News of the Restless

Israeli cartoonist Shlomo Cohen neatly illustrates the phantom nature of the "victory mosque at Ground Zero". It's not a "victory" mosque, it's not even an actual mosque, and it's not actually at Ground Zero. I'm pretty sure, though, given his background and country of residence, that satirizing irrational fear and hate was NOT his intention here.

Maybe I shouldn't post this so soon after the longest fucking quarrel I've had with a troll to date, but I'm damned if I let outsiders set my agenda here, any more than I let idiots make up my mind for me. So, here goes: I'm all in favor of Park 51, the non-mosque that is not gonna be built on the ashes of the former World Trade Centre.

That's right, you read that correctly. I'm totally cool with Park 51.

And yes, this post is gonna be my little contribution toward the education of those who let fear, hatred, bitterness, bigotry and generalized stupidity rule their lives. If it changes their minds about Park 51, great; if it at least forces them to think and rethink, it will have done what I meant it to do. (I can't do your thinking for you either, people, but I can give you plenty of crunchy food for thought, and I can ask you to take it quietly home and chew it over on your own, can't I?)

So. Here goes.

For starters, let's consider the political climate that surrounds the Park 51 debate. You would have to be totally dissociated to think that this debate is occurring in a vacuum. There is an awful lot of racially-charged hate being whipped up very deliberately right now, some of it in the guise of a certain recent "non-political" rally to "restore honor". The rally in question was, of course, VERY political. And honor, that vague, shifty concept that people are known to kill each other for across all cultural boundaries, had fuck-all to do with it. Unless you consider ugly people with ugly attitudes scrawled all over their ugly shirts and getting ugly with perceived outsiders to be "honorable", of course. In which case, yeah, something was restored, all right.

Now, with that kind of climate, is it so surprising that a drunken idiot would try to start a brawl in a bar with a Middle Eastern theme? Or that a Muslim cab driver gets his throat slashed, specifically, for being Muslim? Or that a bunch of armed teenagers would go around trying to terrorize worshippers at a mosque in western New York, which is nowhere near Ground Zero? Or that an arsonist would try to torch construction equipment at the site of a mosque-in-the making more than 800 miles from Ground Zero?

Which is why I wonder if the trolls who pooped here, claiming that two blocks' walk from Ground Zero was too close for a Muslim community centre, have any real idea of how ridiculous their pleas for "sensitivity" towards the insensitive demands of non-Muslims really are. Or how fucking ironic. If Murfreesboro, Tennessee, isn't far enough away from Ground Zero to build a mosque--a REAL one--then clearly no place in North America is.

And that means that Muslims are not really welcome here.

What's sad and ironic is that Muslims in North America have made real, serious contributions to these lands since the first one to settle in New York landed in what's now Manhattan, nearly 400 years ago. And one of their finest gifts, their contribution to the fight against Islamist terrorism, isn't being given due credit. Instead, we get to see them treated to utterly demeaning shit like this:

...which is hardly a ringing endorsement of inter-faith peace. It's a ridiculous demand, coming from someone who lives just about as far in the US as it's possible to be from Ground Zero (unless you count Hawaii), someone who will never have to look directly upon that heart-stabbing community centre herself. Why the hell should Sarah Palin care, as long as she can score cheap political points on the tweeter?

But if the political points are cheap and easy for a Sarah Palin, they come at a much greater cost to those at whom these barbs were directed. Why do peaceful Muslims constantly have to repudiate and refute (not refudiate, which is not a real word) those who use Islam as their bludgeon? And can you imagine what would happen if they, in turn, demanded that Christians "refudiate" their own extremist brethren? It's not as if there's any shortage of them. Especially in the anti-mosque camp. Will they repudiate the violent amongst themselves? Will they come forward to denounce those who advocate burning mosques?

If my own skirmishes with the anti-mosque crowd are anything to go by, they're falling on their asses in this department. I have not seen ONE opponent of Park 51 say his confederates: No, don't burn, don't vandalize, don't terrorize. Not even when I asked them to, would they repudiate. Instead, they turned on me, telling me to be more tolerant. Of what? Arson threats? Intolerance? Oh, please. If I can't ask you to tolerate a peaceful Muslim community centre, you have no right to tell me I should tolerate your intolerance of it. That's just fucked up.

And even when peaceful Muslims come forward, time and again, to repudiate and denounce those who tarnish the name of their religion, their voices go unheard. Instead, they get drowned out by shriekers like this one at Alan Colmes's website:

These people are everything that is wrong with America. Why are so many blacks, like those pictured above, for the victory monument at Ground Zero? Because in their hearts, they know the attacks are not aimed at them, so they don't give a damn.

That's fucked up, too. (And racist, clearly--which is another hallmark of the current toxic political climate. Why else would the commenter mention the color of their skins?)

In case anyone forgets, blacks and Muslims died in the collapse of the WTC, too. They worked in that building. How could the attacks that killed them NOT be aimed at them? Is Park 51, which will incorporate a memorial to the victims (but not the hijackers), a slap in THEIR faces, too?

If you're going to talk about "everything that's wrong with America", and somehow loop Muslims into it, you may want to consider the singular irony of Saudi oil money going to finance the leading anti-Islamic crapaganda channel in the United States. (What--did you really think Rupee Murdoch was brainwashing you just out of the goodness of his own grinchy little heart? Wake up, Amurrica.)

And--irony upon irony--the Park 51 project is headed by an imam whose brand of Islam is anathema to the Wahhabi princes of Saudi Arabia. FactCheck has a marvelous list of facts about Park 51 that would make your head spin. Among them is this:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has a long history of cooperation with the U.S. government, beginning during the Bush administration. In February and March 2003, he led cultural awareness training for FBI employees in the bureau's New York field office, New York division officials told us. In 2007 and twice in 2010, he traveled to the Middle East to talk about religious tolerance and Islam in America as part of a speaker program organized by the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs.

Philip Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said of the imam: "His work on tolerance and religious diversity is well-known and he brings a moderate perspective to foreign audiences on what it's like to be a practicing Muslim in the United States." Rauf's most recent trip, which is in progress as we publish, garnered objections from people who feared he would try to raise money for the Park51 project during his trip, but the State Department said those concerns were unfounded.

