News of the Restless

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 24

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Sabina Becker

maricori-colombia

María Corina Machado, May 2. Say, isn’t that the day she was supposed to be in hospital, getting her broken nose fixed? As you can see by the profile, it’s remarkably intact for someone with four alleged nasal fractures. No swelling, no bumps, no nothing. And her eyes aren’t black and swollen, as one would expect a post-op nose-job patient’s eyes to be. And she’s not in too much pain to go out glad-handing, either…

Oh dear. Poor, martyred MariCori. At this rate, she’s going to come home with the two black eyes she didn’t have when she left for Colombia just a few short days ago. Just look at the pummeling she and her whiny escualido pals took at the hands of the Colombian government!

Members of a commission of right-wing oppositionists, led by parliamentary deputy María Corina Machado, came with the hope of entering the Casa de Nariño [Colombia’s house of government] to speak out against the unity and strength of Colombian-Venezuelan relations.

The escualido delegation was not received, and had to take their speeches against the Bolivarian government of Nicolás Maduro to the Congress, where their Uribista and conservative friends opened the floor for them.

It is clear that the right wing, financed and trained by the United States, is trying to convert Colombia into a beachhead for the destabilization of the Venezuelan government. They also insist on attacking the good relations between the two peoples, who prefer to continue consolidating their economic, social and peace relations.

Another failure in Colombia to add to the permanent defeat of the recalcitrant Venezuelan right…

Translation mine.

Meanwhile, speaking of El Narco Uribe and ironies…what’s this about him hauling Maduro before the Human Rights Commission? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Especially since there are all those “false positive” deaths he has yet to account for? El Narco is a human rights violator, and on a grand scale.

It really does speak volumes as to what sort of “democratic” person MariCori is, to be hanging out with a genocidal, dictatorial, murderous, drug-trafficking fascist like El Narco…don’t you think?

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Posted in El NarcoPresidente, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off

Quotable: John Lennon on honesty

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Sabina Becker

john-lennon-on-honesty

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Who you callin’ an antisemite?

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Sabina Becker

maduro-jewish

This nice Jewish guy? Shame on you!

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, rebuffed the accusations of the Latin American Jewish Congress’s director, Claudio Epelman, who called him antisemitic because of the relationship Venezuela maintains with the people of Iran.

During the plenary assembly on Monday of the World Jewish Congress, in Budapest, Hungary, Epelman stated that the growing ties between Iran and several Latin American countries, especially Venezuela, “are causing an increase in antisemitism in the region.”

“A strong presence and strengthening of the relations between various Latin American countries and Iran is a promoting factor of antisemitism on the continent,” Epelman said.

“I greatly lament the declarations of Claudio Epelman, director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, whom I know and whom we have received in Venezuela so many times, saying that there is antisemitism in Venezuela and accusing Chávez and me…let him accuse me if he will, but be quiet about Chávez,” said Maduro in response to Epelman’s remarks.

“We reject that campaign. We are a humanistic people, we are not antisemites,” said the president during a Street Government meeting in Baruta, Miranda. “In Venezuela we have never had antisemitism. All the religions and peoples of the world are welcome here. We are an open-hearted people.”

The president explained: “One thing is that we have differences with the state of Israel…We reject the attack by Israel on Damascus, the people of Syria, and the attacks against the Gaza Strip and the people of Palestine. We are at the forefront of the struggle against those who have hijacked, by way of a repressive state like Israel, a noble people like the Jewish people.

“If there is a people who have a socialist tradition, it is the Jewish people, for thousands of years. And we respect their history,” Maduro added. “My grandparents were Jews, the Maduros as well as the Moros. They converted to Catholicism in Venezuela…The mother of [communications and information minister] Ernesto Villegas also comes from that tradition.”

“Historically speaking, antisemites are linked to the currents of Opus Dei, who direct the Venezuelan right wing. The Catholicism of the right has always maintained that the Jews were the ones who killed Christ. And over top of that, they constructed a myth of persecution. The Catholicism of the right fed Mussolini and Hitler, not Lenin, who was a fighter for the rights of the Jewish people. Marx was a Jew.”

“Here, the Liberator had Jews among his troops, and people who supported the Jewish people, among them Samuel Maduro, one of the first Maduros to arrive here in 1812. And if we come to Hugo Chávez, he was the one who inaugurated the ecumenical era of religion in Venezuela,” Maduro added.

“The Jewish Holocaust was created by the ultra-right and international capital financing. As Luis Britto García says, What is fascism? Rancid financial capital, the aristocracy holding the power of the state. When the aristocracy takes power in capitalism, that’s fascism.

“Who liberated the concentration camps all over the battle front, in Poland and Germany? The Red Army, led by Marshal Zhukov! They were liberated camp by camp. That’s what the revolutionaries of the Soviet Union did. We are their heirs. Of the good, at least, of the anti-fascist struggle, we are the heirs of the Soviet Union,” Maduro said.

