No hard questions for Mr. Gates, please

If you listened or read the news yesterday, you couldn’t have missed it.  The title of the story in the New York Times “Defense Chief Lifts Ban on Pictures of Coffins” was pretty much repeated throughout the major media.  Democracy Now reported, “Pentagon Lifts Media Ban on Soldiers’ Remains“.

The ban on photographing coffin shipments goes back to George Bush Sr.’s excellent Panama adventure, where he was shown on the nightly network news joking with reporters while the bodies of soldiers killed in Panama were being unloaded.  As punishment (for the media, not for the president, what were you thinking?) the Pentagon banned all media coverage of future death shipments.

So at first glance, this was reported as a change.  But was it change we can believe in?

Unlikely.  Said Gates:

“If the family of one of the fallen says that they do not want media coverage of the return of the dignified transfer process, then that will be the decision. There will be no media coverage. If they say that’s OK with them, then it will be available.”

Well that certainly clears things up.  Will the family of each dead soldier be presented with a photo release form before the body is shipped home?  If one family checks the box marked no, and 26 families check the box marked yes, will no boxes from that flight be photographed?  Or will they put a special flag on the non-photographable one?  Maybe they can hide it behind a curtain.  Does it mean that the Pentagon is preparing a general survey for all soldiers’ families, in which case, if only one negative response is received, the media punishment ban will simply continue?

Is it too much to expect a reporter somewhere in this country to ask a simple question?  Because if it is, there ought to at least be a truth-in-advertising law that stamps “advertorial” on every press release sent out by the Pentagon and recycled as “news”.

Terrorists and the terrorized

Paid Solidarity

Santiago Alba Rico

Translation: Manuel Talens – Revised by Machetera

Is it possible to show interest in the pain of a man who is not a relative, of a boy we did not raise, of a woman we never loved? Is it possible to choose as equal an unequal distant human being or to choose as a kindred a remote foreigner? There is a sociological explanation for both hostility and indifference but perhaps there is none for this glowing crystallization of uncontainable sympathies that through their very chemical composition precipitate an intervention in the world.

We usually call “solidarity” – or maybe we should call it – the armed hand of compassion, the solidification of commitment: the act of freely choosing other people’s needs, of voluntarily suppressing the very conditions that allow this act of freedom once one has been shaken by the pain or been contaminated by the idea of a stranger. The active compassion Todorov identifies with the “morality of sympathy” finds its highest expression in the absurd and luminous decision of solidarity suicides who – not being able to bear the suffering of the Jews – jumped with them into the livestock wagons which were driven to the concentration camps.

Understanding democracy

Accepting Chávez

Pascual Serrano

Translation: Machetera

On February 15, Venezuelans returned to the polls to show their support for President Hugo Chávez by approving a constitutional amendment that does away with the two term limit for governors, members of parliament or the President of the Republic.  In this way, Chávez may be a presidential candidate in 2012, the year in which his present term ends.

As one may recall, the government’s supporters lost the December 2007 referendum on constitutional reform, in which the elimination of term limits was included among 68 other articles of reform.  Support for constitutional reform has gone from the 4,379,392 votes (49.29%) cast at that time, to 6,003,594 (54.36%) for the present amendment.  Meanwhile, votes against the amendment also increased, from 4,504,354 (50.7%) to 5,040,082 (45.63%) but now are in the minority. Those who expected that the referendum would usher in the decline of Chavismo have had their expectations dashed.

Jon Lee Anderson still getting by with one eye

“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

What else did Machetera miss while she was away?  Not much, apparently.  A Frontline documentary, produced by Ofra Bikel, called “The Hugo Chávez Show,” aired in November, with all the usual suspects…meaning people who used to support Chávez but don’t any more, like Teodoro Petkoff.  The Guardian’s Rory Carroll is given a chance to recount (again!) his tale of on-camera humiliation at Aló Presidente, for which he is still seething and, judging by his latest dispatches, seeking vengeance.  But pride of place goes to Jon Lee Anderson, best known in the English speaking world for his Hollywood Babylon biography of el Che, cocktail chatter from fascist warzones, and more recently, detailed descriptions of the seatback tray table hinges on Chávez’s presidential jet.  In “The Hugo Chávez Show,” he adds clairvoyance to his resume, telling us what Fidel was “probably” thinking when Chávez spoke at the University of Havana’s Aula Magna in 2000:

This is what the future looks like

What happened to November, December and January, you ask?

Well, although Machetera believes strongly in the maxim, never complain, never explain, she will at least say that her internet access over the past three months has been almost non-existent, thanks to the ex-Cubans in Miami who have spent all these years cutting off their noses to spite their faces, and blocking any undersea cable that might provide Cuba with a semi-normal level of bandwidth.  Although the blocked Cuban blogger doesn’t seem to mind hanging out in Havana hotels to upload her nastygrams, Machetera has far better uses for her time.

So, just a quick word to the ex-Cubans who made their fortunes in Miami’s telecom business (everyone knows who you are): Thanks!  By forcing Cuba to go through a slow, costly satellite feed, you’ve managed to ensure that bandwidth in Cuba is rationed first to those who really need it – real Cuban journalists, academics, and government officials – instead of being wasted on bloggers, or the intellectually challenged members of Machetera’s family who would undoubtedly use it for porn.  Second, you’ve laid the framework for the bandwidth monopoly to go to Venezuela, when it connects the undersea cable next year! No wonder you lost in 1959!