Rauf is an adherent of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that has itself been targeted by extremists. A 2007 report by the nonpartisan RAND Corporation suggested that Sufis could be potential partners against radical Islamism. "Because of their victimization by [extremist sects] Salafis and Wahhabis, traditionalists and Sufis are natural allies of the West to the extent that common ground can be found with them," the RAND study concluded. Indeed, Rauf has often spoken out against extremism, including recently as part of a Washington Post discussion about the Park51 project, then called the Cordoba Institute:

Rauf, July 21: We are not the extremists. We are that vast majority of Muslims who stand up against extremism and provide a voice in response to the radical rhetoric. Our mission is to interweave America's Muslim population into mainstream society. We are a Muslim-American force for promoting the universal values of justice and peaceful coexistence in which all good people believe.

Wait, what? He's a Sufi? He co-operates with the US government? He speaks up for peace? He wants Muslims to live in the mainstream, not the margins? What a stab to the heart. What a slap to the face! Everything that's wrong with America, yup yup yup, that's him all right. Why, he might even ask us to join him in singing Kumbaya! The horror!

And yet, if my trolls are to be believed, I'm some kind of extremist for supporting this moderate man of Islam.

As my friend Orwell's Bastard notes, these guys are terribly busy trying to make words mean what they don't mean, to the point where they become utterly meaningless; when that happens, they go and make up their own, which could mean anything and actually mean nothing. Could that be what "refudiate" really means? I mean, how else is it possible for me to be an "extremist" for liking this moderate, Imam Rauf?

Oh, but of course. If you're tolerant of Muslims, especially moderate ones, you're intolerant, because that means you've shut the wingnuts, those "moderates" who keep moving the goalposts ever further to the right, out of consideration. You're ignoring their crapaganda whenever you look at the facts and refuse to be swayed by emotional blackmail. And if you refuse to let your blog be hijacked and your discourse derailed by those who try to sneak a false label onto you by claiming you're falsely labelling THEM, why, you intolerant extremist you!

I would argue that I've been more than tolerant enough by letting the trolls babble at me about my imagined insensitivity for their poor hurt widdle feelings for as long as they did. I even argued back in good faith, and got shat on all the more for it, in unmistakably misogynous terms. I got accused of having no sense of humor (which, as anyone who reads this blog regularly can tell you, is the most ridiculous charge of all.) Normally, they get three strikes. If they can't say anything decent within three posts, they get the royal flush. Sometimes, if I'm really not in the mood, they get it even sooner. My blog, my rules. If they don't like 'em, they can get their own; I promise I won't visit.

And if you really want to talk about intolerance and insensitivity, how about this?

This is the same fucking asshole who convened that flop-sweat rally to "restore honor". Nice, eh? And of course, he's a leading voice in the anti-mosque (really, anti-Muslim) "movement". The timing of his bullshit is no coincidence; he also heads up some travesty called the 9/12 Project. It claims to be "non-political" (there's that non-meaningful phrase again!), but it's just another fucking wingnut hijack. Glenn Beck, who is not a 9-11 survivor himself, has no shame about using the ugliest date of the past decade to his own selfish, hateful ends.

And he uses it to whip up the same selfishness and hate in others. The kind that raged on the day after September 11, 2001. The kind that led to the torching of the Hindu Samaj Temple in Hamilton, Ontario; the kind that led to numerous attacks on Sikhs; the kind that is now leading to attacks on existing mosques, mosques under construction, and a Muslim community centre that's still only on the drawing board.

I'm supposed to tolerate this hate-mongering crap in the name of "moderation", but you know what? I've had more than enough. I owe you "moderate", "non-political", "anti-agenda" rightards nothing. No tolerance for your intolerance, no acceptance for your meaningless redefinitions of words, and no platform for your absurd phantom visions of a "victory mosque". From now on, all you get out of me is a well-deserved Doc Marten bootprint on your sorry asses.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)|

Ms. Manx is, of course, all in favor of gun control; she remembers the Montréal Massacre only too well. She wants to see the long-gun registry stay; it may have something to do with the fact that long guns are the overwhelming heavyweights when it comes to gunshot deaths in Canada. So it heartens her up to read a few things that seem to indicate a balance tipping in Law-Law Land, and which may just be the magic bullets that kill the SupposiTory attempt to scrap the long-gun registry:

The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom, a long-time "skeptic" of gun control, has read the RCMP report and changed his mind. Seems that pro-gun talking points are simply no match for facts and figures, especially ones endorsed by police chiefs nationwide. Blam!

Another Star columnist, Heather Mallick, has let her frustration with the pro-gun, anti-registry rural New Democrat MPs boil over. She points out that the NDP, once the party of feminist progress, has become mired in cushiness and nicey-nicey bullshit. Why is it suddenly so important for MPs to curry favor with Con-deluded rural voters? Why can't they educated them as to why the gun registry is actually good for gun owners? Among other things, it can help get a stolen gun back to its rightful owner, just as motor-vehicle registration can do with cars. Ah, but such talking points would mean stepping out of their comfort zone and actually risking a debate with those voters, instead of just going the easy route of kissing ass. Mallick concludes, on a pessimistic note: "The corpses of the Montreal Massacre are silent and the yapping gun-freedom brigade is so very loud."

But if the corpses of the Massacre are silent, their living relatives are not. At the top of the Globe's letters-to-the-editor section today, there's a beautiful message from Suzanne Edward, who lost her daughter that day, urging NDP leader Jack Layton to stand by the promises he made when he founded the White Ribbon Campaign against violence. There's also a letter from Ward M. Eagen, of Toronto, who points out that Tommy Douglas, the founder of the NDP, was an early gun-control advocate, disappointed in half measures and compromises, who said, "Some day, we will have the techniques to register all firearms." Those techniques are in effect now. Eagen also points out that the NDP was a rural party from its inception. If being strongly pro-control didn't hurt Tommy Douglas's popularity with his rural Saskatchewan base, shouldn't that tell Jack Layton and his fellow NDP MPs something?

Well, some of those rural MPs are listening--if not to pro-control voices from the base, then certainly to those of their enemies. And one of them, Charlie Angus, is now so incensed with the Tories that he's changing his stance--he's now likely to vote in favor of keeping the long-gun registry. Angus is an influential voice among rural and northern Ontario New Democrats, so his backlash against the Tories is very heartening to this little red-haired wild-rose girl from up North.

Montreal Simon seems to share Ms. Manx's hopeful view of Charlie's change of heart, and he serves it up with plenty of amusement on the side.

And if you're wondering what might have changed Charlie's mind, here's a video full of clues. It features a horse with two asses, one of which is facing the camera:

That's James Bezan, a Tory, getting nasty toward the NDP--the party that holds the hammer when it comes to whether the long-gun registry stays or goes. The horse's name is Woody. Doesn't Woody look like he can't wait to buck that buffoon and drop a load on him?