Also, Maduro explained that “Holocaust” means extermination, and for that reason he considers it pertinent to use that term in reference to the colonization of the Americas in 1492, where an estimated 100 million indigenous people died, and more than 30 million Africans were kidnapped, enslaved and killed. “How can you describe how 30 million people were taken from their lands, and half of them died at sea, and the other half were enslaved? Holocaust means extermination,” Maduro added.

“Here, they exterminated our indigenous. They killed our ancestors. It was an Indigenous Holocaust,” the president concluded.

The accusations of antisemitism contrast with the openness and cordiality of Chávez as well as Maduro toward representatives of the Jewish community. Last January, Maduro, then vice-president, met in Caracas with members of the World Jewish Congress.

In 2009, Maduro also met with the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, Michel Schnaider, and the president of the Latin American Congress, Jack Tenpins, among others representatives of both institutions, who called the meeting “cordial and fruitful.”

The cordial relations during the government of the late president Hugo Chávez and that of Maduro contradict the accusations of antisemitism against the Venezuelan government.

Activists and political personalities who support the cause of Palestine and who are critics of the government of Israel, including Jews such as Noam Chomsky, Norm Finkelstein, or the US activist Medea Benjamin, founder of Global Exchange and Code Pink, are frequent targets of accusations of “antisemitism” or “judeophobia” on the part of pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Incidents such as the attack on a synagogue in Caracas in 2009, were energetically condemned by said pro-Israel organizations as examples of the supposed antisemitism of the Chávez administration, which was accused of promoting the attacks. The condemnations received much media coverage around the world, in contrast with silence over the energetic condemnation of Chávez against said crime, the investigation which revealed that the government had no relation to the incident, and the special protection offered by Chávez to provide security to the synagogue afterward.

Translation mine.

Yeah, that’s right, you bitches…Venezuela has a Jewish president. Maybe not a religious one, but one with Jewish ancestry on both sides, regardless.

By contrast, his former opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, another practising Roman Catholic, brags of his Jewish ancestors too, but he only has them on his mother’s side. (Plus he’s a Majunche, which cancels out anything else anyway.)

And like Chavecito before him, Nicolás Maduro knows his history, knows his onions, has good relations on the ground with Venezuelan Jews (funny how few of THEM have turned out to accuse him otherwise), and in short, he’s good for the Jews. Something I greatly doubt the Majunche would be, as he’s only out for himself, and not the common good.

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Posted in Confessions of a Bad German, Cool Beans, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Pissing Jesus Off, Socialism is Good for Capitalism!, Who Forgot Poland? | 3 Comments

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 23

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Sabina Becker

maricori-miraculous-recovery

“They caught me!”

Well, well, well, well, well. Who have we here? Why, it’s our old friend MariCori! You may recall how, the other day, she was wearing a whiplash collar and complaining of no fewer than four nasal fractures, allegedly sustained at the hands of some Chavista rabble. And how she travelled to Colombia a short time later, to kvetch to the usual fascist sympathizers (and, no doubt, collect a huge cash infusion from the usual gringo bagmen.)

Well, somehow, on the way to Bogotá, MariCori experienced what can only be called a miracle cure:

As is well known by the right-wing press and the putschist channel Globovisión, parliamentary deputy María Corina Machado was the target of a supposed aggression. Strangely, no one knows who dealt her the particular blow that caused four fractures to her nasal bones, and in spite of the “seriousness” of the injury, she didn’t have even a little black eye, as one normally would in such a case.

A few hours after the “incident”, the deputy flew to the capital of Colombia. But in mid-flight, an amateur photographer, one of those who abound everywhere thanks to cellphones, captured the moment of a “miraculous recovery”, which has rarely been seen documented photographically: María Corina freed herself of the “therapeutic collar”, and her little nose was as straight and white as ever.

Even so, the parliamentarian took advantage of the occasion to indulge in some cosmetic surgery which she had already put off for several years, due to her “hard work” as opponent of the Bolivarian government.

Translation mine.

Gee, maybe I should ask MariCori what saints she prays to. It’s obvious that she has much more of a direct line to God than the rest of us mere mortals. (Or at least, to Washington…)

Meanwhile, MariCori’s co-religionist, Julio Borges, got enough of a black eye for both of them:

julio-demands-recount

“I demand a recount of the beatings!”

PS: Here is what MariCori would look like with an actual broken nose (and corrective surgery):

maricori-nosejob

As you can see above (and in last week’s entry), she looks nowhere near as bad as that.

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Posted in Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia, The WTF? Files | 2 Comments

Music for a Sunday: It’s Cinco de Mayo, ya bastards!

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Sabina Becker

First, a classic (rock) rendition of a familiar Mexican song:

And here’s a speeded-up version from three decades later, with really great guitars (and don’t miss the classical mariachi quartet at the end):

And now, the rebel version:

Gringo imperialism took it on the jaw a long time ago, as far as culture is concerned. The Mexicans aren’t merely coming back; they never left!

