Omer update

GAZA CITY, Jun 28 (IPS) – Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza.

…The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European parliamentarians, and mocked Omer for being “the prize-winning journalist”.

The Gazan journalist was repeatedly asked why he was returning to “the hell of Gaza after we allowed you to leave.” To this he responded that he wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a “trouble-maker”.

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His Gellhorn prize money had been awarded in British pounds but he was not carrying the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

“At first I refused but then I had an M16 (gun) pointed in my face and my clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear,” Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said he was told, “you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Full story

Dying to live

One of the astonishing things about the part of the country where Machetera lives, a backward and super-provincial, reflexively capitalistic and hyper-nationalistic (not in a good way) kind of place, is that even here, the truth still escapes all the mostly effective attempts to blockade it. Back when Machetera was suffering from the triple virus and had to haul her computer into the shop, she took it in without bothering to remove the bumper sticker taped below the screen which says “Only free men can negotiate” (Nelson Mandela), with the subtitle, “Palestine. Dying to live.” At the end of the week when she went to retrieve it, an older gentleman, dressed like a lumberjack and waiting to retrieve his own computer, stared fixedly at the sticker, while Machetera’s heart sank. Surely an evangelical tirade about Israel was brewing. Finally, after a few minutes, he asked with the utmost politeness where the sticker had come from because he wanted one for himself. “It’s so true,” he said, shaking his head.

With that in mind, today’s contribution to the destruction of the information blockade is the news about Mohammed Omer, the 24 year old Palestinian journalist who is in critical condition after being tortured nearly to death by Israeli troops for the crime of trying to return home after accepting the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London. He and Dahr Jamail shared the prize. You can read more about Omer here, where you will also find a link to his acceptance speech, introduced by John Pilger.

And in other ethnic cleansing news from Palestine, this arrived in Machetera’s mailbox this morning:

Popular, not populist

In this interview with Argentina’s Mario Wainfeld, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa says, “…the policies of George Bush have been so clumsy in the region that they’ve favored us. The progressive governments have a lot to thank him for, he’s helped us a lot.”

Also in this interview, this breaking news: An Ecuadoran who survived the Colombian/U.S. bombing of the FARC camp in Ecuador on March 1 was killed with a blow from a rifle butt to his neck, not by gunfire or the bombs themselves.

Winning Elections is Not the Same as Winning Power

Mario Wainfeld – Página 12

Translation: Machetera

In an interview with Página 12, Ecuador’s president spoke of his opposition’s coalition, the role of the media and banking. As well, he spoke of the relationship between democracy and power factions, and his socialist project and its limits. Of the influence of the dollar and remittances. Of the relationship between countries in the region, with Colombia, with the United States. And much more, even a goal made in overtime.

Why do they call this man a socialist?

Another in the long list of questions you need not answer.

Spain’s President Zapatero has just said that Chávez (and by extension, Correa and Morales) doesn’t understand the EU’s Returns Directive.

“Maybe we need to explain exactly to the president of Venezuela what this directive (EU law) consists of,” Zapatero said. “There have been many interpretations of this directive… that have nothing to do with what it really is.”

Oh please, patron, explain…

A huge heart, full of gratitude and love

Ever since Hugo Chávez’s most recent suggestion to the FARC that they give up their hostages in exchange for nothing, the left has been having a heart attack over it all. You’d have thought the Apocalypse had already begun, ushered in personally by Chávez. In times like this, Machetera believes, it’s important to remember things that actually matter.

To Vladimir Acosta from a Housewife

Lilia Ramírez

Translation: Machetera

Today, April 16, 2008, I woke up late, at 7:30 a.m., turned on National Radio as usual, heard someone talking about the President; carefully followed what he said, turned off the radio because I figured I’d gotten the frequency wrong, turned it on again, to hear the same voice speaking with the most bitter tone, meanness of focus, the worst comparisons; then I understood that it was a case of repressed hate and opportunity had opened its door.

Not your ordinary .22

This was the weapon that was confiscated from one of the Nazis hanging around the airport in Bolivia where Evo Morales was about to touch down last Thursday. Machetera doesn’t know that much about guns but it doesn’t look like something you’d use to go after squirrels.

In fact it doesn’t look much like anything anyone should be hauling around an airport where a president is due to arrive any minute. What do you think would happen to someone found carrying this anywhere near where The Decider was about to touch down? You don’t need to answer that.

Chávez weighs in on Morales assassination attempt

Would this elegant assassin be Junior Vaca or the other one?

