Music for a Sunday: You be the Moon, I’ll be the Earth…

It’s so hard to pick a single song, but here it is. I am loving this entire second album of theirs.

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May the Force be with you, Evo…

Oh my. What have we here? A trailer for a new science-fiction blockbuster? But of course:

And here’s the story, courtesy Aporrea:

“Bolivian Wars: The ‘Yes’ Awakens” is the title of the video published by the Facebook page, Sí Bolivia, an official page which promotes the modification of the Bolivian constitution.

“You, he, she, all of us who fight against the Empire, and who seek a better future: Join the positive side of the Force, the #YES side”, says the page, adding: “Say #NO to the dark side of the past, to backwardness, poverty and evil.”

Based on the success of the latest Star Wars film, Episode VII, “The Force Awakens”, Bolivians of the ruling party are calling for constitutional reform so that current president Evo Morales can run for re-election once more. They put together a video in which they show the leader as embodiment of the Force, and the opposition as “the Dark Side”.

In the two-minute clip, there appear scenes from the recently-debuted film, but with the face of Morales on some of the characters representing the Force. On the “Dark Side” appear ex-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada as Darth Vader, and ex-minister Carlos Sánchez as Kylo Ren.

Translation mine. Link to Facebook page added.

So, it looks like another epic chapter in the saga of the little rebel against the Empire. I quite approve of the casting decisions, particularly Goni as the Dark Lord of the Sith.

And no, I won’t be posting any spoilers. You’ll just have to wait and see it when it comes to an Internet near you.

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A happy holiday hootenanny

Sufi Muslim musicians play Christmas tunes. Just a reminder that Muslims too consider Jesus a prophet, and venerate him along with the rest. And that they, too, want peace on Earth.

Happy Holidays to all!

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Venezuela exposes Macri’s hypocrisy

Oh my. This is just golden:

Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodríguez holds up photos showing the “peaceful” demonstrations of the Venezuelan opposition during the Mercosur summit in Paraguay, shaming the new president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, who defended those demos in his speech.

Of course, the demonstrations in question aren’t peaceful at all. They’re violent guarimbas in which people were killed, Public Ministry buildings and public-utility trucks were set on fire by arsonists, and thugs menaced the public, impeded traffic, and even beheaded motorcyclists with trip-wires. Clearly illegal activity, and in no sense to be tolerated by any government with its collective head on straight.

But Mauricio Macri, being a right-wing extremist thug himself, thinks all this qualifies perfectly well as just a peaceful difference of opinion on the part of legitimate political actors. In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies: He would, wouldn’t he?

But here’s the rub: Just yesterday, I translated a piece from Telesur and Página/12, in which it was reported that Macri was putting out emergency legislation with the ultimate effect of restricting actual, peaceful demonstrations by the various Argentine social movements, leftist parties, and trade unions.

I suppose one can’t blame him for doing so. After all, he’s only been president-elect for a month today, and only in office for little over a week. And already the pitchforks and torches are out for him, because he’s planning to jam through a massive economic “reform” packet, with rate hikes here and service and wage cuts there. Not exactly stuff that sits well with the common Argentines, who’ve seen all this shit all too many times before, from the military dictatorship of the 1970s and ’80s, to the messianic reign of Carlos Menem. Every time a right-winger has taken the reins in Argentina, it’s resulted in disaster for those who actually WORK for their living. And the Argentine political, workers’, and social movements are all notably fractious, and not exactly slow to make their outrages known. So, of course, a crackdown on demonstration is not only understandable, it’s as predictable as the gunshots, tortures, and “disappearances” that followed the rise of the Junta after the fall of Isabelita Perón.

But here’s the OTHER rub: As much as Macri and his flunkies insist that their measures will only “regulate” legitimate protest and keep it peaceful, they also insist that Venezuela put up with a lot more from its right-wing than they are willing to tolerate from their left. And Delcy Rodríguez calls the smarmy little fucker on it in no uncertain terms.

