Yawn, Support the Brown Folks

Greg Palast, poser extraordinaire, rambles incoherently at DV about the Chavez 300 and the "hemisphere on the verge of flames," Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador. The recent to-do with the border incursion of Ecuador by Columbia to kill FARC's second-in-command Raul Reyes, while the actors on the verge of flaming have kissed and made nice already.

With all Greg's experience and contacts he doesn't see the recent incident was nothing more than a pissing contest by proxy, or he sees it but as he earns his living on hype for a left leaning readership, he has to use such hyperbole as the "hemisphere on the verge of flames" to pump up his low forehead readership.

And by the way, the pissing is instigated by white folks at home and abroad who are directing the actors involved on the stage in Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia, etc. You think Uribe is the only puppet?

Not sure what Greg thinks of the "rebels" FARC - his editorial reads as little more than a paw swipe at Bush, Clinton, and Obama, once you read through his usual impressed-with-himself soppery and the evil "right-wing" at home and their foreign flunkies. Whoop tee doo.

Yessirree Bubba, to read the left you would think the left-wing doesn't meddle at all in foreign intrigue.

Palast is guilty of not linking to information he interprets for the reader, e.g. regarding the $300 million Chavez/FARC payola on the dead rebel's laptop: "What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop ... I read them. While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez..."

(I did find the documents in español on Palast's home page... guess he thinks everyone has gregpalast.com in their favorite links.)

Thirty years ago I would have defended FARC as a group of freedom fighters - but over the last 3 decades Farc has morphed into just what the mainstream press calls them - terrorists. Farc was a people's movement in the '60s and '70s but failed to obtain support of the impoverished masses, and today's generation of Farc-sters are thugs, thieves, social outcasts. They run drugs, guns, kidnap, murder. The elders are no longer freedom fighting heroes - but aging criminals, raising their young to maintain a lifestyle of jungle hegemony - by any means necessary. And very aware that the "left" in the USA is sympathetic to their "cause".

Did Chavez pay Farc $300 million? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. It's believable that it is US rightwing propaganda to erode Chavez image - but also believable that Hugo would use some of his oil profits to pay ransom for hundreds of hostages which would have the worldwide "left" press singing Spanish ballads to Chavez for obtaining their release. In the emails referenced above the rebel does mention ignoring Columbia's Uribe proposal and going with Chavez offer as it would "give the greatest worldwide resonance..." although Palast doesn't mention it in the DV piece.

Palast interviewed Ecuadorian president Raphael Correa, and the interview is worth a read. Correa's father did time in a US prison for drug running, a mule, in the 1960s. Palast applies lipstick on this little piggy with the excuse of hard times, poverty, etc.

I'm curious - would the progressive "left" be as forgiving if say Obama's daddy had been an inner city drug running ex-con? Also curious as to how an impoverished non-white drug mule managed to send his son to Belgium to obtain a Masters in economics, and then to University of Illinois for his Phd.

Correa is fluent in English, Spanish, French and much more handsome than, dare I remind you, the metizo Chavez? These days the "left" seems tickled pink when mixed race folks are in charge; do they want you to believe such folks are not connected to any white oligarchy? Why doesn't the "left" refer to Obama as a mulatto more often?

Ahh, Correa has Belgium and France connections. Need I remind you who funded, armed, trained, and supported the Hutus in Rwanda?

When Correa married his white Belgium wife Anne was he sayin' "Where da white women at?"