And finally, for those who want to help the NDP get its act together on this one, here's a Facebook group you'll want to join, and some e-mail addresses you'll want to use.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)|

You want more creepy? You got it:

A young man of 22 was arrested last weekend in Buenos Aires, accused of killing six persons in four weeks to fulfill a promise to "San La Muerte" (St. Death), a "saint" venerated in prisons and rural parts of Argentina, according to a police source on Tuesday.

"The killer made a pact with 'St. Death', in which he promised a death a week in exchange for the protection of his family," said the source.

Marcelo Antelo was arrested on Saturday, August 28, accused of having killed a philosophy student, 27 years old, who was found with a bullet wound to the chest in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, south of the Argentine capital, near the accused killer's home.

Upon his arrest after an intense gunfight, the police confiscated a .38 calibre pistol, similar to those used by federal police officers.

At the moment, "Marcelito", as he was known in the barrio, is in custody for the murder of the philosophy student, but the police suspect that he may be the killer of five others, including a double homicide on August 15, five days before he celebrated the day of "St. Death".

"A half-dozen witnesses have already come forward. One of them gave us details of the pact with 'St. Death'," said an investigator in the case.

"St. Death" is a traditional figure of folk worship in the rural northeast of Argentina, particularly in the provinces of Corrientes, Chaco, and Formosa, and is also venerated in many prisons. His devotees invoke him for ordinary favors, such as to protect a harvest, but he is also sometimes called upon to bring death to an enemy.

In routine raids on the homes of suspects, the police have often found the image of "St. Death", in the form of a tiny human skeleton.

Translation mine.

The veneration of "St. Death" under various names (La Muerte, La Santa Muerte, San La Muerte, etc.) is not limited to Argentina. Mexicans, too, are known for their veneration of the unorthodox "saint", particularly on the Day of the Dead. He (or sometimes, she) is commonly invoked by members of crime gangs, for fairly obvious reasons. When even St. Jude, the patron of lost causes, won't do, St. Death seems the natural choice for drug-dealers locked in endless turf wars, or battles with the police (or both, simultaneously).

Of course, invoking Death brings karma down on you like a duck on a junebug, as this one unlucky Argentine found out. The elaborate tombs of Mexican drug-gangsters are also testimony to how well the double-edged sword of "St." Death can slice. Just something to consider, if ever you're tempted to make a pact with Death.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)|

Hello and welcome to reality, Bjørn Lomborg. What took you so long?

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.

Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.

In a Guardian interview, he said he would finance investment through a tax on carbon emissions that would also raise $50bn to mitigate the effect of climate change, for example by building better sea defences, and $100bn for global healthcare.

His declaration about the importance of action on climate change comes at a crucial point in the debate, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions stalled amid a resurgence in scepticism caused by rows over the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming.

Not that I'm not glad to hear that he's had a change of heart, and not a minute too soon. The solutions he proposes (other than the iffy cloud-tinkering one) are also sound, if this brief summation is true. I only wonder if it's actually already too late.

Well, anyway, welcome to the fold, Bjørn. I'm sure your namesake animals are glad to hear it, too.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)|

This is what it looks like when real, ordinary Canadians from all walks of life turn out to take back OUR streets from the thugs of the G-20 crime cartel. It's no coincidence that the national anthem was sung, and that its most-repeated phrase "We stand on guard for thee" sat ill with the transnational oppressors. When a government takes 2 billion dollars away from the people and spends it on thuggery, it is up to the people to stand on guard...and not let their country get sold out to the transnationals for a profit that most of us will never see.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

First it was Chavecito, now it's El Ecuadorable heaping something black and feathery onto the plates in Bogotá. No, it's not the chickens coming home to roost, it's another bird entirely...

The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, announced on Saturday the re-establishment of normal relations with Colombia, as a sign of dignity, justice, sovereignty and respect, on his weekly program called "Citizen Link".

"We will re-establish relations with Colombia for the good of our countries and our peoples," said the Ecuadorian leader, in response to an invitation to a bilateral meeting with the new president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, who was inaugurated on August 7.

It is worth emphasizing that while demonstrating goodwill in re-establishing bilateral relations, the Ecuadorian president has not forgotten the reason for which the two countries became estranged, since in his estimation, an "illegal bombardment" is not to be so easily forgotten. At that time, Santos was the defence minister of Colombia, who authorized the military action of March 1, 2008, without informing or receiving permission from the government of Ecuador.

Correa pointed out that at the root of this event that violated the sovereignty of his nation, there were members of the FARC, and reiterated that he had never met a member of the FARC, "but they accuse us of being accomplices in order to justify an absolutely illegal bombing, disloyal and unjust."

Correa also maintained that there are illegal FARC camps in the rainforests of Peru, which are much more inaccessible than the equatorial rainforests of the Ecuador/Colombia border. "But no one has accused Alan García of being in league with the FARC," meaning that "the truth is self-evident", and now the whole world knows it, since his government and country enjoy great prestige. "We have an immense credibility at the national and international level," Correa concluded.

Translation mine.

And of course, Santos and his magic laptop have ZERO credibility. That may be a reason why things are suddenly warming up between him and his two alienated neighbors. Colombia stands to lose a lot more than Venezuela or Ecuador if things stay in the deep-freeze much longer. Hence, out comes the old crow, thawed and ready to eat.

Karma, babies.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

I recall Hurricane Katrina only too well, as it happened on my dad's birthday five years ago. It was a surreal day, to say the least. As my folks and I sat in front of the TV and watched the storm roll inland on a traffic camera, and the traffic lights in the foreground began to swing wildly, we knew in our guts that this was going to be a horror. And it was: More than a thousand people drowned in the storm surge, most of them poor and black.

What followed was even worse: We learned that it was not the storm itself that had done the most damage, but bad BushCo policy and plain old human neglect. Levees that should have been shored up and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers, were not; FEMA, which should have helped the survivors evacuate and put their lives back together, ended up both neglecting them and, bizarrely, imprisoning them in trailer-park camps as if they were common criminals, and not merely poor folks in need of a home and the basic necessities of life. (And we haven't heard the last about those infamous trailers yet. Or "Heckuva Job" Drownie Brownie, either.)

