Le Fou, et la folie anglaise

This is the guy who tried to gun down Québec’s new premier, Pauline Marois, last night. He has been identified as Richard Henry Bain, 62, a businessman from Mont-Tremblant. He didn’t hit her, but he did manage to shoot two other people; one died of his injuries. This is not merely tragic, it’s highly ironic when you consider the following:

“It is clear the current PQ will not lead us to sovereignty. Another PQ, perhaps, but not the one we have now. It is not unifying or inspiring enough,” former PQ cabinet minister and Marois ally Joseph Facal wrote in the Journal de Montreal on Monday. And in 2011, after the PQ legislators quit even though Marois had a 93 percent vote of confidence at a party congress that April, rebel legislator Jean-Martin Aussant said “I do not think Mrs Marois is the woman people want to follow when it comes to creating a country.”

Maybe it’s because creating a new country doesn’t seem like her top priority. During her victory speech, Marois said in English — a significant decision — that the rights of all Quebec residents would be respected. “We share the same history, and I want us to shape together our future,” she said.

That came right before the lunatic shown above opened fire like Marc Fucking Lépine at the Ecole Polytechnique. As he was being hustled out by police, he shouted “The English are waking up!” (In what’s sure to be another delectable irony, he shouted it bilingually.)

One wonders just what exactly the “English” in Québec are waking up to now. One hopes it is to the fact that yes, they too produce fanatics, terrorists and deranged fools. There is a veritable anti-francophone derangement syndrome; I call it la folie anglaise, the English madness. It’s a minority thing, but it’s real, and there’s just enough of it going around to do serious damage. Here’s a small sample of la folie anglaise gleaned from Facebook last night:

Charming, eh?

Time for anglophone Canada to face up to this cancer in our midst. And time to drop the animosity before more people get hurt (or worse). Had things gone according to Bain’s plan, hundreds of people could have perished in the hotel; he set fire to the outside of it. It’s hard not to call this terrorism, so let’s do it and face up to the fact that yes, this shit stinks. And we’ve got Augean Stables full of it, everywhere we look.

In the meantime, to the francophones, I’d just like to say: Je suis désolée, nous ne sommes pas tous comme ce fou. Il est l’exception, et il est d’une très petite minorité. Nous sommes très embarrassé(e)s de lui. La reste du Canada n’a pas une folie anglaise comme ça. Nous voulons travailler en paix avec vous. J’espère que notre pays reste entier.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Isn't It Ironic?, Morticia! You Spoke French! | 1 Comment

Stupid Sex Tricks: And now, your pre-flight safety drill…

Passengers on a Polish airplane got a different brand of safety drill when they buckled in, thanks to a major condom brand:

Was this staged? I don’t know. The giggling old lady and the horrified young man tell me it can’t have been, since those are the reactions you’d least expect from people of their respective ages and genders. As for that close-up of the young couple fondling each other, I have to wonder.

Let’s hope the REAL safety drill got as much attention as this.

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Quotable: Carl Sagan on irony

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Posted in Isn't It Ironic?, Quotable Notables, She Blinded Me With Science, The United States of Amnesia | 2 Comments

Happy You Know What Day

I’m quite surprised that we still have this holiday under the Harper Government™ of Harpistan. But whatever…hope yours is still good. Enjoy it while you got it, folks.

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Music for a Sunday: Blow your harmonica, son!

Frank Zappa’s classic song, with actual footage of the LA riots that inspired it.

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Wankers of the Week: Neil Armstrong Memorial Edition

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Crappy weekend, everyone! This week’s wankapedia is devoted to the late Neil A. Armstrong, the first person from Earth to set foot on the Moon, and who remained remarkably down to earth for all that. These wankers, however, are simply out of this world. And here they come, in no particular order:

1. Monica Fucking Crowley. Yes, that’s right, Neil Armstrong died just so Barack Obama could spread Islam. This is an even loonier conspiracy theory than claiming that the Moon Landing was faked.

2. Rupert Fucking Murdoch. Does anyone else see the irony of ol’ Rupee, who made a pretty penny (and pound) invading other people’s privacy, even paying private eyes to hack their voicemails, now suddenly getting all sanctimonious and “Leave Naked Prince Harry Alone!”? Yeah, I thought you would.

3. Don Fucking Dwyer. Won’t somebody please think of the children? Well, this professional homophobe did…but only AFTER he drunkenly rammed a boat full of them. That’s something I have NEVER seen a gay person do.