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Wankers of the Week: Committing Sociology

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Sabina Becker

Crappy weekend, everyone! Batten down the hatches, we’re about to get another fifty-wank blower here. This week, we’re committing sociology…or in the case of our lovely listees, stoopidology. And here they come, in no particular order:

1. Pierre Fucking Poilievre. Terrorists cause terrorism! Gosh, who knew? Well, Captain Obvious. Duh, that’s who. With deep thinkers like this in his camp, it’s no wonder Harpo has a growing reputation as the Dubya of the north. PS: And more Deep Thought. Hey Pierre, you and your gummint aren’t working for “union bosses”, as you claim — you’re supposed to be working for the PEOPLE (and not just “the taxpayers”, either). Instead, you’re working for the fucking corporations. Why don’t you all just fucking quit and start drawing those corporate paycheques legitimately, already?

2. Sarah Fucking Palin. Speaking of Dubya’s intellectual (!) heirs, the Snowbilly Grifter has had a busy week of wankin’, starting with her equating Planned Parenthood with a back-alley butcher. No, Sawah, PP is actually what’s keeping women from ending up in the hands of unscrupulous types like Kermit Fucking Gosnell. And then there’s her bitter snipe at not being invited to the so-called Nerd Prom, which was crashed by Tawd and Bristol. How desperate for attention she must be, to scrape THAT barrel. And hey! How about those teabaggers who want a half-term senator?

3. Matt Fucking Yglesias. If you want to know just how morally bankrupt neoliberal economics really is, just visit a Bangladeshi garment factory. And if you want to know how mentally bankrupt its apologists are, just read this guy. “Foreign factories should be more dangerous”, he says. Right, because then at least it’s not white people being crushed to death under badly constructed sweatshop buildings, eh?

4. Gene Fucking Simmons. Why?

That’s why. How about acknowledging that PALESTINE exists? And there is nothing holy about Israel, either. Just ask a fellow American…Emily Henochowicz.

5. Chris Fucking Broussard. Being homophobic is the REAL “open rebellion to God.” Who do you think MAKES people gay, you stupid motherfucker? PS: Stop setting off my fucking gaydar. PPS: Ha, ha.

6. Gail Fucking Horalek. A diary description of one’s vulva is NOT pornographic. It’s just an unusually frank (ha! see what I did there?) expression of something all girls do: namely, check themselves out in private.

7. Greg Fucking Laurie. “Sinophobic” means “fearful of Chinese people”, you homophobic fucking imbecile. And if there’s one thing for sane, intelligent people to do on the “National Day of Prayer”, it’s pray that you either see the light or go to hell. PS: Stop setting off my fucking gaydar.

8. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. Oh look, the Pigman is projecting AGAIN! This time, it’s to assert that all liberals are mass murderers. Because they’re not professional homophobes like him. Oh yeah, and they’re all “jihadis”, too. Yawn, yawn, yawwwwwwn.

9. Don Fucking Cherry. I’ll give Ol’ Sour Grapes half a point: Nobody really needs locker-room “journalism”. Everybody knows that pro athletes have nothing of worth to say when they’re standing around in their old stinky jockstraps, waiting to shower; they’re inarticulate at the best of times anyway. Best thing to do is just drop that crap from the newscast altogether. But to single out female sports reporters, for being women in what’s erroneously presumed to be a man’s world? Yup, that’s a fuckin’ wank.

10. Stephen Fucking Harper. Well, finally he admits that he is in fact a Toronto elitist. Probably came to that decision after realizing how stupid he looked playing Cowboys ‘n’ Injuns at his age. Or maybe how stupid he looked supporting the Mordorization of Alberta. But it won’t do much good…his family still supported the LOSING design for our national flag. Which may explain why he’s still trying to paint Canada blue after all this time.

11. Jason Fucking Kenney. Wow, there really isn’t much to distinguish between him and a Bangladeshi sweatshop owner, is there? Talk about victim-blaming. Also, stoopid economics are stooooopid.

12. Mark Fucking Sanford. Yeah, “she went there”. Because your “hiking the Appalachian trail” does put your ability to govern in a mature, effective manner, and be present for your constituents, into serious question. In other words: Nobody wants a governor who’s gonna just fuck off to Argentina whenever the whim takes him. Especially if he’s going there to, well, fuck. People like to know that the person they elect is gonna stick around, not follow his dick around.

13. Ben Fucking Shapiro. Yeah, the standard in “heroes” has gone down. As has the standard in “columnists”; see, for example, yourself.

