Abide with me

Abiding In Bolivia's Duderino isn't posting so very often these days, but he's still posting and that's the best news. Today he offers up a nice pic, a link to a decent report on Bolivia and also some critique of the normal northern viewpoints on Bolivia you get to hear from all them there experts, which goes like this:

Ignorant gringo: OMG! Evo Morales is an Indian who wants to save Mother Earth, WE ARE SAVED!

Ignorant gringo two weeks later: You know what I just read. That in Bolivia, they have huge mines that pollute the water, rivers, and kill fish. Evo is such a hypocrytical asshole. He must just be a dirty demogagic commie. The New York Times was right!

Ignorant gringo later that day: Gosh, politics is so stupid. I am just going to blog about my feelings and work on my compost pit.

Yes, yes and thrice yes. We love Duderino so click thru, read it all and have a nice day while you're at it.

ps: i liked 'demogagic', dude :-)

News roundup (eclectic brainscatterings grouped together, causing worry about the aggregator's mental health)

An incredibly racist, nauseating piece shows up in Time Magazine today. The rag, its editors and anyone paying money to read this note should be ashamed of any connection to Joel Stein.

The openly Gay Community in Bolivia is braver than most, as the country is still backwards when it comes to sexual emancipation (and not helped by its President's wisecracks about chicken hormones, even if he apologized afterwards and explained it was meant in jest). Bolivia Weekly reports on the La Paz/El Alto Gay Pride parade last weekend in the city and the issues facing its members. Clearly some progress is being made (the parade was well supported and successful) but there's a way to go before Bolivia joins the more enlightened regional countries on LGBT rights.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Fund Manager. It turns out that the best performing fund manager over the last 30 years has held more cash than anything else! What the hell do you pay these people for, foolish investorperson?

So apparently, Uribe has been tapping Correa's phone lines. The headline-grabbing part of this scandalette smacks of BS to me, but the chances that DAS has been operating in Quito are more than high. Note the timing, folks, what with Studmuffin wanting to be invited to watch Santos get the sash.

Chile's futbol team will receive a hero's welcome when arriving back home, because they played to the best of their ability and showed great game. England's team decided to schedule their return at 06:20am this morning London time to avoid such hero's welcomes.


UPDATE: We very like post commenter Tim Dees very much:

Tim Dees said... I live in Edison. It's a nice little suburb, and the Indians make it a really cool, unique place.

Fuck you, Joel.

UPDATE 2: Seems Joel has pissed a lot of people off with his bigotry. The WSJ picks up the story, notes the protests and even reports that Time International, the sister publication to Time Magazine, has refused to publish Stein's story in its edition.

News roundup (we rootle the dusty corners of old wardrobes where others fear to rootle)

The Mex Files gives us background on Mexico's big headline right now, the apparent kidnapping of PAN party bigwig Diego Fernández de Cevallos. You get to find out the shadiness behind the consternation chez RG, which is always good.

Marcelo Ballve eats tongue. It's a good call and adds flavour (geddit?) to his current assignment. Good post.

At Structurally Maladjusted, Gringo Juan takes a good look at the latest UN Human Opportunities Index report. If you don't know what that is, in the words of the scribe ".....it's a development-minded nerd's wet dream. The HOI is essentially a measure of access to basic services, including education, housing, water and electricity, taking into account how equitably or fairly these are distributed...". Wonk that I am, I loved this post; full of words and numbers and insight. Go read.

El Duderino resurfaces! which is good news for all those wanting real news from Bolivia. Abiding gives us an inside track on the music scene there, which is good.

Mo' Jessica

The other day IKN ran a quick note on Jessica Jordan, ex-Miss Bolivia and current candidate for governor of Beni for Evo's MAS party. As you've come to expect, IKN's coverage was wafer thin and snarky but I'm happy to say that somebody who really knows the scene in Bolivia has written much more about Jordan and has given us a lot more background.

For sure she's smokin' hot, but the lady is much more than just a pretty face so find out over at the wonderful Abiding In Bolivia site right now. Nice job, duderino.

UPDATE: It looks like she can't run, after all. This report explains that not only is Jordan too young to run (she needs to be 25), she doesn't reside in Beni. The analyst seems to think that Evo has set all this up as a publicity campaign.

The Bolivia Elections, as seen by the people who want to you be free-thinking and democratic in that special certain way

The title of this post is longer than the contents, as all I'd like to do is send you over to a magnifico article at Abiding, where the dude has had the intestinal fortitude to have waded through all the guff and nonsense written about tomorrow's vote by the media.

