What, she doesn’t trust Felipe Calderón?!

Let’s review.

First the press said the Mexican students were a FARC support group. And that Morett Álvarez was a guerrilla and a drug trafficker, taking a course on explosives no less, according to Colombian and Mexican intelligence. (Presumably a very quick one, since Morett Álvarez arrived only hours before the bombing commenced.) Then, the same excellent intelligence reported that a Cuban spy had acted as liaison between the FARC and the students and was seen prowling around the military hospital in Quito where Morett Álvarez and two Colombian survivors of the attack were recovering from their wounds. Meanwhile, upstairs in their hospital room, two FBI agents were threatening the Colombians with extradition if they did not lead the agents to the FARC mothership. The Mexican consul came to cast a quick look at Morett Álvarez, and left as quickly as possible without saying goodbye. Meanwhile, Felipe Calderón has nothing to say.

Well, Machetera guesses she’d ask for political asylum too.

The Mexican Student Wounded at the FARC Camp Asks for Political Asylum in Ecuador

Georgina Saldierna – La Jornada

March 30, 2008

Lucía Morett, the Mexican survivor of the bombing attack by Colombian troops against a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp, asked the Ecuadoran government for political asylum, according to her aunt, María Álvarez Moctezuma.

How does internet censorship work? Part 1

Many Swedish internet users have been unable to access certain Spanish language sites over the past couple of weeks. The following article from Rebelión, one of the blocked sites, claims that Cogent (misidentified in the original article as “CogNet”), the North American company that provides internet bandwidth to Telia, the Swedish telecom company through which many Swedes connect, has been deliberately censoring end-users’ access to the sites. It’s possible, but a quick Google search also indicates that there is some sort of peering conflict going on between Telia and Cogent, as evidenced by the many gamers whining “I cant play Flyff!”

When the U.S. engages in internet censorship it usually goes a more direct route – yanking domains directly, through the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which as the Cuban journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde pointed out, has more than two dozen people assigned to harass North Americans traveling to Cuba, and four to track the finances of Osama bin Laden, and prior to his snuffing, Saddam Hussein.

No empire lives forever

“Uribe and those who dropped bombs identical to those hurled against Iraq, should be investigated and punished.”

Lucía Andrea Morett Álvarez – Rebelión

The following statement by Lucía Andrea Morett Álvarez was read at a tribute to the university students killed in the March 1 massacre on Ecuadoran soil, in the Aula Magna at the Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM’s) College of Philosophy and Language. They were also read by Senator Rosario Ibarra at an event in Mexico City’s Zocalo to protest the privatization of Mexico’s oil. Both events took place on March 25.

Compañeras y compañeros:

My sincere Bolivarian greetings, from the bed in the military hospital in Quito, Ecuador where I am recovering from the multiple wounds I received as a result of the criminal bombing of Ecuadoran land by the Colombian army this past March 1, in which four of my best friends died. Many things pain me, among them, that with its silence, the Mexican government tries to shift the responsibility, before the world and history, away from those who directed the massacre, to the question of what we were doing there. Not only that, but they know that we arrived at the camp only a few hours before the barbarism and we went as civilians and university students, not imagining that we were going to be victims of one of the most infamous acts committed recently in Latin America, in a place where we’d been invited to learn about peace proposals.

On the 20th anniversary of Cuito Cuanavale

It’s sort of a telling statement about the utility, or rather, inutility of Wikipedia that the first footnote in its wandering entry on Cuito Cuanavale comes from Cubanet, the U.S. financed anti-Cuba propaganda site. According to Wikipedia, Cuba’s assistance at Cuito Cuanavale, might have helped end apartheid in South Africa. Or it might not have.

If you ask an African about it, there’s not a moment’s confusion or hesitation. Nelson Mandela didn’t have any doubts, so why does Wikipedia? The Cubans’ military contribution, and that of their commander, Fidel Castro, was brilliant and decisive. If you ask a Cuban about it, and I’m talking about a real Cuban, not an ex-Cuban or an anti-Cuban, they’ll recount the details of the battle with an overwhelming, effusive sense of pride, as though the battle occurred yesterday, nearby, not twenty years ago on a distant continent.

Viva Cuba!

The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale – The 20th Anniversary of an Example of International Solidarity

Jose Steinsleger – La Jornada

Havana, near the end of 1984: “Is it worth dying so far away?” The young woman in olive green, sitting next to me in the famous Cuban ice cream parlor, Coppelia, dropped her “compañero” attitude and gave me a fearsome stare of contempt. “Look, sir. This country was made with the blood of millions of slaves.”

Then she turned away and left me there, alone and blushing with embarrassment, with a lost appetite for my stupid icecream.

The devil’s workshop

…is definitely not the result of idle hands. This we know, thanks to Jose Maria Aznar who, for an ex-president is one busy busy bee. Right now he’s headlining a meeting at Ciudad de Rosario, Argentina, where every rightwing blowhard imaginable, including the insufferable Jorge Castañeda has come together to figure out how to rid the continent of its tiresome Bolivarian revolutionaries. As Modesto Emilio Guerrero explains below, it would be all too easy to dismiss the group, except that they aren’t stupid, they’ve got money, they control the media and they intend to win.

That North American tradition of keeping ex-presidents busy building their monuments to themselves otherwise known as libraries might not be a bad one. Can you imagine Bush Jr. occupying himself with such a thing as Rosario once his seemingly endless term actually comes to a close? (It’s a rhetorical question.)

