The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 8

Journalist Earle Herrera, host of VTV’s Kiosco Veraz (Truth Kiosk), devotes the latest edition of his show to a strange phenomenon:

One would think that since they have just three more weeks to go before the next federal elections, the opposition’s dedicated news media would have their boy front and centre, dancing the hokey-pokey. But no! No sign of him anywhere. They have the new pope; they have Henry Falcón, the ex-Chavista chef de mission of the opposition campaign whom we met a few entries ago, off-gassing about the country being in “chaos” (when, in fact, it’s quite calm as the Dry Law takes effect and Holy Week gets under way). But where is Henrique Capriles? Has anyone seen him?

Nope, no sign of him anywhere.

It might be his terrible numbers. Or maybe it’s because the bus driver is about to eat his lunch. Or maybe it’s the other oppos, plotting behind his back. In any case, the ignominy of Majunche — more Bolivarian than Bolívar, more Chavista now than Chávez — losing twice to a dead man is just too much for even the most fervent of the opposition media. They took him off their front pages, and they’re yattering on about everything BUT him.

Do you suppose the distraction will work?

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Quotable: Neruda on risk-taking

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“They die slowly who transform themselves into slaves of their habits,
who never risk,
who evade a passion,
who never risk the certain
for the uncertain….
who abandon things before starting them,
who complain of their bad luck,
who don’t travel, don’t read, don’t dream,
who don’t trust, who don’t try,
who don’t love…
the opposite is to be alive.”

— Pablo Neruda

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The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 7

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“Nicolás isn’t Chávez! Vote for me, comrades, because I’m the exact same!” Uh-huh…surrrrre.

What’s this? Dirty corporatist tricks from the Majunche campaign? Yes! And look who else is involved…the richest man in Mexico, no less. Plus a whole bunch of other putschist skank-shit from ten years ago…

The Mexican telephone operators’ union informs that the campaign command of Henrique Capriles Radonski has purchased a text-messaging and airtime package from Teléfonos de México (TELMEX), as it did during the presidential campaign of 2012.

VTV president and journalist William Castillo revealed that the cost of the package, purchased by Carlos Slim for Capriles, was $50 million.

Another fact revealed by Castillo, according to the Mexican operators’ union, the cost of the right wing’s telephone plan will be cancelled by the Pacific Rubiales oil company of Colombia, whose stockholders are ex-managers and oil workers involved in the PDVSA sabotage of late 2002 and early 2003.

Castillo says that “the phone calls and messages are not only for electoral purposes”, but that “their central objective is to wage a dirty war” by “creating destabilization and fear” in the Venezuelan population.

“No one should be surprised that the ‘telephone’ operation of Capriles and Slim has, at its bottom, the hand-over of CANTV [Venezuela’s nationalized phone company] in a neoliberal ‘paquetazo’,” wrote Mexican philosopher Fernando Buen Abad, upon hearing the news.

This right-wing move was rejected by Venezuelans, who found their peace interrupted by phone calls at midnight and other bothersome times. The text messages were also bothersome, as they are considered invasive and violations of communications privacy, a fact which puts private mobile phone companies in doubt, since these are presumed to have furnished the campaign with the database of their subscribers.

Translation mine.

Chalk up one more irony for the Venezuelan opposition. They’re so patriotic now that they’re going as far away as Mexico for robocalling and robotexting services to supplement their already dirty campaign. And as rich as these bastards are, they still need Carlos Slim to finance their robocalls and robotexts. The term shameless was invented, it seems, just for them!

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Who is Nicolás Maduro?

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Courtesy of Cubadebate, a thorough (and very impressive) profile of the acting (and future!) president of Venezuela:

Nicolás Maduro stands a robust 6 feet 4 inches tall, with black hair and a thick mustache. He drove a Metrobus in Caracas for more than seven years, was foreign minister for another six, and now is acting president and presidential candidate for all Venezuela. He is part of the new generation of Latin American leaders who, like metallurgical worker Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or coca-growers’ unionist Evo Morales, entered politics from the social trenches of the opposition.

Maduro is a socialist revolutionary who modified his original orthodox training to join the heterodox hurricane of the Bolivarian Revolution. He is a man of the left who came to power without abandoning his principles. A loyal collaborator of Hugo Chávez, who did the same himself, he is now in the driver’s seat of one of the most profound processes of transformation in Latin America.

Politics run in Maduro’s blood, and he breathed them from his first days. He was born in 1962 in Caracas, to a family deeply committed to collective public action. His father was a founding member of the social-democratic Acción Democrática party (AD), and organizer of a failed oil workers’ strike against the dictatorship in 1952, which obliged him to flee and go into hiding.