Duderino totally pwns Bolivian media coverage. Go over to see why.

Dedicated to....

......the large chunk of US citizens that are stupid enough to believe the very expensive oil company propaganda campaigns, only worry about what Al Gore makes on the side and are actually moronic enough to doubt climate change. AFP sez:

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found 57 percent of Americans see "solid evidence of warming," compared to 71 percent in April 2008, and 77 percent in August 2007.

Meanwhile, here's a photo or two from what the sane amongst us call "reality".

This is the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia. Its waters are vital (no other word suffices) for the continued wellbeing of the people living around it. But maybe that should now read "were vital". Abiding in Bolivia, reference source on the country par excellence, has the details, the links, the works.

Abiding In Bolivia Is Back

Good news for all you out there starved of decent coverage about the land of Doctor Morales; the wonderfully wonderful blog 'Abiding in Bolivia' is back from mysterious, self-imposed hiatus and posting again. Talking of which you just gotta check out this article today, cos El Duderino is in full stride already and taking to task the mediocrity of Bolivian MSM coverage in top style.

Great to have you back, dude. Here's the link again so you have no excuse.

Still don't believe that US reporters lie to you about LatAm?

Well read this.

Some idiot who thinks he's special because he got hired by The Washington Post named Joshua Partlow has been conclusively shown as a know-nothing liar and peddler of proven falsehoods that were ordered retracted by court order over a year ago. And surprise surprise, Partlow was spreading BS muck about...wait for it.......roll on the drums....yes....you've guessed it already...Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador! Wow, shocker, huh?

All this thanks to the diligent work of excellent (and I'm proud to say long-time linked here) blogs Abiding In Bolivia and The Mex Files (and their own mini-eminence gris Utpal.) Click on the blognames to find the full exposés to Partlow's lies. Good work, guys.

So Joshua, you receive an award that so many professional journalists who read IKN have deserved this week. All yours, dumbass:

News roundup

Ingrid Betancourt kindly removes ear wax
from President Bachelet's right lug

The bits you don't normally get to see (or see once it's too late), courtesy of your loving and caring IKN:

Dateline Paraguay (beepbeepbipbipbeepbipbip)
Brazil's Bandes financing agency is under fire from another quarter. After President Studmuffin said "ain't gonna pay your illegal debt" and kicked up a world-sized fuss, Paraguay's megatop wonderful President Lugo came out with his country's own version today.

Lugo said that Paraguay would exhaustively study the legality of the debt Paraguay has with Bandes (also known as BNDES) and he was going to commission a group "of high moral standing" (man this guy is great) to study the debt taken out with Brazil, nearly all of it to build the joint Itaipú dam project.

Dateline Argentina (beepbeepbipbipbeepbipbip)
Argentina's lower house today easily passed their part of the law proposal to nationalize Aerolineas Argentinas (and its internal flight service, Austral). The upper house Senate must also pass the law before it becomes a reality.

The Klishtina gov't is likely to pay current owner, the Spanish Marsans (which started life as a travel agency) $1 for the company by the end of December, all this after Marsans and the government couldn't agree on a price to pay. Aerolineas has a heavy debt burden, but the two sides differ widely on exactly how far in the mire it really is. It all sounds like a very Argentine bizdeal to me.

Dateline Argentina (beepbeepbipbipbeepbipbip)
More news from Klishtinalandia, as she today sacked her environment secretary Romina Picoletti. The official reason is the lack of progress made in cleaning up Buenos Aires' Riachuelo open sewer (which was a river a couple of hundred years ago). The snarky reason is the lack of progress in enviro affairs since she got the job, except the progress in feathering her own nest and those of friends and families (4x4s suddenly parked in relatives' driveways, we're led to believe). But the real reason is for the Glacier Protection Bill that was passed by Argentina's parliament but vetoed by Klishtina herself. Picoletti was the driving force behind the bill and Barrick (ABX) and its big bad Pascua Lama gold mine project was the driving force behind the Kirchner decision. The "experienced in LatAm affairs" Barrick wins. Hey, what's new?

