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

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.

Blair’s memoir….a tough choice resolved

This blog notes with mixed feelings that Tony Blair’s  eagerly awaited (it says here) memoir, A Journeyman: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bush Family, is rocketing up the Amazon best seller list.

This happy event is due in no small part to St Teflon’s pledge to donate all royalties from the book, and his £4.6 million advance, to the Royal British Legion for construction of a sports centre for veterans, an act which, were it not for the persistent suspicion that the former Prime Minister is attempting to salve his conscience, and take what he doubtless considers his rightful place in the pantheon of great British Prime Ministers, would be entirely laudable.

The temptation to forget the lies, the shackling of Parliament, the bonfire of the liberties and the narcissism, along with a genuine curiosity as to how Blair will try to airbrush his political legacy is almost overwhelming, but then….

You almost had us there, Tony.

Get Labour Out, has come up with a rather elegant solution to this conundrum. Instead of buying the book, donate your £12.50 directly to the Legion.

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.

Ghandi and Martin Luther King as establishment patsies

How about this for a spectacularly stupid piece of historical revisionism?

You can’t argue with psychopaths.

Damn straight, Derrick.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi death watch….the continuing story

320 days since the “terminally ill” Lockerbie bomber was released so that he could die at home in Libya.

Must be something they put in their tea.

He lives! God is great!

The stench of a cynical quid pro quo between the Government and Kadhafi grows more fetid by the day.