News of the Restless

It defies the laws of physics, if I'm not mistaken. But shhhh, don't tell that to the AP:

Venezuela on Saturday accused 60 Colombian soldiers of illegally entering its territory, as tensions over Venezuela's alleged effort to aid Colombian guerrillas swirl.

Well, at least they got the "alleged" part right. It's an allegation, it's only an allegation, and in the end, an allegation is all it will ever turn out to be. But I'm still trying to visualize a tension swirling, and all I get is a headache. Definitely a bad trip. This is much easier:

Could we do that, please?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:42 AM | Permalink

Check out this story: "Rival demands Chavez clarify rebel links".

Then check out the photo they stuck on it:

The story is about pathetic, mush-mouthed Manuel Rosales, the guy who got maybe a third of the vote in the last Venezuelan election despite heavy financial support and cheerleading from Gringolandia. But as you can see, that ain't him. That's another US puppet altogether.

Still, it's not an honest mistake, but a definite Freudian slip. Aporrea reports that Rosales is awfully chummy with El Narco. According to journalist Jose Vicente Rangel, formerly Chavecito's VP, Rosales recently attended the Festival de Vallenato in the paramilitary-controlled region of Valledupar, Colombia, and was seen leaving with El Narco.

What do you suppose they were up to? Just kinky sex, or something much more nefarious?

BTW, very nice of the AP not to report what's really going on in the Venezuelan opposition. They are in fact leaderless and very much at sea. They don't even need Chavecito to make them loco; they just are.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:19 AM | Permalink

You know the brotherhood of humankind is in big trouble when the Moonie-owned UPI service can't even spell "brother" correctly.

So, what is a "borther"? Animal, vegetable or mineral? Perhaps it's extraterrestrial and plans to assimilate us? (No, wait, that would be Scientology. With the Moonies, the ass-imiliation is strictly terrestrial in nature.)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:07 AM | Permalink

Cue up the banjo music. Here comes some inadvertent hilarity from a party that once marched to war on Iraq in lockstep.

First, Sen. Lindsey Graham, on Face the Nation, claiming a "breakthrough in Baghdad" thanks to Dubya's "surge":

Continue reading "Headline Howler: Dueling Republicans" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:05 PM | Permalink

No matter how tense the official occasion (in this case, Argentine president Cristina Kirchner's recent visit to Venezuela, during the days when Colombia attacked and then menaced Ecuador), Chavecito knows how to lighten things up and make everybody go awwwwwwww.

Oh, and did you know he brokered the peace at the summit that ensued? That's pretty awwwwww-inspiring, too.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:10 AM | Permalink

Chavez irks Colombia by defending rebels

Of course, we all know that it's not Colombia that's irked. Colombia is just relieved and grateful that two hostages are safe. It's Alvaro Uribe and his paramilitary pals who find it irksome. And they're not so much irked about Chavecito's less-than-unkind words about the FARC, I'm sure, as they are about Operation Emmanuel finally meeting success.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:02 AM | Permalink

Everybody sing! "Once I was the King of Spain, now I eat humble pie..."

Meanwhile, look who else is munching a hearty slice of homebaked humble goodness:

Continue reading "King eats humble pie" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:23 AM | Permalink

Ouch!

Fidel Castro broke two weeks of silence Sunday, applauding his close friend Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for having "leveled devastating criticisms at Europe" during a summit of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

In a brief essay published on the front pages of state newspapers, the ailing 81-year-old Castro also praised speeches by leftist presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Eva Morales of Bolivia during the Ibero-American summit, which wrapped up Saturday in Santiago, Chile.

Emphasis added.

Please hold the "Don't Cry For Me Argentina"--we don't want to get his country wrong, too.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 05:06 PM | Permalink

I just watched the CBC Sunday Report, and I could swear I was watching FUX Snooze. Only this time it was Evan Solomon instead of Bill O'Reilly pissing me the hell off.

Continue reading "Headline Howler: CBC commits its own "Misplay of the Week"" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Well, I guess if he calls himself ugly, it must be okay for Reuters to do it too. (The "quotation marks" make it all right, you know.)