In 1967 Maduro attended meetings of a leftist AD splinter group, the People’s Electoral Movement, along with his parents, and a year later, the massive and popular rallies in support of the candidacy of Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa. In that campaign, Maduro came to know the world of poverty, and that of cardboard houses. And, for the first time, he spoke in public, when his father set him on the roof of a car with a microphone.

Aside from parental influence, Maduro had his own political opinions from a very young age. In his fourth year of primary school, he defended the Cuban Revolution against the criticisms of the nuns who taught in his school. As punishment, he was expelled from the classroom for three days and spent his detention in the school library — in reality, a prize for a restless boy who devoured every book he could find.

Far from being cured over the passage of time, his political precocity grew. At 12 years of age, and as a junior-high-school student, he began to militate without his parents’ knowledge in the Ruptura movement, a public wing of the revolutionary project of the guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo. Youthful exuberance was the sign of the times. From then on, young Nicolás participated without interruption in neighborhood politics, in the formation of movie clubs, in union movements, and in popular armed conspiracies.

As bassist of the rock group Enigma, he saw how many young people of his generation in the barrios got roped into the world of easy money and the drug culture, becoming addicts and getting killed in the gang wars. The experience marked him for life.

Nicolás Maduro, like Hugo Chávez, is a big-time baseball player (third base); however, unlike the Comandante, who was a terrible dancer, Maduro acquits himself reasonably well at dancing salsa.

His participation in popular movements was his university. Like many other members of his generation, his intellectual formation is directly associated with his involvement in the mass revolutionary struggle. He studied the classics of Marxism and analyzed and interpreted Venezuelan reality by the light of those teachings. Gifted with an extraordinary capacity for learning, he has been at the same time self-taught and a leader instructed by years of participation in organized politics. Until the triumph of Chavismo he regularly suffered police persecution and lived, literally, on the brink of death.

He participated in the Revolutionaries’ Organization and in its open wing, the Socialist League, a Marxist revolutionary group, an offshoot of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). Its founder, Jorge Rodríguez, was assassinated by the intelligence services in 1976. Maduro distinguished himself there as a brilliant organizer and mass political agitator.

In 1991, he began working for the Metro de Caracas. Outgoing, affable, committed to workers’ rights and charismatic, he was elected by his comrades as their union representative. His calling to democratic unionism and class struggle resulted in his being frequently suspended by the bus company. The Caracazo of 1989 had left him with the memory of the haunting sounds of the poor crying in the streets, lamenting the murders of their family members.

Maduro came to know Hugo Chávez the same way as most Venezuelans: he saw him on TV when the latter assumed responsibility for the military uprising of 1992. More than a year later, on December 16, 1993, he met him personally in jail, along with a group of workers. The lieutenant-colonel gave him the clandestine name of Verde, and put him in charge of diverse conspiratory tasks. When Chavez was freed, in 1994, Maduro devoted himself full-time to the organization of the Bolivarian movement.

The now acting president was part of the National Constituent Assembly in 1999, writing the new Constitution. A year later he was elected to the National Assembly as a deputy. In January 2006 he was named president of the Legislative Power, and a few months later, stepped down to become minister of Exterior Relations. As foreign minister he became a central figure in the project to build a multipolar world, press for Latin American integration, and building peace. From there, he went on to become vice-president and, as of a few days ago, acting president.

Maduro is married to Cilia Flores, a lawyer nine years older than himself. A leading figure of Chavismo in her own right, she has been president of the National Assembly, vice-president of the PSUV, and procurator of the Republic. They have one son, Nicolás Ernesto, a flutist, as well as a grandson.

Chosen by Hugo Chávez as his political successor, Nicolás Maduro will face the test of the vote on April 14. If he wins, he will have the job of being the new driver of the Bolivarian Revolution, resolving problems such as public insecurity and corruption, and continuing the legacy of the Comandante, radicalizing and innovating at the same time.

Translation mine.

So, for those of you wondering what Chavismo will look like without Chávez, there you have it. It looks to be about 6-foot-4, with a good head of hair and a black mustache…and, like Chavecito, a natural-born leader who came, not from the traditional ruling class, but up from below, fighting and scrapping and kicking ass all the way.

In other words, not bad. Not bad at all.

