For all the Chavez haters

This month, Francisco Rodríguez published an article in Foreign Affairs entitled "An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Chávez". The piece attempts to make the case that Chavez's economic policies have not benefited the poor -- that in fact, the poor are hurting more now than ever.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has put out an urgent response against Rodriguez's piece:

In the five years since the government of President Hugo Chavez Frias got control over the country's national oil industry, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has grown by more than 87 percent, with only a small part of this growth being in oil. The poverty rate has been cut in half, and unemployment by more than half. The economy has created jobs at a rate nearly three times that of the United States during its most recent economic expansion. Health care for the poor has been vastly expanded, with the number of primary care physicians in the public sector increasing from 1,628 in 1998 to 19,571 (by early 2007). About 40 percent of the population has gotten access to subsidized food. Access to education, especially higher education, has also been greatly expanded for poor families. Real (inflationadjusted) social spending per person has increased by more than 300 percent. It would be remarkable if this macroeconomic and spending picture were compatible with the dire picture of Venezuela that Rodriguez paints.

I'm not a fan of Hugo Chavez. I believe in ways of living that must not include the State -- no matter how much I am entertained by a certain Head of State's performance in front of his prick counterparts at the UN year after year.

I am also not a fan of economists and believe that economics needs to be stripped out of their cold, dead hands. I do recognize, however, there to be a handful of decent economists with politics not entirely laced with imperialist tendencies, some of whom include the very people CEPR was founded by: Nobel Laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz; Richard Freeman (Harvard); and Eileen Appelbaum, (Center for Women and Work at Rutgers).

CEPR's paper destroys Rodriguez's allegations by showing that, "some are altogether wrong, and others grossly exaggerated and/or misleading." It is important to put Foreign Affairs' distortions of reality into line with the the geopolitical environment that always seems to surround those places who have sought to nationalize their oil. It's not going too far out on a limb to say that if 9-11 wouldn't have happened, the U.S. would be in Venezuela instead of Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly, it's not that the White House doesn't want to. It just kinda can't.

It's kinda busy right now.

The "facts" presented by Foreign Affairs this month and its transparent political agenda are quite reminiscent of the coverage other regions and people receive from the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News. From this point on, it seems to me, any Foreign Affairs analysis being put forth should be critiqued with the similar fervor we show to that coming out of their irresponsible brethren.

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Tito Kayak highlights intersecting struggles

The following story is from last April, but needs to be posted as not enough people know about the amazingness that you are about to witness. But first, some background:

Puerto Rican activist "Tito Kayak" (born Alberto De Jesus Mercado) is internationally known for creeping into places he shouldn't(?) be, and planting flags in places where they shouldn't(?) be planted. In 2000, he and other activists stepped onto the crown of the Statue of Liberty to plant a Puerto Rican flag on the statue. He was subsequently jailed. Five years later he was arrested at the United nations for trying to switch the UN flag with the Puerto Rican one, while the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization discussed the political situation of Puerto Rico.

And just this past April at a weekly Bil'in protest in the West Bank he was somehow able to climb to the very top of a Israeli surveillance tower to... well, check it out:



Kayak and the flag remained up there for five hours before he came down. He was arrested, of course. And subsequently deported.

Tito celebrates his 50th birthday next year.


[Tarboush tip: Emily]

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Chavez Loses Something; Take That May

I had faith in the Venezuelan people, but I must admit I was holding my breath. But the good people of one of my favorite countries defeated their president’s attempt to legally and constitutionally become a dictator. Much to the dismay of KABOBfest’s official Chavez apologist, Maytha.

President Hugo Chavez suffered a stinging defeat Monday in a vote on constitutional changes that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely and solidify his bid to transform this major U.S. oil provider into a socialist state.

Voters defeated the sweeping measures by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent, said Tibisay Lucena, chief of the National Electoral Council, with voter turnout just 56 percent.

Let me qualify my views. There are many things I like about Chavez, but most of them appeal to the helpless news reader/immature guy in me. I like how he can flip traditional powers off. I like how he can tell the likes of Bush and Blair to go fcuk themselves as they try to lecture the world on democracy and human rights standing on the pile of Iraqi children they murdered. I like that he has the balls to speak his mind with out worrying about consequences.

But that’s also what I don’t like about the dude; he takes his rhetoric too far, and sometimes forgets that being a president is being responsible for the well being of a nation, not a feel-good position. I don’t like him because he has totalitarian tendencies, but I like him because he is trying to become a dictator legitimately, democratically, and constitutionally, instead of suspending the constitution wholly, like Egypt’s Mubarak and Pakistan’s Musharraf, or partially like George Bush.

