>> ^schmawy:
Thanks again, you lovely Sifters. If you'll notice there is one that is conspicuously missing.

Okay, I give. Which one? And don't be coy, or else I'll rip your Godard skull off, chemise down your neck, fusil you in your eye socket, and then crème fraîches all over your buté.

EDIT: WTF is ^that? Oh, I get it: Godard lucky760 and his word filters. Using French, mon ami!? How seditious!

Though he's pissed at me, I agree with choggie that all public figures are fair game.

The left and its liberal-mainstream-media-in-denial have been calling Bush a monkey for almost the whole 8 years.

A "Che" style Obama shirt would be more accurate.

I upvoted your comments, chogs, because you can't vote them back down.

Since Morgan Freeman didn't know I can tell anyone interested that the duet is from "The Marriage of Figaro". It's called "Sull'aria? Che soave zeffiretto" and is preformed by the characters of Susanna and the Countess in Act III, scene X, in which the Countess is dictating a loveletter for Susanna to give to the Count.

Yes it is.

"NON E' BRASILIANO PERO', CHE GOLS, CHE FA, MAURO BRESSAN !"

un piccolo che succhia mai non danneggiato chiunque

Che Guevara !

Ever heard of political sentimentality? Hitler used it.
German slogan in the 30’s: “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”—roughly meaning “Children, Fireside, Church.”

Artist: Gotan Project
Album: Lunático
Year: 2006
Title: Mi Confesion

(Feat. Koxmoz)

(Apolo Novax)
Proyecto Gotan... desde el Koxmoz para el mundo...si, soy yo… y la voz de mi pensamiento...mis pensamientos... pensamientos del corazón.
Cómo es la clave, cuál el secreto? Para estar en paz por completo, dos pies en la tierra y un relato desde hace rato me tienen sujeto. El mundo es mi suelo, el cielo mi techo, Buenos Aires donde cosecho mis anhelos y mis pasiones, pero solo hay vacío y no estoy satisfecho.
Si hablo de amor... se que la extraño, de mis actos en vida soy dueño, pero me calla el dolor por el daño, es como un sueño dentro de otro sueño. Apuesto a pleno pero de callado, cada uno en la suya, yo ando rayado, sigo esperando sentado... que esta vez el destino no me deje plantado... que no me deje plantado... no nena.
Escuchame bien... no es chamuyo...es amor.

(Chili Parker)
Me la batió un gomía che, la culpa no fue mía, de amor yo no se nada, lo mío es la astronomía, vos sabias bien que yo era un mamarracho, vos lo sabias bien...soy un borracho. Así que ya no me reclames, no me esperes flaca ya no me llames, todos lo saben prefiero ser MC, hasta el farolito de la calle en que nací. Tengo una balada para un loco, que la compuse yo, para mi, porque estoy loco, y eso me provocó que en vos pensase, y así un poema nace. Los más hábiles dejamos pasar los abriles, inmóviles para no quedar como giles, así ya no me enamoro de nuevo... así ya no me enamoro de vos de nuevo.

(Apolo Novax)
Pensamientos del corazón … son mi confesión..."¿que?"... tampoco mi inspiración.
Pensamientos del corazón … son mi confesión..."que se yo, pero sé que no es chamuyo"... tampoco mi inspiración. ( Bis X2)

(Chili Parker)
... y es así, todos tropezamos con la misma piedra.

(Apolo Novax)
No es chamuyo...es amor.

From Six Questions for Greg Grandin on Che’s Legacy:

Forty years ago this month, Che Guevara was captured and executed as he tried to lead a guerilla insurrection deep in the Bolivian jungle. Despite questions about his sometimes violent tactics and effectiveness as a revolutionary leader, Che remains an iconic symbol—even though he’s now been dead longer than he was alive. Che’s popularity in this country might stem more from how he looks on album covers and T-shirts than from his ideas or actions, but in Latin America, Che is remembered for his willingness to stand up to the United States. Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, is the author of several books on American influence in Latin America, most recently last year’s Empire’s Workshop.