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Music for a Sunday: A prayer for Latin America

Maria Bethânia, Caetano Veloso’s sister, puts her unforgettable voice to some powerful lyrics. Here’s my translation:

Grant, my God, grant
That all that separates us
Never bears fruit, never counts
Grant, my God
Grant, my God, grant
That all that binds us
Will be only love of a rare knit
Grant, my God

Grant, my God, grant
That all that separates us
Never bears fruit, never counts
Grant, my God
Grant, my God, grant
That all that binds us
Will be only love of a rare knit
Grant, my God

Grant, my God, grant
That our love will declare itself
Much greater and not stop within us
If the waters of Guanabara
Run down my face
A nation in solidarity won’t stop within us

Grant, my God, grant
A nation in solidarity
Without prejudices, grant
A nation like us

Grant, my God, grant
That our love will declare itself
Much greater and not stop within us
If the waters of Guanabara
Run down my face
A nation in solidarity won’t stop within us

Grant, my God, grant
A nation in solidarity
Without prejudices, grant
A nation like us

A sentiment surely not confined only to Brazil, where this song originates. And by now, that “nation in solidarity” is surely growing throughout Latin America.

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Wankers of the Week: A Big Gulp of Stupidville

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Crappy weekend, everyone! Well, how was that for a week from Hades? We get one Steubenville more or less wrapped up, only to have a new one pop up in Connecticut, with all the vile rape apologism of the first and then some. And that’s not all: CPAC made like a wanker on the john, coming and going. And speaking of wankers…ah, you know the drill. In no particular order, as always, they are:

1. Sarah Fucking Palin. Ha! You thought she was irrelevant? You’re right! And here she comes, back to prove it, with a big tub of sugar-fizz in one hand, a microphone in the other, and absolutely NOTHING between her ears, as always. Gotta love that Snowbilly Grifter… PS: Ha, ha. Brainless gets dissed by Bush’s Brain. Priceless!

2. Ann Fucking Coulter. And while we’re on the subject of irrelevant grifters with nothing between the ears, here you go, ladies and gentlemen (???) of CPAC. Your Coultergeist. Please, take her away. She’s babbling about Legitimate Rape, which is an illegitimate concept. And in any case, irrelevant to Bill Clinton, who only had a consensual affair, albeit a stupid one. Perhaps she got him mixed up with St. Ronald of Reagan, who WAS a forcible rapist.

3 and 4. Pamela Fucking Geller and Orly Fucking Taitz. It was a knock-down, drag-out, screeching battle to the death to see who was the biggest, dumbest fucking conservaharridan of all. Who won? Hell if I know. But thanks for the show, girls. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any quality mud-wrestling.

5. Fucking CNN. Why?

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That’s why. A girl’s life got yanked out from under her by a bunch of fucking asshole football players (one of them an ex-boyfriend bent on getting revenge for her dumping him), and CNN’s rape-apologist crew is all about how THEIR lives got ruined. HELLO? No one held a gun to their heads and forced them to drug and sexually assault that girl. No one is responsible for the ruination of their lives but themselves. And you want to blame HER for that? Fuck you, you fucking Chicken Noodle Network. Next thing you know, we’re going to hear from the Three Mouseketeers of Steubenville about how the kids Jerry Sandusky molested were responsible for the ruination of his life AND the death of poor ol’ JoePa. That’s just all kinds of fucked up right there.

6. Moshe Fucking Ya’alon. In case anyone wonders whether Bibi Fucking Netanyahu is ever going to show some sense and stop encroaching on Palestinian turf, here’s your answer. And it’s a resounding fuck-you to Palestine.

7. Steven Fucking Crowder. What? He lied about being assaulted by a “union thug” last year? Well, I never. Actually, I could, and I did, because the video came out shortly after showing that Crowder had, in fact, made the first move. Several of them. Gee, I wonder what other disappointing facts about him are going to come to light over time? Like, maybe, the fact that his “I saved it for marriage and boy was it worth it” rantlet was a sham, and that he’s really a gay rentboy underneath it all? That would be MY educated guess… PS: Oh, BROTHER. Transphobia on top of it all. Whatsamatter, Stevie, do they confuse you? Or do they bring out something latent that you’d rather forget you have?

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8. Tucker Fucking Carlson. Bowtie Boy seems to be keeping radio silence this week. That’s prudent of him, since his efforts to smear a certain Democratic Latino senator have hit a rather large snag. And the snag is that the prostitutes he allegedly tied to the alleged senator, are now alleging that the whole thing was made up. I don’t suppose Fucker will have the grace to fashion his bowtie into a noose, but one can always hope.

9. Giorgos Fucking Katidis. At a time when Greece is facing some of the worst austerity measures since Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, well…a sloppy Nazi salute on the soccer pitch should be just the thing to lift people’s flagging spirits, right? WRONG. (And all those ugly-ass tattoos aren’t helping, either.)