Hugo Chavez calls himself ugly and his looks earned him the nickname "Goofy" in the military, but the president's image is changing -- he is now considered one of Venezuela's sexiest men.

A poll said on Thursday the fifth-most desired man is Chavez, whose large nose, protruding lips, forehead mole and gap in his front teeth are easy fodder for caricature artists in a South American nation obsessed with beauty.

Continue reading "Headline Howler: Who you callin' ugly?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:47 PM | Permalink

The headline:

Centrist claims win in Guatemala

The howler:

Centre-left candidate Alvaro Colom has declared victory in Guatemala's presidential election with the count nearly complete.

With results from 95% of polling stations counted, Mr Colom had a lead of 5% over his right-wing rival Otto Perez Molina.

Continue reading "Headline Howler: Why is the Beeb pushing "centrism"?" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 08:06 PM | Permalink

Mary Mapes's article in the Huffington Post is a riveting read--not only because it exposes the cowardice inherent in the corporate news world, and not only because it exposes the scum-suckers that populate Rightard Blogistan, but also because of a single sentence that made me want to beat my head against a wall.

Here it is:

In retrospect, I think the real problem with this story is that it ran three years too early.

Continue reading "Headline Howler: Too little, too late, too bad!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:49 AM | Permalink

Poor Yahoo News. They're so confused. On the one hand, they report that "Dean leaves Mexico relatively unscathed"; on the other, "Hurricane robs Maya of vital fruit trees".

What are we to make of this, other than that, as usual, Mayan people don't count for a whole lot in Mexico?

(See also the un-starlike treatment Rigoberta Menchu--Mayan, activist, Guatemalan presidential candidate and Nobel prizewinner--recently got there. Ouch.)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 02:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Courtesy of one "Douglas A. McIntyre", a little piece of absolute hogjaw twaddle:

The prevailing wisdom is that oil prices will move down. They have already dropped from over $78 to $72, and most observers think that is only the beginning. Troubled financial markets and the potential of a slowing global economy should being demand down.

Don't tell the president of Venezuela, nut job Hugo Chavez any of that. He wants the world to believe that he can control the price of crude, which is only partially true. According to Reuters: "I've always said that oil prices are headed straight to $100 per barrel," Chavez said during a televised speech. His argument is simple. Supplies are dwindling and consumption is still going up.

Continue reading "24/7 Wall St. bullshit" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 06:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've gotten so much crapaganda from the lamestream media in my inbox lately. All of it about how the Venezuelan opposition is feeling persecuted lately.

Um, you might want to start learning how to spell PROSECUTED, lamestreamers, because anyone who supported the April 11 coup by showing up at Miraflores the next day to support the illegal "provisional government" of Pedro Carmona--and maybe make money or get jobs off it--is definitely complicit in high treason and should therefore NOT be eligible for US citizenship. Let alone of a preferential fast-track variety while real refugees are turned away. No, the only asylum these people deserve is the mental kind, because their thinking is clearly delusional. It's pretty obvious to anyone not mentally impaired that the coup was not democratic but antidemocratic--every democratic institution was declared null and void for two days, and every freely elected official's legal status was blatantly disregarded. Many elected Chavistas feared for their lives and had to go underground or be "arrested" in what amounts to REAL persecution. (And they didn't flee on luxury yachts to Curacao, either.)

And as a glance at the timeline of that coup will clearly show, the entire thing was all about money, money and more money. (It will also show that the army, still under Chavez's orders, took pains not to use violent measures against the opposition even when it was most justified in doing so.)

But then again, being lamestream, mainstream US media people just don't grasp little nuance-y things like that. Nor will they give you an honest look at the "democratic" Venezuelan opposition. They much prefer to reprint whatever PR bullshit comes into their office over the wires. It saves them having to report and do any digging of their own, you see. (And it also saves them from all risk of having to go off the message the State Dept. wants Americans to get.)