Many of us who champion causes of social justice, indigenous rights, and self determination, tend to emotionally embrace leaders who pay lip service to these causes and not hold them to the strict and skeptical standards we must hold politicians and leaders to. As a result, we tend to lose perspective and not notice similarities and parallels to other dictators, like those who rise from the right. And Chavez’ progression of power consolidation was very similar to other dictator, from both the right and left, who reached power through free elections only to suspend the system and acquire absolute power. Case in point, Zimbabwe’s Mugabi single handedly destroyed the country’s economy and consolidated power under the pretence of land reform and redistribution.

Chavez in his turn, was well on his way to hurting the country's economy with his less than sensible policies. He should be applauded for attempting to renegotiate revenue sharing deals with the foreign oil companies that have so far gotten well more than their fair share of the oil revenue. But he could have consulted some economists on how to better deal with the matter, and drive fewer of them out, there by not losing oil production capacity. He should be applauded for diverting much of the revenue to social programs. But instead of throwing money at the problem, he could have had expert planners invest the money in projects that produce jobs and long term economic development. He should be applauded for trying to reform the economy, make it more independent, and unbeg the oil price to the dollar. But he should have experts do it instead of making his decision-making criteria "what ever pisses off the capitalist west" since some of those decision tend to backfire, and foster an environment hostile to business development and eventually drive many of the engineers who ran the country's oil industry to work in Canada's Oil Sands.

I have to admit that I still find it cute how Chavez tried to win elections to become a dictator, it tells you how inexperienced of dictator he is, or nice of one he is. Anyway, Venezuelan’s did not buy into his pitch, even though he practically shut down all the not pro-Chavez media outlets. And the sweetest part is, it was the people vs. Chavez, not an American puppet vs. Chavez, where the people would have endorsed the dictator in spite of somebody like Bush. Luckily, there was no reason for self-destructive behavior. It’s just they know that absolute power corrupts…

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Obama, Osama, Yo Mama

• It's not that Mitt Romney doesn't trust his speech writers. It's that, darn it, all you brown people look so much alike! [Think Progress]
  
• Israel to trade in gold-digging nafka for more cost-effective sharmootah even though, man this one's got a real set of teeth on her. [Jpost]
  
• Israel encourages launch of gas-gouling rockets by hindering electric powered, evironmentally friendly ones. [Yahoo]
  
• Scientists locate optimism area in brain; issue "remove it yourself" manual to news readers. [AP/Yahoo]
  
• This is kinda like that one time when I was too lazy to turn around and speak to my cubicle mate so I shot him an e-mail calling our Republican Jewish Canadian boss a Nazi. Except that when I accidentally sent the e-mail to our boss instead of sending it to the cube mate who I was too lazy to turn to speak to, at least the Nazi knew it was me. [IHT]
  
• I'll admit, this is so last century. And okay, it didn't work the last time I tried it. But if you just sat down and patiently listened, I'm positive you'd become the person we both really want you to be. [WaPo]
  
• You know how when two people who hate each other have sex one day and refuse to talk about it even though their behavior has been destructive to them and to those around them, and how it doesn't help any that their friends choose not to plan an intervention because really, it's super entertaining and secretly they just wish they could watch? Well, someone just found some pics. [WaPo]
  

[Tarboush tip: Nimr, Hanaan, Fayyad]

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"Israelis are pee everywhere!"

Yesterday's FUCK YOU AND SHUT MOUTH post was too kute. I have such a soft spot for broken English. Not only does it send me back to my younger years growing up in that illegal immigrant household with the 8 people in the closet-sized studio apartment, it also reminds me of moms who (she's so cute) three decades later, still hasn't learned English very well because who the hell speaks English in Southern California anyway?

(Okay, that's not completely true. She likes to pretend she doesn't know English but I know that she at least knows how to READ English -- as in READ the English written in my diary when I was in high school which kinda got me kicked out of the house JR year but I came back SR year when we patched things up and things got even BETTER when I left for college but that's a blog entry all on its own. One you probably won't be seeing on here as it's a story even too sordid for this family-friendly blog of ours.)

Anyway, FUCK YOU AND SHUT MOUTH reminds me of an Israeli girl I encountered this past summer in Guatemala who, while hiking up a mountain to see a really neat lake, had to take a leak. So, to her European friends' amazements, she dropped off the trail to go behind the bushes and came back pulling up her pants. I don't know why her friends were so horrified, as this type of behavior isn't uncommon on hikes, but they were. So she felt the need to smile and explain to them,

"Israelis are pee everywhere!"

Nobody bothered to correct her broken English, which leads me to believe that everyone present shared that sentiment, particularly since we were in a country whose genocidal government Israel went above and beyond its divine call of duty to aid.