And then the real horror of it hit home. Pictures of floating corpses leaked out, one by one. Stories emerged, too: people seeking help being shot by local police and the National Guard, presumably for "looting" goods that had become unsaleable anyway; the Superdome stadium and the convention centre, meant to shelter storm refugees until they could be evacuated, being neglected and filled with filth and desperation (and rumors of rape gangs that turned out to be false, although there were a handful of deaths inside, only one of them violent); a hospital forced to euthanize its sick and elderly patients because it could no longer keep them alive; a flooded prison, locked down and its inmates abandoned to a hideous combination of sweltering heat, hunger, and water-borne diseases. And then there were people like Miss Vera, who survived the storm only to get mown down by a hit-and-run driver, some random asshole who just didn't give a shit. Every Katrina death seemed somehow emblematic of what happens when people in a position to do something just stop caring and let things go to hell. It got so bad that I developed a Pavlovian nausea that acted up every time someone uttered the K-word.

And I wasn't even physically there. Can you imagine what life must have been like for those who were?

Life is still hard for the storm's displaced survivors. But it does go on, and pockets of hope have been slowly appearing between the wreckage and the tacky "rebuilding" so touted by whites of the privatize-all persuasion. Here are some of the hopeful stories.

Truthout tells the Katrina story in poignant black-and-white cartoons. The hero of the story is New Orleans itself, "a city where people not only ask how you are, they wait for an answer."

Yes! Magazine has a positive account of the spirit of that city. No, it's not dead yet, in spite of corporatism's best efforts to kill it. In fact, it seems to be catching; those who came as volunteers to help rebuild, keep coming back. There is no shortage of need for their help, and no shortage of love, either.

Ann Beeson finds some hints as to how and why that spirit continues to survive. The secret, it seems, lies not in the "experts" trucked in from without to whiten and restructure the place, but in the local people, most of them black, who stuck around and picked up the pieces when no one else cared.

Sarah Jaffe relates the old wound of Katrina to the new one of the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe, and reminds us of why we must not succumb to "disaster fatigue", but keep on fighting for what we love, wherever it may be, no matter what. New Orleans has been battered and abused, but its people aren't giving up. Nor should we give up on them.

And on that note, I really love Rachel Maddow for stating the painfully obvious.

And on a final note, Color of Change is raising funds to help the (still very ongoing) rebuilding process. Kick in what you can.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)|

This is what passes for discourse on the right, concerning the Cordoba community centre at Park 51, Lower Manhattan:

Thanks to a little birdie on the tweeter who spotted this.

And no, I'm not going to conceal any of those names. They felt they could post this publicly, so more publicity they and their insanity shall get.

FBI, consider this a heads-up. NYPD, same goes for you. Do your duty, coppers.

PS: That guy who says he did it before? Maybe this was his handiwork. Srsly, FBI, read Facebook. Innocent people's lives are depending on you, and this is better intel than you'd get through waterboarding.

UPDATE: It now appears that shots were also fired near the site this afternoon. Yeah, this shit is serious.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (47)|

Silly schlock: We haz it.

And if you wonder where the "chuck a can" bit really came from, here:

Flashy keyboards and a funky bassline. What more does a soulful diva need? (Besides a funky hunk, that is?)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

Pee-fucking-yew--what IS that smell? Looks like salmonella's not the only thing that can turn your stomach, and it's not the only thing stinking up the joint of late. These bad eggs--of the human variety--are making me wanna puke:

1. Kim Fucking Tran. With an attitude like that, she deserves to lose ALL business at her nail salon, not just that of the overweight. Or does she think those extra pounds come stuffed with extra cash?

2. Roy Fucking Blunt. You know what's REALLY inappropriate? Comparing the Cordoba Centre to "Dr." Laura Fucking Schlessinger's "nigger-nigger-nigger" rant. Why is it okay to discriminate against Muslims, and not all the other religions whose believers died on 9-11?

3. Erik Fucking Prince. If you're not a fraudster, what the fuck are you doing in Abu Dhabi--knowing you'll never be extradited from there?

4. Conn Fucking Carroll. The burden of proof is still on the accuser. Prove to us that Julian Assange is responsible for even ONE death in Afghanistan as a result of publishing what Bradley Manning gave him on Wikileaks. Just one. Can't do it, can you? Oh, surprise.

5. Mary Fucking Bale. Cats are beautiful creatures (I would argue the MOST beautiful); cat haters are ugly (and in the case of this one, downright hideous). Fortunately the mistreated tabby survived, but it's a testament to the ugliness of this hag's soul that she first acted friendly toward it, then dumped it in a garbage can without even pausing. That's just beyond words.

6. T. Boone Fucking Pickens. He stinks up the Huffington Post slandering Chavecito, and now we know why. His real agenda isn't green energy, it's OIL THEFT!

7. Randy Fucking Kuntz. Constable is out of line; police chiefs SUPPORT our long-gun registry. And no wonder. Of the last 16 police officers shot to death in Canada, 14 were long-gun homicide victims. And the registry is consulted more than 10,000 times a day--BY COPS. It's an effective crime-fighting tool. Gun control IS crime control, people!

8. BTW, Shelly Fucking Glover is a wanker for the same reason as #7. It's bewildering that a woman could support abolishing something that's saved so many of her sisters from a grisly, untimely death.

9. Ditto Candice Fucking Hoeppner. Why do you two wankers hate your own sex so much? PS: Nice junket, Candy.

10. These fucking homophobes here. Seriously ugly wanktardery there, folks. God did not tell you to do it, you did it off your own bat and then claimed it was God. You are not God, no matter how much you might think you are (or claim to speak for Her.)

11. Rocco Fucking Rossi. Really, defending the homophobes' "right" to annoy a neighborhood? I hope that costs you votes, jackass. Nobody has the "right" to harass others! And if you want to see what "the people have spoken" looks like, may I remind you that the community came together to kick out the 'phobes from their quiet street? Yeah, that's right...gay or straight, NOBODY likes self-righteous wanktards, and no one thinks they have a right to disturb the peace with it!

12. Anna Fucking Ardin. Ain't sayin' she's a gold digger, but between that skeevy Wikileaks "scandal" and her own antisemitic fringe-right (not left!) leanings, there's just something majorly unattractive about her.

13. Alan Fucking Simpson. Oh, the social safety net--"310 million tits" and one big fat BOOB.

14. Michael Fucking Enright. Funny or Die? Definitely DIE. Should have stuck to filmmaking, nerdy boy--attempted murder does NOT look good on a résumé unless you're trying out for CIA covert ops.

15. Chris Fucking Young. Ever wonder why so many people have trouble finding Jesus? It's because he's hiding from wankers like this one.

16. Brian Fucking Williams. Dude, if you're gonna talk dick, do it on Chatroulette.

17. Stephen Fucking Harper. He thinks he makes the rules? Um, no, Stevie, you're just a bad employee of the Canadian public. You may also think you're a wit, but you're only half right.

