Franklin Brito….another victim of Oliver Stone’s ego

Today this blog would like to tell you about Franklin Brito, someone whose name most of you will almost certainly have never heard.

For those who are unfamiliar with Brito’s story, he had a productive livestock farm in Venezuela until a certain Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías decided to “expropriate” it, declaring property rights to be at an end at that henceforth, “all Venezuelan land (would) belong to the people.”

Brito tried to recover his property through the legal system, a herculean task in Latin America generally and all but impossible in Venezuela, where matters of right have been settled at the whim of the regime for years. He was unable to get an explanation, let alone a hearing.  So, in desperation, Brito resorted to a  hunger strike, which until yesterday had lasted nine months. I say until yesterday because that’s when his body and spirit gave up the unequal struggle for justice.

Franklin Brito

The poor fellow really should have known better than to expect a dictator to pay the slightest attention to a hunger-striker. No doubt we’ll be hearing more weasel words about “bandits” today from Mr Chávez’s friend, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who, as the crocodile tears cascade down his cheeks like the Iguaçu Falls, will doubtless also be fielding further awkward questions about his Workers Party’s support of the FARC in Colombia.

This blog would be particularly intrigued to know the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, John Pilger Sean Penn and Oliver Stone, four men who would no sooner live in Chávez’s Venezuela than they would on Jupiter (but are quite happy, it seems, for others to do so) on this most Latin American of outrages.

Brazil has a presidential election in October. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone with more than two functioning synapses that Lula’s anointed successor is Dilma Roussef….

Before....after....

You got that, right? Sean Penn thinks people who refer to Chávez as a dictator should be jailed.

*UPDATE*

No prizes for guessing whose side the MercoPress Agency is on in the Brazilian election….

José Serra

Quote of the week

From the redoubtable John Ward, describing Ben Bernanke’s speech suicide note….

If there is one thing that concerns me more than a bearded rabbit in the headlights, it’s adult male and female professionals taking this crap seriously. Bernanke’s speech today represented a lengthy overture of sightless denial followed by a cacophony of contradictory ideas – literally, a blind man stabbing at darkness he cannot see.

It’s a bank holiday in the UK. We should all relax: it will stand us in good stead in the coming months.

Wheat, weed and Obamacare

The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to….

“regulate commerce . . . .among the several States,”

….and for more than 100 years federal lawmakers invoked it for a very narrow purpose; to prevent states from imposing trade barriers on each other. But today members of Congress act as if it gives them the authority to do just about anything, including forcing Americans to eat their greens.

During her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Elena Kagan seemed to accept that the Commerce Clause could, in theory, give Congress the power to dictate what Americans eat. And what about ObamaCare’s “individual mandate,” which forces Americans to purchase health insurance? ObamaCare opponents are lining up to challenge its constitutionality, but supporters say it’s justified, you guessed it, under the Commerce Clause.

How did a clause intended as a restriction on states wind up giving Congress a green light to regulate non-commercial, local, and purely private behaviour? How will ObamaCare stand up against the legal challenges brought by the states? Legal titans John Eastman (Chapman University Law Professor) and Erwin Chemerinsky (Founding Dean, University of California, Irvine School of Law) slug it out to to determine whether or not Congress has been abusing the commerce clause.

If the words no longer mean anything, then we don’t have a constitution that binds and limits the power of government, and the Government can do whatever they want….

You know those soap-dodgers who go smashing bank windows?

Like these at the Climate Camp in Edinburgh last weekend….

Real hearts and minds stuff

Well, this blog can think of a lot of names for them but anarchists they are not….

As Old Holborn helpfully pointed out to a Climate Camper yesterday….

Hat tip, Captain Ranty.

Judge Napolitano’s History of Liberty, Part 5

….of five….

The Tea Party movement, though its rhetoric is often conservative sounding, is at heart neither left wing nor right wing. It is a fundamentally libertarian cry of exhasperation at a government increasingly seen to be spending away our futures and trampling our liberties and disregarding the rule of law.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi death watch….the miracle continues

Happy anniversary, Mr al-Megrahi….

This newspaper can also disclose that American senators investigating Megrahi’s release will this week launch an unprecedented request for British “whistle-blowers” to disclose details about the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber. The appeal is a remarkable sign of US-British rifts as it indicates that US investigators do not believe they are obtaining the full story from politicians in London and Edinburgh.

Q: What do you call a state that connives with a rogue state for commercial gain?

A: A rogue state.