Magic laptops gunning for Obama

Okay, Machetera “borrowed” this artwork from her friend Borev. But it’s just too good not to be used again and again…

How to Turn Chávez Into a Terrorist in Two [Short] Months

Pascual Serrano – Diagonal

Translation: Machetera

Colombia’s bombing of a FARC camp in Ecuador set off a real media war. Any similarity between the mainstream media version and reality is purely coincidental.

First they said Chávez was a dictator, but that didn’t convince anyone, considering that he was the president who’d won more elections than anyone in the Americas. Then they said he was armed to the teeth and a danger to the region’s stability, but the truth is that Chávez never used a single weapon outside his own country. So the latest tactic has been to turn him into a terrorist through a two month long media operation. Let’s review the chronology of the operation and compare each event as reported by the Media Axis (El País, El Tiempo, The Wall Street Journal, Colombia’s President Uribe, the White House) with what actually happened.

Hitting Cuba through Bolivia

Casals & Associates, Inc., headed by Beatriz Casals, is the sluice trough through which USAID money flows to undermine the Evo Morales government in Bolivia. And funny thing…it all goes back to the ceaseless U.S. efforts to destroy the Cuban revolution. Néstor García Iturbe explains.

USAID Objective: Bolivia

Néstor García Iturbe – cubasocialista

Translation: Machetera

Among the various mechanisms created by the United States government with the objective of trying to topple the government of Bolivia, an important role belongs to the actions developed by USAID in which a wide range of businesses and organizations are used to cloak the “killer claw” that gives money to take away life.

The strategy that is being employed in Bolivia seeks to divide the existing revolutionary forces within the country while strengthening the right-wing. A policy of “regression” which was successful in the Reagan era and as we indicated in an article titled “Yankee Diplomatic Offensive in Latin America,” published in Entorno in July of 2007 is being applied as follows:

“Regression” will be applied individually. Its application will begin after the successful provocation of a situation where “ungovernability” has been demonstrated in the country and “democracy” is in such a crisis, that in order to implement peace, order and security, a humanitarian intervention by the United States armed forces is necessary to ensure the establishment of a “democratically legitimate” regime.

Note to Obama: time for a Latin American reality check

Barbara Curbelo Cusack sent this excellent rebuke to Barack Obama, via his website, where she told Machetera she had also mentioned “people like my parents who had to fight Batista’s sadistic and corrupt dictatorship. Whenever I see the likes of Pepe Hernandez talking about democracy and human rights, I get indignant because although I was a little girl during the revolution – I haven’t forgotten.”

I agree Senator McCain’s view of the Americas is out of touch, but so is telling CANF, sons of forces ousted from Cuba for crimes against humanity, that theirs is a legacy of conviction, commitment to freedom, and hard-earned prosperity.

Your message of freedom must first stand the constitutional test in Miami.

You spoke of freedom from fear, leaving out acts of terrorism perpetrated with absolute impunity against the people of Cuba; financed by CANF (by convicted terrorist Posada Carriles’s own account to the New York Times), costing more than 3,000 lives, and countless suffering.

You spoke of dissidents treated unfairly, yet this very week Cuba has put forth irrefutable evidence of convicted terrorists from South Florida sending those “dissidents” hefty contributions through the US Interest Section in Havana. That was a missed golden opportunity to attack the duality of Bush’s bogus war on terror.

Telling the truth about Colombia

Today Machetera offers two small translations, both to do with Colombia. The first, this brief note by Pascual Serrano, following the FARC’s confirmation of the death of its commandante, Manuel Marulanda, and the second, a memory of Marulanda by Gloria Gaitán, whose father, the political candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was murdered in Bogotá in 1948, sparking the guerrilla war that has gone on for 40 years now. Update: James Petras’ Homage to Marulanda which includes a lot of interesting details about the history of the conflict as well as Marulanda’s leadership, can be found here.

A Map of the World

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

–George Orwell

The Guerrilla Conflict in Colombia Enters a New Era

Pascual Serrano – Público

Translation: Machetera

With the confirmation of death by natural causes of the head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Manuel Marulanda, who joins his fellow FARC leaders [in death], Raúl Reyes and Iván Rios, it’s time for the parties to begin a new path that will leave Colombia’s violence and bloodshed behind.

False positives in Colombia

False Positives

Gloria Gaitán – Aporrea

Translation: Machetera

“False positives” is a post-September 11 Creole expression which came about during the Álvaro Uribe government, to describe the absolutely false supposedly “anti-terrorist” actions used by the regime to throw up curtains of smoke whenever highly scandalous situations present themselves, as has happened repeatedly throughout his entire mandate.

This week, faced with the seriousness of “parapolitica” [paramilitary politics], the extradition of paramilitaries in order to silence them and the denunciations of the ex-Congresswoman Yedis Medina – who has been showing how the second re-election of Álvaro Uribe is illegitimate because it happened thanks to bribes and criminal extortion – false positives have been the order of the day, filling the national atmosphere.