18. Nathan Fucking Herbert. Stalking and lewdness: is that some kind of Mormon thing? Or is it a governor-of-Utah's-son thing? Whatever it is, your magic underwear isn't going to protect you from the consequences, y'know.

19. Joe Fucking Miller. Lisa Murkowski may be what you say she is, but what does that make you? My vote is on the box marked "wanker". PS: Pathetic excuse does not wash.

20. Rob Fucking Ford. Among all else, form letters--quite possibly his classiest move to date.

21. Peter Fucking Thiel. Want to cancel your PayPal account? Can't say I'd blame you if you did. It's not Teh Ghey, or even the conservatardery, it's the Coultergeist Cooties that're the problem here. Aside from the cognitive dissonance that goes with being both gay and conservative, there's this little conundrum: If you're gonna throw a HomoCon, shouldn't your guest speaker be somebody other than a rabid homophobe?

22. Ben Fucking Stein. Dull as tofu, and nowhere near as useful. But hey, at least he's fact-free! I hope he lets us know when he decides to step out of his own little world and rejoin the rest of us in the bigger one. And until then, I hope he STFUs.

23. Pamela Fucking Geller. Have I mentioned yet today how very loathsome this hate-mongering idiotess is? No? Well, consider it done.

24. Dennis Fucking Miller. Unfunny fratboy has been to one kegger too many. Sure does put the ASS in class, though.

25. This fucking racist middle school. Naturally it's in Mississippi GawdDAMN. But still--what the fuckity-fucking FUCK?

26. "Dr." Laura Fucking Schlessinger, AGAIN. She has a black friend! And a gay one! Big fucking whoop, so did Renee Fucking Baio. Must sure make them feel good to know they're just tokens, eh? I wonder if she tells THEM not to be so hypersensitive about other people's racism and homophobia, too. Because hey, she suffers from both, and if it doesn't bother her, why should it bother THEM?

27. Laura Fucking Ingraham. So hateful and dumb, she can't see the OTHER hateful dumbasses even when they're right under her nose. Because to her, hate and dumbassery are normal!

28. Michele Fucking Bachmann. You know you're a bad egg when you have to tell shaggy-dog stories to impress the voters, and you can't get the dates (or any other relevant data) straight. Someone please tell Ms. Batshit that the U-2 wasn't a German submarine (that was the U-boat, U being short for Undersea), it was a US SPY PLANE. One of them got shot down over Russia. Hell, Lee Harvey Oswald used to track them on radar for the US Marines from Atsugi! I bet she doesn't know any of that, much less how the Dorchester really went down. And yet she uses that wartime incident shamelessly for her own gain--and abuses it in the process. How does someone this smug and stupid even make it through school, never mind into politics?

29. Sarah Fucking Palin. She was at Glenn Fucking Beck's Wankfest in Washington today, and sure enough, some creep in the crowd decided it was the perfect opportunity to rock out with his cock out while she was up there squawking. How anyone could get turned on by that grating voice, I don't know, but it happened. They should both have been arrested for public indecency. (And the anonymous diddler should be thankful he didn't do it in front of the Fucking First Dude, who I hear has a wicked bad temper.)

30. Luis Fucking Bonilla. Sexual abuse and alienation of a teen: bad. Sexual abuse leading to teen pregnancy: worse. Sexual abuse of teen caught on tape: horrifying. All of the above, while presumably celibate and in a position of trust: GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL, YA FUCKING BASTARD.

31. Paris Fucking Hilton. Pots of unearned money + unearned fame = Shit Girl. When will the media learn to stop glorifying this talentless twat?

32. Rod Fucking Blagojevich. I don't know how he managed not to be convicted, but I'd say it's just more evidence of how crooked he is. His hair alone is worthy of a ten-year sentence. The jurors who failed to convict him are wankers too.

And finally, to Glenn Fucking Beck. Today was his big, bull-goose loony day--the national day of backlash by self-righteous whites against them evil, uppity blacks. With unmistakable fascist overtones. Of course this would never be happening if one of Them had not "invaded" the White House (thus tinting it a subtle, yet strangely becoming shade of coffee brown.) Let us now enumerate the ways in which this "reclamation" (which sounds suspiciously Civil War-ish) is a wank...with a little help from Charles, Bob, Zaid, Monica and anyone else who has written something nasty but true about him today. He usurped a day that was about equal rights, trying to take it over in the name of white supremacy. All that was missing was the burning cross and the hooded sheets. Frankly, Glenn, I hope your hemorrhoids burst...and that no doctor will be able to stem the hemorrhaging (or want to).

Good night, and get fucked!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)|

A little mood music, Maestro Ford...

And now, the story.

I saw on the CBC news this evening how they've brought up a hydraulic borer to help start the rescue effort for those 33 miners trapped 700 metres underground in Chile. A NASA psychologist is also on the way to them now, to make sure their mental health withstands the strain that lies ahead. There are concerns that some of the men are more isolated than the rest, because they didn't appear in the video sent up to confirm that they are all still alive; these "isolated" ones, trapped in a less than 500 square-foot space, are the ones most likely to crack under the strain of the long wait ahead. With some four months to go before they're free, it's incredible enough already; it's unprecedented.

But you haven't heard the worst of it yet. If you wonder how the miners wound up in such an awful predicament in the first place, you can stop wondering now and just read this:

The owners of the mine in which 33 workers remain trapped since August 5 have said that they don't know whether they can continue to pay the salaries of their employees.

Alejandro Bohn, one of the proprietors of the San Esteban mine, admitted as well that his company did not buy insurance for its workers, and lamented the economic deterioration of the company, according to the DPA press agency.

"Due to prolonged closure, we have experienced a significant economic deterioration and to date, we have not been able to remedy it," said Bohn. "The company is calm considering that there has never been a precedent for a catastrophe of this type."

The Chilean minister of mines, Laurence Golborne, reacted with immediate "indignation" to the declarations of the businessman, and said that the government would prosecute those responsible for the incident. "These declarations are incredible to me. I heard them and found them really surprising," said the minister.

Golborne added that the incident showed a "lack of concern for safety," pointing out that if there had been an emergency exit, the country would have been "spared this drama". "We can forget the possibility that the government will bail out this business, which has comported itself this way."

Translation mine.

Lax and shitty workplace conditions, and now this. No salaries. How are those miners and their poor families supposed to live?