1. How is Che currently viewed in Latin America and how different is his image there than it is here?
There are those in the U.S. who see Che as a generic symbol of rebellion against power and some who even think seriously about his political legacy, but he is more readily available as a pop and commercial icon. His image has been co-opted, following in the tradition of Warhol’s silk-screened Mao. In Latin America, some of this banalization exists, but the popularity and understanding of Che goes well beyond that. I was living in Guatemala a decade ago when peace accords ended that country’s 36-year civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died. Suddenly Che’s image was everywhere. One street vendor told me that during the first three months after the war ended she sold more images of Che than she did of pop stars or the Virgin Mary. So Che–who was no fan of free speech–became a symbol of exactly that in a country long repressed. Throughout the region, Che remains a multifaceted symbol of reform, embodying anything from anti-imperialist resistance to revolutionary purity. And of course it doesn’t hurt that he is so good looking—I.F. Stone said that he was the first man he had ever met who he thought not just handsome but beautiful. In recent years, a number of admirers have been elected leaders of a number of countries: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner all have embraced Che. Even more cautious reformers like Brazil’s Lula feel compelled to pay homage to his legacy.

2. How has his image evolved over the last four decades in Latin America?
His popularity has increased since his death. When he was alive, the Cuban Revolution, of which he was one of the most visible spokesmen, represented a divide between Latin America’s old, reformist, Communist Party Left, and a new, insurgent left. Today, those debates are largely the stuff of history and his appeal is practically universal save among the most hidebound. Look at Bolivia to get a sense of just how much his reputation has evolved–it was there, in the remote village called La Higuera, that Bolivian forces, aided by CIA agents, executed Che. His Bolivian expedition was a complete failure and his capture had much to do with the fact that he didn’t receive much support from either the Bolivian Communist Party nor from peasants. But today Che’s image is everywhere in Bolivia and he is particularly esteemed by that country’s powerful peasant and indigenous movement. President Morales is reported to keep a picture of him in his wallet and just last year, upon winning the presidency, he participated in an unofficial inauguration, where he claimed Che as a patron saint of indigenous rights, saying, “The struggle that Che Guevara left uncompleted, we shall complete.”

3. What do you say to those who object to this canonization of Che, claiming that he’s nothing more than a totalitarian murderer?
I’d say tell it to the millions of Latin Americans, many of them at the margins of society, fighting for a just, truly democratic world, who still find inspiration in his struggle and image. To them, there is no confusion. Do our political commissars, always on the hunt for any whiff of residual sympathy for the militant New Left, really want to dismiss those people out of hand as irrelevant or misguided? Over the last two decades, social movements inspired by Che have fought against free-market orthodoxy. Those movements are bearers of the social-democratic tradition and are seeking to advance democracy.

4. The vision Che had for Cuba and the Third World in general did not develop. How does that effect his legacy?
You could argue that the failure of the Cuban model has actually benefited Che’s legacy, which has evolved from the specific political project he was associated with. Forty years ago. Che died trying to export the armed tactics of the Cuban Revolution elsewhere. There were many reasons why the Left by that time had embraced violent insurrection as a strategy, not the least of which was the refusal of the region’s elites, fortified with support from Washington, to give up even the slightest of its privileges. Since then, the Latin American Left has evolved. Today it is profoundly peaceful and democratic, despite having adopted an icon of insurrection as its talisman.

5. What are some of the common misperceptions about Che in the United States?
My guess is that the American public knows very little about Che. If they saw the movie Motorcycle Diaries, they may have learned that he was Argentine, not Cuban. But few know that just after that tour around Latin America, where he first began to develop a pan-American consciousness, he wound up in Guatemala, a country that at the time was undergoing a profound democratic revolution. Che practiced social medicine in the country’s rural highlands, ministering to the country’s most marginal. He was in Guatemala during the CIA’s 1954 coup that ended that country’s democracy, and he saw firsthand the U.S. role in restoring a regime that would go on to kill hundreds of thousands of its citizens. He always cited his experience in Guatemala as a turning point. Prior to the coup, the Latin American left, including Communist groups, still believed it was possible to work with a country’s national bourgeois to achieve social democratic reform. Afterwards, it was increasingly difficult to do so. Che himself would go on to taunt the United States, saying “Cuba will not be another Guatemala” to justify the restrictions of civil liberties in Cuba, since it was through the subversion of the press, the Church, and independent political parties that the CIA did its work in Guatemala, and subsequently elsewhere.

6. How have American policies in Latin America following Che’s death impacted his image in the region?
Che was executed in 1967, and some of the worst interventions by Washington in Latin America were still to come. Most people are aware of the CIA’s involvement in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and Reagan’s wars in Central America in the 1980s. Less known is U.S. involvement in, or at least sanctioning of, coups in Uruguay in 1973 and Argentina in 1976. Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Washington moved away from its reliance on repressive Latin American proxies, banking instead on its ability to project its power through elections and economic pressure. This worked throughout the 1990s, as heavily indebted countries governed by centrists submitted to the command of the IMF. Over the past few years, roughly since Chávez’s landslide victory in 1998, the system has started to break down. The “Washington consensus,” as this set of policies came to be called, proved an absolute disaster. Between 1980 and 2000, in per capita terms, the region grew cumulatively by only 9 per cent. Compare that with the 82 per cent expansion of the previous two decades, and add to it the financial crises that have rolled across Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina over the past 15 years, sweeping away accumulated savings, destroying the middle class, and wrecking the agricultural sector, and you will get a sense of why Evo Morales is calling for the completion of Che’s struggle.

