Burusas is busted!

burusas-busted

Manuel Rosales, in the striped shirt, is led off a plane to face arrest upon arrival in Venezuela.

Well, looky-looky. What have we here? Looks like one of Chavecito’s old enemies (and losing would-be rivals for the presidency) is finally daring to show his cowardly face in Venezuela again. Of course, he’s probably going to be showing it mainly from behind bars for some time, as he’s been wanted on various outstanding arrest warrants for the last six years. Here’s the story, via Aporrea:

The former mayor of Maracaibo, Manuel Rosales, who has had outstanding warrants with Venezuelan justice for six years, arrived on Thursday afternoon at La Chinita International Airport, from Aruba, and was immediately detained by SEBIN officers, according to Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) party director Diego Scharifker, via his Twitter account, @DiegoScharifker.

The UNT party president arrived on Laser Airlines flight QL 1981, accompanied by parliamentary deputies Enrique Márquez and William Barrientos. The flight was to depart at 3:00 pm, but Queen Beatrix International Airport informed that the flight was delayed. Military police were located around the terminal from the wee hours of the morning.

Among the persons awaiting Rosales’s arrival were his wife, Eveling Trejo, and former governor Pablo Pérez; the UNT directorate were also on site. Pérez stated: “I’m not going to create false hopes. The Prosecutor’s office indicated that he will be detained on arrival. But what we would like is if they let him go to Calle 72.”

“There is an arrest warrant out for him; if he arrives, he will be taken into custody,” said Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Díaz to the private TV channel Televen. The head of the Public Ministry maintained that Rosales, 62 years old, “will be guaranteed his rights”, but emphasized that “he will be apprehended immediately when he arrives in country.”

Last Friday, from an undisclosed location, Rosales, the former mayor of Maracaibo (in the western Venezuelan state of Zulia), announced that he would return to Venezuela after an exile of six years.

“We will arrive in La Chinita Airport next Thursday, October 15. I will be setting foot on Venezuelan soil come hell or high water, in the face of threats, in the face of everything, because the struggle is for the people and for history and for the Venezuelan homeland,” Rosales stated.

His speech was projected on a giant screen in Calle 72, and watched by a few dozen people gathered by UNT, which Rosales founded.

Translation mine.

Of course, we have to read between the lines a little here. When Burusas — that’s his nickname — talks about a “struggle”, he’s not actually talking about THE struggle in Venezuela, by Bolivarian socialists against poverty and dependency and the menaces of the empire to the north. No, he’s talking about putschism and illegal attempts to halt said struggle. Because, you see, these guys can never seem to get themselves elected. They have a problem with a little concept called Popularity. Like all of the Venezuelan opposition, he’s speaking with a lot of unintended irony, and mainly from his ass.

But hey! At least this time, he managed to do it without mangling any common folk sayings, as he’s normally wont to do. Maybe his time off from active politicking has improved his speechifying skills? Let us pray.

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Posted in El Predicto Speaks..., Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Law-Law Land, Schadenfreude | Comments Off on Burusas is busted!

Whoa Canada!

A tale of environmental horror and police-state paranoia, set right here in the Great North. Pull up some frozen lasagna and watch this, folks.

(Courtesy Shit Harper Did.)

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Posted in Barreling Right Along, Canadian Counterpunch, Cops Behaving Badly, Environmentally Ill, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Free Trade, My Ass!, Human Rights FAIL, If You REALLY Care, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Isn't That Racist?, Merry Old England, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Sick Frickin' Bastards, Spooks, Teh Injunz, The War on Terra, The WTF? Files, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off on Whoa Canada!

Happydance time!

ariel-happydance

Yes, folks, I’m back on and with a working ‘pute! The fairies came through for me in a big way, and that’s no lie — I really do have ’em. Stay tuned for more blogging soon while I get the hang of this holy-crap-everything-really-works-again thang.

ETA: This scene. I loves it.

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Technical difficulties…again.

test-pattern

Please do not adjust your ‘pute.

Yes, I know…it’s been awhile. And it’s gonna be awhile longer. My dear old PowerBook G4 is slowly dying on me, and just typing this is taking me a dog’s age. Help is on its way, but it’s going to take some time getting here. So there won’t be much blogging in the meantime. Please sign up for the RSS feed if you want to know when things get back to normal.

And in the meantime, please enjoy this lovely test pattern with my compliments.