14. Tom Fucking Friedman. “What kind of sick madness is this?” Oh, cram your incurious anti-intellectual twaddle sideways up the orifice you pulled it from. First: The cause of the Boston Marathon bombing hasn’t even been fully investigated, much less have its perps been brought to trial, and already you’re jumping to conclusions, which sound suspiciously like they’re aimed at derailing a debate before it even begins. Second: It’s the fucking imperialism, you stupid, stupid fuck. In other words, it has nothing to do with being a Muslim at all. Get your fucking army out of every country it’s in, and then you won’t see any more “terrorist” pushback. Much less the kind you go to such deliberately obtuse lengths to not-understand.

15. Jan Fucking Brewer. Won’t somebody think of the poor, oppwessed widdle guns? Awww, dat’s so sweet of you, Jan. Now how about not oppressing PEOPLE?

16. Tim Fucking Melton. Nice of you to cover Michelle Fucking Rhee’s education-deforming ass with meaningless statements. But since you haven’t actually made amends to the Tennessee students your award for bad legislation has hurt, you get a great big goose-egg on your report card.

17. Anya Fucking Bargh. Ever wonder what Ann Coulter was like when SHE went to law school? Clicky the linky, and be warned: it ain’t pretty.

18. Megyn Fucking Kelly. Speaking of not-pretty, as well as not-smart, Me-me-ME-gyn has piped up with the keen observation that bigots could be offended if you denounce their bigotry against Muslims. Thanks for that lovely public service message, dear.

19. Dana Fucking Rohrabacher. Speaking of bigotry against Muslims, this is it. Study it well, kiddies. And whatever you do, don’t be a two-faced fucking hypocrite like Taliban Dana.

20. Pat Fucking Robertson. And in other bigoted news, Patwa thinks there’s nothing wrong with calling gay people “abominations”. Because there’s nothing abominable about him for wishing Chavecito dead, and a myriad other very real sins, nosirree.

21. Bryan Fucking Fischer. He knows nothing about genetics, much less prenatal development. Yet he somehow “knows” that someone chose to be gay, simply because his twin brother isn’t? Wow. Let’s all throw out our science textbooks and start taking the bible literally, because that totally, like, convinces ME, man. PS: Thanks for sharing with us your gay locker-room sexual fantasy, old man. Not that you really needed to.

22. Mitt Fucking Romney. Oh joy, Mittens has piped up again…only long enough, mind you, to wank on about how people need to get married early, and have lots of kids. With more than 7 billion people in the world, most of whom are not nearly as rich and complacent as Mittens, I just can’t bring myself to see any flaws in that logic. Can you?

23. Tim Fucking Tebow. Why?

That’s why. He’s all washed up, and he’s awfully butthurt about it. Well, that and he keeps setting off my gaydar, and he can’t do anything about that, either. See where all that pharisaical public genuflection gets you? #justsaying

24. Ted Fucking Nugent. No, you shitty draft dodger, vets aren’t committing suicide over some imaginary violation of the constitution on the part of Barack Obama. Nobody kills themselves out of simple disgust for a mere politician. They’re committing suicide because of the trauma of the wars that Dubya threw them into, and because right-wing politicians and useless idiots such as yourself refuse to support the troops once they demobilize and return home. That’s why, you fucking cowardly scumbag.

25. Benny Fucking Hinn. What, isn’t Jesus listening anymore…and raining down money on Benny’s oily little head? What a surprise. Guess that prosperity gospel is just a bunch of bullshit, then.

26. Buster Fucking Wilson. Yeah, congrats, you’re all of a sudden, just like that, a hatemonger. Actually, that’s not true; you always have been, and you’ve just now been served notice of the fact. Now fuck off and never be heard from again.

27. John Fucking McCain. Coming from a country that’s actually fomented “radical Islamic extremism” (remember those cuddly Afghan mujahideen? I do, I do!) it’s kind of fucking stupid of him to talk of banning immigrants from those parts. How about banning the CIA instead?

28 and 29. Tony Fucking Clement and Jim Fucking Flaherty. B’kawwwwwwwwww! Buk buk bk bk bk. That is all.

30. Charles Fucking Van Zant. Y’know, it’s actually kind of refreshing to see the Repug position on race and gender issues articulated so clearly. And by “articulated”, I mean spewed, and by “position”, I mean BIGOTRY.

31. Meir Fucking Weinstein. Pamela Fucking Geller is the driving force behind Anders Fucking Behring Fucking Breivik, and yet she’s somehow NOT a terrorist, while Muslims are? Dude, get glasses. Have you read her fucking blog? A simple word-substitution game would be enough to prove that she’s indistinguishable from Nazis, and very fucking stupid Nazis, at that. Any rabbi who’d host a talk by her may as well be shaking hands with Josef Goebbels. Or his crazy idiot cousin.

32. Michelle Fucking Malkin. I don’t suppose she’s aware of the irony inherent in her accusing anyone else of spreading misinformation. And that, folks, is why she’s a fucking wanker.