10. Reince Fucking Priebus. Oh foolishly named dude, face it…your party is not the party of inclusion. That much became painfully obvious at CPAC, where the racist lunatics took over the asylum. Your problem isn’t communication; it’s the entrenched history of your party itself. You morphed from the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt into that of the Dixiecrats. You clearly don’t want anyone that isn’t white, male, heterosexual and Christian. And until you can get some political and economic sanity in there, and stop being corporate stooges, you won’t get many people whose faces are not so pale. Because one thing about non-whites is that they’re all, contrary to your expectations, very non-stupid.

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11. Bill O’Fucking Reilly. Ladies! Did you know that Billo the Falafel Man is back on the meat market? I didn’t. I haven’t exactly been following him, because UGH. Also YUCK. But apparently he has been single again for a couple of years now. And only now have we found out just how ugly his divorce was. Can’t imagine why he hasn’t been snapped up again. Can you?

12. Stephen Fucking Harper. Public servant? Got nothing nice to say about Dear Leader? Then don’t say anything at all, lest you be snitched on via Harpocracy’s latest fucking waste of money…a phone hotline to report archivists and librarians who dance out of line with the Harper Government™ and make the “duly elected” Thief in Chief look bad.

13. Roberta Fucking Jacobson. Smooth move, Ex-Lax. How do you like being cut off from diplomatic communications with Venezuela? That’ll teach you and the State Dept. to try to interfere where your “interventions” are NOT wanted. Or needed.

14. Yaron Fucking Raviv. Yeah, that’s right. Call Palestinians “cockroaches”. Go on showing the whole world how totally-not-racist and totally-not-an-apartheid-state Israel is. And how totally-not-a-fucking-dickhead YOU are. You’re a real example to the world, perfesser!

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15. T.J. Fucking Lane. Well, at least he’s a self-confessed wanker, as well as a self-confessed mass murderer. And seeing as he’s very young and has been sentenced to life in the clinker, with no possibility of parole, he’s going to be doing a lot of wanking from now on…in fact, he’ll probably be doing very little else, assuming he lasts in the general population for more than a week or two.

16. Ezra Fucking Levant. He may have apologized for insulting the Roma people, but I have a feeling he still wants to say “Gypsy, PTUH” every time they come up in conversation. Saying you’re sorry doesn’t mean you’re any less of a bigoted wanker underneath it all; in the Putz’s case, it simply means his sanctimonious “free speech” is costing his bosses too much money at a time when they’re already flushing it down the crapper in huge wads. And oh yeah: It makes them look like bigots too, for keeping him on the payroll. PS: Calling himself an “anti-racism activist” and citing Ayn Rand as a “philosopher” to prove it? Yeah, that’s a HUGE wank. Ezzy is a racist of the first water. And so was Ayn Rand. PPS: And now we know why he “apologized”. It was either that, or face criminal charges in Ontario. And now we also know the limits of Ezzy’s “free-speech activism”, ha ha.

17. Vic Fucking Toews. Just when you thought Icky Vic couldn’t get any sleazier, he up and did. This time, it’s his “reality” show about the boogyman that is undocumented immigration. He won’t say how much this crappy publicity stunt is costing the taxpayers, and little wonder: whatever it is, it’s too damn much. And the only way this could get any more farcical is if he showed up on camera in cowboy boots, a Stetson, and a sheriff’s badge, to twirl his walrus mustache at some poor hapless boat people.

18. James Fucking Ives. Sonofagun! A teabagger who’s an actual, dyed-in-the-wool fascist. I’m shocked, SHOCKED…not by the fact that he is one, no, not one bit. I quite expected THAT. I’m just shocked that it’s taken this long for it to become publicly known what teabaggers actually are!

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19. Scott Fucking Walker. Well, at least he’s admitted that support for gay rights has trumped conservatism. Just wait till he finds out that the same is true of socialism!

20. Austin Fucking Whaley. You know how freedom of speech is limited by the fact that you can’t yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre…unless the place is actually on fire? Well, something like that also holds true in a bingo hall. Dude, what I’m trying to say here is, DO NOT FUCK WITH LITTLE OLD LADIES. THEY WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT RIGHT UP. Just count yourself lucky that you didn’t get caned in the taint, kiddo.

21. Walter Fucking Madison. Yeah, somebody’s brain isn’t fully developed here, and it’s not your convicted rapist client. And really, if he didn’t want to be on the sex offender registry for life, he should have thought of that before he assaulted that girl.