Dateline Chile (beepbeepbipbipbeepbipbip)
Ingrid Betancourt has one helluva good PR agent. She hits Studmuffin on Monday, Klishtina on Tuesday and today it was Santiago and Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet chose the moment to announce she was nominating the ex-FARC hostage for the Nobel Peace Prize. At least Bachelet can look Ingrid in the eye and tell her she understands, as Chile's top cheese was also imprisoned for her politics in the Pinochet era. Tomorrow Betancourt meets and greets someone who skipped off to France to avoid imprisonment. Yep, she's in Peru.

Dateline Bolivia (beepbeepbipbipbeepbipbip)
"On Sept. 11 2008, in the village of Porvenir and other places in the Pando province, a massacre occurred." That's how the Unasur commissioner started his presentation to Evo Morales today. Reuter's via the excellent reporter Eduardo García brings you the details. If you prefer your news straight from the source, here's the link to the final Unasur report, now available as a 66 page PDF. Spanish language only.

Interblog humour

YAY! Borev is back from his hols, and puts up a cheeky photo of his fanbase to celebrate the return.

However your observant Otto notes that El Duderino over at Abiding In Bolivia has had an attack of jealousy over the loyal followers of da borev, leaving the comment....

"If only my blog had such a fan base..."

....under the borev post. Therefore IKN to the rescue with this one, duderino.


Fighting Cholitas whup Venezuelan tushes every time.

Is this the worst ever note on LatAm from The Economist?

The Economist has always been lacklustre in its regional coverage, but this note linked right here, full of half-truths and revisionist history (example " Mr Goldberg’s offence was merely to have met opposition governors.".........LOL!!!) on the state of play between Bolivia and the USA really takes the biscuit. Don't they know that Goldberg is in the caca in his own State Dep't due to the way he cocked it up in Bolivia? Even this humble blogger knows more than The Economist about the latest developments, it seems. The Economist may cover other parts of the world well, but in LatAm it has royally sucked for years and there's nothing to suggest the pattern is about to change, either.

The thing that annoys is that there are plenty of informed people all over the globe that trust The Economist implicitly; it never crosses their minds that their fave magazine would try to unduly spin and influence their opinion. Nah...these clowns actually think the tail wags the dog; they think they can read The Economist then form their own informed opinion a posteriori.

Delusion.

If you want to know what has really been happening in Bolivia and the dirty tricks being used by the US and its propaganda machine, just click the name "Philip Goldberg" on the tagline under here. Or better still, click here and go to Abiding In Bolivia because El Duderino knocks spots off the MSM when it comes to Bolivia coverage.

PS: corvad, otto.rock1 (AT) gmail (dot) com

Confirmed: Simon Romero reads Abiding in Bolivia

You say potato, I say potahto

You say Falange, I say Falange too
You say tomato, I say tomahto
You see a nazi salute, I see a nazi salute

Here's the article that catches the region's worst journalist red-handed. Now compare the content to Abiding in Bolivia's last few days' worth of content....YOU BE THE JUDGE!

And a big round of applause to the blog "Down South" that caught the fascists on video and posted the footage up for all to see. This was important work, because not even the apologists can ignore it any more.

Ever needed proof that humble bloggers can make a difference to public opinion? See above.

Bolivia: Applause for Reuters

Credit where credit is due. Amongst the total dross reporting of mainstream media outlets, the coverage offered by Reuters over the events in Bolivia has been the shining exception. In this latest report, Reuters man-on-the-spot Eduardo Garcia (a man injured in a car accident in Bolivia last year that killed one of his colleagues) neatly captures what's really been happening and slaps down the ridiculously poor analysis offered by CNN, AP, Bloomberg and all the others in recent days.

Reuters LatAm deserves applause for the great job it's done in Bolivia. A far cry from the work of other newswires recently mentioned.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Bolivia's Morales emerges stronger from crisis

By Eduardo Garcia - analysis

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia's first indigenous president, leftist Evo Morales, has deftly handled a violent political crisis and appears strengthened as he heads into talks with opposition governors who resist his socialist reforms.

At least 17 people were killed last week as anti-Morales protesters stormed government buildings, sabotaged natural gas pipelines and battled with the president's supporters in four opposition-controlled regions.

He ordered martial law in the remote Amazon province of Pando and arrested the governor there, accusing him of ordering a massacre of peasants last Thursday.