33. Ray Fucking Kelly. Memorize this new word, kiddies: “Understopped”. That’s what New York’s top cop thinks black men are. Never mind that every single one of them in New York City has been stopped and frisked, whether he needed to be or not. If that’s “understopped”, one shudders to think what “overstopped” must mean.

34. Rob Fucking Ford. Meanwhile, in Toronto, being the mayor apparently puts you above the law, and entitles you to use your own radio show, quite literally, as a bully pulpit to go after political opponents who, it goes without saying, don’t have their own show and can’t afford it, either. Ah, it’s good to be the fucking king.

35. Ed Fucking Dahlberg. Surprise! Muslims went to war in Iraq…on the US side. And one of them is the guy whose jaw got in the way of your ignorant fucking fist. Feel stupid yet? You should. Because you fucking ARE.

36. Matthew Fucking Heimbach. Don’t go telling leftists you oppose them “in the name of Christ”. Jesus wants nothing to do with your racist Nazi shit. And speaking of shit, claiming to stand up for the “blue-collar working class” against communism? That’s hilarious, considering that communism is all about the working class standing up and overthrowing ruling-class fascists…like YOU.

37. Penny Fucking Nance. Nice historical revisionism you got goin’ on there, lady. Actually, the Holocaust was not a product of enlightenment OR reason, but of superstition…and oh yeah, CHRISTIANITY.

38. Barry Fucking West. How be you stop “winking at Muslims” and start doing your fucking job, you wanker? Part of your job, as I understand it, is ensuring that all local citizens, including Muslims, feel safe. It’s kind of hard to do that when an asshole in a cowboy hat is aiming a double-barreled shotgun at you.

39. Jeffrey Dale Fucking Williams. Jesus wants eye candy! Oh wait, no, he doesn’t. That’s just the preacher-man, trying to molest a young parishioner. Jesus wouldn’t ask anyone to do any such thing.

40. Glenn Fucking Beck. Humanity is becoming an “affront to God”? No, that’s just you, you fucking freak.

41. Alex Fucking Jones. Transgender people are “vomiting and crapping all over the place”? No, that’s just you, you fucking freak.

42. Jim Fucking Porter. Anyone who uses the term “War of Northern Aggression” doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, much less permitted to own a gun…and even less to be president of the Fucking NRA. When “gun rights” are more important than HUMAN rights (and you know they are, to anyone who uses that racist dog-whistle to refer to the Civil War), you just know you’re dealing with a loon. Having him at the helm of an organization is unlikely to inspire confidence in said organization…except, of course, from the usual old fat racist white loons.

43. Matt Fucking Lewis. Why do gun nuts who write for Fucker Carlson’s effete little vanity website think a certain slang term for ladybits (or kittycats) is an acceptable way of saying “weakling”, “wimp” or “coward”? And, more to the point: Why don’t they spell the word out WITHOUT resorting to asterisks? I guess what I’m trying to say here is…you chicken, bro?

44. Kelly Fucking Ayotte. She voted against equal pay for women because “we have enough laws”? Well. Come next election, she’s gonna find herself voted out of work, because the US senate has more than enough asshats. PS: And yes, this is proof of asshattery, too.

45. Lamar Fucking Smith. And speaking of asshats in US politics, how about this congresscritter? Apparently, science isn’t enough to make a scientific paper publishable. Nope, now it’s got to be politically kosher, too. Congratulations, Trofim Lysenko, you’re hereby vindicated — by a crapitalist!

46. Andrea Fucking Tantaros. Awww. FUX Snooze Concern Troll is CONCERNED! Tell ya what, honey: You keep your puny little mind out of the Obama girls’ panties, and the rest of the civilized world will ignore the idiot that’s walking around in yours.

47. Brad Fucking Blakeman. And speaking of FUX Snooze and concern trolls, here’s another predictable salvo in the War on Women: Birth control causes statutory rape! This, of course, begs the question: Whatever did statutory rapists do BEFORE birth control was invented? Oh yeah: THEY GOT GIRLS PREGNANT AND THEN FUCKED OFF.

48. Stella Fucking Tremblay. She wonders if a guy who lost both legs in the Boston Marathon bombing was hurt? I wonder if she is blind. I don’t, however, wonder if she is sane or intelligent, because it’s already apparent that she is not. Her conspiracy theorizing is so stupid as to be downright offensive.

49. Niall Fucking Ferguson. Oh noes, John Maynard Keynes was GAY! Gay-gay-gaiety-gay-GAY! That means no one can take his (well proven) theories of economics seriously. Oh wait…an effete imperialist twit with wonky (read: HOMOPHOBIC; read: SO GAY) ideas about family and economics said that. Never mind! PS: What’s this? An apology? Huh.