22. Alex Fucking Bilmes. Ladies! Here’s a picture of the editor of British Esquire, who hath decreed that our function, as a gender, is “to be a beautiful object” and purely “ornamental”:

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Gee, why don’t I have a huge ladyboner? Either we’re not such beautiful-object-loving visual creatures as the dudebros, or — and I think I’m gonna go with this one — the man’s a mediocrity in more than just mind. PS: Oh, EWWWWWWW. But yeah, you were right about one thing, Alex…“I should not be here. I am not good-looking enough, I am not well-dressed enough, I have no part to play other than as some kind of gawping idiot onlooker…” That’s what I’m talking about. That, right there.

23. Pat Fucking Robertson. What? He’s still alive, and still ripping people off with false promises about how much more money God will give them if they send it all to him? Getting real sick of your shit, Cthulhu… PS: Bwahahaha. Oh, the irony.

24. Donna Fucking Campbell. Oh, you jumped on anti-choice legislation because you’re a doctor and a woman, did you? Go back to med school, lady…abortions don’t come with nearly as many surgical complications as colonoscopies. And if you’re really concerned about the safety of abortion, the thing to do is not throw up more legal restrictions against it, but to make sure that the latest and best medical and surgical treatments are available to all. Did they not teach you that?

25. Rand Fucking Paul. Instead of “thousands of exceptions” to the stupid-ass fetal personhood rule, how about just one rule: FETUSES ARE NOT PERSONS. See how simple that makes everything?

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26. John Fucking Hagee. Sodom and Gomorrah is not a “pilot study” for anything. It’s a fictional story about discourtesy to visitors, not a true account of what happens when there’s overt homosexuality. Stop lying and bullshitting in the name of Cthulhu, preacher-turd.

27. Michele Fucking Bachmann. Why so scared? Oh, I see: A reporter, asking questions. Couldn’t handle that? Yeah, it’s just amazing how often the people who claim that God is on their side, directing their entire lives, can’t seem to take direction from the Almighty when it comes time to explain themselves in interview. I guess God DOES make junk, after all!

28. Joe Fucking Oliver. Yeah, that green, ethical tar-sands oil is looking greener and more ethical all the time. And what better way to prove it than by running a cleanup ship aground in the very area from which the shit is to be shipped to China? Funny how things like this never happen in Venezuela, that evil, wicked socialist bastion of nationalized oil! Guess you’ve got some very sticky black egg yolks to clean off your face now, eh Joe?

29. Eric Fucking Bolling. Why?

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The only people dumber than Dubya are his unconditionally stupid supporters, especially those at FUX Snooze. There is NO “had to” about the Iraq war; Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. And only a dipshit would remain this deep in denial after all these years. That’s TEN, Eric…if you can count that high on your fingers.

30. Christopher Fucking Robinson. Here’s a handy hint for all you deadbeat dads out there: If you want to spend all your money on stupid shit instead of supporting the living, breathing child you sired, try NOT posing with big fat wads of it on Facebook. Yeah, that’s right…you’re gonna have to learn to resist temptation. (And that includes learning to keep your zippers up, while you’re at it.)

31. Abigail Fucking Fisher. Waaaaaaaaaa, Affirmative Action discriminates against white people! Uh, make that against white people whose grades don’t make the cut, and while you’re at it, that’s not Affirmative Action…that’s just the entry standards of the state university. Which is, shockingly, entitled to discriminate against anyone, black or white, who’s just not bright enough to get in, regardless of how big and whiny a federal case that person tries to make of it.

32. Natalia Fucking Paris. No, chickens don’t get female hormones to make them grow faster (there are special meat breeds that simply do so without any veterinary help; I know because my sister used to raise ’em organically). And no, female hormones of any kind do NOT make men ingesting them gay. But thanks for the misinformation and homophobia, dear! I smell PETA behind this, and in any case, I also smell Epic Fail.

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33. Dennis Fucking Veilleux. Oh noes, Connecticut isn’t friendly to gun manufacturers anymore after Sandy Hook! Funnily, I don’t feel the least bit bad about this. You? Didn’t think so.

34. Steve Fucking Stockman. The best thing about him is that if you poke holes in him, bullshit and Teh Stoopid come out. Actually, you don’t even have to poke; he just gushes them both spontaneously! How friggin’ unreal is that?

