Sexism in India: a what-if scenario

A short film in which a casually sexist guy wakes up one morning…and gets a truly rude awakening when it comes to gender equality. What if guys…got treated the same way they treat girls? (And what if they got periods?)

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Early Argentine election results: Scioli for president, no runoff

scioli-victory

Looks like the always fractious presidential elections of Argentina have given a decisive result this time around, with no need for a second ballot, at least where the nation’s top job is concerned. And the winner is…

Daniel Scioli, the candidate for the Victory Front (FpV), won the presidential election in Argentina today without needing a run-off, according to the MinutoUno news service.

After the polls closed at 6:00 p.m. local time, the wire service informed that the FpV aspirant had a more than three-million-vote advantage over his nearest rival, Mauricio Macri, of the right-wing alliance, Cambiemos.

The National Electoral Chamber stated that it would not give the first provisional results until 10:30 p.m. local time, but the media beat them to it by way of exit polls at all stations.

At the campaign headquarters of the Victory Front, the word was that no one would speak of results before 9:00. But the head of the Buenos Aires cabinet, Alberto Pérez, was more upfront.

“We’re satisfied by the extraordinary democratic day we’ve had, for the resounding victory of Daniel Scioli, and for the new governor of Buenos Aires province, who is Aníbal Fernández,” Pérez said, just after 7:00.

[…]

Aníbal Fernández, the FpV candidate for governor of the important province of Buenos Aires, also triumphed over María Eugenia Vidal, the candidate for Cambiemos.

The fortunes of 24 Senate seats, 130 in the Chamber of Deputies, 43 in the Southern Parliament, and the governments of 11 of 24 provinces will be decided in these elections.

Translation mine.

Scioli was running-mate to the late progressive president, Néstor Kirchner, whose widow, Cristina Fernández, currently occupies the presidential office. So in a way, this is just a roundabout passing of the baton. No doubt it won’t sit well with the gringos, or their vulture-fund “investors” who are still trying to get blood out of a stone nearly 15 years after the great millenial crash that followed on the heels of Carlos Menem’s disastrous economic “model”. For backgrounder into that, here’s a little Canadian documentary that’s always worth watching just for its own sake, but is especially relevant now:

Scioli’s opponent, Macri, would have taken things back to Menemism. A surefire disaster for Argentina, no matter what the IMF, World Bank, and bizmedia pundits say.

PS: And now El Telégrafo is reporting that there WILL be a runoff on November 22, and that the race was closer than originally reported. It being Argentina, all I can do is shrug and say bueno.

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Music for a Sunday: Let the drums do the talking

And with a pan-musical genius like Nik Kershaw behind ’em, they always have a lot to say:

Yeah, tell me that these babies don’t speak YOUR language, too.

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Wankers of the Week: Muftimania!

yada-yada-yada-shoah.jpg

Crappy weekend, everyone! Yes, I pulled it together, and pulled some wankers…well, not out of my hat, exactly, because they wouldn’t all fit in there. I just found these people all lying around, and lying their lying butts off. And here they are, in no particular order:

1. Bibi Fucking Netanyahu. You thought Holocaust deniers were historical revisionists? How about Holocaust abusers? Yup, Bibi is one, and he’s also abusing history. Turns out that Hitler was burning Jews months before he even met the Grand Mufti, the one that Bibi wants to blame for planting that demon seed in little Adolf’s brain. And the one that Bibi would also no doubt like to blame for all those rock-throwing Palestinian kids making life so inconvenient for the likes of him. When even Angela Merkel isn’t having it, oy, Bibi…put a sock in it already.

2. Kevin Fucking O’Leary. Right on time, even before Justin Trudeau is sworn in as PM after ten long years of national nightmare, up croaks a crapitalist raven of bode and woe, wringing his claws about all those sweet, sweet tax cuts that the rich will no longer get. Thus ensuring what, exactly? A brain drain that didn’t happen last time the rich had to pay taxes, either? Canada in fact had a net brain GAIN during the pre-Harpo era, crazy as it may sound. And all that without having to lure in rich “investor” immigrants, too. Gee, it’s almost as if smart people from abroad LIKE our system when it’s socially just!

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3 and 4. Joe Fucking Miller and William Fucking Briggs. So, brain scientists using transcranial magnets have proved that a belief in God is a trick of our temporal lobes, not proof that God actually exists. How the hell these two manage to spin it to mean that trans people can erase God from the world with magnets and eugenics, I do not know. I am not the Jackass Whisperer. And I don’t speak Gibberish or Feckin’ Eejit, people!