So of course, I figured Chavecito must be doing something right again, and indeed he is. But you have to be able to read Spanish, and keep your eye on oil and money, to know just how right. So, with no further ado, here's a little something from Aporrea:

Continue reading "Why they're howling for Chavecito's blood" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

No shit--this really happened!

An opposition student leader named Stalin Gonzalez (I'm not making this up--that is his real name!) accuses Hugo Chavez of being a "right-wing military". He also thinks his infamous namesake was a "leftist". Um, that would come as a considerable shock to the original Left Communists, whose democratic stance Chavecito greatly admires (and often cites), and who would probably see that Stalin quite differently, especially in light of his supplying the Nazi war machine in the early days of WWII. (His famous purges and blatant nationalism would only have confirmed his identity as being of the far right wing of the Communist Party.)

Continue reading "Stalin calls Chavez "right-wing"" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 02:15 AM | Permalink

Screen grab courtesy of Raw Story.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:44 PM | Permalink

But other than that, who's counting?

Memo to CNN: You can call it Vietraq or Iraqnam if you like. I certainly do.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Only this time, it's the doing of the ChuckleNuts Network:

US broadcaster CNN has apologised after mistakenly putting the name of US Senator Barack Obama as a caption on a story about Osama Bin Laden.

An advertisement for a feature about the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader carried the caption "Where's Obama?" over images of Bin Laden.

CNN has apologised for "a very bad typographical error".

Continue reading "Headline Howler: A slip-up worthy of FUX...er, FOX!" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 10:57 PM | Permalink

Finally, the greatest source of shame for India's men is addressed!

The only question now is, who's gonna be caught buying THESE?

Posted by Sabina Becker at 08:57 PM | Permalink

Compare and contrast...

The always reliable Venezuelanalysis: "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Advances Towards Elections Without a Rival". (Note that a handful of opponents does not a rival equal, since Chavez is pulling a minimum of 55% of the poll respondents, a full 35% ahead of all his declared opponents combined.)

Versus the not-so-reliable Los Angeles Times: "In Venezuela, Chavez's Rivals Plan a Team Effort".

Giggle...

Continue reading "Headline Howler: The LA Whore Times reveals its clue-challenged side" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:19 AM | Permalink

(AP photo.)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 02:41 AM | Permalink

How's this for stupid, from the AP's Mark Stevenson:

"NEWS ANALYSIS: Leftist tide may be ebbing"

Conservative Felipe Calderon's apparent victory could signal that the leftist tide sweeping Latin America has reached its high-water mark, as voters frightened by the radicalism of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez seek refuge in more mainstream ideas across the region.

That trend has emerged with Mexico's presidential vote count Thursday, the setback dealt to Bolivian President Evo Morales in a referendum Sunday, and Peruvian moderate Alan Garcia's victory over Chavez ally Ollanta Humala last month.

Intolerance, confrontation, messianic attitudes and stridency — once staples of Latin America's left — are proving less attractive than leaders who can provide stability and strengthen historically weak institutions, like the separation of powers, independent central banks and judiciaries.

Continue reading "Headline Howler: The "ebbtide" that ain't" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 01:14 AM | Permalink

Caracas isn't famous for its urban beauty spots. But then again, we haven't heard nearly enough about its Bolivarian murals...such as this one:

Continue reading "Festive Left Friday Blogging: One gorgeous mural" »

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:00 AM | Permalink

"FBI probes Nuclear Reactor Hole".

Please, do NOT use your tongues, fellas.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 11:48 PM | Permalink

...no matter how hard you try:

Is someone sending the Big Dick a subliminable message?

(Yes, it's real. And it comes courtesy of Reuters.)

Posted by Sabina Becker at 12:23 AM | Permalink

Seen on the Beeb.

And considering that the Pak-Afghan border region (both sides of it) is a notorious breeding ground for terrorism, and that the Taliban would never have gotten anywhere without Pakistani support (particularly from dictator-president Musharraf)--well, that headline is just unfortunate on so many levels.

But then again, considering how much Bush has benefited from terrorism--maybe his praise isn't so surprising after all.

Posted by Sabina Becker at 06:02 PM | Permalink