You can really see how little has changed since Che Guevara and Alberto Granado wrote their respective angry analyses of the Chilean miners' situation. And how current Tennessee Ernie Ford's song is, not to mention universally applicable to miners throughout the Americas, whatever they dig up from the dirt.

If the right one won't get you, then the left one will...

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)|

Don't tell it to Chavecito's Venezuela. They just graduated another big class of new doctors...

...meaning that 90% of Venezuelans now have access to public medical care, up from less than 40%, which it was when Chavecito was first elected in 1998. In another year or two, it should be 100%. Chavecito really is the Tommy Douglas of Latin America.

But in case all that factual stuff about the abject failure of privatization (which is really a form of privation) bores you, here you go. The obligatory adorable shot:

Posted by Sabina Becker at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)|

...don't do this when you drive:

Officer Ross Gilbert said the driver, Colondra Hamilton, a 36-year-old Downtown resident, was sitting with her pants unzipped and a sex toy in her lap.

He said Hamilton told him she was using the toy while watching a sex video on a laptop computer that a passenger in the front seat held up so she could see it.

Gilbert charged her with "driving with inappropriate alertness" and having illegal tinted windows, according to the traffic ticket.

I always did find dark-tinted windows somehow sleazy. Way to justify that uneasiness, lady.

(thx Jezebel)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

...for a Beyoncé parody that's way better than the original:

Pride, not plastic surgery. That's the spirit, ladies!

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

A little insight, courtesy of Telesur reporter Alejandro Kirk:

The culprit, say miners and the family members of the trapped men, is the greed of Big Copper industrialists in Chile.

Working conditions have always been atrocious for that very reason in the copper mines, as Alberto Granado attested in his book, Travelling With Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary:

Of course the tour we had today only served to confirm the opinion we formed when we went round yesterday--that is, that the whole place is incalculably rich.

The countless pieces of machinery, the perfect synchronisation and the way they get the maximum use out of every element certainly inspire admiration, but this is eclipsed by the indignation aroused when you think that all this wealth only goes to swell the coffers of Yankee capitalism, while its true owners, the Araucanian people*, live in abject poverty.

The first place we visited was the gallery of what's called an open-pit mine. it consists of a number of terraces about fifty or sixty yards wide and two or three miles in length. Here they drill and place the dynamite, blow up bits of the hill, and then use universal shovels--a kind of bulldozer--to load up the dump cars hauled by an electric engine. From there the ore goes to the first crushing mill, where a dumper tips it out.

After the first crushing, automatic conveyors take the ore to a second mill and then a third. When the rock is finely crushed it is treated with sulphuric acid in large tanks. All this solution of sulphates is taken to a building, which houses the vats of electrolyte for separating out the copper and regenerating the acid.

The copper obtained by electrolysis is smelted in large furnaces at a temperature of 2,000 degrees centigrade, and then this torrent of liquid copper is tipped into large moulds dusted with calcined bone. It goes on into a unit that solidifies and cools it down almost instantaneously, and then electric cranes carry the moulds to a mill, which planes them to a uniform thickness.

All this is done with such precision that it reminded me of the Chaplin film . The impression grew even stronger when we tried to familiarise ourselves with various aspects of the technological process. Each worker or machine operator knows only what goes on in his section, and sometimes only part of it. There are many who have been working here for more than ten years and don't know what goes on or what gets done in the next section down the line. Of course this is encouraged by the company, which can more easily exploit them this way, as well as keep them at a very low level culturally and politically. The striving trade-union leaders have a titanic struggle to make the workers see the pros and cons of the agreements that the company tries to get them to sign. The company also employs other subtle means to combat the union.

The bloke acting as our guide, who is nothing but a filthy mercenary, told us that whenever there's an important union meeting, he and some of the administrator's other assistants invite a large number of miners to a brothel, thereby robbing the meeting of a required quorum. To give some idea of this character's mentality, it's enough to say that at one moment he was telling us that the workers' demands were excessive, and a little later he informed us that if the mine stood idle a single day the company lost a million dollars. With amounts like that at stake, this born slave dares to say that 100 pesos--a dollar--is an excessive demand. How we itched to throw him into one of the acid vats!

[...]

When we came down we met one of the members of the union. He explained to us that the company pays low daily wages, but attracts workers by holding out the illusion that the company store sells goods at lower prices than those of other establishments in the area. But it turns out that there is only a limited number of cheap articles, and essential foodstuffs are not always in stock, so the men have to buy them at fabulously high prices elsewhere from establishments that operate hand-in-glove with the company. Of course once a worker has settled here he stays on, hoping his demands will be heard and his needs met in the next contract. Time goes by, there's a wife, then children, and in the end, against his will and knowing he's being exploited, he remains until his eldest son takes his place, once he's been rendered useless by the passing years and privations--assuming he's not been killed in a blasting accident, or by silicosis or by the sulphuric vapours.

Afterwards, we went over the western part of the town, where a plant makes prefabricated houses. This kind of building could solve the housing problems not only of Chuquicamata but also of the rest of Chile if the technique were properly applied, with a proper finish, nicely painted, and so on. Here everything is done on the cheap, just to igve the workers housing that fulfils the minimum requirements--and sometimes not even that. Besides, they group the houses together in a distant part of town and don't provide any drains. Of course the Yankees and their lackeys have a special school for their children, as well as golf courses, and their houses aren't prefabricated.

We also visited the area scheduled to be mined over the next ten years, when the sulphide processing plant is finished. When we saw that they would get millions upon millions of dollars a day out of this area too (they are currently extracting 90,000 tons of ore a day) Fúser [Che] and I remembered that when we had read a book on Chile's copper we thought the author was exaggerating when he said that forty days' work could pay off all the capital investment. Life is certainly a great teacher and shows you more than a hundred books.

*Araucanians is the catch-all term for the indigenous peoples of Chile.

Fúser, or Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Alberto Granado's friend, writes more neutrally about the mine itself, but his brief politico-economic analysis of what he and Granado saw at Chuquicamata (in The Motorcycle Diaries) is as chilling as it is clear:

Chile produces 20 percent of all the world's copper, and copper has become vitally important in these uncertain times of potential conflict because it is an essential component of various types of weapons of [mass] destruction. Hence, an economico-political battle is being waged in Chile between a coalition of nationalist and left-wing groupings which advocate nationalizing the mines, and those who, in the cause of free enterprise, prefer a well-run mine (even in foreign hands) to possibly less efficient management by the state. Serious accusations have been made in [the Chilean] Congress against the companies currently exploiting the concessions, symptomatic of the climate of nationalist aspiration which surrounds copper production.