And because her country continues to send support and advice around the world on how to kill the civilians, the possibility exists that she was genuinely pissed about it and chose to voice her I'm-mad-and-I'm-not-going-to-take-it-anymore anger by yelling, "Israelis are pee everywhere!" from the mountain top in her not-so-broken English.

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ISRAELI PROPAGANDA: Che Guevara would be just as fat as Ariel Sharon if he were still alive

Here's a fascinating story that's been circulating around the Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish-speaking world -- a fascination many of us have not been able to share in because it wasn't written in American (which means it didn't happen) and why don't these people learn the language already.

Apparently... you ready? Okay: Ariel Sharon and Che Guevara were cousins.

And not the it's-okay-to-marry-because-we're-second-cousins cousins. They were first cousins, which Che's mother revealed to him right before she died. It turns out she was Ariel Sharon's dad's sister which meant she was actually Jewish -- not Catholic -- which meant that Ernesto "Che" Guevara was -- that's right -- a Jew.

Oh, the secrets we keep.

After Che found this out, he secretly met with Sharon in Jerusalem -- and even briefly studied at a Jewish fundamentalist madrassa completely ruining his chances of ever becoming president in the 2008 elections, according to a Faux News report. The story concludes with a descriptive account of their secret meeting, where, as Che was saying goodbye to his long lost cousin, Ariel Sharon embraced him.

And then Ariel Sharon ate him.

Quite the delicious, probably completely fabricated story.

Che Guevara, cousin of Ariel Sharon?
A leading Israeli newspaper says so. But an historian refutes this.
Aug 04, 2007

TEL AVIV & ROME. ANSA

An Israeli investigator denied today that Argentinean revolutionary, Ernesto Che Guevara and former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon (currently in an 18-month long coma) were cousins and secretly met together.

Investigator, Efraim Davidi, author of a biography on Che, told Italian news agency ANSA today that the story is groundless. The surprising text was published yesterday in Maariv [a popular daily Hebrew language tabloid newspaper in Israel] as a front page story.

It said that the mother of the Argentinean guerrilla, one of the principal collaborators with Fidel Castro in the taking of Cuba, Celia de la Serna, was “in reality a Russian Jew who escaped the pogroms. Her last name was Schinerman and was the younger sister of Shmuel Schinerman, the father of Sharon who immigrated to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century to work as a farmer. Maariv gathered that in 1965 Celia, on her deathbed, confided in her son his lineage to the general Sharon.

Guevara then entered Israel using a false identity, the story says, and met with Sharon and even attended religious courses in Jerusalem.

The conclusion of the story implies, and what the investigation intended to validate is, that Guevara, as “son of a Jewish woman,” should be considered Jewish.

But Davidi said the Maariv premise is groundless.

His mother did not have Russian roots but Spanish, catholic ones. In the 1960s, the investigator says, Guevara visited on two occasions (with Egyptian President Gama Abdel Nasser’s consent) Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, stirring up enormous enthusiasm, but never entered Israel.

Neither was he a part of, according to the historian, the official Cuban delegations that visited the Jewish state in the years that followed.

The Israeli investigator considered it possible that the story was circulated by a Russian nationalist environment, determined to demonstrate links within “international Judaism” and revolutionary movements.

Original story in Spanish here: http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/08/04/elmundo/i-04001.htm

KABOBtranslation: Aug 21, 2007

[Tarboush tip: Nadeem]

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Che in Syria: Rare Video Clip

While scouring the famed Souk Hamidiyyeh a week ago, I was baffled at the sight of some of the offerings: racy lacy lingerie numbers dangerously brushing the corners of Quranic verse wall hangings from adjoining stores, embarrassingly bad Disney/American cartoon knock-off trinkets and toys, and lastly, the ubiquity of Che paraphernalia-in particular, the store directly abreast of one of the most eminent mosques in Islamic history (and a site important in Christian history as well), the Omayyad Mosque, carried images of Che affixed on Palestine-shaped necklace pendants among other Che-themed jewelry pieces.

I understand ideologically connecting historic revolutionary freedom fighters with current oppressed peoples movements, but what's the deal with the widespread embrace of iconic images of Che by countries (like Syria) disenchanted with the contemporary imperial regime?
The reason for my befuddlement?
It was because I wasn't aware of the historic encounter between Che and Syria:



It was because comrade Che visited the renowned religiously significant mosque decades back (exact date unknown) on a visit to Syria!

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Irony, please meet my friend the holocaust exhibit

Amisrael has been sponsoring a traveling holocaust exhibit in Guatemala which just arrived in Quetzaltenango two days ago. The exhibit begins with Hitler and a short analysis on Nazi propaganda and discourse, murderous images of the concentration camps, the unspeakable horrors of the genocide, and finally concludes with the creation and importance of the state of Israel...

...with no mention of the indigenous population said state is now attempting to eliminate.