35. Richard Fucking Littlejohn. The columnist — CALUMNIST, rather — has the blood of a schoolteacher on his hands; she killed herself after he publicly castigated her on the pages of the Daily Mail for the terrible, terrible sincrime of being transgendered. He acted as though her gender transition were some form of child abuse. It’s not; children are, it turns out, MUCH more capable of understanding trans issues than bigoted old adults will ever be. And the children would have shrugged it all off as no big deal, had Richard Fucking Littlejohn not been determined to MAKE a big deal of it. And now they are traumatized, since their teacher is dead. Well done, Richard Fucking Littlejohn, well done, jolly good. And, I see, the Daily FAIL has taken down the offending column, but he’s still on the (hatchet) job. What a bunch of despicable cowards they all are. If justice prevailed, he’d lose his job and never work in the industry again. And then he’d get a small taste of what it was like for Lucy Meadows to be shunned and reviled in terms ordinarily reserved for child abusers. But since he’s a frothing homophobe and a right-wing shitbat, of course he gets to keep his job. And he gets protected by his equally right-wing, shitbat employers, too. From all the way across the Atlantic. OF COURSE.

36. Keith O’Fucking Brien. Well, well. So it’s one thing out in front of the cameras, another behind the scenes? Not any more. These days, if you’re going to make a big public tra-ra about what a pluperfect religious homophobe you are, you had best beware lest the little pink tutu-clad skeleton in your closet starts putting on its toe shoes and kicking the door down.

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37 and 38. Todd Fucking Starnes and Stacey Fucking Campfield. Oh, get a room, you two! It’s really shameful the way you both fixate so publicly and vocally on sex, sex, sex all the time. And you both scream the loudest when confronted with drag queens…and a leather-clad lesbian who’s only there to teach a poetry workshop. That’s not kinky, that’s downright perverted!

39. Gian Paolo Fucking Vanoli. No, vaccines can’t turn you gay. And I should know, because I’ve had so many that by now I ought to be a raging bulldagger, if that theory held true. And here I am, li’l ol’ me, still straight as a stick and girly as ever. And I’m not autistic, either. Dang! Maybe they didn’t “take”? Maybe I should go drink a glass of pee instead?

40. Jeremy Fucking Jensen. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, what you call women is what YOU are.

41. Nicolas Fucking Sarkozy. L’Oréal. Because he’s worth it. Too bad their makeup is all painfully sheer and won’t cover up the crooked, eh?

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42, 43 and 44. Omar, Zayd and Faysal Fucking Khatib. Dudes. Your meme sucks. And now that you’ve faced criminal charges for starting yet another stupid Internet fad, doesn’t it just suck that much harder? I guess what I’m trying to say here is HA, HA. I really do have trouble feeling sorry for a bunch of stupid kids wasting food and drink in the name of fifteen seconds of fame.

45. Julian Fucking Fantino. Can’t bear to let CIDA have a degree of autonomy from the PMO? Then kill CIDA. And let the ideology of profit, profit über alles win out over development aid. That, in a nutshell, is how Harpistan does foreign relations. And that, in a nutshell, is why I despise Julian Fucking Fantino.

46. Saxby Fucking Chambliss. One does not have to be gay to support same-sex marriage; I’m not, and yet I do. But how typically Repugnican of him to be utterly unable to empathize even a little bit with gay constituents. And Reince Fucking Priebus wonders why the GOP has an image problem? It’s not a problem of style, it’s a problem of substance. As in, THEY UTTERLY FUCKING LACK IT.

47. Stephen Fucking Harper. Once again, let’s hear it for the Harper Government™ and its shoddy efforts to usurp the title and role of the GOVERNMENT OF CANADA, BITCHES. Getting real sick of your shit, Harpo.

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48. Bibi Fucking Netanyahu. At long last, an “apology” (note the quotes) for the murderous IDF raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which killed nine Turks, one of them a teenager with US dual citizenship. Why is this a wank? Three years’ delay, for one. Bibi’s legendary whiny arrogance, for another. And let’s not forget that this only could have come about as a result of Barack Obama’s state visit. Does anyone seriously think he’d have bothered if not for that?

49. Roger Fucking Noriega. Accusing Iran, the Mexican drug cartels, etc., of laundering money in Venezuela? Sounds like projection to me. Or maybe just wishful thinking on his part, seeing as neither he nor any of his crooked Iran-Contra cronies have been able to do that there since, oh, about 1999.

50. Mike Fucking Rogers. Hey, n00b, if you’re gonna last long as a professional corrupto in Washington, you gotta learn to play by the rules! And the first of them is, when some lobbyist slips you a fat envelope, don’t go opening your big beak and crowing about it on teh tweeter. Especially not if it’s in support of cyberspying without warrant or even a probable cause. Do I gotta explain it all to ya, kid? Gawd but you’re fucking stupid.