5. Cody Fucking Jackson. “Facebook heartthrob”, you say? Facebook PSYCHOPATH, is more like it. What else would YOU call it if a guy used social media to lure under-age girls, and then kept them prisoner, raped them, controlled every aspect of their lives, and even got them pregnant without a second thought? Well, let’s hope that the boys in jail find this child-sex offender all hubba-hubba, too, in the way they so often do.

6. Petra Fucking Laszlo. So, to recap: Not only did this fascist Hungarian TV camerawoman have the gall to trip at least three Syrian refugees who were only passing through, now she’s going to sue them, too! And she plans to move to Russia…which, BTW, is helping Syria take out the ISIL trash that’s causing all those refugees to run to Europe in the first place. Let’s hope Pooty-Poot has as many laughs at her expense as I’m enjoying right now.

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7. Paul Fucking Ryan. How fucking Randroid can you get? No paid family leave for the Little People. Only HIM. And just think, this numbskull wants to take Boner’s place as Speaker of the US House of Representatives? Whom does he represent, at this point, other than his own selfish self?

8. Daryush Fucking Valizadeh. Now that Roosh V has hit the wall (not that he was ever far from it, as he was a spectacularly unattractive man to begin with), he’s starting to get all moralistic and conservo-wankish. Yes, that’s right, one of the world’s foremost advocates of legalized rape is now claiming that same-sex marriage is the “degeneracy” that will destroy us all, and that he’s just the man to stand athwart it, throwing a hissyfit. Not sure what he expects to accomplish with it, but I know exactly what he’ll succeed in accomplishing: NOTHING, as usual.

9. Wayne Fucking Gretzky. So, it turns out that the Not-So-Great-Anymore One was “only doing Stephen Harper a favor” when he endorsed him. O RLY? Here’s what it really was: A favor to the tune of at least $50,000. Because Wayne-o never met a dollar bill he didn’t like. Especially since he started racking up all those illegal gambling debts.

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10. Doug Fucking Ford. You thought US Repugnican politics was a clown show? Hang onto your popcorn, ladies ’n’ gents…Druggy Dougie is thinking of throwing his hash-filled hat into the ring for leadership of our very own SupposiTories! Laffs and pratfalls galore, comin’ right at you!

11. Dick Fucking Cheney. Oh look, the Big Dick has a book out! And it’s all about the excuses he’s still making for all his fuckups, after all this time. Just shut up and die already, you vile old man.

12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. Tucker Fucking Steil, James Fucking Basile, Christian Fucking Guy, Kyle Fucking Hughes, and Austin Fucking Rice. Forget the Crips and the Bloods. And never mind ghetto. You want real gangsta? White southern frat boys are IT, y’all. And these five ganged up on a bro from another frat and beat the poor bastard within an inch of his life. Hazings are one thing, but this is murder. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out to be literal.

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17 and 18. Gwyneth Fucking Paltrow and Habib Fucking Sadeghi. Just in time for Breast Cancer Month, yay! A resurrection of the old “bras cause breast cancer” myth. Never mind that they don’t, never have, and never will. If they did, EVERY woman in the developed world would have breast cancer. And in fact, most never do. Oops! If you’re going to go that route, you could at the very least name the “toxins” that are supposedly responsible for all this carcinomic havoc, couldn’t you? Can’t we consciously uncouple from all this fucking goop, already?

19. Averil Fucking Macdonald. Actually, Perfesser, women understand fracking just fine. And that’s why they oppose it. But it’s clear that you don’t. Gee, don’t tell me it’s because you’re a woman, and you think with what’s between your legs! And no, I’m not talking about your vagina. I’m talking about what you find further back. Kindly get your head out of your ass and stop mansplaining to us. You’re a woman, and you should know better.

20. Steven Fucking Blaney. Yeah, getting rid of the long-gun registry and allowing semiautomatics, including those that can be converted to full-auto terror weapons, was a GREAT idea! And what could go wrong? Well, other than some extreme right-wing terrorist running amok in Moncton and killing Mounties with just such a weapon, I mean? And on YOUR watch, too. Man, am I glad to be seeing the back of the Harper Government™. And if the Trudizzle is smart, he’ll restore everything the Harpocrats trashed. And I do mean EVERYFUCKINGTHING.

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21. Martin Fucking Shkreli. Why do I get the feeling that the attempt to throw money at Bernie Sanders (who prides himself on being nobody’s corporate tool) was just a troll move all along? Oh, because now Sulky PharmaBro is threatening to throw it at a Repug. And we all know that THAT party never met a crooked, corporate dollar it didn’t love, love, LOVE. PS: Ha, ha!