Bolivian Information Agency

Chávez Condemns the Liberation of Those Implicated in the Assassination Attempt Against Evo Morales

Translation: Machetera

Caracas, June 20 – On Friday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez condemned the release by the Santa Cruz Public Prosecutor of two men believed to be implicated in an assassination attempt against his Bolivian counterpart, Evo Morales, and agreed that what’s going on is a process meant to divide Bolivia.

“The Santa Cruz prosecutor behaved as though (this region) was already its own republic (…); what’s happening in Bolivia is something very serious” and makes up part of “a strategy by the United States empire in several places, not just in Bolivia and Venezuela,” the President said, according to the EFE news agency.

Gunning for Morales, literally

If you read the Reuters or even the Al Jazeera account of the arrests of the would-be assassins of Evo Morales, you’d think, ah, well, someone hauling a gun around, that probably happens all the time in Bolivia, big deal. Maybe those Morales people are paranoid.

There’s a little more to it than that. And yes, it involves the Nazis from the Santa Cruz Youth Union. Let’s see what Telesur reported.

Bolivian Government Denounces Assassination Attempt Against President Evo Morales

(Two men arrested carrying a rifle with a telescopic sight were later liberated by authorities in Santa Cruz.)

Translation: Machetera

Those close to the arrest of two members of the ultra-rightwing Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), detained this Thursday in the El Trompillo airport in Santa Cruz for carrying a firearm, have concluded that they meant to kill President Evo Morales.

This was the denunciation made on Friday by the Vice Minister of the Office of Governmental Coordination with Social Movements, Sacha Llorenti, who explained that those arrested were caught with a rifle with a telescopic sight and 300 shells, in a place where minutes later the Bolivian president arrived for an event in the town of Bicito in Santa Cruz.

Llorenti explained that “apparently these people were to go to the “Center” cinema, which is the highest in the area, with a roof that offers a panoramic view of the El Trompillo airport.”

Obama the clairvoyant (and new decider)

Just to clarify. This is not the type of translation Machetera could normally be bothered to make, and she found the work somewhat revolting. First of all, Jorge Ramos writes like a breathless reporter for a Junior League newsletter, but apparently Machetera’s not the first to notice this. Still, it’s an appalling statement about the intellectual poverty of U.S. media, that this man could be considered one of the “25 most influential Hispanics in the United States.”

Second of all, the mainstream media have enough translators who make a lot more money than Machetera does, to do this kind of thing. But here’s the interesting part. They didn’t. Since Machetera’s vast and dedicated readership are an inquiring bunch, one of her readers asked, “Did Obama really say what I think he said, partway through that interview?” The answer is yes. He did. Israel’s new best friend announced not only that Venezuela is a manageable threat but it’s time for sanctions.

Evo Morales on the EU “Returns Directive”

Open Letter from Evo Morales Regarding the European Union’s “Returns Directive”

Evo Morales Ayma – Bolpress

Translation: Machetera

Until the end of the Second World War, Europe was a continent of emigrants. Tens of millions of Europeans left for the Americas in order to colonize, escape famine, financial crises, wars and European totalitarianism and the persecution of ethnic minorities. Today, I’m following the process of the so-called “Returns Directive” with concern. The text, approved on June 5th by the Interior Ministers of the European Union’s 27 member countries, must be voted on in the European Parliament on June 18th. I feel that it drastically hardens the conditions for detention and expulsion of undocumented migrants, whatever their length of stay in the European countries, their work situation, their family ties, their will and their achievements at integration.

Europeans arrived en masse in the countries of Latin America and North America, without visas or conditions imposed by the authorities. They were always welcome, and they continue to be, in our countries on the American continent, which therefore absorb the economic misery of Europe and its political crises. They came to our continent to exploit its wealth and transfer it to Europe, with a very high cost for America’s original population. Such is the case in our Cerro Rico, in Potosi, where the fabulous silver mines provided the European continent its coinage from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The goods and personal rights of the European migrants were always respected.

Today the European Union is the main destination for the world’s migrants, as a consequence of its positive image as an area of prosperity and public freedom. The vast majority of the migrants come to the EU to contribute to this prosperity, not to take advantage of it. They occupy jobs in public works, construction, personal services and hospitals, which Europeans can’t or don’t wish to fill. They contribute to the European continent’s dynamic demographic, to maintaining the relationship between the active and inactive that in turn makes possible its generous systems of social security, internal market stimulation and social cohesion. Migrants offer a solution to the EU’s demographic and financial problems.