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And finally, to the Fucking Osmond Family. Yes, all of them. And their perfect teeth. You see, they’ve decided to occupy the state capitol rotunda in Utah to caterwaul to the choir on the day the Supreme Court decides the legality of same-sex marriage. IN UTAH. Let that sink in. Ready? Okay. They’re protesting what they see as a change in the definition of marriage from the “traditional” (one man, one woman) to something new and scary. Nobody remind them that their own Mormon church changed the definition of marriage, too, twice…from the “traditional”, to the even MORE “traditional” (one man, one small army of women)…and then, as a condition of statehood for Utah, they had to change it back again. That’s right…the Osmonds belong to a sect (a cult, really) where patriarchs called “prophets” used to have the power to arrange disastrous, often loveless, life-ruining “marriages”, usually between barely-menstruating teenage girls and men old enough to be their fathers, grandfathers or even great-grandfathers…and they think marriage and children need defending from the homo-sex-you-alls? Yes, you did hear a muffled ptmpf…and yes, that WAS an irony meter quietly imploding under the strain of all the batshit fucking crazy.

Good night, and get fucked!

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The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 6

Alberto Nolia and Tania Díaz of VTV’s Dando y Dando discuss the latest efforts of Majunche Capriles Radonsky to usurp the mantle of Chavecito. Unfortunately for Majunche, the campaign has hit a major snag. Guess what that snag is…

Journalist Alberto Nolia stated that Henrique Capriles Radonski has not the slightest chance of winning the coming presidential elections on April 14.

Interviewed by Tania Díaz on the Dando y Dando segment of the VTV program All Venezuela, Nolia stated that the right-wing candidate has intellectual and discursive limitations, which is why he cannot successfully challenge the candidacy of acting president Nicolás Maduro.

Nolia castigated Capriles for trying to take on rhetoric similar to that of the late Hugo Chávez, emphasizing that the strategy is a mistake: “This caveman [Capriles] wants to make himself look like Chávez and criticizes Nicolás Maduro for mentioning him!”

Likewise, he commended the way the socialist candidate Nicolás Maduro has conducted his campaign: “Maduro is campaigning the way he truly is, at the side of the people.”

Nolia addressed the right-wing candidate (by way of recommendation) that he withdraw from the elections, and continue to do what he has been doing up to now: “despoiling the state of Miranda.”

Translation mine.

Isn’t it funny? First the opposition has tried (unsuccessfully) to position itself as more Bolivarian than Bolívar; now it’s trying to look more Chavista than Chávez. And judging by that fuzzy caterpillar on his face, Majunche is also trying to outdo someone at something:

capriles-maduro-stache

“Mirror, mirror…do I look more mature?”

That’s a pun, hon. “Maduro” is Spanish for “mature”…and no, Majunche, you will never get there. Not even on the superficial level that seems to be the only thing the inbred twits of the Venezuelan upper classes can grasp or handle. While you’re in front of the mirror twiddling your weedy ‘stache, the man you keep deriding as a “mere” bus driver is drawing closer…and come the 14th, he’s gonna roll that shiny new Metrobus right over you. Probably while you’re busy with an eyebrow pencil, trying to draw a mole on your forehead that looks just like the one Chavecito had.

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RED ALERT: International fascists to meet in Argentina

warning-fascism

From Aporrea, a denunciation of what are sure to be nasty things to come:

Our editorial desk has received a denunciation and alert regarding a no-good meeting which will take place in two Argentine cities, and which will involve the most reactionary right-wingers from this zone and from Spain. The alert reads as follows:

MEETING OF REACTIONARIES AND PUTSCHISTS

Between April 8 and 12, the cities of Rosario and Buenos Aires will once again receive visitors who are personae non gratae to those of us who think, work and yearn for the emancipation of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The oft-repeated names of the international right-wing, which will reunite the biggest exponents of anti-Cuban and anti-Bolivarian discourse, will come together in our land to attack the Media Law, Latin American unity, and the popular political experiences taking place in the region.