The irony is tasty. So, too, is the Schadenfreude.

Somehow, though, I don’t think Macri is going to enjoy the really chewy bits to come.

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Posted in Don't Cry For Argentina, Economics for Dummies, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Huguito Chavecito, Human Rights FAIL, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Schadenfreude | 2 Comments

Argentina: New laws to govern protests rejected, along with economic measures

Ahem. A little music, Maestra, to set the tone:

Ah. That was lovely, even with the bit at the end missing. Now, the story:

The Argentine head of cabinet, Marcos Peña, announced on Friday that the Macri government are preparing a “protocol for social protest” to confront the complaints following recently announced cutbacks and rate hikes.

Peña explained that the government is seeking “predictability and clear rules” to define protests. “Protests are legitimate, but they must not impede free circulation,” he told the daily newspaper, Página/12.

For the secretary of the Interior Security Council, Gerardo Milman, the protocol will provide “more fluid channels of dialogue” between demonstrators and authorities. At the same time, it will offer “specific locations to influence” protests.

The measure also seeks to guarantee two rights, that of those who protest, and that of those who mobilize.

A group of political and social organizations and unions protested on Thursday in rejection of the latest measures implemented by the Macri government, which had barely completed a week’s rule, and announced an upcoming gathering for Tuesday to repudiate the economic measures.

Translation mine.

So yes, the honeymoon is definitely over for the Macri administration, and they’ve not even been in power a month. This bodes ill for them, though rather hearteningly for the people and social movements of Argentina. They’re not taking this repressive “free speech zone” shit lying down, and they’re not fooled by the government’s euphemistic rhetoric. That’s good.

BTW, if you’re wondering what the missing piece off the end of the song is, it’s a spoken bit where a creepy male voice says, “You ain’t seen the bloody trail yet. Ha ha.”

And yes, I think that’s relevant, too.

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Music for a Sunday: One bad banana

Since it’s getting close to that day, and there IS a real-life Grinch out there looking to make it miserable for everyone, I’m just gonna leave this riiiiiight here.

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Wankers of the Week: Ones for the Krampus

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Crappy weekend, everyone! It’s beginning to look a lot like Kissmyass, for sure. No, it’s not all snowy where I live; in fact, we’ve had flurries exactly twice, and both times the flakes were gone from the ground in no time at all. Wish I could say the same for these flakes. Alas, it looks like we’re stuck with them. And here they are, in no particular order:

1. Janine Fucking Turner. Have you ever wondered whatever happened to Maggie from Northern Exposure? If you have, here’s your answer. She basically turned into Sarah Fucking Palin, with extra daffitude and deep-dish dumbth. Honestly, even Maurice Minnifield wasn’t such a fucking space cadet.

2. Max Fucking Kutner. No, the majority of rape accusations are NOT false. What percentage are false? Low single digits, dude. And what percentage of men accused of rape have actually had their lives ruined by said rape accusations, whether real or false? Again: Low single digits, DUDE.

3. Kyle Fucking Kittleson. “Gays for Trump”, eh? Yeah, that’ll go well. How well? Well, about as well as it went for Ernst Röhm with Adolf Hitler. Of whom Der Donald is, I remind you, quite the admirer.

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4. Milo Fucking Yiannopoulos. And speaking of gay guys who lack self-awareness (as well as some healthy self-love), Milo Yeah-Nope has magnanimously (and unilaterally) decided that it’s okay to use homophobic and transphobic slurs. Next up: gendered slurs for women! Racist slurs for nonwhites! YOU get a slur! And YOU get a slur! Everyone gets a fucking slur! (Except, of course, for racist, sexist, homophobic, cis-gendered white guys. Because some humans are more human than others, y’know.)

5. Karl Fucking Rove. Yay! Unka Karl finally piped up again this week, after a long and awkward silence. And what he had to say about the Paris climate-change conference will make you want to burn everything with fossil fuel. Starting with Unka Karl himself. Because he can’t see past the end of his nose, let alone his life, and is such a fucking waste of oxygen anyway.