50. Adam Fucking Carolla. Maybe Big Brother doesn’t care about YOUR cellphone calls, because you’re an unfunny, uninteresting, politically clueless hack. But I’m pretty sure he’d be interested in my internet activities…or those of anyone else who’s not a criminal or a terrorist, but also not interested in being a good little capitalist conformist for the rest of their lives. Maybe, if YOU were under surveillance, and all your masturbatory habits made it into an FBI file, you’d start to feel different about all that porn on your phone. Or, better still, about the government snooping and spying on everyone in the name of catching a few so-called “terrorists”.

And finally, to the Fucking NRA. You can’t very well be accused of having your priorities straight, if you support arming kids with child-sized (but still deadly!) rifles rather than comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education and the morning-after Pill. And if your line-up of speakers is anything to go by, you CAN be accused of supporting Teh Hardcore Stoopid.

Goodnight, and get fucked!

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“The Pope covered up my son’s abuser”: an Argentine mother speaks out

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Sabina Becker

gabriel-and-beatriz-varela

Gabriel Varela and his mother, Beatriz, are among the few Argentines who have dared to take on the very top of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy — not only on their own soil, but all the way to the Vatican. And why not? The man at the centre of their outrage, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, is the new Pope…

Even for the protagonists themselves, it’s not easy to tell this story. Beatriz Varela and her son Gabriel have had to wait almost 11 years for the Argentine judiciary, in an unprecedented decision, to sentence the Catholic Church for its responsibility in the pedophilic acts of a priest against a then 15-year-old boy.

The Appeals Court of Quilmes, in Buenos Aires province, upheld the sentence by a lower court in December, which sentenced the local bishop to pay 155,600 Argentine pesos (more than 23,000 euros) for the psychotherapeutic costs and moral damage to the boy and his mother.

The crime took place on August 15, 2002. Varela invited Father Rubén Pardo, the local vicar, to her home, to teach her two sons about the precepts of the church. According to journalist Mariana Carvajal, of the newspaper Página 12, the 50-year-old priest talked with Gabriel alone, and later, at supper, asked the boy’s mother to let him stay the night at the priest’s residence to continue the dialogue and so that on the following day, he would assist in the celebration of a mass.

Later, Gabriel would tell the court that Pardo had invited him to sleep with him, a gesture the teenager interpreted as a paternal attitude. It was then that the priest sexually abused him.

“I knew he was raping me, but I couldn’t think what to do to get away, because I was so shocked and afraid,” Gabriel said.

Once Pardo had fallen asleep, Gabriel fled in terror and told his mother what had happened.

Beatriz Varela immediately went to the bishop of Quilmes, Luis Stöckler. “At first he appeared concerned, but as the days went by, he showed no sign of taking any measures,” Varela said. The bishop “tried to minimize what happened, saying I had to be compassionate with persons who had chosen celibacy for their vocation, because they have moments of weakness.”

But the mother told the bishop that she was there because she wanted “truth, justice and for it never to happen to anyone else.” The bishop then began to pressure her “by way of paycheques”. “I worked in a church-run school,” she explained.

Varela turned to the ecclesiastical tribunal next, “whose president didn’t want to hear my denunciation.” Two weeks later she was interviewed by four priests “who put me through a humiliating interrogation, with lascivious and tendentious questions, putting me in the role of the villain, when they knew that it had happened, because the abuser had admitted it to his bishop, who reprimanded him.”

Gabriel’s mother also went to the metropolitan curia, the home of the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio, better known today as Pope Francis I. The security guards tried to expel her. In the cathedral, which adjoins the curia, she learned that the pedophile had been put up in a vicarage house in the barrio of Flores, under the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, whose head is now the Pontifex Maximus and head of the Vatican.

“Bergoglio knew all about this denunciation,” Varela says. “Nobody was installed in any vicarage without the authorization of the archbishop. That’s Bergoglio’s commitment: just lip service,” she says. “When it comes to pedophilia, the Church acts to cover them up, with hypocrisies, lies, and complicity, and without commitment before God and society. Everyone knows and everyone keeps silent, so everyone’s an accomplice. And at the top of it all is an institution revered by society. The Church smiles on its face, and everyone is happy because an Argentine is on the throne,” says Varela.

The mother regrets the confidence she placed in the Church. “The priests are trained to steer the masses, to manipulate their minds,” she adds.

Any joy she might have felt at the news of the sentence against the Diocese of Quilmes was muted by a phone call Varela received last week. “There are two priests who were transferred to the Archdiocese of Córdoba [in central Argentina] when the denunciation was made,” she says. “On Friday, a mother called me in distress because her four-year-old daughter had been raped by those two priests, who still work in a school. She had anal fissures, there are photos of her and other little compañeras. And other children are still at risk.”

The mother of the abused girl, who did not want to come forward [to the press] at this time, launched a suit seven months ago against the priests, but the two men are still working in a school. “This is a pedophile network, because the schoolmistress is well aware of the fact that three or four girls disappeared during recess and reappeared later. That’s called a cover-up,” Varela says.