22. Anibal Fucking Cavaco Fucking Silva. Why the double Fucking? Because that’s how fascist and undemocratic it is to ban leftist parties who don’t want Portugal to bow down to the EU and the IMF and thus leave the Portuguese people in the lurch. Portugal will be doubly fucked if this goes on any longer.

23. Gilles Fucking Duceppe. It’s hard to imagine anyone out-racisting Harpo in the last election campaign, but guess who did that? Yup. THIS GUY. Because the pure laine Québec vote can’t survive without a spectre clad in a niqab. So long, and don’t let the door hit you where your mama done split you, you fucking Nazi.

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24. Earl Fucking Cowan. Oh sure, Angry Old ConMan, blame the media (who actually ENDORSED them!) for the SupposiTories’ defeat…and not your own rudeness, racism and all-around shittiness. This was a defeat that was richly deserved, so SUCK IT!

25. Bartholomew Fucking Schumacher. Oh, so an oppressive dickweed trying to scare women with fetus-fetish porn is upset because a counterdemonstrator is trolling him with the truth? Gee. I’d feel a lot more sorry for him if he weren’t also a pervert who kept it all in the family when he tied up, punched, and raped a woman at knifepoint.

26. Ben Fucking Carson. So, some speech should be more free than others, eh? And of course, FASCIST speech should be favored over anything to the left of centre. Well, Ben, thanks for spelling out, most definitively, why you should not and never will be president. Adios, cabrón.

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27 and 28. Donald Fucking Trump and Jeb Fucking Bush. Either one would be a disaster as POTUS, and neither one, fortunately, stands a snowball’s chance of becoming it. And the way those two squabble alone is proof that neither one has what it takes to vacuum the carpet in the Oval Office…much less wipe their dirty shoes on it, as we all know they’re both dying to do.

29. Peter Fucking MacKay. Blah blah blah Conservative Party blah blah more inclusive blah blah blabbity blah blah. Stow it, Petey. You’ve already had ten years in which you could have done that, and what were you doing? Dissing Belinda Stronach after she dumped you (yeah, I wonder why, too), goin’ fishin’ (and getting your ass extricated by a helicopter belonging to us taxpayers), marrying a humanitarian-slash-beauty queen (and dissing women who work), and just generally doing every damn thing you could to avoid the question of why your party is so damn Anglo and white and male and Christian and blah blah blah. And since you’re officially retired from politics, why are you still talking like a PM in waiting — or the savior of a party that ought to be buried with a stake in its heart? Go give your wife a hand around the house already, and STFU.

30. Stephen Fucking Harper. Yes, kiddies, you just KNEW he would squeeze in (or rub out?) one last wank before leaving 24 Sussex to the exorcists. And it came during his concession speech, which sounded weirdly like a victory speech hastily rewritten (and probably was). No word about what he planned to do with himself after his crushing defeat by the Trudizzle Liberals. Probably because he had no such plans. He probably expected to just carry on where he left off as PM-slash-Führer of a more-racist-than-ever Canada, complete with Barbaric Cultural Practices snitchlines, and was totally unprepared for what came on Monday night. Then he saw the writing on the wall, huffed “Pooh!”, and flounced, leaving members of his own party to wonder WTF was going on. And putting the entire party in the awkward position of having to issue a banal press release instead of, you know, facing the press himself. But that’s not his job anymore, and he’s spent the last seven years letting the National Press Gallery gather dust anyway. He hates the media even when they bow down, on boss’s orders, to kiss his ass. And he’s determined, no doubt, that they shall not have him to kick around even though he thoroughly deserves it. Controlling, totalitarian, unaccountable to anyone for anything — so long, Stevie, we won’t fucking miss you!

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And finally, to the fucking numbskulls out west who think they can secede. No, you fucking can’t. Confederation is not going to be rewritten just so you perennial wankers can finally feel superior to Ontario — or Québec. If the Bloc Québécois couldn’t saw off a populous province, what makes you think you stand a chance? You’re sitting in a mostly-empty chunk of land, talking bullshit out of a mostly-empty skull. You are losers for a reason, and that reason is that you don’t represent a majority of Canadians even in your own patch of dirt. In more than a hundred years, you haven’t had a fresh or original idea amongst the lot of you. You just vote for the right-wingers because that’s what your great-great-grandpa did. You don’t deserve to win, and you don’t deserve your own damn country, either.