6. JoAnn Fucking Windholtz. Hey, everyone, remember her? Don’t worry, you soon won’t. Because this victim-blaming terrorist-hugger is now facing a recall vote, and will probably end up biting it. Ha, ha.

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7. Daryush Fucking Valizadeh. Oh, Roosh. Roosh, Roosh, ROOSH. Instead of an impossible laundry-list of criteria for your future wifey and/or baby-mama, shouldn’t you be looking for…well, anyone who’d be fool enough to settle for you in any capacity at all?

8. Harold Fucking Bornstein. Der Donald’s personal proctologist has spoken, and what he says about his patient’s health is…highly dubious. Especially the part about the BP. Nobody’s face gets that red on normal blood pressure, mack. And really: Healthiest presidential candidate EVER? Have you exhumed the corpses of all previous candidates for comparison? Well, HAVE you?

9. Billy Fucking Woodward. Shorter: Homeless women don’t deserve shelter, because UNHOLY SEX. And people wonder why abused women keep going back to their husbands, or why so many homeless women are prostituted? Y’all can stop wondering now.

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10. Theodore Fucking Shoebat. Uh, stoopid — you do realize that if all Muslims are executed in that “Christian supremacist” society of your whacked-out wet dreams (which will never come to pass, due to the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11), you and your dear old dad would be too, simply on the basis of past associations, right? RIGHT???

11. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. Oh surprise! The Pigman is a big, fat hypocrite when it comes to global warming. He “doesn’t believe in” it, because to do so would lose him idiotic redneck listeners — but he WILL let the US Army Corps of Engineers store sandbags on his beachfront property in the event of an inevitable climate emergency.

12. Carly Fucking Fiorina. Between the promise of anti-choice SCOTUS noms and the eating of doggie nom-noms, this one is done like…drumroll please…A DOG’S DINNER.

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13. Ted Fucking Cruz. Words: They do not mean what you think they mean. And when Inigo Montoya himself has to tell you that, you know that there’s only one word for you: ESTÚPIDO! PS: How are you even considered eligible for candidacy? HOW?

14. Ethan Fucking Couch. Finally, the little “affluenza” pisher is busted. Now, let’s hope the next judge he faces is not a nincompoop like the last one. PS: Aaaand he’s scarpered. Catch that punk!

15. Donald Fucking Trump. Seriously, creep, shut UP about banging your own daughter already. It’s not as if you aren’t gross enough without yattering on about THAT.

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16. Bill Fucking Cosby. How’s THIS for chutzpah? He’s now countersuing his accusers for “defaming his character”. Um, that would imply that he had one already, and an increasingly mounting pile of evidence would indicate that he has never had one. (And no, Fat Albert and Dr. Huxtable don’t count. They were FICTIONS.)

17. Louis Fucking DiNatale. Dude, this is Canada. No one cares about your stupid (and poorly written) Second Amendment here. In fact, as the country that escaping slaves fled to when eluding the slave patrols for whom said amendment was written, we’re kind of proud to have more sensible gun legislation than you. And anyway: What kind of lame excuse is “I forgot it in my wife’s car”? You were a sergeant major in the fucking US army, fergawdsakes. Presumably you’ve had a goodly bit of firearms training. Didn’t they teach you how to store your weapons responsibly when not using them? And would such an excuse have flown with your commanding officers? Idiot.

18. Hannah Fucking Hawkes. Nice self-righteous nopology for your shitty sexist family photo, lady. And nice internalized misogyny you got there, too. I suppose next you’ll be accusing people of having no sense of humor for pointing that out, eh? Oops, it would appear that you already have. Pity that the Internet will always remember you as “that idiot who could have said no to a sexist picture, but decided that she’d rather take the money”.

