Bolivia - Magazine Article Translation - What an Exercise!!!

A few weeks ago, we were in the supermarket, checking out, and just like at home, there were alot of magazines in racks next to the counter. I saw one that looked interesting, and was prominently displayed in front, called "America XXI". On the front cover, it had headlines that read “Zionism – The Nazism of Today”, “Uruguay Extensive Front – Crossroads”, “Bush encourages a blow in Venezuela”, “The Church that Conspires in Argentina”, so needless to say, it caught my attention. A few days later, when I finally had time to flip through it, I found an article that I thought if I could translate, would provide me with a formidable exercise for my slowing improving Spanish knowledge, and also give me a chance to learn about the views of the U.S. from down here. Once I finally begain my translation project, I was about mid-way through when I realized that what I had in my hands was Venezuelan propoganda, obviously. Or, as it is known in the U.S., the news. Anyway, it became obvious that this magazine, and specifically the article I had chosen to translate, were from a VERY Venezuelan paradigm. So, here it is, in its verbose entirety: "The South Facing Zionism and the Bellicose Imperialist", By Luis Bilbao:

America XXI – From Venezuela for the whole continent – September 2006
Headlines include:
“Zionism – The Nazism of Today”
“Uruguay Extensive Front – Crossroads”
“Bush encourages a blow in Venezuela”
“The Church that Conspires in Argentina”
The South Facing Zionism and the Bellicose Imperialist
By Luis Bilbao
War: Israel was defeated in military terms in Lebanon. But the United States, seen by
the entire world as responsible for the aggression, suffered a political rout of enormous
strategic meaning: Washington as the capital of democracy and the future has finally
been buried in international opinion. These reversals do not stop the military machine.
Already, aggressions are in motion against Iran and Syria, as always with the Zionist
State as the arrowhead. Meeting in Havana from Sept.11-16, the Non-Aligned Movement
assumed the responsibility to impede a war that plants incalculable risks to humanity.
“I feel a light shake in the airplane, when the bombs free themselves. A second, and
that’s all. That is what I feel.” It is with this repugnant cynicism that the commander of
the Israeli air force, Dan Halutz, responded when a journalist inquired about his feelings
after an F-16 bombarded a building in Salah Shehadeh in the early morning of July 22.
The operation was supposedly destined to destroy a Hamas base, nevertheless it killed 15
civilians, 11 of them children. It was only the beginning of five weeks of bombardments
from the air, land and sea on the civil population of Lebanon.
An editorial from the New York Times - hypocritical, yet eloquent - it added key data: in
Palestine and Lebanon, Israel utilized fragmentation bombs, manufactured by the United
States. These arms, said the NYT, “are utilized against tanks, massive conventional
weapons and other strictly military objectives. But never should they be used in
populated areas. Naturally, they kill indiscriminately. Because some bombs do not
explode on impact, the victims continue to be killed long after the fight ceases. These
apparently inoffensive objects, often no larger than a battery, explode when you touch or
move them. Children confuse them with toys, with tragic results.”
Despite everything, Dan Halutz has his sensitive side: hours before initiating the
invasion, in the same moment that he was sending his own soldiers to death, this high
military leader occupied himself with selling stocks on the Tel Aviv stock market to
avoid the financial loss that would result from the war.
Summarized in Halutz, is the predominant moral degradation of the Israeli high
command, that explains in good measure, the humiliating of an army with a reputation of
being invincible. After a month of unmatched savagery against the civil population,
Israel discovered to its amazement that the military operation in itself had been an
extraordinary blunder: "We did not we have water. We forgot to bring food. For several
days, we had only a slice of bread. It was the worst experience of my life", explained
Alon Gelnik, an infantry soldier accustomed to being before the mass media.
It is not about anecdotes. This alienating conduct expresses a political reality and an
ideology. It explains the character of the war unleashed in the Middle East and the role
that the United States has bookmarked for Israel in this chapter that has recently begun.
With society divided down the middle, and under the double emotional impact of the
atrocities committed by its armed forces and the impossibility of defeating Hezbollah,
Israel has already assumed a debate that presses. The people of Jewish origin or religion
have before itself a reality that does not admit subterfuge: the Zionism of the 21st century
is Nazism. For its brutality, certainly, and for the absolute contempt of all humanity, but
above all, because it is the ideology with which imperialism goes to a war that plants
risks of world catastrophe.
To The Search for Justification
Hamas has never gone to war without ideological justification. In the most recent period,
the Department of State appealed to the defense of democracy and world peace,
supposedly threatened by "international terrorism", to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The
exposition of the lies manufactured by the Goebbels-ian apparatus of American
propaganda, added to the situation for the occupying troops with no way out of Iraq, has
demolished that framework in little time: in a turn losing control of the situation, the
planetary network of informative intoxication mounted by the imperialist, shown by
television to thousands of millions of people, the true role U.S. in Iraq, in Palestine, and
in Lebanon: the bombardment of cities, the death of children and unarmed civilians, the
forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. "The war in Iraq has cost some of
the popularity of United States" the secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted in
Germany. She explained that in the future we will work harder so that American politics
will be understood. "We have to speak with the people in Middle East and not offer
monologues. We need to have more contact with the people, particularly with the youth"
she said with her habitual grimace.
But there is no way to justify the militaristic dementia of the U.S.; to nobody, and much
less to the youth in Middle East or wherever.
It is here where the role of Zionism comes into play: the supposed defense of territory for
the Jewish settlement is the imperialist instrument to go to the war in the 21st century.
And if in the past there was space so that people of democratic and progressive
convictions confuse the defense of the Israeli State with the cause of the Jewish
settlement, from now own the delimitations will be categorical, because it has remained
clear in the last month, the methods employed by the Israeli authorities rival the Nazi
atrocities during the second world war.
End of the Regressive Phase
With the fall of the Soviet Union an ideological regression that came from long before
took over and did not leave any ideological position safe. On the threshold of the 21st
century the world seemed to enter into a second medieval period. While astute
booksellers announced the end of imperialism, the loss of meaning of the fight by the
political power, the expiration of the political action and of course of the parties, the
unfathomable victory of capital over any other historic variation, all in name of the last
modernity, the "condemned of the land" grew in number and resorted to the instruments
they had at hand in each case to resist. Forms of extreme religiousness reappeared,
presented as mere fanaticism by skeptical, aseptic intellectuals and, of course,
progressives. The current unfeasibility of the revolution was declared in shrill paradoxes
and contradictions difficult to disentangle.
That period has ended, or at least it has taken a qualitative leap forward. The surprise of
the world by the military capacity of Hezbollah, the perplexity of Israeli society before
the evidence of an unexpected fiasco, the phenomenon of aggregation that the war
produced in Lebanon joining with Muslims, Christian and lay-socialists in a unique
victorious front, permits us to measure at the same time the magnitude of the lack of
understanding regarding what occurred in the world during the last 25 years and the
distance crossed after an alternative history.
Although barely intelligible in the muddled surface of international reality, already under
way is a re-composition of the dynamics in all the plans. The logical terms are invested:
Before a social confrontation is used to go without organization, without politics, without
strategy and of course without ideological identity. Far from condemning the rationality,
nevertheless, this picture presents the profound coherence of two forces in a head-on
collision of global scale, each one trying practical and theoretical axes of re-composition
for the action. The motor that moves both to the structural crisis is the world capitalist
system.
In this unpublished historic conjuncture, the meeting of 116 member countries and 20
observers of the movement six decades behind called "the non-aligned" constitutes a
formidable point of support to draw the courses of a new phase. The need to impede the
war will be a powerful point of union in that assembly of extreme heterogeneousness.
The reappearance of the Mnoal, in an anachronistic sense and in another original, is a key
fact of the world political future and the results that are obtained will be determinants.
Yet it is not known if Fidel Castro, the architect of this encounter, has been present in the
sessions. But nobody doubts that its ideology and its socialist proposal are again on the
horizon of a world that seeks answers.