The judicial process she and her son have gone through has not been easy, and while she is grateful for the verdict, she feels she has waited too long for justice. “When the priest who abused my son died (of AIDS, in 2005), the file disappeared for two years. The case nearly fell through, and my son thought of suicide and was hospitalized a month and a half in a psychiatric clinic,” she recalls. “No amount of money can compensate what we have suffered.”

Unlike the mother from Córdoba, Varela has decided to go public. “Stöckler, who is still bishop emeritus of Quilmes, tried to silence me, but I told him: Only death can shut me up. My son has already suffered. No other child is going to suffer through my silence,” she says.

Gabriel, now 25 years old, has agreed to the publication of his story. He knows all too well what it means to suffer. “I had nightmares, I couldn’t sleep. At times I felt guilt for what had happened, which is what the Church was looking for when they told my mom that she had caused this, or that I had provoked this person [Pardo].”

One of the hardest moments came when the the file [on Pardo] went missing. “I felt we had lost, and that all those years of fighting and all the money spent were in vain,” says Gabriel. But, with psychological help and the support of his mother and brothers, he was able to move ahead at last and realize that nothing that had happened was his fault, “because no one is responsible for another person’s perversion, and because one is a victim.”

But the young man doesn’t consider it good to go on playing that role. “There are so many people who don’t denounce because they’re afraid, or ashamed, to speak out against a man of the cloth. That’s why I had to act.”

Gabriel no longer considers himself a Catholic, and is trying to declare his apostasy. “Any decision the Church takes represents you as one of the faithful. And the Constitution indicates that the state has the obligation to submit to the majority’s beliefs. With my renunciation, the institution will lose power,” he concludes.

Translation mine.

The Argentine Catholic church was already compromised during the fascist junta dictatorship of 1976-83. There are more than a few high-ranking churchmen accused of covering up the junta’s crimes, and feeding communion and absolution to the generals who ordered the atrocities from the very top. Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, is one of those churchmen. But while he appears to have slipped past media scrutiny for that episode, this one won’t be so easy to shake off. Like Pope Benedict (formerly Cardinal Ratzinger) before him, this pope is now known to be a cover-up man. His job was not so much to rectify the crimes of lower churchmen, as to sweep them under the rug in the time-honored churchly fashion: by transferring them to other parishes, dioceses, churches and schools. Effectively this left them free to molest, abuse and rape again. And just as effectively, it makes him culpable for their crimes.

The fact that liability was proven in this case sets an important precedent, as it clears the way for other claims in Argentina to go forward, and provides the plaintiffs with the confirmation that they are not alone in their frustration and outrage. They are all victims of the same crime and the same cover-up; now, they stand to become beneficiaries of the same justice, and to receive badly needed compensation for medical treatments incurred while fighting the physical and mental illnesses that invariably follow sexual abuse. And the help can’t come a moment too soon.

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Posted in Don't Cry For Argentina, Fascism Without Swastikas, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, Pissing Jesus Off, Sick Frickin' Bastards | 2 Comments

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Ladies and gentlemen, the future president of Honduras is…

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Sabina Becker

xiomara-castro-de-zelaya

Looks like Honduras is slated to get a Cristina Fernández of its own, at least if polls hold true:

Honduran ex-foreign minister Patricia Rodas predicted the victory of candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya in the presidential elections of next November, in spite of threats and violence in the Central American country.

“On November 24, we will reverse the coup d’état,” affirmed the director of the Libertad y Refundación party (Libre), which has put forward the wife of former president Manuel Zelaya, ousted in 2009, as their candidate.

Rodas celebrated the decision of the Working Group of the São Paulo Forum, which, during a meeting in the Brazilian city, had decided to accompany the progressive and leftist forces in Honduras during the coming elections.

“In the months to come, we will start a campaign with terrible difficulties, permanent threats, and an escalation in violence and murder,” Rodas said.

Rodas stated that Honduras has become the most insecure country in the world, “by combining insecurity and repression with no clear borders.”

“We have to confront the right-wing’s fear of the return of the people to power, to rebuild what they tried to destroy with the coup,” Rodas said.

The convoking of a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution is one of the principal proposals of the Libre Party, Rodas said.

She added that even now, there are still institutions in Honduras operating under colonial concepts. She stated that with the candidacy of Xiomara Castro, a process of profound changes will begin in that Central American land.

A Paradigma poll, conducted yesterday in Tegucigalpa, put the former first lady and now presidential candidate at the head of electoral preferences.

Translation mine.

Honduras has the highest murder rates in Latin America, and the coup d’état made that problem what it is today. You might hear a lot of bleating and blatting about Venezuela, but Honduras has higher per-capita murder rates by far. And if you’ve heard about that, you obviously didn’t get it from your mainstream media, either. Their stated objective, as far as Honduras goes, is to promote the coup and cover up its abuses, and paint Manuel Zelaya as the baddie in the whole sorry affair.