Oh, and another thing: Lay off Rachel Notley. She won fair and square, and so did Justin Trudeau. Grow up, and accept your defeat like fucking adults! You’re all as fascistic and childish as your boy, Wanker #30. And frankly, your defeat in both the Alberta and the federal elections looks damn good on all of you.

Good night, and get fucked!

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A few random thoughts on the election

trudeau-batflip

Well. That’s all over and done. It was a nailbiter for a while there. The dust has risen, and settled, and soon it will rise again. Let’s peer through that cloud while it’s still thin, shall we, and see what we can see…

First off, let’s acknowledge the undeniable. This election was yet another great Canadian throw-the-bums-out housecleaning blitz. We have a long and storied history of just such elections. It wasn’t so much about electing Justin Trudeau as it was about installing Anybody But Harper. It was very little about policy or substance, when you get right down to it. It was just about shampooing the parliamentary rugs, sweeping out the cobwebs, and Febrezing that lingering Harpo stench away. Canadians would have voted for a tree stump if it meant getting the trolls out of the PMO.

But hey! As a bonus, they got a young, cute, well-spoken guy, with an adorable young family and really nice hair, whose antecedents are a known quantity, and representative of the old “Two Solitudes” combined into one. His mother is an English Canadian, his father a Québécois. And he’s fluently bilingual and a perfectly integrated, clash-free mix of the two. There will likely be no rumblings about Québec separation on his watch, which will be a definite change from what his old man went through during his own two stints at 24 Sussex. Unless, of course, he really bobbles it up, and does it worse than his charmless immediate predecessor did. The “Orange Crush” of 2011 was not just about the undeniable charm of Jack Layton either, you know; it was about sticking it to the political establishment of Québec, be they Conservative, Liberal or BQ, and reminding them that they could all be replaced by another party if they didn’t put an ear to the ground often enough.

And that’s a lesson that it would behoove the Trudizzle to remember well. He too is, when all’s said, a member of the political establishment, and has been all his life. He has NEVER been an outsider to politics, and certainly not among the Liberals. When he and Sophie and the kids take possession of 24 Sussex after the Harpers move out, it will not be “just like coming home”; it WILL be coming home, period. It is his childhood home. He was literally raised in the shadow of the first Trudeau prime ministership. It just doesn’t get any more establishment than that.

And when Canadians get sick of what the establishment is doing to them, and feel it’s not doing enough for them, what do we do at election time? We clean house. With a vengeance.

If he’s as shrewd as I think he is, Justin Trudeau will bear that in mind, and govern accordingly. Yes, he got a majority this time, but it was not a majority just for him and his great head of hair. It was actually a majority of people who opposed the Harper government and all it stood for. And that means that eventually, he’s gonna have to walk back some bad decisions he made when he was still just a lowly third-party leader, when he voted for the same measures Harper & Co. were pushing. He’s gonna have to face up to his part in the passing of C-51 and S-7, the disastrous bills that demolished the right to protest and institutionalized old-order bigotry. The sort of old British Empire things we thought we’d left behind 50 years ago, right before Justin’s old man rode the wave of Trudeaumania into office. And shades of the Cold War things we thought we’d leave behind when the Berlin Wall fell. We are a democratic, progressive country; we are not a conservative colony. We do not want any Star Chambers, McCarthyism, or Jim Crow up here.

And right now, that’s what we’ve got. And that’s what we voted out.

Justin’s own role in the passing of those odious bills has been, for the moment, swept under the rug by the major media. But when it comes back to bite him — and it will — it’s gonna bite him hard. If he’s smart, he’ll repeal all that and apologize profusely for getting the wants and needs of his fellow Canadians so dreadfully wrong. He won’t just coast on his charismatic, “progressive” image if he knows what’s good for him. Sure, last night he came off sounding like the love child of Jack Layton and Barack Obama. All hopey-changey and earnest. He even evoked the century-old glory of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his “sunny ways”. That was mighty fine speechifying, and to be expected of a former private-school drama teacher. If Justin doesn’t want to end up getting swept out by the Cons (or the NDP, if they manage to miraculously reconstitute themselves under an actually leftist leader), he’ll stop walking on sunshine and put both feet firmly on the ground, and soon.

Because we, the voters of Canada, didn’t vote for him and his cuteness. We voted against our oppressors. And it’s past time for him to realize that and not become one himself.

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Na na na na. Na na na na. Hey hey hey. GOODBYE!

So, the media just called it for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, and it does indeed smell very much like a majority. I’ll analyze the meaning of it all later. For now, I just want to dedicate this song to Stephen Fucking Harper and his Fucking HarpoCons:

And may I say this much: You won’t be missed. Buhbye!

