What we call news

A colleague sent me this hilarious and awkwardly accurate take on journalism in the West...

What We Call the News | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Censorship: A royal prerogative

In 1977 Dutch journalists got their priorities slightly mixed up. According to the journalist Friso Endt NRC Handelsblad refused to run a story about Prins Bernhard's involvement in Northrop affair (taking bribes to promote business deals) after the PM at the time, Joop den Uyl asked them not too. Case closed.

...I wonder if much has changed?

Talking to Wallace...

As usual on Tuesday - Wednesday morning 6.45 am for you Kiwis - I talked to Wallace Chapman over on Kiwi FM. We discussed the transition in Cuba... here's the link.

Making Iraq worse

Normally I'd never publish anything about the war in Iraq on this blog, unless maybe to mention the poor El Salvadorians, caught up in a war they have nothing to do with.

However, I read a column in the Washington Post today about a book written by former CIA agent Marc Sageman. I made me a little mad, so I thought I'd share it anyway.

Sageman, based in Pakistan, collected scientific data on more than 500 islamic militants to find out who they were.

Turns out that the generation of Bin Laden and the Taliban are all but extinct, save a few hundred or so left in Afghanistan. Instead, the militants in Iraq are about as fundamentalist as I am. They're "thrill seekers," averaging around 20 years old. Kids who watch videos on You Tube of the brutalities committed by US soldiers, and think, "I should do something." (Not entirely unlike the internationalist brigades of the Spanish Civil War.)

The conclusion Sageman draws, is what any reasonable thinking person figured out years ago...

The United States is making the terrorism problem worse by its actions in Iraq. "Since 2003, the war in Iraq has without question fueled the process of radicalization worldwide, including the U.S. The data are crystal clear," Sageman writes. We have taken a fire that would otherwise burn itself out and poured gasoline on it.

Double Trouble

It's not everyday you get a story published in the Dutch and the British press on the same day...

De Pers ran an article of mine on the story of Maria Eugenia Sampallo, who was stolen from her mother as a baby during the dictatorship, today. I wrote about her in an earlier post. Meanwhile The Independent asked me for a broader piece on the baby-theft trials, which also appeared today.

You might like to know that once the work was done, I celebrated with an afternoon siesta.

Cuba Column

After missing a few installments due to my being stuck on a bus somewhere in the Andes, I'm back to writing my weekly column on Latin America for the Buenos Aires Herald. As always I'll be posting them on the day they appear over on Latam Watch. Here's a jpeg of today's, this time on Cuba. You might find the forecast a bit far-fetched and I'm sure the learned Cuba watchers will shoot holes in it, but frankly I think nobody has a clue about what will happen next, or what's going on in the mind of Raúl Castro c.s.

Check out the new Herald layout... nice!

Chasing windmills...ehhh, molinos

After taking on those who hoard milk, and those who claim that Simon Bolívar died of natural causes, Hugo Chávez is now facing down The English Language. English words are not be used any longer by public servants. No more "marketing" and "password," now its "mercadeo" and "contraseña."

However laudable protecting the Spanish language may be, introducing ukases and banning words is hardly the way to go about it. If they really want to promote the language the Venezuelan government should consider better education and quit bullying the press.

Besides, if anyone in Venezuela peppers their speech with English, surely it's old Hugo. Wasn't it he who greeted that other staunch anti-imperialist from Cuba with the words "Fidel, how are you!"

Paco, the child-slayer.

Paco is horrifying drug, made from cocaine paste and containing any number of toxics like kerosine, boric acid or lidocaine, it's sold on the streets of most Latin American cities. Because of the price of a paco cigarette - about 1 to 3 pesos (30 cents to 1 dollar) - it has become the drug of choice for children here in Argentina. It's so addictive it only takes 2 or 3 shots to get hooked. After that it's a quick descent into pathetic dependancy and finally death.

I´ve seen the affects the drug has on street children in Buenos Aires. I spent a day with some of them last year. Some of the kids, 11 or 12 years old, could no longer walk straight. They had lost all eye-hand coordination. Girls of the same age would prostitute themselves to truck drivers to get 5 pesos to buy some paco. Their life stories were tragic. For most of these kids rehabilition is impossible. They won´t reach 20.

The New York times has a feature on the drug today which is well worth a look at.

Baby-theft victim testifies

Several human rights trials are underway in Argentina at the moment. One of the most compelling is the case of a young woman who was taken from her mother as a baby during the last dictatorship.Now she's bringing charges against her adoptive parents. Yesterday I attended the courtroom session in which Maria Eugenia Sampolla testified. Here´s what I wrote for the BA Herald.

The courts on Comodoro Py were the scene of a kind of testimony yesterday not often heard in public. For the first time ever in Argentina a young woman, snatched from her kidnapped mother as a baby during the last dictatorship (1976 -1983), has taken her adoptive parents to court. In the courtroom by the docks she told her life story.

Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragán is 30 years old, she thinks. When asked by the judge to state the date and place of her birth, she answered nervously, “I don‘t know.” Those present in the courtroom exchanged glances of pity.
Her testimony sketched a miserable childhood. Constantly fighting with her adoptive parents, who were far from affectionate, she felt alone and rejected.