So it’s no secret why Xiomara Castro already enjoys great popularity going in. Her husband started a progressive program for the country, ushering Honduras into the beneficial ALBA alliance, and at the time of the coup, things were just getting underway for the constitutional rewrite that he had promised during his own election campaign. Had it not been for the coup, Honduras would have had a new, democratic constitution four years ago. And now, it’s getting the chance to do it again.

Adelante, adelante, la lucha es constante…

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Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Not Hiding in Honduras, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off

Quotable: Arundhati Roy on war and peace

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Sabina Becker

arundhati-roy-on-peace

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Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Quotable Notables | 1 Comment

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 22

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Sabina Becker

maricori-whiplash-collar

María Corina Machado, Washington’s darling, flanked by the only people in Venezuela who find her even remotely credible: the “reporters” (note the quotes) of oppo crapaganda channels Venevisión and Globovisión, respectively. As a presumptive victim of the brawl in Venezuela’s parliament the other day, it’s a wonder and a miracle that she can even be seen in public with all her injuries. So, tell us, MariCori: where does it REALLY hurt?

In spite of having FOUR fractures to the bridge of her nose, according to her own words, and wearing a collar (obviously around her neck) to “improve” said nasal fractures, María Corina Machado confirmed that she will be travelling to Bogotá on Thursday to meet “with leaders of the opposition”, the president of the Colombian congress, and, obviously, with “journalists”.

The objective of the trip, she says, is “to make visible the situation of Venezuela.”

Note: In the midst of all her “suffering”, María Corina still took the time to put on earrings the same color as her shirt…

Translation mine.

One would expect someone with four fractures to the bridge of her nose to be bandaged out to there, and have so much bruising and swelling around the eyes that she could barely see, much less be seen. Yet there she is, looking remarkably well, with tasteful little turquoise earrings and everything. And she’s even going to Colombia today, to show what a horrible country Venezuela is, presumably against doctor’s orders. What a trouper! Perhaps MariCori had a little help from the same makeup wizard at Globomojón who livened up Julio Borges for the cameras? In any event, one doesn’t wear a whiplash collar for a broken nose. If you’re going to make up stories, MariCori, can’t you at least make sure the details match? If you could find earrings to go with your blouse (in that condition!), it shouldn’t be any problem for you.

Oh well. At least one other Venezuelan oppo’s behavior matches his statements…although in ways he clearly hadn’t thought all the way through:

julio-borges-revealing-tweet

“The lie will always triumph. The good always conquers. We have to take the hatred of a few and convert it into energy to fight more!”

Um, Julio…since when does a lie serve the “good”? And yeah, interesting choice of words there. “The hatred of a few”…that wouldn’t be your side, now, would it? Nahhhhhh, of course not. They’re only the noisy minority who lost the election to a dead man they hated, after all…

And your stage manager doesn’t seem to do any better at keeping things under his hat, either:

alberto-revell-incriminating-tweet

“Today the ‘parlimentary coup’ could come together, watch the National Assembly session.”

Note the date and time. This was tweeted right before all the shit started to hit the fan in the Hemiciclo. It was planned violence, and good ol’ Albertico Federico seems to have seriously believed no one was watching his tweeter for the cues. Only his loyal sycophants, of course.

Meanwhile, Majunche has almost dropped out of sight. But not to worry, he’s still up to his usual tricks. And one of them is blatantly asking for foreign interference in the politics of his own country:

“We will exhaust all internal means, but we are in no doubt that this case will end with the international community,” said presidential ex-candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, in reference to the elections of April 14, which Nicolás Maduro won with 50.61% of the vote.

During an opposition march on May 1, Workers’ Day, the losing candidate insisted on not recognizing popular will, and attacked the head of state once more as the latter was addressing the revolutionary workers’ march in O’Leary Square in Caracas.

[…]

The call for foreign interference as a means of violating the decision of the Venezuelan people has become evident during the past week, as four members of Capriles’s party, Primero Justicia (PJ) promoted the non-recognition of the institutions of the state during a tour of four European lands.

Then, the PJ secretary-general, Tomás Guanipa, accompanied by Edmundo González, a co-ordinating member of the opposition’s international liaison, stated that they had visited Spain, Germany, Belgium and France, where they met with right-wing organizations to solicit their support for non-recognition of the institutions of the Venezuelan state.

In spite of the repeated attempts of the right-wing to discredit the Venezuelan electoral process and the victory of Nicolás Maduro, every country in the world has recognized the results of the elections, except the United States.

Translation mine.

If these hopeless bumbling idiots are the best Washington can do for local allies, it’s no wonder the locals are no longer fooled by the show they put on. And they won’t vote for them, either. Even the vaunted “international community” no longer gives a shit for them. Even the spooks couldn’t help them. Just a pity they can no longer rig elections in their favor, like they used to before Chavecito. Ha, ha, ha.

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