Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Colombia: Legitimizing the FARC

Colombia’s Perilous Peace Talks
Former President Álvaro Uribe warns that negotiations ‘validate’ FARC terrorists.

Under Colombia’s 1991 constitution, a criminal conviction disqualified an individual from running for office. Now the “framework for peace,” an amendment to the constitution that was signed into law last year by President Juan Manuel Santos, converts FARC atrocities into “political crimes” and gives the attorney general discretion over which ones will be prosecuted.

By categorizing violent crime and even what are essentially crimes against humanity—including the recruitment of child soldiers—as “political crimes,” the Santos government can now offer the FARC political “eligibility” in exchange for an end to hostilities.

Make no mistake, the FARC insist that they will not surrender their weapons, will not disarm, and will not serve time in prison. They want a similar deal to that of the IRA in Northern Ireland.

That should not come as a surprise, considering how the IRA trained the FARC, and how now the IRA is lending its expertise to the negotiations taking place in Havana.

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MoDo did well!

Who said this?

“Just because Che became a chic brand for the capitalism he tried to destroy, it doesn’t mean he’s worth honoring on Galway Bay.”

Maureen Dowd said it.

I kid you not!

She said it in her column Gaelic Guerrilla (h/t Babalu),

Cameron hopes the city council takes the memorial matter up soon. Meanwhile, he sees the totalitarian rainbow. “The ultimate fruit of all this is that Che will be known as having the Irish blood and the Galway connection,” he says. “And that is an achievement in itself.”

Certainly Cameron is checking out Pol Pot’s genealogy, in case someone from Galway turns up.

Prior files on the proposed monument to Che here.


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So let me get this straight,

Billy Cameron, the Galway City councilman who proposed the monument to Che Guevara because Che was of Irish ancestry, insults a man who opposes the monument and says the man “should just butt out of Irish affairs”, even when the man’s Irish ancestry is so clear Eire is his last name?

Eir·e   [air-uh, ahy-ruh, air-ee, ahy-ree]
noun
1.
the Irish name of Ireland.
2.
a former name (1937–49) of the Republic of Ireland.

I kid you not,

Councilor Cameron indicated that Cuban-Americans such as Yale Professor Carlos Eire (who recently criticized the monument plan) should not become involved in Irish affairs.

‘I won’t be taking lectures from Cuban-Americans, who have their own agenda. I’m looking for a balanced debate. You won’t get balance from Cuban-Americans, or the Cuban-American lobby,’ said Councillor Cameron.

‘We live in an independent country. We fought long and hard for our independence, we’re not under the jurisdiction of the United States, and they should just butt out of Irish affairs, the Cuban-Americans,’ he added.

Or do only Irish Communists get respect?

As Babalu says, no tiene nombre.

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Irish illegals in the US, and a stolen heart

After reading the posts about the proposed Galway monument to Che, several friends are forwarding Irish stories,

New Irish exodu$ rivals days of old

New York beckons again for Ireland’s latest lost generation, her sons and daughters fleeing their country’s battered economy on a scale not seen since the early 20th century.
After the spectacular boom years of the famous Celtic Tiger turned to bust in 2007, more than 350,000 emigrants have fled, more than half the number that left over a 20 year period between 1900-1920. It’s Ireland’s traditional safety valve during painful periods of economic distress.
Hundreds of Irish workers are streaming into New York every month, according to Irish community leaders. That reverses an earlier trend, when some Irish workers in New York went back home to participate in the Emerald Isle’s once blistering growth.
…
When Ireland entered recession in 2008, people were already packing: 42,200 left in 2007, 45,300 emigrated in 2008, 65,000 in 2009, the same number in 2010, 76,400 last year. And more than 60,000 are forecast to go in 2012. That’s about 355,000 in six years — out of a population of 4.5 million.

I expect that is the trend from the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) countries, too.

The other Irish story this morning?Dublin patron saint’s heart stolen from Christ Church Cathedral
The heart was housed in a wooden box surrounded by an iron cage
The preserved heart of Dublin’s patron saint has been stolen from the city’s Christ Church Cathedral, officials say. St Laurence O’Toole is Dublin’s patron saint. Laurence O’Toole would make a great name for an actor, too, as it evokes Lawrence Olivier and Peter O’Toole.

No word as to whether St Larry’s heart “migrated” to US shores.

Meanwhile, back in the old country,they’re looking forward to the second annual Che Do Bheatha festival, due to be held in the seaside town of Kilkee this September because

is not a celebration of Guevara himself, but rather his image. It was made popular by artist Jim Fitzpatrick, who worked in Kilkee at the time of the visit. “It is not a political thing here and is a fun celebration,” [organizer Tom] Byrne says.