While still very young she was told she was adopted. Her parents, they said, had died in a car crash. They were left nameless. “It made me want to find out who my parents were.” Maria Eugenia said. She questioned her adoptive parents about them often, but never got a reply.

They, Maria Cristina Gómez Pinto and Osvaldo Rivas are charged with kidnapping and hiding an infant, denying her her civil status (not telling her who she was) and falsifying her birth certificate. Also charged in the case is former army captain Enrique Berthier, who allegedly handed the baby over to the couple.

Maria’s real mother, Mirta Barragán was a union delegate during the first years of the dictatorship. She was kidnapped and taken to an illegal detention centre in December 1977, six months pregnant at the time. After Maria was born, she was “disappeared.” Along with Maria’s father, Leonardo Sampallo, Mirta joined the ranks of the 18,000 who were kidnapped and never heard from again. Some rights groups put the figure of “disappeared” at 30,000.

Among the most horrifying crimes committed during the military regime, was the theft of babies. Taken from their mothers, they were placed with families of policemen or soldiers. Their parents were “disappeared” and the children were raised as if their mothers had never existed. Investigators estimate that there are some 500 cases like Maria’s, 90 percent of which have now been traced to their biological family thanks to DNA-testing and campaigning by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Throughout her testimony, Maria - dark rimmed glasses and dressed in black with a hint of red - referred to the defendants by their surnames. At first “Gomez and Rivas” stuck by the accident story, but later they came up with different versions about Maria‘s parents. “They said I was the daughter of a maid who had worked in the home of Rivas’ mother. That struck me as odd, because she lived in a two-room apartment.”

The nameless maid then became a nameless stewardess, who had gotten pregnant abroad and had to hide the baby from her husband. “That‘s when I developed the headaches,” Maria told the court. They were so serious she was examined by a pediatrician. “The doctor said the pains were caused by a violent emotion or trauma.”

She finally reached what the prosecution was pushing for - the link to Berthier, suspected of taking the baby from a military hospital, possibly wanting to keep the child for himself and his wife and finally giving her away. He was a friend of Cristina Gomez and a regular visitor to the home. A mutual acquantiance told Maria she was the daughter of Berthier and his wife.“By now I was really confused and refused to believe anything,” Maria testified.

Years were spent arguing with her adoptive mother. She no longer saw Rivas. Then, in 1994, she had the courage to confront Berthier, demanding to know where she came from. He denied any knowledge at first. Later he confessed to hearing about an abandoned baby in a military hospital. He said he had phoned Gomez to ask them if they wanted the baby, but that was all.

Maria fought with Gomez over who she was, but the woman refused to yield. “That was the deal, we could keep you if we said nothing,” she told Maria, according to her testimony.

Finally in 2000, on a friends insistence she went to the CONADI, that researches crimes committed during the dictatorship. A year later, the test results of a blood sample revealed to Maria that she had a grandmother, a brother and an aunt who were still alive.

“They asked me if I wanted to meet them,” Maria related, and added with a half smile. “I said yes, of course. That’s what this whole joke has been about.”

Photo AP

Fidel Castro calls it a day

Finally, the news we've been waiting for for almost two years. He's decided 49 years in power is just enough. That's that. In a letter to the Granma party paper published early this morning he announces he's quitting. As I wrote in this week's Lat-Am watch, the coming days would be crucial. In December Fidel announced he might be stepping down and on Saturday he let slip his next message would be an important one.

Coming Sunday is when the National Assembly are set to elect the all-powerful Council of State. Now that Fidel is no longer a candidate as president they will likely pick Raúl Castro. Or maybe they'll skip a generation and pick Vice-President Carlos Lage. Neither, of course, has even a shred of the kind of charisma Fidel could wield. Neither is much of a democrat, either.

So we sit and wait what will happen next. Will the Cuban people run out into the streets to demand freedom - not likely. Dissidents, like Osvaldo Paya, are calling for immediate change. On his website he insists the National Assembly and all those who hold power should work from today on to change the laws so that Cubans can express themselves freely and then organize free and fair elections. Others will just wait and see what the coming days and weeks bring.

P.S.
It's a good thing of course, the US introduced the trade embargo on Cuba when it did in 1961 , because that really forced his hand. A great success. If it hadn't been for that he would probably still be in power next week.

Back in BA

Back in Buenos Aires! The last leg of my trip was a grueling 52-hour bus ride for La Paz in Bolivia and I now have a map of the Andes ingrained in my behind. Far from being a monotonous trip, we were accompanied by Jeanne Claude van Damme for the last 8 hours of our sit. The Muscles from Bruxelles did his stuff in five back-to-back films, courtesy of our benevolent busdrivers, who probably saw my passport and thought I might be home sick for the Low Countries after so many mountains.

Anyway, it's been an amazing 3 months in which I've seen much of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and a little of Peru and Bolivia. On the other hand, only now do I realise how much I still have left to see.

Wallace at Kiwi FM phoned me today to ask me how I'd been. You can listen to us chatting about Lake Titicaca and the rest here.

I've also put some more of my photos online. On the right, under the heading My Photos, you can find links to the different Picasa albums. I won't be making those albums public, so this is the only place where you can find the links.