George Galloway’s racism

June 9th, 2013

Galloway: “I am a soldier in Che Guevara’s army”
In case you had caught a touch of the progressive mind-flu that makes you think Guevara was some kind of freedom-loving revolutionary, have a read of this to remind you how he was a racist murderer.

Galloway describes [Che] as his “hero”. Let’s take a look at what Guevara wrote about black people, and maybe you should ask Galloway yourself if he endorses his hero and leader’s comments:

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”

Surely George knows that.


Venezuela: The kidnapping worked

June 8th, 2013

Imagine, if you may, this sequence of events:

  • Dictator dies
  • Dictatorship expels superpower military attaches in March the same day dictator dies
  • Dictatorship perpetuates (or at least attempts to perpetuate) itself through electoral fraud
  • Superpower ignores election results
  • Big OAS pow-wow date looms on the horizon
  • Dictatorship kidnaps citizen of superpower
  • Behind-the-scenes deal takes place
  • To add urgency, the dictatorship places the citizen of the superpower in one of the most dangerous jails in our hemisphere
  • Citizen is released and returned
  • Superpower’s Secretary of State and dictatorship’s foreign minister get together for photo-op
  • Everybody’s happy

You don’t think that’s what happened in the Timothy Tracy case?

Think again:

John Kerry Meets With Venezuela’s Foreign Minister; Talk Of Improving Relations

On his first trip to Latin America since taking office, Kerry said he was hopeful that a rapprochement could be achieved. The meeting, which came at Venezuela’s request, took place just hours after Venezuela released from prison an American filmmaker who had been jailed on espionage charges, removing an immediate irritant in the relationship.

Meanwhile, in a speech to the 35-member OAS annual general assembly, Kerry did not mention the developments with Venezuela, but reiterated U.S. concerns that some countries in the hemisphere are backsliding on their commitments to democracy and seeking to weaken OAS institutions that monitor and report on human rights.

Any questions?

UPDATE:
Linked by Pirate’s Cove. Thank you!


Person(s) of Interest

June 7th, 2013

No, not them,

Us,

 

US intelligence chief denounces info ‘leak’…

NYT: Obama has lost all credibility…

Paper ‘quietly changes published editorial to make less damning’…

RELATED:

 New York Times:

President Obama’s Dragnet  —  Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every …


Mexico: Retailers Descend on Mexico

June 7th, 2013

Compare and contrast: Retailers pay millions of dollars to leave Argentina, while they’re descending on Mexico

Spurred by Relaxation of Tariffs on Clothing, Youth-Oriented Stores Head South, among them H&M, Zara, and Gap, all aimed at the younger consumer (I do shop at Zara for its classic, yet updated, style)

Encouraging the retail newcomers is the relaxation of steep tariffs on imported clothing. For more than a decade, Mexico applied antidumping duties as high as 533% on Chinese-made apparel to bolster its domestic garment industry. But in December 2011, the country eliminated the last of those transitional duties on Chinese clothing, lowering that barrier to entry. Currently the top tariff is a more palatable 25%.

“Because Mexico is a huge aspirational market, the removal of import tariffs for apparel may well be the single most-important retail event in the country in the past few years,” says a report by analysts at Credit Suisse, CSGN.VX -3.34% which estimates that clothing in Mexico was previously at least 50% more expensive than clothing in the U.S.

It’s all part of Mexico’s market-friendly policy by decreasing trade barriers.

Colombia: Bayly entrevista a Uribe, 2a parte

June 6th, 2013

Primera parte ayer; segunda parte hoy,

FYI,

June 6th, 2013

in case you missed it,

NSA is collecting the phone records of MILLIONS of Verizon customers daily under top secret order issued in April and it lasts into July

Because of the lack of distinction, it means that the phone records are not just being collected for suspected terrorists, but the company’s entire consumer base.

Meanwhile, Obama and Google swap staff


Venezuela: Timothy Tracy released

June 5th, 2013

By the time today’s podcast aired, Tracy was apparently on his was way to the USA:
Venezuela Frees,Then Deports U.S. Filmmaker

A U.S. filmmaker was freed from a Venezuelan prison and expelled from the country, local officials said Wednesday, more than a month after he was arrested on charges of plotting against the new administration of President Nicolás Maduro.

“The gringo, Timothy Tracy, caught spying in our country, has been expelled from national territory,” said a post on Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez’s Twitter account. The message was confirmed by a ministry spokesman, who declined to give further details.

And,

The release of Timothy Tracy, 35, was secured with the help of former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who has long worked to improve often strained U.S.-Venezuelan ties and was hired by Tracy’s family as an attorney in the case.

The expulsion came just as Secretary of State John Kerry was to meet with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Guatemala to discuss relations between the two countries, which have been without ambassadors since 2010.

That’s the OAS meeting.

Last week Tracy had been transferred notoriously violent Rodeo prison, where hundreds had died in a 2011 riot.

In Silvio Canto’s podcast

June 5th, 2013

Talking about Argentina and other US-Latin America issues with Silvio, Michael Prada, and Soledad Ytuarte of the Buenos Aires Herald.

You can listen to it here.

Colombia: Bayly entrevista a Uribe

June 5th, 2013

Primera parte hoy,

Ni Uribe ni Bayly tienen pelos en la lengua. Bayly presentará la segunda parte esta noche en MegaTV. Pondré los YouTubes mañana.

[To my English-only readers, I don't post a translation because of time constraints.]

Cuba: Castro’s pawn

June 5th, 2013

Mary O’Grady asks about Alan P. Gross, now in his 4th year of imprisonment,
Cuba Admits Gross Is a Pawn

Is Washington engaged in a negotiation with Havana to try to free U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross from a Cuban jail? If so, what’s on the table?

From the looks of it, Cuba wants “the release of several Cuban intelligence officers convicted in 2001 of spying on the U.S.” in exchange for Gross’ freedom, rather than a ransom.