Whatever the outcome of the battle, it would be as well not to forget the lesson taught by the mines' graveyards, which contain but a fraction of the enormous number of people devoured by cave-ins, silicosis and the mountain's infernal climate.

Both of these Argentine travellers wrote their accounts in 1952, long before Salvador Allende finally won election (in 1970) as the first socialist president of Chile--significantly, on a platform that included nationalization of the copper mines. The atrocious conditions of the mines were already an old problem even by then, and as Che's account makes clear, the Yankee war industries--by that time, given to the production of nuclear weapons--had become a major culprit in the miseries of Chile. That same year, incidentally, Allende campaigned for the presidency for the first time, and lost. Considering what he was up against (the same problems that the miners' union leaders were facing), it seems hardly surprising that he had to campaign in three more presidential races before finally succeeding. By 1970, political consciousness among miners had apparently reached the necessary critical mass. But the mine owners didn't take the nationalization drive lying down, and three years later, Allende was murdered in the coup that brought fascist dictatorship to Chile for the first time in the person of Augusto Pinochet.

And yes, the coup was copper-colored.

At the overt level, Washington was frosty, especially after the nationalization of the copper mines; official relations were unfriendly but not openly hostile. The government of President Richard M. Nixon launched an economic blockade conjunction with U.S. multinationals (ITT, Kennecott, Anaconda) and banks (Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank). The US squeezed the Chilean economy by terminating financial assistance and blocking loans from multilateral organizations. But during 1972 and 1973 the US increased aid to the military, a sector unenthusiastic toward the Allende government. The United States also increased training Chilean military personnel in the United States and Panama.

Kennecott and Anaconda were major US copper-mining concerns in Chile. The Chuquicamata mine, which so infuriated Che and "Mial" Granado, was owned by Anaconda at the time of their visit. Chuquicamata's Wikipedia entry closes on a bland note that probably reveals something of its author's class viewpoint:

These mines were mainly self-contained and self-sustaining settlements. They were complete with their own cities to house the workers, their own water and electrical plants, schools, stores, railways, and even in certain cases their own police forces. These mines were extremely beneficial in an economical sense, for they provided steady jobs and a steady income for the nation of Chile.

Note the complete absence of mentions of the terrible working conditions, the poor pay, the company stores that fleeced the workers, who were forced to live in substandard, prefabricated housing without sewers, and who often made their way to the company graveyard at a shockingly early age. "Extremely beneficial in an economical sense" they may well have been, if Alberto Granado's account of million-dollar-a-day ore extraction is anything to go by, but not for the majority of those who worked there! As Che wrote in The Motorcycle Diaries:

Yet the guide, the Yankee bosses' faithful lapdog, told us: 'Stupid gringos, they lose thousands of pesos every day in a strike so as not to give a poor worker a couple of extra centavos. That'll be over when our General Ibañez comes to power.' And a foreman-poet: 'These famous terraces enable every scrap of copper to be mined. People like you ask me lots of technical questions but I'm rarely asked how many lives it has cost. I don't know the answer, doctors, but thank you for asking.'

Linkage added.

The aging General Ibañez was elected soon after that, but he didn't nationalize the copper mines. Nor did his policies do much that was actually felt at the workers' level, other than for one thing: he legalized the Chilean Communist Party, which was a leading force in the struggle for nationalization and workers' rights. That party would become a component in the Popular Front coalition that supported Salvador Allende.

Ironically, after Pinochet's copper coup, the copper industries of Chile remained nationalized (a process that had begun in 1969 under Allende's immediate predecessor, Eduardo Frei). But the appalling working conditions were never ameliorated, thanks to Pinochet's iron fist. His earliest military posting, not coincidentally, was to the mining regions of northern Chile, where his duties included squelching "communism"--that is, union organization among the miners.

Now Chile has a Pinochet sympathizer as president, one who no doubt is looking at selling off the copper industries or handing them back to their original Yankee dueños. And the mining conditions? Well, they speak for themselves. It's estimated that the rescue of these trapped miners will take another 120 days--four whole months. A fact which should argue strongly against privatization and in favor of serious reforms and drastic new workplace safety measures, but it's not at all certain that Sebastián Piñera will heed these dire warnings. After all, he is a businessman first and foremost, and his attitude is that all of Chile should be run like a business, even when that business is as blatantly inhumane as the copper mines of Chuquicamata.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)|

Thought you'd seen the last of Dubya when His Barackness kicked him oh-so-politely out of the White House, and hustled him and his minions onto that chopper to take him back to Crawford where he belonged? Think again. As long as there's a Bush family, there will be an evil empire of crime and greed. That empire is unbelievably vast, and its tentacles reach all over the place, sucking wealth out of remote locations and leaving the locals impoverished unless they fight back. And one of those places, as strange coincidence would have it, is CUBA--where the locals fought back successfully, and against which, it seems, the BFEE still bears a grudge:

The obsession of the Bush family with Cuba, and its determination to make life difficult for Cubans, begs the question: Is there some secret or "black hole" in the relations of the Bushes with this Caribbean isle?

In reality, there's no cat to let out of the bag, because the hidden skeleton left the closet some time ago, when there was an investigation and a recounting of the links between the Bush family name and Cuba, conducted by Marcelo Pérez Suárez, doctor of political science, of the Foreign Ministry of Cuba.

From one of his works, we draw the following revealing data:

George Herbert Walker, maternal great-grandfather of George W. Bush, member of the wealthy family headed by Prescott Bush, was a director of seven companies operating in Cuba since 1920. These were dedicated to the production of sugar, distillation of rum, and railroad infrastructure. They were called The Cuba Company, The Cuban Railroad, Cuban Dominican Sugar, Barahona Sugar, Cuba Distilling, Sugar Estates of Oriente, and Atlantic Fruit and Sugar.

These were merged in 1942 into the West Indies Sugar Company, which was nationalized in 1960 by the Cuban revolutionary government [of Fidel Castro].

In 1953, George H. Walker died, but his namesake son, George H. Walker Jr., the uncle of George Bush, took up the reins of those seven companies. That same year, George Bush, father of George W. Bush, entered the oil business and founded the Zapata Oil company in Houston, Texas, creating Zapata Offshore as a subsidiary.

In 1958, Zapata Offshore signed a contract to exploit petroleum deposits 40 miles off the Cuban shore, north of Isabela de Sagua in the province of Las Villas. This venture was cut short by the triumph of the Revolution in 1959.

However, even with the possibility of business and investments with Cuba ruled out, George Bush Sr. remained president of Zapata Offshore until 1966.