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German women launch new anti-prostitution campaign

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Huschke Mau, the formerly prostituted German woman whom you may remember from my “Dear Madame Minister” post awhile back, has been busy lately. She’s banded together with some like-minded colleagues from the political and social-work spheres, and together, they’ve formed a new group aimed at helping women to exit prostitution. Die Welt interviewed them to find out what they’re doing, and why:

Lobbyists of the prostitution industry love to swear by their ideal image of the free and self-determined whore, who provides her quasi-therapeutic services with pleasure, and who provides life help on the side.

For 90 percent of all prostitutes in Germany, however, another reality holds true. They need to service at least seven johns a day just to pay for their rent and food. They get degraded, abused, sometimes even tortured. And the vast majority of them do their job not freely, but out of material necessity or because they were forced to — by pimps, acquaintances, even their own families.

Whore, a normal job? “I know of no job in which it’s normal to be abused every day, in which mental harm is an occupational hazard, and gives men the feeling that it’s hot to degrade women,” says Huschke Mau.

She prostituted for ten years; the “voluntarily”, she puts in quotation marks. Three and a half years ago, she exited, with great difficulties. Now she’s the star witness of the scene for journalists, and tries to explain how prostitution is not a job like any other.

Along with Stuttgart social worker Sabine Constabel, and unionist Leni Breymaier, she campaigns for an exit from prostitution — and for the newly founded group, Sisters e.V., which will accompany [exiting] prostitutes along the way to a new life.

Counseling services to help women exit prostitution are still much too rare, says Sabine Constabel, who has been working with prostituted women for 25 years. “A woman who wants to exit is no happy sex worker. She’s ashamed, she’s disgusted with herself, she takes painkillers daily because her genitals hurt, or she does hard drugs because she just couldn’t take it anymore otherwise. We want to make these women a concrete offer.”

Sisters is to be the cornerstone of a network of volunteers helping exiting women on their way into a life outside of prostitution. For that, above all, Constabel emphasizes engagement by civil society. “I’ve given up all hope that political regulation can protect women,” she says. For that, the planned prostitute-protection law will do little to change things; it includes a registration requirement and regular counselling for the prostituted.

Leni Breymaier says that the real scandal is that Germany has long been Europe’s bordello. “For me, it’s not about morality, but about human rights.”

The picture painted by the two Sisters representatives is altogether different from what is still being presented to the public. 80 to 90 percent of the women come from foreign countries, says Constabel; most recently, from Romania above all. Some were sent by their own families after being told that one can earn enough money through sex in Germany to feed entire families at home. Hardly anyone cares what price the women pay for that.

And what’s up with those who so self-assuredly call themselves “sex workers”? “Half of them are dominatrices, and the other half are madams,” says Huschke Mau, the exited woman. “This pro-sex lobby is not representative for us.” The vast majority of prostitutes, by contrast, have stories much like her own: Violence and abuse in their own families, and the resulting sense that they are only good for sex and nothing else. “I have never met a single prostitute who hasn’t suffered violence,” says Mau.

Whether the planned prostitution law can provide help in exiting is doubtful for the Sisters activists. It still follows the demands of the prostitution industry lobby, according to Constabel. At least a hike in the minimum age from 18 to 21 would have made some sense. But this demand failed. The draft proposal, by family minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD), is still before an interdepartmental committee.

Breymaier, the SPD deputy chair for Baden-Württemberg, is also wrestling with the law. “But anything’s better than the law we have right now. We’re going in the right direction, but of the 100-metre dash we have before us, we’ve only put five behind us.” Most preferable, the women have made more than clear, would be a world without prostitution.

That’s a vision that the sex lobby naturally doesn’t share. The “Hamburg Prostitution Advice” group invited the public to a “Second Hamburg Culture Stroll”, in order to “get to know everything about the topic of sex work in St. Georg — with workplace tours from an hourly hotel to an S/M studio to an exclusive nightclub.” Afterwards, at a question-and-answer session with sex workers, one can then “relax over coffee and sweets” and quiz the experts “in peace about everything you’ve always wanted to know about sex work.”

Welcome to the parallel universe.

Translation mine.