But I suppose it makes perfect sense. Such talk might hit a little too close to home here in Guatemala, a state currently recovering from a 36-year genocidal war against an indigenous population the U.S.- and Israeli-backed government attempted to eliminate.

The holocaust exhibit's last panel states that such an exhibit needs to exist because,

"historical memory demands that we eliminate any type of intolerance in existence... so that atrocities like these are never repeated in human society, at any scale."

I suppose that as long as Palestinians are not considered to be humans of the human kind, and until Israel's atrocities toward, and intolerance of, Palestine's indigenous population is mentioned on this last panel, we can be certain that our friends Irony and Holocaust Exhibits shall never be introduced.

Amisrael's latest production comes only months after the Plaza Israel it erected last year in Quetzaltenango was vandalized one night. On the night of Valentines Day, animal organs were left near the plaza's imposing star, and the perpetrators tagged up the place with red spray paint, saying the following:

"Murderers, Occupiers, Child-killers"
"Infidels, Occupiers"
"Blood on your hands"

The next morning, the police received a phone call reporting the incident, apparently from the type of person whose first thought is always the conspiratory "blood libel" in situations like these. This Sherlock told the police that someone had left a fetus at the foot of the star. Turns out, it was animal's heart, a piece of lung and some trachea...

No Matzoh balls were reported at the scene.

This crime will never be solved. This is Guatemala. Still, I keep asking around for thoughts although no one really knows who did it. So far, mine is the best theory -- a strapping male successfully wooing a young anarchist's heart on Valentines Day...

:o) :o) :o)

I mean, they left a heart there and everything.

Other theories mostly linger around the default racism against Jews, per Amisrael's own explanation. When I point out to folks that maybe it was a political act against the Israeli government (it was Plaza Israel, after all and not Plaza Jew), I keep being met with blank stares that seem to ask, "Aren't they the same thing?"

"Nooooooo… Israel and Jews are not automatically the same thing and that's the problem with having nation-states in the first place, especially when they're based on race and ethnicity!!! Everything the government does gets blamed on innocent people of that race even if they have nothing to do with anything, y estos cabrones politicos solo se representan a ellos mismos y sus mendigos amigos, pero la gente es la que sufre and by the way, since when has the term "occupier" been a racial epithet? Has Israel really gotten Jewish people that far into this mess?"

I'll begin to explain this and once in a while hit them in a sensitive spot by outlining Israel's connections to the 36-year Civil War and how Israel was the genocidal Guatemalan government's #1 arms dealer after Carter stopped sending weapons over in the late 70s, and how Israelis were hired for counter-insurgency advice on how to kill their people.*

And then they're like, "Aw, hell nah... what?!"

And I'm like, "Yes, have a seat. Let's chat. Believe it or not, it's not just the gringos who suck ass."

_____________________________________________

*FURTHER READING (although I know for some of you the length of this post was already too much reading):

Aruri, Naseer (Jan 23, 2007) "Israel's friends in high places" Morning Star, People's Press Printing Society Ltd

Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin "The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why"

Bahbah, Bishara and Linda Butler (1986) "Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection"

Cockburn, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (1992)"Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship"

Fernández, Damian J. (1988) "Central America and the Middle East: The Internationalization of the Crises"

Howard, Esther (1983). "Israel: The Sorcerer's Apprentice" MERIP Reports, No. 112, The Arms Race in the Middle East. (Feb., 1983), pp. 16-25+30.

Hunter, Jane (1987) "Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America"

Jamail, Milton and Gutierrez, Margo (1986) "Israel in Central America: Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica" MERIP Middle East Report, No. 140, Terrorism and Intervention. (May - Jun., 1986), pp. 26-30+44-45+47.

Jamail, Milton and Margo Gutierrez "It's No Secret: Israel's Military Involvement in Central America"

Klieman, Aaron S. (1985) "Israel's Global Reach: Arms Sales as Diplomacy"

Lofving, Staffan (2004) "Paramilitaries of Empire: Guatemala, Colombia, and Israel" Social Analysis Vol 48 Issue 1.

Rubenberg, Cheryl A. (1986 and sounds like a self-hating Jew to me!!!). "Israel and Guatemala: Arms, Advice and Counterinsurgency" MERIP Middle East Report, No. 140, Terrorism and Intervention. (May - Jun., 1986), pp. 16-22+43-44

Sharif, Regina (1977) "Latin America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1. (Autumn, 1977), pp. 98-122.

Wirpsa, Leslie (April 7, 1995) "Murder and complicity in Guatemala; U.S., Israel allegedly continue furtive roles in military, politics" National Catholic Reporter

Woodward, Ralph Lee (2005) "A Short History of Guatemala" pp. 150.

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