A Continental Rightwing Orgy is Taking Place in Argentina

Modesto Emilio Guerrero – www.aporrea.org

Translation: Machetera

As if they were expecting the first signs of a Latin American Armageddon, some 40 well-known (some more than others) representatives of think-tanks, academia and pro-U.S. policies are meeting in the city of Rosario, on the shores of the majestic Paraná river.

Nothing at the event is accidental. Neither the name nor the scale of the meeting which has adopted a hemispheric aspect, nor its main academic, intellectual and political speakers. Not the time of its scheduling, nor its sponsoring organizations, nor the city, nor even the ethno-racist selection of the gallery of assistants; you are asked about your national “accent” and what institution you represent, to see if you are a potential risk. Nothing, absolutely nothing has been left to chance by the organizers.

Let’s compare childhood deprivations

Okay maybe Machetera was a little rough on Yoani Sánchez yesterday. Yoani did have a tough time growing up, what with the Russian cartoons and all. Although to be perfectly frank, Machetera’s mother didn’t permit cartoons of any sort so perhaps she suffered more? Anyway it’s not really Yoani’s fault that reporters are so lazy. She’s figured out that all she has to do is gripe and Western reporters will fall all over themselves to broadcast the griping as some kind of special inside Cuban scoop. It’s a simple case of supply and demand, really.

So perhaps the real media whore is Anthony Boadle, the Reuters correspondent in Havana who distributed the story in the first place about the censored blog without bothering to check the facts, knowing that his editors wouldn’t check them either. Helluva gig there, Tony.

Still, there’s something about Yoani that’s a little off. It’s not that Cubans aren’t famous for complaining, and sometimes about the craziest things. It’s more that after a certain point, the complaining becomes whingeing and that’s when you have to start wondering about the person who’s doing it.

But don’t take Machetera’s word for it. Take Ivan Alonso’s.

The Relentless Persecution (of Yoani Sánchez and her censored blog)

Iván Alonso – Cubainformación

When I learned that Cuban authorities had censored a blog at the online magazine Consenso, where Yoani Sánchez, a 32 year old Cuban woman was writing against “the anonymous censors of cyberspace” so that, as she dramatically put it, she would not be “locked up at home, lights shut off and friends not allowed to enter,” I went there to check it out.

And today’s media whore award goes to…

..the Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, who doesn’t bother with the usual tricks for inflating her blog stats. No, Yoani goes straight to Reuters, who is glad to put out a blast fax on her behalf, which is then picked up by scores of reporters too lazy to check the facts.

The Censored Cuban Blog

Pascual Serrano – Rebelión

Yesterday if one were to google “Yoani Sánchez” within Google’s “News in Spanish,” approximately 40 media reports would have appeared stating that this Cuban woman’s blog had been blocked by authorities in that country. (Cuba Censors One of its Main Blogs the Same Day it Approves Computer Sales, News Hurts, Bloggers Denounce Havana Blocking Access to Their Sites From Within Cuba, Cuba Blocks Access to the Most Read Cuban Blog, Cuba Blocks Access to One of its Most Read Blogs Because of its Criticism of Raul Castro etc..)

The news is practically identical in all media and it appears to have originated with a Reuters wire-service story. The peculiar thing is that it is limited to reiterating the allegations of this particular Cuban woman who “said that Cubans can no longer visit her website nor that of other bloggers born in the country who have their websites hosted on a server in Germany. All they can see is an error message.” Another thing that caught my attention is how, if the Cubans are continually being denounced for not allowing Internet access, the government could have an interest in blocking a blog that supposedly is not accessible?

What a tangled web we weave…

Another body from Colombia’s attack on Ecuador turns out not to be who Colombia said it was. It’s those lookalike South Americans again! Who can tell the difference, honestly?!

New Data Undermines Colombia’s Version of the Attack on the FARC

The Colombian Defense Minister has now admitted that a body it claimed was that of a FARC leader after the March 1st attack actually is that of an Ecuadoran citizen. Furthermore, he admitted that they had the help of U.S. intelligence [for the attack].

Keeping the world safe for Dolce & Gabbana

…among other things.

Pascual Serrano points out some recent absurdities of the modern capitalistic world.

Things that Happen in Capitalism

Pascual Serrano – Pascual Serrano/Rebelión

Often, observing certain curiosities of an economic system can be more eloquent and edifying than listening to the ideological principals that inspire it. I’d like to discuss a few of them now. In our market system, there are two topics with a palliative social function that are exploited more than any other: the environment and solidarity with the disadvantaged. Perhaps the following anecdotes can help us understand the hypocrisy in these topics.

11 people taken hostage from the FARC camp in Ecuador

It is sad but understandable, for reasons that are best illustrated by what happened to Raul Reyes when he made the mistake of using a satellite phone (or maybe even just a cellphone), that the FARC cannot have a website, and a translator.

Therefore Machetera brings you the FARC’s latest communique, which mentions near the end that Alvaro Uribe told Rafael Correa his army took 11 people back to Colombia with them from the FARC camp they destroyed in Ecuador.

Fighters + Lovers, the Danish group mentioned in the communique, incidentally was absolved by a Danish court of the charges that it had violated Denmark’s anti-terrorism law by donating funds from the sale of t-shirts to the FARC and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which proves that Denmark has not become totally rotten after all. Just 90%. But it would be hard or maybe even impossible to find any mention of that absolution anywhere in the English language press.

The FARC Accuse Uribe of Holding Eleven People From the Guerrilla Camp in Ecuador