Note to Obama: Goodwill doesn’t fit in a bank vault

Machetera has a few things she’d like to say to Barack Obama. Fidel, however, has already covered the basics, particularly in regard to Obama’s speechwriters’ delusions about Cuba and the CANF. Translation is a tricky business and although Fidel’s translators are generally excellent, there are a few small things that Machetera has improved, for instance, “animales domesticos” generally refers to farm animals, not household pets – not that Fidel has anything against those, she’s sure, but in terms of the world food crisis, “domesticated animals” is a better choice. Revision is always easier than translation, though – it’s something like 20/20 hindsight.

The Empire’s Hypocritical Politics

By: Fidel Castro Ruz, May 25, 2008, 10:35 p.m.

It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan. I listened to his speech, as I did McCain’s and Bush’s. I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly.

The Pentagon moves its pawns

There might be a reason it’s impossible to find a picture of a U.S. President playing chess. Not to underestimate the Pentagon, which probably does have a few decent chess players notwithstanding their mentally challenged commanders in chief, but Machetera’s bets are still with the Latin Americans.

It’s not hard at all to find a picture of el Che or Fidel playing chess. Publicly.

You can even re-live Fidel’s game with Filiberto Terrazas here.

* * *

With Evo and the FARC Weakened, Washington Begins its Checkmate Against Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa

Heinz Dieterich – Rebelión

Translation: Machetera

1. The Checkmate Scenario

Washington has reached the following conclusions:

1. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have lost their operational capacity.
2. It has managed to neutralize the Evo Morales government through the creation of a parallel state in the four provinces associated with “Camba Nation.”
3. Its successes in Colombia and Bolivia set the stage to begin the checkmate against the governments of Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa. This is the reason for the growing military provocations by Uribe’s troops, the U.S. military forces in the Caribbean, and the reactivation of the Fourth Imperial Fleet.

Here comes trouble

Today’s New York Times has a sneak preview of the new Steven Soderbergh Che film, from Cannes, where its reporter, A.O. Scott got a peek. The film is presently 4-1/2 hours long, and split into two parts; the first, dealing with Che’s role in the Cuban Revolution and the second, the insurgency in Bolivia. A.O. Scott, evidently trained in the U.S. method of “objective” reporting, where you give mathematically equal space to both sides, even when one of the sides is an obvious lie buttressed by an eternity of disinformation, complains that Che’s “brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned.”

Okay, well, that would be called fiction.

Soderbergh’s film is not a documentary, obviously, but must it include every anti-Cuban fantasy in order to get a decent review and a distribution deal? Probably. Ask Oliver Stone what happened to Comandante, which HBO canceled under pressure from Miami and Washington, and even now you can’t buy it except in a version that won’t play on an American or Canadian DVD player, without hacking it first.

So U.S. citizens, no worries. There’s no danger that you’ll see Che in the near or distant future, any more than you’ll ever see Dick!, the movie about Dick Cheney’s brutal role in turning the United States into a dictatorship.

Goal!

Compañero Fidel spoke of last weekend’s summit of EU and Latin American leaders in Lima by comparing it to one he attended nine years ago in Rio de Janeiro:

The dominant spirit among the rich representatives of Europe was one of ethnic and political superiority. All of them were the bearers of capitalist and consumerist bourgeois thinking and talked and applauded in its name. Many brought with them the businesspersons who are the pillar and support of “their democratic systems, guaranteeing freedom and human rights.” You would have to be an expert in cloud physics to understand them.

Evo Morales, a man after Fidel’s heart, apparently decided to skip the cloud physics last weekend and do something that mattered.

* * *

Evo and Soccer

Luis Hernández Navarro – La Jornada

Translation: Machetera

He’s 47 years old but doesn’t miss a chance to take part in any soccer match he can. He’s played alongside crack soccer players such as Diego Armando Maradona, Héctor Chumpitaz and Diego Latorre. He’s on the Litoral team, a semi-professional team that aspires to reach the big leagues. His name is Evo Morales and he’s also the President of Bolivia.

His most recent game was last Friday, in Lima, Perú, during the Fifth Summit of Heads of State and Government for Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union. The game was organized by the People’s Summit, an alternative event held in parallel with the official meeting. Morales was aligned with a group made up of Bolivians, which faced off against legendary world players from Peru such as Héctor Chumpitaz and Julio César Uribe. Wearing the number 10, Morales made a penalty goal in the 22nd minute.

Dialing for dollars in Cuba

U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Michael Parmly, impersonates a Cuban “Lady in White” impersonating an Argentine “Mother of the Plaza de Mayo”

By: Machetera

There are so many things wrong with this story that it would be hard to know where to begin, so let’s start with Tuesday’s headline in El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish language fiefdom of the Miami Herald, which says “Dissident Cuban Woman Says Government Hounds but Doesn’t Allow a Defense.”

Now, aside from the striking fact that the Cuban woman in question, Martha Beatriz Roque, is given a free platform by a major U.S. daily from which to defend herself (and doesn’t) – something which is never offered those hounded by the United States government, Machetera’s going to take a wild guess here and say that if the Cuban government didn’t also invite her to appear on the Cuban political television program, Mesa Redonda (Round Table) where her grasping emails were unveiled, demanding payment for services rendered, it would have been to save her from being killed by the audience. Because Martha doesn’t just take money from anybody. She takes it from the ugliest people – Santiago Alvarez, the benefactor of Luis Posada Carriles, who blew up a Cuban passenger plane in 1976, killing all 73 people on board.