Somehow, I don’t think that info-stroll will include the inmates of the megabordellos. For one thing, a lot of them are foreigners, who can’t speak much German beyond negotiating a transaction, and who in any case are probably much too busy trying to pay the extortionate costs of room and board at the hooker-hotel to have much to do with this Happy Hooker lobby group. For another, even if they could speak fluent German, or talk at length about their work, they’d not have much nice to say. After all, they have to service at least seven johns a day just to break even. Little wonder, then, that the “stroll” will be limited to the “sex work” lobby’s preferred domain of hourly hotels (used by better-paid call girls, not lowly flat-rate brothel prostitutes), S/M “studios” (remember, half the lobbyists are dominatrices) and fancy-pants sex clubs. After all, it wouldn’t do to sicken any prospective clientele — or Amnesty-style supporters — with the shabby truth.

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Posted in Confessions of a Bad German, Crapagandarati, Drrrrruuuugs, EuroPeons, Filthy Stinking Rich, Human Rights FAIL, Isn't It Ironic?, Law-Law Land, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off on German women launch new anti-prostitution campaign

Music for a Sunday: A west-coast strut that’s sweet as molasses

Actually, when I woke up today, my right eye was swollen almost shut from a bad rash that cut through my eyebrow. I thought it was stuck shut with that goop that’s been oozing out of it, but nope…it’s just a garden-variety allergic reaction that’s got it all blistery looking, and it looks worse than it feels. Mostly, it’s just puffy and kind of heavy and hard to keep the eye open. So I’m kind of bullish on those cheap sunnies today, too.

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Wankers of the Week: Upper Class Pigfuckers

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Crappy weekend, everyone! And a crappy Equinox to one and all. Fall is upon us, and so are multicolored leaves, pumpkin-spice-flavored everything…and oh yeah, the one thing that never changes with the seasons: WANKERS! And this week, in no particular order, they are:

1. David Pig-Fucking Cameron. Yes, kiddies, that’s right. First crack out of the box, a special distinction just for His Nibs. Who stuck his nib in the mouth of a dead pig during some kind of creepy initiation rite at Oxford. One that makes the rumors of the Skull and Bones initiation seem mild by comparison. Is this what it takes to be a global leader of the 21st century? A willingness to stick your willy everywhere it doesn’t belong, and commit bestial necrophilia, to boot? This no doubt explains the paucity of female “leaders” at that level…for one thing, women have better sense than to do anything like that. For another, we also have different anatomy.

2. Paul Fucking Wells. Well, now we know the identity of at least one of Harpo’s buttboys in the media. Inkless Wells, as he so cutely titled his political column, is either witless or conscienceless, in addition to inkless. Because he apparently thinks that the legal, ceremonial and electoral institutions of this land support broad-scale election thefts. And Harpo is guilty of them in at least two elections, and now he’s running for a third. And the media, or at least Maclean’s magazine’s star political columnist, is running interference for him. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comforted? Oh, and get this: Witless Wells also insulted Raffi. Yes, that’s right, he called a beloved children’s singer a “flatulent crank” for pointing out the blinding obvious. That’s pretty damn low, but it’s par for a man who spends much of his time flat on his belly for the Harper Government™.

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3 and 4. Rick Fucking Wiles and John Fucking Price. Yes, please do tell all the evangelical shitferbrains to leave the US and never come back. And while you’re at it, you too should get the fuck out. Those who are left behind will finally get their chance to fix the political, economic and ecological messes you idiots have left behind!

5. Carly Fucking Fiorina. When even FUX Snooze is no longer buying the lies in all those fake Planned Parenthood videos, that’s your cue to STFU. And really, as someone else said: If you’re looking to destroy Planned Parenthood, Carly, why not become its CEO, and run it into the ground like you did HP and Compaq?

6. Brian Fucking Kilmeade. He’s allegedly Catholic. I say “allegedly”, because he clearly doesn’t believe in abiding by the word of the Pope, who is, according to church doctrine, infallible. Leaving doctrinal issues out of it, though, I’d say Francis is at least correct about the evils of capitalism. Jesus Christ himself railed against the moneychangers in the Temple, and drove them out with a cat-o’-nine-tails — remember? So why is this moron taking the part of the moneychangers? Oh yeah: It’s FUX Snooze. Where black is white, day is night, wrong is right, and truth is shite.

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7. Paul Fucking Elam. Not enough of a he-man woman-hater for Paulie? That’s all right, bitches, because he’s about to Go His Own Way. Without you. And only the most boorish drunken misodges will be allowed in the treehouse from now on, so NYAHHHH! Yup, Greatest Human Rights Movement in the History of Ever, folks.