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19. Martin Fucking Shkreli. Oh gawd, HIM again. When will he stop wanking? When he stops breathing, I’m guessing. PS: Aaaaand BUSTED. Most unsurprising arrest ever? Yup. (And of course he has an OKCupid account. Fuckboys gotta fuckboy. And YouTube it while wanking on the guitar, too.) PPS: And whaddya know: He wasn’t very good at capitalism. I’m sure this comes as a terrible shock to nobody.

20. Sid Fucking Miller. HAPPY FUCKING HOLIDAYS, SID! And good luck getting up to Canada to try and slap me, you giant fucking manbaby. PS: Gee. Maybe this is why he’s so tetchy about a harmless holiday greeting? Very incriminating! Maybe we should be wishing him happy holidays in prison, eh?

21. John Fucking Key. Rape jokes, ha ha. Always SO fucking funny. Except when they’re not. Which is all the fucking time. Good luck trying to live this one down!

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22. Ben Fucking Carson. Troops on the Canadian border. Oh, ha ha ha. That’s a good one, Ben. Pull my other leg, please, it shoots hot buttered popcorn! PS: Aaaand THIS is why he should not be entrusted with the keys to the Oval Office washroom, much less the nuclear football. UGH.

23. Linda Fucking Harvey. LGBT-friendsly businesses are like WHAT? Uh, NO, you fucking idiot. You’re thinking of homophobic megachurches.

24. Conrad Fucking Black. Yup, you read that correcty. He actually thinks Der Donald is not a bad guy, because reasons. Which is a bit like saying Hitler wasn’t so bad either, because he had some “reasonable policies” and was nice to his doggie. Hey, even Jack the Ripper can look like a perfectly lovely guy if you cherry-pick carefully enough and avoid all the prostituted corpses — right, Lord Blah-Blah of Obscure Bus Station?

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25. Vladimir Fucking Putin. Is Pooty-Poot on drugs? Is he an idiot? Or is he just receiving all reports of US presidential candidates in extremely bad Russian translation? Because there is no way in hell that he could come to such an inane conclusion about Der Donald otherwise. PS: Get a room, you two.

26. Recep Tayyip Fucking Erdogan. Because the terrible truth is not “betrayal”, you dictatorial motherfucker.

27. Debbie Fucking Wasserman Fucking Schultz. Why the double Fucking? Because that’s how undemocratic and dictatorial she’s being by doing every underhanded thing she can to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the race. Which we now KNOW he’s going to do, because pretty much everyone is fed up with this Blue Dog, Repug Lite shit.

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28. Andrew Fucking Wommack. Hey, preacher? You’re not a gynecologist. You don’t know what causes miscarriages. Being “too emotional” doesn’t do it; if it did, all those women who used to throw themselves off cliffs in a hopeless effort to self-abort wouldn’t have had to bother, because their own inner anguish alone would have done the trick! But hey, at least you’re admitting that God is, in fact, the biggest abortionist ever. There might be hope for you assholes yet!

29. Joshua Fucking Wade. No, you are not under obligation, “as a Christian” or whatever, to carry a gun everyfuckingwhere you go. You’re just a dumb, delusional ammosexual. And as such, you deserve to be laughed out of the meeting.

30. Frank Fucking Pavone. Victim-blaming from an anti-choice priest. AGAIN. Don’t you have an altar boy to molest, or something?

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And finally, to all the fucking islamophobic idiots out there. From the world’s dumbest mother, to all those who would bomb the fictional city of Disney’s Aladdin, this week you guys really outdid yourselves with blind frothing hatred, xenophobia, and sheer imbecility. May the Krampus finally descend from the Alps and beat the shit out of you all.

Meanwhile, the wankapedia is going on holiday, so see all you wankerheads in the new year. Let’s hope I get fewer dumbfucks to list in 2016, eh?

Good night, and get fucked!

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Argentina: The honeymoon’s already over for Mauricio Macri

fuera-macri

“Macri out!” reads a graffito on a shelter in Buenos Aires. It’s a sign of the times for the new so-called president, who’s barely been inaugurated and is already facing calls for his resignation from an indignant, and very large, contingent of Argentines:

Thousands of Argentines marched to their congress today to repudiate the multiple measures taken by president Mauricio Macri during his first week in office.