But soldiers showed restraint, taking a hands-off approach at times to avert confrontation. And South American presidents strongly backed Morales at an emergency summit this week, condemning any coup attempts or separatist rebellions CONTINUES HERE

Bolivia round-up

An arrested Leopoldo Fernández gets on a plane for La Paz today
(photo shamelessly stolen from blogsite "down south" doing on-the-spot marvels from Santa Cruz)

Pando chief Leopoldo "nothing to do with me, honest" Fernández is arrested and shipped out to La Paz. Nice on the spot blogging from Down South, who's in Santa Cruz right now and took photos of the local racists actually rallying to support the mass murderer when news of his arrest got out. Impressive stuff. Go see his blog, that's an order.

Abiding in Bolivia knocks one straight out the park with this post that goes into the details of how it all happened with plenty of source material on hand, too. Essential reading for those who want to understand how all this came to pass.

On a personal note, I've been pleasantly surprised about the number of people accessing last night's post that translated The Moneda Declaration. It seems there are still people out there who care for things like rule of law, decency and true democracy; good for you.

Even the LatAm right wing is disgusted by the Santa Cruz fascists. This is what President Alvaro Uribe had to say after last night's historic declaration. I have to say that Uribe has gone up in my estimation in the 72 hours.

Uribe sez:"(I support the gov't of Evo Morales) in the same way that Colombia always asks to condemn the terrorist violence that affects our country. It is very important that all South American countries come together to defend constitutional order and democracy in Bolivia that is made flesh in its President Evo Morales, who has just been ratified by a wide margin in an unquestionable democratic process."

Otto sez; w00t for Alvaro over that one

Bolivia: Evo, Unasur, Pando, Abiding

To read what's going on in Bolivia, go to "abiding in bolivia" immediately and bypass my vague wanderings. I mean it. Here's the link to his site again; he's doing a stellar job in bringing you the raw news unfiltered through what other people want you to understand. Sombrero, Duderino.

Suffice to say that the wishful thinking I've been forcing myself to read about Evo's government under pressure, falling apart and suchlike from far right-wing pundits couldn't be further from the truth. The government of Evo Morales is handling the insurgents very well; neither pandering nor heavy-handed. Evo has strengthened in the last 72 hours as a President of substance, and rightly so. Meanwhile, locals in Santa Cruz are beginning to realize that Ruben Costas' way is hurting them more than the MAS party, and with the hotels now receiving cancellations from people who usually attend the city's big fiesta week at the end of September it's the local business owners who will be rebelling against their own "leader" next. In other news, an arrest order for Pando's prefect has been issued in connection with the now 16 confirmed deaths in the Pando massacre, and his reaction was typical of the bullyboy coward. He's fled to Brazil and is undoubtedly hiding out in the western jungle regions with his narco playmates.

Meanwhile, the most important development (for me at least) is that Michelle Bachelet, the in-turn President of the 12 country regional body UNASUR, has called an emergency council meeting over the Bolivia situation that takes place tomorrow. The pledges of attendance have been excellent, especially considering this summit has been called for at the drop of a hat. This is very, very significant. For maybe the first time ever, Latin America is taking full control of its own problems and is sending a clear message to the rest of the world. We can sort this out by ourselves, and we don't need you. Especially this "you".

Let's see what kind of resolution local leaders (with the emphasis on 'local') come out with tomorrow.

As a little post script, I'd add that Reuters has been covering developments very well, too. With that said, now go to Abiding in Bolivia and stop wasting time here.

Update: Now thirty confirmed deaths from the Pando massacre.

More Bolivia: Santa Cruz's idea of democracy

Smile! Branco, the acceptable face of slavery

Duderino is back! Abiding in Bolivia's guiding light returned from a short break tonight, and among three or four other posts (he must have been bottling them all up), he's found an absolute, total, essential must read report on the way Santa Cruz landowners treat their slave force (they call them workforce, but you'll see I'm right when you read the article). This is the link, so go there right now and get an education.

Therefore, when multimillionaire, mega-landowner, racist shit and arch troublemaker Branco Marinkovic says, as he did today, "Those who are causing the violence are from the government, who have deployed violent people against our right to express ourselves and fight for our rights and for democracy", the way he treats the people mentioned in the F24 report is this idea of 'democracy' he mentions to a lapdog press corps. To give you a taster;

"All her life, Ines has worked without being paid. "I don't know how much I should have been paid. They gave me old clothes - that was how they paid me", she says. Today, in this remote corner of southern Bolivia, an estimated 2,000 families continue to live in semi-feudal servitude and debt bondage. Year after year, many workers find themselves trapped into paying back debts to their employers, which cancel out any meagre wages they earn."

Marinkovic should consider himself lucky he lives in Bolivia; anywhere else and he'd be in jail by now.