Short ‘n’ Stubby: Booby prize edition

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Sabina Becker

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And today’s prize boobies are…

Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, for getting Honduras and Ecuador mixed up. Just because they both grow bananas for the Yew Ess of Ay, is no reason for a so-called foreign policy expert to flunk geography. Or to misspell “daft”, come to that, because a coup in Honduras IS a big deal to Hondurans and their friends abroad, and to handle it (or mishandle it) as Obama & Co. did, is daft as a Bush. At this rate, Think Progress will be called Stink Progress.

Rory Carroll, for also having Teh Stoopid about the Honduran coup. Well, at least he named the country correctly…

Olay and Virgin Media, in Britain, for badvertising.

The UN’s so-called human-rights “experts”, for not understanding the unsubtle differences between political prisoners, common crooks and corrupt judges. (The freed criminal was a bankster, and guess who paid the judge to let him go.)

The Miami Hairball, which is now asking its online readers to cough up cash to read its trash. Shouldn’t they first produce something accurate, informative–in other words, worth reading?

The Beeb, for providing a platform for murderous homophobes.

Congrats, guys, here’s your trophy…

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…because you SUCK.

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15 Responses to Short ‘n’ Stubby: Booby prize edition

  1. Manaat says:
    December 16, 2009 at 10:14 PM

    To be fair to the UN HR experts, I don’t think they called Eligio Cedeño a “political prisoner”. They said that his right to a free trial was being violated (I don’t exactly know the legal finding behind this … normally you can you be out on bail or whatever equivalent the Vzlans have, but in this case I think they argued that there is significant risk of flight, which is presumably true …)

  2. Sabina Becker says:
    December 16, 2009 at 10:19 PM

    In which case, no human rights were being violated by keeping him in jail until he was tried.
    So much for the myth that Chávez owns the Vzlan judiciary, at any rate…

  3. Manaat says:
    December 16, 2009 at 10:33 PM

    I don’t know the legal issues here, you might know more. Is there an automatic “right to a free trial”? Like, can’t a judge in, say, the US or Canada always deny bail if there is a significant flight risk? (I don’t think you need to convince anyone that he was a flight risk, since he does seem to have escaped)

  4. Sabina Becker says:
    December 16, 2009 at 10:41 PM

    Well, up here a judge can always deny bail to a clear (and wealthy) flight risk. Seems it happened with Conrad Black in the US too, if memory serves. So no one’s right was being violated. The right to bail is independent of the right to a trial in any case.
    What bugs me is that they claim this judge’s firing somehow “creates a climate of fear”. Um, on whose part? Crooks? Crooked judges? Certainly not ordinary, non-rich Venezuelans, who would love to see this assclown brought to justice…

  5. Manaat says:
    December 16, 2009 at 11:38 PM

    Or maybe because he has been in jail so long (his trial was ongoing, as far as I know) that there is some condition that the trial must end with a definitive sentence in a reasonable period of time, and that meant he shouldn’t be allowed to be jail, or something? There might be some legal issue here, that the Reuters reporter jumbled up …

  6. Sabina Becker says:
    December 16, 2009 at 11:55 PM

    Could be. Reuters reporters are so crappy these days, I wouldn’t even trust them with the weather.
    But at least he was getting a trial, not a summary execution.

  7. Anthony says:
    December 17, 2009 at 1:30 AM

    The funny thing about living across the pond from Copenhagen – there is a meeting in Valby, just outside of CPH, where Evo and Hugo are speaking later today.
    http://cphpost.dk/component/content/47744.html?task=view
    And I ain’t got money for a ticket. But at least there’ll be some pictures from right around my alley for FLFB. 🙂

  8. Sabina Becker says:
    December 17, 2009 at 8:55 AM

    And meanwhile, my home and native land is the butt of all the jokes, thanks to Harpo & Co. and all their lame excuses and toadying. Sigh…

  9. Manaat says:
    December 17, 2009 at 11:49 AM

    I was right. The issue seems to be that Cedeño has been in prison too long without the case going to trial. (Venezuela has a serious problem with shortage of lawyers, judges, bla bla and long time lags in these things are legendary).
    Rotters on the other hand calls Cedeño an “opposition politician”, which is silly. He is a banker who was seen as a boliburgues actually (he was close to Tobias Nobrega, who was Chavez’s finance minister in 2002-03, maybe sometime beyond); of course he changed tune as soon as he was arrested. He was arrested along with Gustavo Arraiz, who was recently sentenced to 6 years (he pleaded guilty). The investigation began in 2003, they were informed (“imputación”) in 2005, and arrested in 2007. (They apparently got dollars from CADIVI to get computers that they never brought in, but in Cedeño’s case there are some more charges …”obtención fraudulenta de divisas y contrabando agravado en la modalidad de simulación de importaciones”)

  13. Sabina Becker says:
    December 17, 2009 at 5:12 PM

    LOL at Petkoff blowing his stack. That’s all the oppos need, a crook among their ranks…yet another one. He’d fit right in, since he’s got that ol’ Puntofijista corrupto thing down pat! But no, he sucked up to the other guy and then got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and too bad for him that Chávez meant what he said when he said it was time to go after corruptos. And Teo-choro, who resurrected his own dead mother to sign himself a fat cheque, is upset over that. Too fuckin’ funny.

  14. Manaat says:
    December 17, 2009 at 5:28 PM

    Yeah, but the funny thing is how they agree in private that it is silly to call the Cedeño dude a “political prisoner”.
    The worst thing about Petkoff is that I never know what he really believes about anything.

  15. Sabina Becker says:
    December 17, 2009 at 5:31 PM

    I don’t think he believes in anything but money, myself…

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