News nuggets for the morning crowd

Vuvuzuelas blare in Santiago
Chile: Students are going to protest the Pinera education policies again today, the sixth massive demonstration in the past few weeks. It could get nasty, because the government did not grant authorization for the march to La Moneda. High school students will demonstrate in the morning, university students in the afternoon.

Student leaders, professors, and academics held a 2 1/2 hour meeting with Interior Minister Hinzpeter at the La Moneda but the talks fell through and the students said they would go ahead with the march today. The fact that the meeting was held in La Moneda gives an indication of how serious the Pinera government considers the protests.

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Guatemala: Nobel Peace Prize honoree (1992) and indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú is officially a candidate for the presidency. She will run under the banner of a leftist coalition called the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) in the elections on Sept. 11. Should she win, Guatemala would be ruled by an indigenous woman (which would be very cool.

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Argentina: Cristina today announced a 16.82 percent raise for retired elders. So far this year retirees have gotten a 37.06 percent raise in their pensions, to the equivalent of U$S 340. (This will certainly do no harm to Cristina's re-election aspirations.)

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Colombia: In Bogota, alvarito's boys, Tom and Jerry, were once again accused of having links to parapoliticans. The accusation was made by Ivan Cepeda, leader of the lower chamber of Congress. The same accusation was made last year, but the case slipped under attention of the public. uribito tweeted an angry response, saying that Cepeda was a "moral hitman."

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Venezuela: "Yul" Chavez. (Is it my imagination, but does he resemble Harry S Truman?)

Thanks for the heads-up on the planned but disallowed march for Thursday. Hope Pinera doesn't try to make a "statement" by getting rough with them.

Hope there isn't so much racism it will keep Guatemala from making a great choice in the next election.

Such good news from Argentina. Had not heard a word about this. Money spent to help those in need is never misplaced, far different from the way things are done here, in giving to those who create the poverty for others while deriving their profits from others' work and need.

Tom and Jerry. Are they weak leaks? Two Achilles' heels? This isn't the first time their names have come up connected to criminals. Very interesting. (Have heard of Ivan Cepeda. He must be be very effective.)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_OX4JF-DDNtY/TCrCLCAcb8I/AAAAAAAAGoU/x0QLdJszbek/s1600/ATT00014%5B1%5D.jpg http://ph.cdn.photos.upi.com.nyud.net:8090/view/a61bde9e327d8d865dc1762a73d7e6d6/Gen-Douglas-MacArthur-meets-with-President-Harry-Truman-on-Wake-Island-during-the-beginning-of-the-Korean-War.jpg http://coacheshotseat.com.nyud.net:8090/coacheshotseatblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/HarryTruman1.jpg
http://www.thepresidentialcandidates.us.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/deweydefeatstruman.jpg
I can't get the right photo which brings out best the similarity of what I can see, like you, in the two faces. You are right, however. When you've seen Truman's face a LOT, you know what it looks like, and how it looked when he broke out into one of his great smiles, too.

Yul Chavez looks great with his hair like that! Thanks for the photos.

they must be racist?

http://newspaperrock.bluecorncomics.com/2007/09/menchu-loses-presidential-election.html

One who did not seem to get any spiritual help is Rigoberta Menchú, the first indigenous presidential candidate in this predominantly indigenous country and the winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy on behalf of Guatemala’s marginalized Mayans.

She finished sixth in a field of 14, according to results released Monday, with just 3 percent of the vote. The two front-runners, Álvaro Colom and Otto Pérez Molina, will compete in a runoff on Nov. 4.

Why Ms. Menchú fared so poorly is as complex as the Mayans themselves.

She was not from around here. That was obvious to anyone who scrutinized the details of the embroidery on the traditional Mayan clothes she wore to campaign. She is a Quiche Mayan, from the midwestern highlands. Her indigenous language is different, unintelligible to a local Tz’utujil speaker. Nineteen other Mayan groups live in Guatemala, each linguistically distinct. Because of the rivalries and conflicts among Mayans, Ms. Menchú had to win over Mayan voters just like any other outsider.

Your political 'litmus test' leaves something to be desired.

She lied because she made up almost everything in her book.

It will have to wait till tomorrow but If you use the DU search engine Judy and I had this discussion previously, with me providing sources.

She said she watched her brother starve. Lie.

The primary focus of the story, a land dispute, was with another Mayan, not a European as she says in the book.

she did not watch her other brother be burned alive, nor did her parents watch it.

The marixsts with rifles showed up in town before the government did.

she did not travel to the coast every year to pick beans. her family was too wealthy.

they were not desperatley poor, her father had over 2,000 hectares

she had an elaborate story about how her father didn't want her to go to school and learn upper class values so she had no schooling and was self taught. In fact she want to two boarding schools.

http://www.salon.com/col/horo/1999/01/11horo.html

unreliable.

Samples (from the article you cite):

"Whether it was the education she received in Catholic boarding schools that made her a spokeswoman for Communist guerrillas, neither Stoll nor Rohter says, but it is all too possible." --David Horowitz

"In an editorial responding to these revelations, the Los Angeles Times typically glosses over the enormity of what Menchú, the Guatemalan terrorists, the French left, the international community of 'human rights' leftists, the Nobel committee fellow-travelers and the tenured radicals who dominate the American academic community have wrought." --David Horowitz

---

Horowitz is a notorious, ranting, raving fascist. It would be worse than trying to track back the lies of...I don't know... Glen Beck or Ann Coulter (or Ronald Reagan, or John Negroponte, or Otto Reich, or that snake-woman, Jeane Kirkpatrick)...to try to disentangle this diabolical stew of hatred, lies and poison. I'm not going to bother. On one point it does enlighten me, though--that the murderous forces of ignorance and greed are terrified of Rigoberta Menchú becoming president of Guatemala.