Zapata Offshore and its head, George Bush, are both linked to the CIA, as was shown by declassified documents from the US Secret Service. Also because the records of Zapata were destroyed. A good while after 1960, the Secret Service moved to protect George Bush when he began his political career and destroyed all the records between 1981 and 1983, when he began his term as vice-president. There were motives.

What is true is that regarding West Indies Sugar and Zapata, it is very likely that the Bush family, as well as being hurt in its business relations and investments in Cuba, may have maintained some "right" to reclamation after the nationalizations of the Revolution. Recall that many companies have continued to maintain these "rights" up to now, hoping to recuperate the properties or a higher compensation [than originally received], under the complicity of the government and laws of the United States.

Fletcher Prouty, an ex-CIA officer, confirmed in his 1973 book, The Secret Team, that two of the ships used for the Bay of Pigs invasion--the Barbara and the Houston--were renamed and repainted by Agent Bush in the naval base of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, before being sent to Cuba, and that his company, Zapata Offshore, was used as a front.

In summation, there is no "black hole" in the relationship between the Bush family and Cuba. Everything is clearer than water, and there is nothing hidden to investigate.

Translation mine. Linkage added.

Of course, if you've been following the BFEE in more recent years (as this site has), you'll already know that they've fallen on harder times since those glory days when they snapped up trouble-ridden Cuban corporations at fire-sale prices and proceeded to profiteer obscenely from the investment. Dubya's oil companies, Harken and Arbusto, were most notable for drilling dry holes, for losing money, and in Arbusto's case, for being sold, at a ridiculous profit, to none other than one of the Bin Ladens (another rich and powerful family, this one distinctly Saudi in character. Perhaps you've heard of them?) It's awfully tempting to put two and two together between that connection and 9-11, and a certain CIA daily briefing that Dubya--oddly, considering that he is the son of a former CIA director--brushed aside, not to mention how badly the US military, under Dubya's orders, flubbed the battle of Tora Bora (the one where a certain tall turban-man named Osama got away.) Don't you think so?

If you do, you won't have any problem seeing why Dubya strove so hard (and in vain) throughout his term to starve Cuba out. Actually, his old man came closer to it, which is why you may have seen that brief rash of Cuban boat-people during the so-called "Special Period" between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the mid-1990s, when the Cuban economy began to recover and the trickle of economic migrants ceased. That period of hardship eased, not due to foreign investment (for there was none), nor by any buyouts or reclamations of nationalized corporations (there were none of those, either), but by the Cuban people's pre-existing self-sufficiency drive, established in the wake of the Revolution. The Special Period deepened and intensified it, and Cuban ingenuity won that day.

The Cuban recovery happened during Bill Clinton's tenure--at a time when the BFEE, and indeed the entire US right-wing, was doing its damnedest to force that popular, and largely peace-minded, president out of office. Ken Starr and his panty-sniffing, pornographic impeachment drive failed. Even the Elián González kerfuffle could not spark the undoubtedly desired conflict that might have brought things to a head in Cuba. There was nothing for the BFEE to do there, and not later, either. Dubya missed his own window of opportunity when Venezuela struck up the ALBA treaty, with Cuba as its first co-signer. (He had struck out earlier, too, when his oily widdle coup against Venezuela failed in '02.)

Two rich Caribbean oil treasure troves, and he fucked up in his efforts to get them, as my mom would say in German, under his fingernails. That's gotta hurt. But it's quite par for the course; Dubya has the reverse of the Midas touch. Everything he sticks his hand into turns to shit.

Let's hope that no subsequent Bush gets into the Oval Office, or, in the event that one does, let's hope he fails as badly as all his predecessors at undermining the sovereignty of Latin America for nefarious BFEE corporate purposes.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 1:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)|

I would, in fact, call this simply shameful:

Canada's position on human rights issues is becoming harder and harder to predict, says Amnesty International's newly appointed boss.

Salil Shetty said Monday that Canada is now taking drastically different positions in areas such as torture and the death penalty where it has traditionally been progressive.

"Generally speaking if you talk to most Canadians, there's a big gap between what they believe Canada does and what the reality is in terms of government policy and actions," Shetty said in an interview.

"It's a G8 country, it's a major world power and it has produced so many leaders on these issues, so it has (had) a trendsetting or agenda-setting role."

Amnesty's new secretary general said it's hard to know where Canada stands on many issues.

"You could predict where Canada stood on many of the issues in the past and now you can't be sure," Shetty said before delivering a speech at the CIVICUS World Assembly, a gathering of civil society groups.

Salil, it's not so bewildering when you consider who's in charge of us here:

Just take the most noxious right-wing positions you find kicking around to the south of us, transpose them up here, give them a sweater vest and a bland non-accent, and voilà! Instant explanation for what's been ailing us up here in Beaverlandia.

Most of us are perfectly capable of grasping why Omar Khadr needs to be repatriated and stand a fair trial here. We're Canadian, we like justice. But Harpo is US Repug Lite, and he doesn't.

Most of us are in favor of refugee claimants, whatever their origins, getting a fair hearing from immigration. We're Canadian, we remember how many of us (or our forebears) came as immigrants and/or refugees. But Harpo is US Repug Lite, and he doesn't.

Most of us are in favor of freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. We're Canadian, and we cherish those rights. But Harpo is US Repug Lite, and he doesn't.

Most of us are in favor of basic human rights as set forth by the United Nations. We're Canadian, and we take pride in our long-standing record as UN supporters and peacekeepers. But Harpo is...

...well, you get the picture.

Harpo is un-Canadian, and it's time to haul him the fuck out of office. That is all.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

"Cultural insecurity begets its linguistic doppelgänger. The same is true of technical advance. In a world of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (not to mention texting), pithy allusion substitutes for exposition. Where once the Internet seemed an opportunity for unrestricted communication, the increasingly commercial bias of the medium--'I am what I buy'--brings impoverishment of its own. My children observe of their own generation that the communicative shorthand of their hardware has begun to seep into communication itself: 'people talk like texts.'

Tony Judt, "Words", in The New York Review of Books

Posted by Sabina Becker at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

...by the world's lamest rapper:

Every hip-hop meme is in there. Every. Single. ONE.

(Thanks to the tweeterriffic @gameandpc, whom you are hereby commanded to follow. Queen's orders!)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)|

This one just seems to flow, doesn't it? Straight from a sad place where we all have been at one point or another (yes, even you, the smug twit there at the back, pretending it's never happened to YOU...)

Crank it and sing along. You know you wanna.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)|