" scandal too, only they can't because the coup regime cracked down on the country's free press again over the weekend.

• Some poor kid risked his life exposing abuses of Colombian prisoners, and now the U.S. is going to be a dick and not let him pick up his human rights award in New York.

• Remember that loathsome Cuban terrorist dickwad Luis Posada Carriles? Turns out he's also a loathsome Cuban terrorist dickwad stool pigeon.

• Colombia's crazy right-wing government has been active on college campus lately, basically "rolling tanks, harassing, threatening and even killing students who dare to express their opposition" to Alvaro Uribe.

Fat, melty coup lobbyist Roger Noriega wants to set the record straight: he is NOT a coup lobbyist. Instead he is a man who happens to be on the payroll of some shadowy group of Honduran business elites who plot the coups and then publicly defend them as "a constitutional process that was carried out by the functioning civilian Congress and Supreme Court." Why can't the librul media STOP editorializing and START reporting the FACTS?

Anyway the point is that Roger Noriega is a coup lobbyist who thinks you are a fucking idiot.

We don't report much on the Colombian press here because whatever, right, but HOLY POTATOES the bitchiest thing just happened today.

Claudia Lopez is was a longtime columnist for the country's largest paper, El Tiempo. Broken a lot of big stories, fierce critic of Uribe, yada yada. Anyway today she wrote a column critical of the paper itself, noting that its selective reporting on some agricultural scandal stands to benefit the political career of this one right wing politician whose family happens to own the newspaper. Got that?

Well guess what happened? They printed the column! Only with the following postscript:

"El Tiempo rejects Claudia López's statements as false, badly intentioned, and slanderous. The Directorship of this daily understands her strong criticism of our journalistic work to be a resignation letter, which we immediately accept."

• AFP headline reads "Honduran teams agree plan to restore ousted president"

• BBC: "'Deal agreed' in Honduras crisis"

• From Reuters: ""I wouldn't talk of an end to the political crisis, but an exit, yes," Victor Meza, a close aide to Zelaya, told reporters..." What does that even mean?

• Deal or no deal? There are exactly two perspectives on this, as always, in America's premier PoMo newspaper of record.

• Naturally Michelleti's people are trying to scuttle the agreed upon deal because, what dicks, according to CNN.

*SPECIAL 24 HOURS AFTER THIS IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS EVENT UPDATE*: We got nothin'.

Evil, conniving Ecuadorian oligarchs have released an oh-so-obviously rigged new poll showing president/heartthrob Rafael Correa coming in sixth place? I mean come on let's try and be a tiny little bit realistic here. Raf comes in behind....Cristina Kirchner? WHERE is the goddamned Carter Center?

There, there little snowflake. Let daddy comfort you.

I don't know if you people have ever run a coup, but it's not all shooting the poor people this and torching the media that--there's fun to be had too! Seriously, what's the point of forcibly taking control of your country's institutions if you can't bend them to your own retarded vision?

To that end, hilarious Honduran dipshit "Mirna Castro" has taken over the country's Cultural Ministry, and she's has quickly put an end to outmoded hippie ideas like literature or um, whatstheword, "art," or whatever. No, it's fashion week! In the middle of a coup! With tax dollars. Actual quote:

Fashion is an industry but it is also part of the culture of the people.

Moises Naim's terrible foreign policy magazine "Foreign Policy" now comes complete with its own terrible blog, the creepily-titled "Shadow Government." With a name like that you'd probably expect it to be written by a bunch of coup-plotting ne'er-do-wells, and upon reading it, your suspicions are immediately confirmed (example!).

But wait! The coup bloggers have already anticipated your skepticism, and have preemptively denied their own coupiness. In fact, they've actually written their weird denial into their own bylaws. Shadow Government's "About" section specifically notes that they are NOT "written by a bunch of coup-plotting ne'er-do-wells," Wow!

Air. Tight. Alibi. These people are good.

There is this comic book! About the coup, in Honduras!

Haha so funny, this t-shirt. You probably heard that it was worn last week by a member of famous Puerto Rican musical troupe Calle 13 at some MTV awards dealie in California. Even funnier, though, has been watching reporters try to explain what exactly it "All Means." Here's AP's game attempt:

"Perez also wore a black T-shirt with a message that appeared to criticize Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for a deal to allow U.S. bases in his country -- and which could be read to suggest he has paramilitary links."

BoRev Flashback: Readers will remember Calle 13 from their lawsuit a few years back to prevent the Venezuelan political opposition from using their music in anti-Chavez campaigns, which is why they are your favorite band, even though you totally hate reggaeton.

Ok so the other blogs and our own commenters have been SO EXCITED about this funny/weird video, so why not let's post it here too! Famous obese documentarian Michael Moore went on the Jimmie Kimmel teevee program the other night to talk about a strange encounter he had with Hugo Chavez in an Italian hotel this summer. Gross. Sorry. Let's try this again.