The congressional plaza overflowed with demonstrators who reject the announced reform of the Law of Audiovisual Communications Services, better known as the “Media Law”, which the president plans to implement.

Just yesterday, according to EFE, the first demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo took place to defend a law which had become one of the symbols of the government of former president Cristina Fernández, who maintained a constant battle with the opposition press, headed by the Clarín Group, the most important multimedia corporation of the land.

One of the first decrees Macri signed after taking office on the 10th was to modify the Federal Authority of Audiovisual Communication Services, so that this organism depends upon the Ministry of Communications, whose head, Oscar Aguad, already anticipated that the “Media Law” be reformed.

“The media law must not be touched”, read the large placard which was hung before the congress building, and under it filed artists and political leaders who ratified the strategy of resistance to the Macri government.

The demonstrators carried hand-written messages or ones printed out on computers, defending the “plurality of voices”. They explained that they “do not want to be prisoners of those who paid for your [Macri’s] candidacy”, and rejected the “dictatorship of grand decrees”.

Rebellion against the new president grew in the most recent hours thanks to other decisions, such as the 50% devaluation of the Argentine peso, which came into effect this Thursday, and which will have a negative impact on incomes and buying power.

“Macri has already stolen 40% of your salary,” warned one placard, while others denounced a wave of layoffs in various businesses and state offices, or recalled that Macri has been on trial for illegal espionage, and that “the judges are not [Macri’s] employees”.

Other messages read “Fight for a return”, alluding to a possible presidential candidacy for Fernández in 2019, or shouts of “They haven’t beaten us”, and “It’s time to fight”, in self-defence against the Macri government.

Militants of the Front for the Victory, the Peronist party of Fernández and that of her late husband and presidential predecessor Néstor Kirchner, which they created, participated in the demonstration.

Translation mine.

So, just for all those who think a great wave of right-wing politics is about to wash over South America, here’s what’s really in store. Massive demos AGAINST right-wing politics, starting immediately, wherever right-wingers supposedly “won” an election. And no end in sight, until the right-wing dictatorship ends. Just as in the late 1970s and early ’80s, when Argentina was under an intensely pro-capitalist, anti-people military “government”…

If the Venezuelan opposition are at all intelligent (ha!), they’d do well to take note of this. And tread very carefully, because their own honeymoon in the National Assembly is bound to be even shorter…and a lot less sweet.

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Quotable: Mandy Patinkin on peace and fear

This was recorded in May 2012. How on Earth did I only come to see it now?

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Arrest order out for ex-president of Panama

Well, well. What have we here? A crooked-ass ex-leader under capture orders? Yes…soon:

Last Friday afternoon, attorney Carlos Herrera Morán presented an apprehension order against Panamanian ex-president Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal, who has been linked to a case of telephone tapping.

In the preliminary hearing, judge Jerónimo Mejía declared that Martinelli is a “rebellious defendant”. According to Herrera Morán, this means that the ex-president is “disobeying the orders of Panamanian tribunals, who are turning a deaf ear.”

For the moment, the court case is suspended until Martinelli appears in court.

According to Herrera Morán, the only way to get Martinelli to appear is a detention order by way of Interpol.

It is also known that the prosecutor of the case, Harry Díaz, will solicit the arrest of Martinelli.

Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Berrocal left the country on January 28, 2015, for his first legislative session in the Central American Parliament. Until now, his attorney and he himself have indicated that he is in Miami, Florida, where he remains in self-exile and uses Twitter to make his criticisms.

Translation mine.

Honestly, the only thing about this that surprises me is that it’s taken this long to put a request in with Interpol. Martinelli was Bhad Nhews from day one. And of COURSE he’s hiding in Miami…it’s where all the flotsam and jetsam of Latin America keeps washing up, regular as the tide.

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