Very beautiful. Thanks especially for translating the song.

Long live Che.

Here's the official lyrics, but in that great folk tradition, they've been updated and changed to fit the times:

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole

If no one out there understands
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a T-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

ma prima devo aderire a un collective, vero?
mica posso mettere il tag di 1 collective se non ne faccio parte, vero?
mh..mi sembra tutto troppo complicato x la mia mente semplice, e tremendamente gerarchico...bo, magari provo con un collective, si aderisco prima?

In reply to your comment:
“sì (che carina).

deve arrivare a 3 voti in 24 ore, e poi a 10 voti in 4 giorni, altrimenti viene scartato.

se vuoi posso salvarlo (ovvero farlo tornare in coda per altri 4 giorni), ma dato che aveva solamente 3 voti anche se lo faccio ci sono scarse possibilità che passi.

anche perché senza collective prendono molti meno voti, in genere, dunque ti conviene postare qualcosa che possa associare a un collective

:*

In reply to your comment:
“ah! ma il mio video dei dEUS é sparito..??? boh? forse se sta tanti gg con pochi voti si autodistrugge?
”

sì (che carina).

deve arrivare a 3 voti in 24 ore, e poi a 10 voti in 4 giorni, altrimenti viene scartato.

se vuoi posso salvarlo (ovvero farlo tornare in coda per altri 4 giorni), ma dato che aveva solamente 3 voti anche se lo faccio ci sono scarse possibilità che passi.

anche perché senza collective prendono molti meno voti, in genere, dunque ti conviene postare qualcosa che possa associare a un collective

:*

In reply to your comment:
“ah! ma il mio video dei dEUS é sparito..??? boh? forse se sta tanti gg con pochi voti si autodistrugge?

ah! ma il mio video dei dEUS é sparito..??? boh? forse se sta tanti gg con pochi voti si autodistrugge?

In reply to your comment:
“le foto sono una menata, vanno messe su flickr e poi linkate qua. due palle, io son stato molto senza, poi l'ho messa solo perché l'avevo già caricata su flickr per altri motivi.

per i collective devi fare richiesta all'owner di invitarti, poi accetti l'invito, e i NUOVI video che posti li puoi associare a UN collective.

non so che genere musicale facciano i deus, ma forse avrebbe potuto inserirsi nel "rock&roll"? altrimenti non c'era altro collective adatto dunque amen.

ultimamente mi sto un po' scocciando di postare nuovi video perché spesso non passano senza motivo, dunque bo.

In reply to your comment:
“mh..vero..non ci avevo fatto caso, ma mi sembrava ridicolo scriverti in inglese, si. bo, i commenti li faccio in inglese cmq. non riesco a caricare la foto:(
i collective..ah..

In reply to your comment:
“ah poi ti spiego i collective, che ti permettono di aver molti più voti”””

il fatto é che ho la foto su flicky licky ma..non son capace a metterla...

deus, no, non rock&roll, no. credo, no, ne son sicura!!
bo, io ne metterei di nuovi video, ma..non posso!!
si, ne avevo visto uno di carino di collective, lo faró, ma non ora che non ne ho voglia!!

In reply to your comment:
“le foto sono una menata, vanno messe su flickr e poi linkate qua. due palle, io son stato molto senza, poi l'ho messa solo perché l'avevo già caricata su flickr per altri motivi.

per i collective devi fare richiesta all'owner di invitarti, poi accetti l'invito, e i NUOVI video che posti li puoi associare a UN collective.

non so che genere musicale facciano i deus, ma forse avrebbe potuto inserirsi nel "rock&roll"? altrimenti non c'era altro collective adatto dunque amen.

ultimamente mi sto un po' scocciando di postare nuovi video perché spesso non passano senza motivo, dunque bo.

In reply to your comment:
“mh..vero..non ci avevo fatto caso, ma mi sembrava ridicolo scriverti in inglese, si. bo, i commenti li faccio in inglese cmq. non riesco a caricare la foto:(
i collective..ah..

In reply to your comment:
“ah poi ti spiego i collective, che ti permettono di aver molti più voti”””