The Peruvians, Mario and Alvaro Vargas Llosa (publicists of neoliberalism and fierce opponents of every form of popular power); the Spaniards, José María Aznar (ex-president, supporter of the invasion of Iraq and the coup d’état against Chávez in April 2002) and Esperanza Aguirre (president of the fascist Partido Popular in Madrid); the Chileans, Joaquín Lavín (Pinochet’s dauphin) and Cristian Larroulet (secretary-general to Sebastián Piñera); the Uruguayan, Luis Alberto Lacalle (ex-president); the Bolivian, Jorge Quiroga (ex-president, accused of narcotrafficking and violations of human rights, opponent of Evo Morales); the Venezuelans, Marcel Granier (president of the TV channel RCTV, supported and pushed for the coup against Chávez in 2002, which was the reason why five years later he did not receive a licence renewal for the station) and María Corina Machado (deputy of the Venezuelan national assembly, opposition putschist); Carlos Alberto Montaner (Cuban-American writer, linked for decades to the CIA), as well as the Cuban, Yoani Sánchez, agent recruited to serve the interests of the United states under the guise of an innocent blogger, whom Wikileaks has singled out for her close relations with US diplomats in Cuba, as well as being regional vice-president of the IAPA (an organization of newspaper owners with headquarters in Miami). All of these sinister personages have been convoked by the Freedom Foundation (created in Rosario in 1988 by a group of businessmen, professionals and intellectuals, all fierce defenders of neoliberalism), the Fundación Pensar (“Idea factory of the PRO”, as the Macri supporters call it) and FAES (created in 1989 and closely linked to the right-wing Partido Popular of Spain.)

These undesirable visitors will come to vomit their fiercely McCarthyite discourse, support the criminal blockade against the people of Cuba, defame once more the revolutionary and dignified trajectory of the recently deceased Comandante Hugo Chávez Frías, plot against the governments who belong to the ALBA, denounce the “politicization” of UNASUR and CELAC, and go on recommending the neoliberal economic formulae dictated by the IMF, which are starving our people and leading Europe off a cliff, and justifying the political, economic and military offensive which imperialism continues to develop all over the continent.

Regarding Argentina, they will not miss the opportunity to rail against the Media Law, in defence of the corporate policies and postulates of the press owners’ syndicate which is the IAPA, and to support the proposals of the right-wing oligarchy headed by the Rural Society and their partners of the PRO.

Joining these sordid visitors and their continent-destabilizing preachments, is a star of conspiratory entrapment, launched by the US State Department and the CIA for their media operations against Cuba, the blogger Yoani Sánchez. With her and her defamatory discourse on Cuban reality and the incontestable achievements of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, they will try to close the circle of lies, insults, provocations and threats thrown by these discredited prophets of intolerance.

In the face of this meeting of the international right wing and their local hosts from the Argentine right wing, we the undersigned:

— Repudiate the presence of these lugubrious messengers of capitalism and their destructive politics against the people and nations of Latin America and the Caribbean

— Denounce the campaign of siege and destabilization which this group of individuals and the entities they represent (and who finance them) come to visit with impunity upon the governments and peoples of the continent who have opted for an independent, progressive and confrontational course against the interventionist politics of the United States and their European allies

— Extend our solidarity to those who, for having denounced terrorist plans against Cuba organized by the mafias of Miami, are today unjustly imprisoned in the United States, as is the case with the five Cuban patriots, political prisoners in the US for more than 14 years

— Advocate for a deeper integration of Latin America, and for extending emancipatory proposals to all the countries of the continent

— Call upon the citizenry to close ranks in order to prevent the campaigns we have denounced here from developing with impunity. For this, the best recourse the people have is their mobilization and organzation, along with their growing awareness, to head off at the pass those who are trying to drag us back to the hell of neoliberalism and submission to the dictates of North American imperialism.

Translation mine.

The denunciation comes courtesy of an Argentine committee in support of the Cuban Five, who are no doubt following all of these lugubrious (I love that word!) imperialists. Watch this space come April 8-12, kiddies, I’ll be following them too.

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Posted in All About Evo, Chile Sin Queso, Crapagandarati, Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), EuroPeons, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Fine Young Cannibals, Good to Know, Huguito Chavecito, Inca Dink-a-Doo, Isn't That Illegal?, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Paraguay, Uruguay, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia, The War on Terra, Under the Name of Spain | Comments Off on RED ALERT: International fascists to meet in Argentina

Quotable: Chinua Achebe on oppression and resistance

chinua-achebe

“To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He [or she] must know his [or her] oppressor’s real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!

— Chinua Achebe, Nov. 16, 1930 – Mar. 22, 2013

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Festive Left Friday Blogging: Chavecito joins his heroes

A little cartoon from ViVe TV, in which the great players of Latin American history unite in the shade of trees on the Venezuelan plains. Bolívar is there, as are Allende, Martí, Tupac Katari, Che…and who’s that woman holding out her hand? That’s Chavecito’s biggest hero of all — his beloved grandmother, Rosa Inés, who raised him while his parents worked, and taught him to be the caring humanitarian he became.

Hasta siempre, Comandante.

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