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It’s Election Day in Canada. Do you know where YOUR vote is?

cons-no-brains

Yes, smartass, I know it’s in the ballot box. But really. Do you know where to make your mark?

Having trouble deciding? Fine. I’ll help you narrow it down a bit.

First off, NOT under the Conservatives. I don’t care how nice the one from your riding is (and if there are still any nice, old-school “Red” Tories left, it would come as news to me, since Harpo’s done a bang-up job of purging them and replacing them with his neo-con CRAP party drones). Do NOT, under any circumstances, put an X in the Conservative box, unless you’re a complete idiot who LIKES seeing your hard-earned taxes going into a police state full of outright Nazi-like paranoia towards women in veils. Or you don’t mind seeing your job going to a chain gang in China under the illegally passed TPP. Or you’re dead keen on the boondoggle that is the F-35, a defective flying crate whose ejection seat can break a pilot’s neck. Or you think it’s somehow good for the Jews to support the unholy land of Israel, where it’s open season on Palestinians all the time since 1948, but especially so of late. And of Robbo and Dougie, it is better not to speak. Under NO circumstances are you to make a checkmark or an X under the Cons, unless you wish to be shunned by the adults, and laughed and pointed at by the kids. Or you really have a fetish for tar and feathers.

Also, do NOT vote Liberal. I don’t care how nice the one from your riding is, either (and I’m sure a lot of them are). They voted, as a party, in favor of Bill C-51, the warrantless police-state bill. They also helped to pass S-7, the so-called “Barbaric Cultural Practices” law that underpins a snitch line where you can report veiled women, men in turbans or fezzes, and other non-criminals for Living In Canada While Brown. Fascist Lite is not an adequate change from Fascist, capisce? And they’re quite bullish on oil pipelines and the conversion of Alberta into one big, tarry Mordor. So don’t be a moron. Be brave! Make your mark in a new square just this once, eh?

Green Party voters? Well, I’m not one; ironically, the Canadian Greens not quite green enough for me, and too corporate besides. Environmentalism is important; environmentalism done right is paramount. I would much prefer an eco-socialist party over an eco-capitalist one. But at least Elizabeth May & Co. are standing up on their hind legs against Harpo & Co. And she’s made it clear that she’s willing to form a coalition, if needed, to stop Harpocracy once and for all. So if there is a Green in your area with a good chance of winning over the other parties, by all means, back them. At least they can be counted on to work with the other progressives, and that’s always a Good Thing. ABC needs unity, and there’s been too little of that all around.

The NDP? Well, I’m no fan of Mulcair, as he’s a bit too close to Conservative for what used to be a real socialist party. (They even openly courted him at one point, which is Vhery Bhad Nhews.) The party is no longer Tommy Douglas’s baby, and that’s a damn shame. The emphasis has shifted from “farmer, soldier, laborer” to “tax cuts for small business” — never mind that the middle class, the backbone of small business owners, is shrinking like it’s got osteoporosis. Never mind, either, that tax cuts don’t create jobs. Too much Zionism in there, too (and sadly, NONE of the parties have a good track record when it comes to Palestinians). They could use some remedial Women’s Studies classes, too. I actually had to hold my nose when I voted for them at the advance polls last Monday. But hey. They did manage to become the official opposition for the first time ever, last time ’round. And they did manage to form a provincial government in hard-to-starboard ALBERTA, of all places. When even a longtime Conservative like Andrew Coyne (who, now that I think about it, is/was one of those old-school, good-egg Progressive Conservatives that Harpo did his best to drive to extinction) is voting NDP, something is in the wind there. Could it be change?

We do not know yet. But we are watching, and waiting for when the polls close.

Stay tuned.

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Music for a Sunday: One night in late October…

Fair warning, folks, it’s about to get awful drunk out:

This one goes out to all the Harperites hate-reading me and saying nothing. Probably because you all know that your boy is toast tomorrow, despite Robbo and Dougie promising to deliver all those Toronto votes…eh?

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No wankapedia tonight. Sorry.

Got a lot of gardening and other housekeeping to do today, folks. So no Wankers of the Week THIS week, either. With any luck, things will be back more or less to normal next week. In the meantime, enjoy one of my all-time fave songs.

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Festive Left Friday Blogging: Photo du soir

ecuadorable-evo-maduro

Three fabulous presidents, three fabulous ponchos. El Ecuadorable, Evo and Madurito put on the red stripes — a traditional Aymara color scheme reserved for weddings and wars — to jointly announce that they would be fighting climate change and defending Mother Earth at COP21. Go, boys, go!

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