Bolivia - The U.S. Election

I don't see anyone dancing out in the streets of Cochabamba today, but I feel like heading out there myself and doing a happy jig of my own.

In my opinion, today is the best day the United States of America has had in 10 years.

It was in November 1996 when the Presidential election results confirmed Bill Clinton's victory over Bob Dole. Since then, we've had the Lewinksy scandal, the Whitewater scandal, a grueling dishonorable impeachment of our President, a financial market implosion and economic meltdown, a stolen Presidential election, unprecedented levels of corporate corruption and felony, an unthinkable terrorist attack on our own soil, a squandered budget surplus, an inept statement and adoption of foreign policy, fiscally irresponsible tax cuts, blundered war campaigns under false pretenses, horrific natural disasters, political scandals of all kinds, energy crises, and an environmental timebomb all of which are resulting in an unimaginable 8 year term for an administration having some of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, an expensive, tragic, quagmire of a war in Iraq, an economy very possibly running on fumes, and depressingly, our country's severely eroded stature in the eyes of the world.

Today though, there is hope. There is a reason to celebrate. There is change, and it should be clear to all who care to notice, that change is needed. I really couldn't care less if Democrats control the House and Senate, or if Independents would. But, to continue down the path that the Republican party has torched since the Congressional Republican revolution of 1994, most noticeably under Bush's leadership(?), would certainly lead us deeper into the ditch we've already dug ourselves into. I have no idea if the Democrats will do any better. However, I feel that they couldn't possibly do any worse, and it seems there are alot of people out there thinking the same way.

I am happy, and I am hopeful about our country, today. It will take a while, if we so desire, for our country to right the wrongs of its recent past. But, with the clear message our voters sent today, there are reasons to believe it can happen.

We need to lead the world in developing profitable technologies, and personal and business behaviors that reverse and nullify the catastrophic environmental impact our country has had on the world. We need to recognize and embrace the notion that there are other countries having larger populations than us, having similar or greater global impact than us, having sometimes conflicting interests and/or values than ours. We need to set the standard for ethical governance, business practice, and cultural behavior at home and abroad so that our presence on the world stage is welcomed again without cynicism.

Nothing our country needs to do is impossible. In fact, I'm confident it's all been done before. We just need a re-fresher. Today is that day. Be excited, very excited. I am.