Alberto de la Cruz suggests,

As long as we are “celebrating” the “fun” side of vicious and ruthless murderers, here are a couple of suggestions for some other festivals they may want to consider:
The Idi Amin Food Festival
Political opposition, they’re not just for breakfast

* * *

The Pol Pot Gardening Festival
How the right fertilizer can make your killing fields into a prize winning garden

Maybe the Galway Council ought to look into Pinochet’s ancestry, too, while they’re at it.

As a final note, yesterday someone tweeted this,

mayor doesn’t want  monument@declanganley: First, to refresh your memory as to Che’s vile nature, a… bit.ly/wUnDVs

@Fausta @declanganley was one of the Lynches from Clare 🙂 didn’t have as much blood on him as the right wing butchers of SAmerica

To which I replied,

@GearoidFitzG @declanganley & may every freedom-loving man on earth piss on each of their graves & on every monument built to their lives

Did I make myself clear?

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#Galway mayor doesn’t want #Che monument @declanganley

First, to refresh your memory as to Che’s vile nature, an excerpt from an article, The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand, by Álvaro Vargas Llosa I linked to a while ago,

Guevara might have been enamored of his own death, but he was much more enamored of other people’s deaths. In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his “Message to the Tricontinental”: “hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” His earlier writings are also peppered with this rhetorical and ideological violence. Although his former girlfriend Chichina Ferreyra doubts that the original version of the diaries of his motorcycle trip contains the observation that “I feel my nostrils dilate savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy,” Guevara did share with Granado at that very young age this exclamation: “Revolution without firing a shot? You’re crazy.” At other times the young bohemian seemed unable to distinguish between the levity of death as a spectacle and the tragedy of a revolution’s victims. In a letter to his mother in 1954, written in Guatemala, where he witnessed the overthrow of the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz, he wrote: “It was all a lot of fun, what with the bombs, speeches, and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in.”

Guevara’s disposition when he traveled with Castro from Mexico to Cuba aboard the Granma is captured in a phrase in a letter to his wife that he penned on January 28, 1957, not long after disembarking, which was published in her book Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara in Sierra Maestra: “Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty.” This mentality had been reinforced by his conviction that Arbenz had lost power because he had failed to execute his potential enemies. An earlier letter to his former girlfriend Tita Infante had observed that “if there had been some executions, the government would have maintained the capacity to return the blows.” It is hardly a surprise that during the armed struggle against Batista, and then after the triumphant entry into Havana, Guevara murdered or oversaw the executions in summary trials of scores of people—proven enemies, suspected enemies, and those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain…. His belongings were now mine.” Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim “was really guilty enough to deserve death,” he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: “He had to pay the price.” At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture.

The proposed Galway monument to Che is indeed an obscene piece of propaganda, encompassing social media:

The commemorative sculpture will be entirely funded by the Cuban and Argentine Embassies and a design by Simon McGuiness will now go before the Galway City Council’s Working Group for approval.

Simon McGuinness told the Galway City Tribune that the image is a “total homage” to Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick’s iconic 1968 Che poster, which was based upon a photograph by Alberto Korda.

“It has three plate glass panels of varying heights which represent man, image and ideal,” Mr McGuinness explained.

The monument will feature a number of interactivity features and people visiting it will be able to use their phones to have a photograph taken at the statue and uploaded onto Facebook.

A planned WiFi feature at the monument will allow visitors to access videos and surf the Che Guevara website. They will also be able to post messages on the website.

As of now, however, The Mayor of Galway says she will not support plans to erect a monument of Che Guevara in the city.

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Raiding private pensions: it’s not just for Argentina anymore

Back in October 2008, Argentina nationalized ten bank-owned pension funds – worth over $26 billion in total – in an attempt to bail itself out of a financial crisis.

Now it’s Ireland’s turn: a tax, not a nationalization,
Irish Bombshell: Government Raids PRIVATE Pensions To Pay For Spending

The Irish government plans to institute a tax on private pensions to drive jobs growth, according to its jobs program strategy, delivered today.

Without the ability sell debt due to soaring interest rates, and with severe spending rules in place due to its EU-IMF bailout, Ireland has few ways of spending to stimulate the economy. Today’s jobs program includes specific tax increases, including the tax on pensions, aimed at keeping government jobs spending from adding to the national debt.

The tax on private pensions will be 0.6%, and last for four years, according to the report.

But Argentina and Ireland are not alone: Business Insider lists Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, France, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, Portugal, Greece, Germany, South Korea, Spain, Italy, and Japan as likely candidates to follow their example. Investor’s Business Daily points out that

Britain under Labor Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown did something similar in 2008.

The Irish plan is to tax of 0.06% on 65,000 private pensions to fund a :jobs initiative” for four years.

And when that doesn’t work, what next?

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Related:
Here in the USA,
The Millionaire Retirees Next Door
Typical retired couples will collect $1 million or more in Social Security and Medicare. This is more than they paid in, and the cost will fall on today’s workers.

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