So thanks for that. She may have gotten only 3% of the vote last time around, but clearly she presents a threat to Horowitz and his masters (or did in 1999) and that is a very big gold star in her favor. She probably doesn't have much of a chance, but she bears watching in direct proportion to how much she is hated by someone like Horowitz. Far rightwing venom is useful that way. It also tells me something about you, naaman fletcher, that you would cite such a source

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Horowitz really is a nazi. He has been the leader of the far rightwing attempt to purge "liberals" from our universities. Here's a useful analysis of his career:

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Horowitz_David

Horowitz on Bush's war on Iraq: (note his celebration of the infamous, fake pull-down of Saddam's statue by Chalibi's thugs)

"Baghdad is liberated. In the days to come let us not forget that if it were not for one man, and one man alone—George Bush—the people of Iraq would not be celebrating in the streets and pulling down Saddam's statues today. ... We have entered the era of a new civil war between the forces of freedom and the powers of Islamo-fascist and communist darkness, and once again the left is clearly determined to take its stand on the other side. The good news is that America is back," Horowitz wrote on FrontPageMag.com in April 2003. "Our military has performed superlatively. Our leadership has stood tall. We ourselves can celebrate over this and look confidently toward what lies ahead" ("Liberation! Wankers Go Home," FrontPageMag.com, April 9, 2003). (my emphasis)

:puke: double :puke: :puke:

Horowtiz is not the source. U agree with you about him, he's not the source.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

Jeronimo Uribe says paramilitary lies about links
Thursday, 04 August 2011 16:18
Natalie Dalton

In response to claims put forth by a Colombian congressman, ex-President Alvaro Uribe's son Jeronimo said Thursday that "the testimony put forth by a , who doesn't know us, is plagued with lies."

In a press statement published on his father's website, Jeronimo rebutted claims by Colombian congressman Ivan Cepeda who had said Wednesday that he had recently submitted evidence to prosecutors that suggest that former president Alvaro Uribe's two sons had ties with former paramilitaries, after speaking with Jose Gelvez Albarracin, alias "El Canoso," in jail.

Cepeda said a business run by Uribe's sons, Tomas and Jeronimo, received supplies from a company run by that a councilor of the city of Santa Marta who was allegedly elected by paramilitary votes.

Jeronimo said that El Canoso spoke of "fake meetings and false intentions, the most absurd and impossible to test," adding that they had never met paramilitary leader "Hernan Giraldo" as claimed by Cepeda.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/18119-jeronimo-uribe-says-paramilitary-lies-about-links.html

Re: Argentina. 8% economic growth last year. 10% this year. Employment way up. Good wages. Business booming. It's amazing what LEFTIST government, LEFTIST leaders and LEFTIST policies can do. Total turnaround from "neo-liberal"/rightwing basketcase to PROSPERING LEFTIST COUNTRY.

Same in Venezuela (recently designated "THE most equal country in Latin America" by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean). The Venezuelans were the first in this LEFTIST democracy revolution. They helped Argentina get out from under deliberately ruinous World Bank/IMF debt.

Same in Brazil, soon afterward. (They started helping countries like Bolivia, in a Venezuela-Brazil strategy to "raise all boats.")

Same in Bolivia. High economic growth, with prosperity spread around.

It's happening everywhere LEFTIST governments get elected (most of South America and parts of Central America), and is built on social justice and regional cooperation, including creation of a "level playing field" in dealing with multinational corporations. U.S. corps no longer dictate policy and no longer get to bully and bludgeon LatAm countries, extracting all the wealth, looting "the commons" and leaving devastation behind them. International corps have to COMPETE, and, among other things, have to satisfy social justice requirements in order to do business. And, contrary to Wall Street's lying, twisted, always-wrong "analysts," COMPETITION actually WORKS. Government trade reps, government corps and private corps are flocking to LatAm's leftist countries to invest, and, when an Exxon Mobil walks out of negotiations in a snit at not getting ALL the profits, a half a dozen other corps step into the breach, glad to have the business. Monopolies and untoward corporate power kill economies. A REAL "marketplace"--a competitive "marketplace," with a strong component of social spending--brings them back to life and prosperity. Argentina is perhaps the most spectacular example, but there are many.

I just saw a very funny post by bemildred (I think it was), of some Wall Street financial wizard's "analysis" of Argentina. He really couldn't deny Argentina's financials, because there they are, by the numbers. But his "advice" to Argentina, now that LEFTIST policies have turned Argentina around, is--get this!: Cut wages. Cut social spending. And he has the nerve (or is it "black humor"?) to quote a Goldman Sachs "analyst," among others. Goldman Sachs & brethren ought to STFU, is the truth. They won't, of course, and, if they can do anything at all to induce "capital flight" in Argentina, they will--because they CAN'T STAND to see wealth SPREAD AROUND, they CAN'T STAND to see anything go UN-LOOTED, and they HATE a REAL "marketplace" in which everybody prospers and society as a whole benefits.

Too bad we can't elect a LEFTIST government here, with all the blockades against it (f.i., corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the U.S.). But at least we have quite a few great examples to the south of us of what needs to be done. (First off, the LatAms did their civic homework on the fundamentals of honest, transparent elections.)

for the second round of chemo treatment. The Ven. National Assembly went through the required motion this morning to allow him to leave the country.

Couple of days ago Chavez said he would cut down on his public appearances, probably because he is rapidly losing all his hair.



But it will probably grow back; recall Lugo went bald after his chemo sessions in Sao Paulo last year, but he now had a healthy head of hair.

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