8 and 9. Jared Fucking Rutledge and Jacob Fucking Owens. And speaking of he-man woman-haters: Isn’t it sweet to see how the two biggest douchebags in Asheville are now its two LEAST popular dudes? Ha, ha.

10. Martin Fucking Shkreli. Sorry, AIDS patients, pregnant women, and other immune-compromised people! If you’ve been exposed to Toxoplasma gondii, you’re going to have to pay through the nose for the pill that treats it. This hedge-fund vulture has decided that a 5,700 percent markup is “fair”, at least to compensate himself for what he paid to buy the company that produces this remedy, which is twice as old as he is and really should be public domain by now. Isn’t that illegal? If it’s not, it damn well SHOULD be. Because it’s certainly going to cost an awful lot of lives, and he has a known track record for doing precisely this sort of thing. It stinks of a Ponzi scheme, too, as he’s been accused of using money grubbed this way to pay back angry hedge-fund investors he ripped off in the past. Doctors, heads up…and prescribe generics! PS: And he STILL thinks that’s not enough! I think he’s ripe for a major criminal investigation, don’t you? PPS: No, really…he is MORE than ripe. He’s ROTTEN.

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11. Marco Fucking Rubio. No, women are NOT getting pregnant just to sell fetuses to Planned Parenthood. And even if they were, it wouldn’t be an indictment of women, but of capitalism…for making them so desperate in the first place. Restrict capitalism, not women!

12. Jeb Fucking Bush. No, black people are NOT out to scam free stuff off of others. Once again, you’re thinking of capitalism…and specifically, the kind practiced by stupid white dudes like yourself.

13. Charles Fucking Gasparino. No, Jesus would NOT “thank you for making money”. He drove the moneychangers out of the temple with a cat-o’-nine-tails, remember? And moreover, he was indeed a communist, if not the Marxist kind. He explicitly told his followers to pool their resources and give any extra to those in need. Capitalist Jesus never existed; it’s as simple as that!

14. Bruce Fucking Rauner. Why?

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That’s why. Some call it “robbing Peter to pay your shareholders”. It’s the same crime as #10, basically.

15. Stuart Fucking Varney. And again: No, Jesus was not a capitalist. He said nothing at all about how the rich are somehow better than anybody else, just because they have more money. And the Pope, for once, is in agreement with him, and realizes that there’s no point in saving souls if there’s no planet left to house them all. Mind: blown! (No, wait, that’s just an artery.)

16. Alex Fucking Jones. Taking measures against man-made climate change will leave a billion dead? Well, if this hot-air blower is among them, it can’t be an entirely bad thing.

17. Alex Fucking Johnstone. It’s kind of hard to imagine anyone NOT knowing what Auschwitz really is, but somehow, she managed it. And shame on the federal NDP for cutting those who recognize Palestine, but NOT those who fail to recognize holocausts. At this rate, I may soon have no party left to vote for.

18. Mike Fucking Huckabee. Why?

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That’s why. The Pontiff, as anyone who’s been following the news this week would know, had no complaints about the welcome he got in Washington. This “apology”, from someone who will never be pontifex or POTUS, is just self-serving bullshit.

19. Justin Fucking Trudeau. Guess who I most definitely won’t be voting for? Yup, that’s right, the Trudizzle. Environmentalism is nothing but “sanctimonious crap” to him, just as our right to privacy is something he had no trouble selling down the river so as not to be seen as “soft on terrorism”. For anyone who still thinks there’s a dime’s worth of difference between him and Harpo (beyond age and hairstyles), think again. There will be NO real change if he’s elected PM. He’s already made that clear with his actions, and now his words have irrevocably followed.

20. Dean Fucking Esmay. Wow. Looks like Deano’s really gone off the deep end this week, lobbing wild accusations at all and sundry. It seems that now, anyone who disagrees with him, debunks his bullshit, or just makes fun of him for being a complete asshat is going to get called a child abuser, because Deano was (or claims to have been) sexually abused as a child. Because calling someone out for being a misogynist idiot is totally the same thing as raping him, apparently. PS: Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that Deano thinks that those who literally have every disadvantage against him are “privileged”. He is truly through the Looking Glass!

