Statement by the family of Franklin Brito

Following the tragic and wasteful death on Monday of Venezuelan hunger-striker, Franklin Brito, his family issued a statement which this blog would like to see publicly branded on the foreheads of Messrs Chomsky, Pilger, Stone and Penn.

It follows in full….

It is with immense sorrow that we inform the Venezuelan people and the world of the following:

Today, August 30, 2010, the exhausted body of our husband and father, Franklin Brito, stopped breathing. After a struggle of more than six years, more than eight hunger strikes, the mutilation of a finger and unlawful deprivation of liberty, the body of Franklin Brito today ceased to perform its vital functions.

All this does not mean, however, that Franklin Brito has died. Franklin lives on in the struggle of the Venezuelan people for property rights, access to justice, for life in liberty and respect by government for collective and individual human rights. Franklin Brito, no longer flesh, becomes a symbol, a banner for all who are trampled by abuse of power, for those offended by the arrogance of their rulers, for those who believe that truth and justice are always above circumstance and convenience.

The body of Franklin Brito died in a military institution where he was kept detained against his will. The government of President Hugo Chávez ignored Franklin’s petitions, the cries of his family and the pleas by international agencies to allow access to trustworthy medical care of his own choosing. Therefore, the Brito family at this time abstains from issuing opinions about the direct cause of death because of the unusual and inhumane circumstances surrounding it.

However, what we can say with certainty is that Franklin Brito’s struggle continues. We, his family, will fight for his children’s heritage. His conscious sacrifice will not have been in vain while the children of Venezuela are also willing to defend the moral and physical heritage of the nation.

At a later date, when the pain permits, we will issue a new statement. For now, know, Venezuela, that violence could not defeat Franklin Brito, could not frighten him, could not threaten, bend or corrupt him. For this and much more in these times of death and pain, Franklin Brito is a symbol of decency in life.

We are certain that Franklin’s soul, through the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, will follow us in light, because his struggle, which should be the fight of everyone, CONTINUES!

Elena Rodriguez de Brito
Ángela Rodríguez Brito
Brito Rodríguez Francia
Franklin Brito Rodríguez
Franklin Jose Brito Rodríguez

Hospital Militar, Caracas

Monday, August 30, 2010. 10:20 PM.

Absolutely nothing to add.

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

So how was Climate Camp for you?

Don’t know about you lot but this blog had a whole pile of fun….

….but  it was that veteran hogger of the limelight and burster of pompisity’s bubble, Old Holborn, who ran away with the laurels….

….and managed to get almost an entire piece in The Groan to himself.

Honourable mention for services to sanity to @wearethebritish, who started the whole thing with this….

When’s the next one? Tell me there’s another one soon!

Quote of the week

Hate crimes complaints, I learned, are like hydras: attempt to chop up one and you find yourself facing two. Douglas Murray

James Delingpole has also incurred the righteous ire of the Diversity Police this week.

Oh, I say!

This blog really likes this little gem from the English Democrats.

English Democrats have submitted the following questions to be answered by the BBC by the end of September 2010 under Section 65 of the Race Relations Act.

To a BBC Board Member:-

A. Do you accept that “English” is a protected group (“racial group”) within the meaning of the Race Relations Act 1976 as amended;(“RRA”) if not please state reasons why not and, if yes, please specify the type of racial group within the meaning of section 3 of the RRA you accept English as being?

etc. etc. etc….

You can’t say that!

Mind the gap

A fine and rigorously argued post by John Ward over at The Slog challenges the latest incarnation of left wing Utopian orthdoxy, The Spirit Level.

Going back over a hundred years before the CIA was ever imagined, Jeremy Bentham proposed – without the benefit of any data – exactly that truthful empiricism of balance: ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, he felt, should be the aim of every society. Not only was Bentham a brilliant, instinctive observer of social anthropology before it was an ology, he was also a man blessed with a complete absence of bollocks in his thinking.

Sadly, the same can’t be said for Nick Cohen. For his assumption in the Guardian/Observer piece is that, by definition, the Tories don’t want ‘more’ equality.

I wonder: is he mad? Cameron has had to work day and night for four years to explain away his background. The current Labour Party’s MPs are more middle class and Oxbridge than the Coalition’s.

Actually, Cohen’s a bright bloke and he isn’t mad: it’s just his job (and his preference) to keep on insisting that all Tories are evil and greedy…..unlike Mandelson, Prescott, Byers, Blair, and Hoon.

The Guardian’s Salvation Army will never accept that the differences between Labour and Tory policy on equality are ones of strategy and definition, not objective.

Quite, although the only question this blog would ask, and which John hasn’t addressed (at least in this post) is which is more desirable and more practical, a society where all social strata of are better off but the gap remains the same, or failed attempt after failed attempt to pursue a theoretical egalitarian Utopia, which always, but always, has the net result of leaving everyone worse off, and invariably only succeeds in replacing one imbalance with another?

For a more detailed (and thoroughly enjoyable) critique of The Spirit Level, try this.