Michael Moore says he stayed up all late with Hugo Chavez drinking tequila like a real Mexican, before writing all of Chavez's speeches for him, drunk. Heating oil for everybody!

Of course this was all just a huge, awful joke lie, because really, tequila? And you can't just go knocking on Hugo Chavez's hotel room, also. Duh.

• Sorry Honduras! Jim fucking DeMint is now content with U.S. policy there. The fix is now, officially & forever, in.

• Alvaro Uribe has no interest in personal power. When he gets his third term it's only because the baby Jesus wanted it that way.

• How's your economy doing? Because Venezuela's "will expand 1.3 percent in 2010, according to Morgan Stanley, compared with a previous forecast for no growth."

• Wondering where the hottest new coup will turn up? The good money is here.

• Did you know that Colombians have six thousand words for "state-sponsored murder?" This is a new one.

By Revolter

The Honduran coupster's PR firm and their Krazy Kongressional Kubano/a friends are really pushing the fanciful "November elections would be free and fair" idea. Today, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Co. are parading out 3 judges from Micheletti's Supreme Electoral Tribunal at a secret Congressional briefing to talk about who knows, since "nothing has changed" in Honduras since last year. Later, the Inter-American Monologue will invite the rich kids over to watch the judges discuss "the elections and what is being done to assure they are free and fair" by invitation only, natch.

But not everyone in DC is an over-educated idiot. Hondurans for Democracy and other groups organized a picket & online action last Monday targeting the coup regime's newest paid apologists, Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates. About 40 people showed up outside their offices to ask how they were spending the $350,000 in Honduran tax dollars (top answers: at the Capital Grille, call girls). AFP gave it a short, shite mention in an English-language story and ran a longer piece in Spanish, which was picked up by El Tiempo in Honduras.

Chlopak, Leon . . whatever, don't seem to like the attention. Here's one guy's email exchange with a grumpy Charlie Leonard. To join Charlie's fan club here's the mass email link again. And if you want to throw in your very own "polite" greeting you can find individual CLS emails here, since their website has been "unavailable" since the day of the picket. Weird.

Classic. Hey everybody, look who finally "gets" this whole coup thing, now that it's been turned into a comic book!

Crack Latin America correspondent Rory Carroll noted yesterday that this comic represents a "journalistic take on the Honduran crisis with an attention to context that puts conventional media coverage to shame." You can say that again, Guardian reporter! Is there maybe a graphic novel out there about the magic laptops or the drug war or Venezuela or whatever?

It's a testament to the stranglehold the Lanny Davises of the world have on the U.S. press corps that we are genuinely surprised by the results of this Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner poll today. But yes, when you ask actual Hondurans what they think of their ousted president, they like him, still. And in huge numbers.

But that's not the most surprising little nugget. Check out this shizit, after the jump.

I...wow.

Remember way back to last Tuesday, when we all watched that video of Michael Moore talking about Hugo Chavez, and how some of people were like damn what a stupid thing to say and others were like hey lighten up it's just a joke? Basically Simon Romero just wrote an article about that, because why not.

Update: Michael Moore has been forced to respond, via Twitter, sigh.

You may have heard, but Venezuela has a new-ish state-sponsored initiative to promote local filmmakers, bringing it line with culturally forward thinking countries such as France, Ireland, and OMG NAZI GERMANY! And North Korea and Red China and, um, JOSEPH STALIN!!! Actual seriously for-reals line from the article:

"Like the 20th-century autocrats he emulates, Chávez is fascinated by the power of cinema. Ever since Hitler turned to Leni Riefenstahl, dictators have dreamed of harnessing the epic force of the big screen for their political script."

PS: Hey this might come in handy: letters@newsweek.com Mush, people. Mush!

• Honduran coup leaders are finally willing to negotiate their fake elections FOR REAL THIS TIME, provided we all just calm down and wait until after the elections are over.

• Repulsive Iran Contra figure knocked the Berlin Wall down himself personally, with Greneda! Lesson here.

• Oh look the only countries to survive "this economy" are the ones who totally fucking kicked that invisible hand poseur to the curb.

• Dear President Obama, democracy is nice so maybe we should support it please. Signed, sanity.

• "Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe will be able to announce his candidacy whenever he wants, and not be forced to do so before December despite laws to the contrary."

To recap: the Honduran military illegally overthrew its constitutional government three months ago, and for many weeks now the real president has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, with no water or electricity and near-constant bombardment by weird sonic torture devices.

Which begs the question: Why is mean old Brazil being so terrible to the coup government? The way they just stay there, day after day, pooping in buckets and going slowly insane, it's almost as if they're trying to torture their thuggish usurpers by not surrendering! There must be some simple, obvious and spectacularly delusional way to solve this crisis. Of course!

Discuss...

(Click here if the video isn't coming up).