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And finally, to all the fucking MRAssholes who jumped all over #MasculinitySoFragile, the Twitter hashtag making fun of pointlessly macho marketing gimmickry. Thanks for being humorless idiots, and thanks for making our feminist point for us. You’re all so fragile and insecure in your machismo that you can’t take a joke even when it’s not at your personal expense. Remind us again why you deserve so much more respect than anybody else, because when I look at the bunch of you (yes, even you poor delusional women who think “feminism has gone too far” when it hasn’t gone halfway far enough), all I can do is snicker. Sucks to be you guys (and you desperate-to-be-liked gals).

Good night, and get fucked!

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Festive Left Friday Blogging: Evo dances!

Hey ladies, check it out:

Evo is most definitely NOT all work and no play. He’s a fun boy:

The “neck dance” of the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, a peculiar rhythmic movement which the leader made famous in the carnivals of 2013, went viral again on social networks this Wednesday.

Relaxed and in good humor, the Bolivian president left the stage of an inauguration ceremony for a school in Santa Cruz and succumbed to the contagious tropical rhythm of “Juana the Cubana”.

“Neck-dance, neck-dance,” the singer urged, while the audience, composed of local authorities and graduates, cheered the leader on. For a few seconds the president’s head moved in time with the beat, left and right, as if it were moving from one shoulder to the other, amid the general jubilation.

Morales did the “neck dance” briefly for the first time in 2013, at the Santa Cruz carnival, although that time he didn’t step down onto the dance floor. Many humorous videos were made of him and they even composed a song later.

The Bolivian leader likes to keep up his good humor in the four or five public appearances he puts in every day, but his favorite activity is to play soccer during the inauguration of sports stadiums.

Sometimes, the jokes he makes about women have been the subject of complaints by feminist groups.

During his youth, Morales was a trumpeter for the folk-music band “Imperial”, one of the most prestigious of the famous Oruro Carnival.

Translation mine.

Well, I guess that explains his sense of rhythm then. You can’t go anywhere in Bolivia during carnival time without being blasted by big brass bands. The bigger and brassier, the better. Evo might not be a singer, like Chavecito was, but he’s still plenty musical.

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Big butthurt in Little Havana

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Oh, those poor pathetic ex-Cubans. They just can’t get no luvvin’ from anyone. Not from the island, that’s for sure. And not from a certain Argentine-born pontiff, who’s been sounding too much like Che Guevara for their liking lately, either:

Some 25 persons gathered on Saturday in Miami to express their rejection of Pope Francis, in a demonstration in which some attendees went so far as to call him a “traitor” for the role he played in the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, according to EFE.

Organized by the “Vigilia Mambisa” movement, the demonstrators met near the well-known Café Versailles, on Calle Ocho of Little Havana, where they hoisted placards calling Pope Francis and Cuban cardinal Jaime Ortega “personas non grata”.

“The pope sold himself to the Cuban government”, was one of the claims most heard at the gathering, in which the attendees also expressed their disappointment at the lack of a meeting with the so-called “pro-American dissidents” on the island during Francis’s entire visit to Cuba, which began on Saturday.

The demonstrators wore black bands on their left arms, as well as on several Cuban flags, as a “symbol of mourning” for what Cuba is living through, according to Vigilia Mambisa spokespersons.

This week, Cuban activist Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of the Democracy Movement, began a “fast of conscience” in Miami, in order to ask the pope to intercede for “civil society” during his visit to Cuba, and to “join the Cuban family”.

According to EFE, the 61-year old has lost ten pounds (4.5 kilos) due to the protest that he maintains from a tent installed beside the Monument to the Martyrs in Little Havana, and in which he only ingests water.

Translation mine.

Hey Ramón, if you have any sense, you’ll just start eating again and give up your bid for martyrdom. Because if these photos of Fidel and the Pontiff are any indication, so-called “civil society” and “dissidents” have fallen out of grace, not just with the mainstream of Cuban society, but also with the Vatican’s numero uno hombre.

As for the rest of the demonstrators, they can take their mourning bands off their flags and shuffle on home in defeat. Cuba will never be theirs again. They fucked off when the Revolution rolled over the island; too bad, so sad. By choosing capitalism over Cuba, they forfeited all their claims to the island. Suck it up, Mambis, you’re finitos.

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Posted in Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), Don't Cry For Argentina, Pissing Jesus Off, Schadenfreude, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Big butthurt in Little Havana

Music for a Sunday: No tidal wave can turn me around

I could be a lighthouse…

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