U.S. officially bans arms sales to Venezuela

Washington accuses the Chavez government of not cooperating with its anti-terrorism efforts.

Which means…what? Notice how vague the allegations against Venezuela are.

“This focuses on concerns [over] the relationship they have built up with states like Iran and Cuba, state sponsors of terror … which has made it very difficult for the United States to work on anti-terrorism efforts with them.”

There’s nothing specific here. Just the usual neocon slime by innuendo with little or no actual fact. No doubt they will whine about how horrid Venezuela is if (when?) Venezuela retaliates by cutting off oil supplies to the US.

In Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, Rodriguez said the United States “is the most terrorist nation,” citing its refusal to deport Luis Posada Carriles to face charges that while he was in Venezuela he plotted the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Carriles is in U.S. custody on immigration charges.”It is the height of cynicism,” Rodriguez said of U.S. accusations against his country.

Posada has boasted of bombing the airliner, so, unlike the Bush slime, these charges are quite well-documented.

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Goodness, the Minutemen have undergone quite a media makeover, haven’t they? Gone is the overt racism and extreme right wing public stance. Now their statements are carefully polished and manicured. Why on first glance you might think they actually cared about the health and welfare of those crossing over into the US.

Well of course they don’t. Dig a little and it’s clear they are just another in a long and sick line of U.S. nativist organizations that loathe and fear anyone different from them.

Their fresh-scrubbed new persona is just that, a persona. The neocons know they could get hosed in the November elections. Thus, they need to get the hard Right foaming at the mouth about something so they’ll vote in November. Immigrant Rights (and gays) will be their targets. The Minuteman could prove useful here, but not as who they really are - hence this cleansing spritzer to make them appear reasonable and normal.

The Democrats have deluded themselves into thinking the November elections will be a big victory for them so all they need to do is nothing and let the Republicans skewer themselves. Given such a brain-dead ’strategy’, Democrats may skewer themselves instead.

People said the KKK in their heyday was just a bunch of trash from the countryside. Not really. They had friends and supporters in powerful places. Ditto for the Minutemen. That’s why they must be opposed whenever and wherever they appear.

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Maninstream media says:

Gang offensive brings Sao Paulo to a standstill

Sao Paulo is the largest city in Brazil. It hardly seems like a “gang” in any normal sense of the word would be capable of disrupting a city of millions. This is something much bigger.

The scale, intensity, duration, and the coordination demonstrated by these attacks shows that this gang has made the transition from evading the police to treating the police (the nation-state) as a competitive threat. It also has set what could be construed as a plausible promise that could be used to recruit allies: that Sao Paulo’s government can be attacked successfully.

Poverty there is so pronounced, the article goes on to say, that gangs could well recruit new members from the Sao Paulo favela, where 10 million live without basic services. Yes, 10 million.

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USA TODAY/Gallup poll

Disapprove 51 / approve 43

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