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4. Jeff Fucking Landry. While it may be true (ha, no, not really) that LGBT studies minors don’t directly help students get jobs, abolishing them won’t help on the job front either. One thing those minors WILL do, however, is increase political consciousness…and considering that Landry is a Repug and we all know how THEY feel about LGBTs, that would be a terrible thing…for the likes of Jeff Fucking Landry. Political consciousness is the nemesis of the GOP.

5. Mitt Fucking Romney. Swiss bank accounts are the key signifier for international financial criminals. By refusing to close his, what is Mittens really saying about himself? And speaking of offshore tax evasion type stuff, how about that Cayman Islands flag on Mr. Amurrica’s partyboat?

6. Caleb Fucking Hesse. Homophobes are invariably hiding something, and in the case of this Prop Hate supporter, it was his own pedophilia. Man, that ol’ closet door just keeps getting flimsier all the time! But hey, the evangelical churches are there to help…by giving these creeps a place of regular access to impressionable children. Amazing how well that works.

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7. Bryan Fucking Fischer. Oh sure, the Repug party has “very clean moral foundations” — if by “clean”, you mean bloodstained by war, dead women, dead queers, Hurricane Katrina…I could go on. Why there’s still such a thing as Log Cabin Republicans, I do not know. If I were them, I’d want out of a party that hated me so religiously.

8. Steve Fucking King. So, let’s see if I got this straight: Minorities have to take “personal responsibility” for their own persecution, or they are just falling into “victimology”, whatever the fuck THAT is. Meanwhile, their rich white right-wing oppressors are NEVER to blame for anything, and if anything, THEY are the “victims” of multiculturalism, as they line up at the public trough for their share of the minorities’ sweat. Sound about right?

9. Tom Fucking Smith. No, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy is NOT “similar to rape”, unless both end in abortion (or forced birth). And even then, it’s the end, not the beginning, where the similarity lies. But thanks so much for intimating that rape victims are jezebels, or that your daughter disgraced you. That’s gotta feel real good.

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10. Jesten Fucking Peters. Yeah, God really listens to preachers from the shallow end of the gene pool, and redirects hurricanes accordingly. Just for that bit of arrogance, I hope the next one scores a direct hit on this woman’s church.

11. Meredith Fucking Lepore. What fucking decade is this again? My gawd, it’s as though The Feminine Mystique had never been published. It’s been nearly 50 years since then, and somebody still thinks women go to college to bag themselves a husband…sorry, an MRS degree. Worse yet, the idiot in question is a woman. Mission Accomplished! We are now post-feminist, people! Everybody go back to your kitchens…except the dudes. There’s a mancession on, and the ladies are only getting in the way of their getting jobs, y’know.

12. Salvatore Fucking Cordileone. Like #6, this one is a Prop Hate supporter (and actually raised money and signatures to get that deformed fetus onto the ballot initiatives); like #3, he drives drunk. Unlike either of them, though, he was recently designated archbishop of San Francisco…the gayest city in the world. What is it about these fucking homophobic bigots, anyway?

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13. Sue-Ann Fucking Levy. It’s only free speech when hateful right-wingers do it; when leftists call you on it, their speech is censorship. How tiresomely fucking predictable!

14. Rebecca Fucking Kleefisch. Four bullet holes good, two stab wounds bad. Some rapes really ARE more forcible than others. So fucking what? Women shouldn’t be forced to bring the results of them into the world, no matter how forcible (or not) they were. Forcible birth is no better than forcible rape, you fucking idiot.

15. Ann Fucking Romney. Meanwile, the Wife of Mittens decides to tell the Repugnican sheeple, especially the ewes, how much she loves them. This as her husband and his party are planning to strip away as many rights from as many people as possible, while handing all that unused personhood over to fetuses and corporations. In other news, a black camerawoman got to hear how Repugs really feel about her…and blacks…and women in general. Call me hearing-impaired, but I think Marie Ann-toinette’s ringing little speech rings just a wee bit hollow. Let her eat cake!

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16. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. Hey Pigman, I have a better idea: Instead of using worthless US greenbacks (which smell terrible, especially when wet) to shore up the levees that your boy Dubya neglected to keep in proper repair, how’s about we plug them up with YOU? Granted, it’s probably no more effective in the long run than sticking a Dutch boy’s finger in a dike, but at least it would kill two birds with one stone: Stop another Katrina catastrophe, and keep you from running your big ol’ ugly racist mouth.

17. Janine Fucking Turner. Washed-up actress turned racist GOP/Stepford spokesmodel tells saccharine half-truths, completely ignores how many men in her own party are dedicated to taking away those “God-given” rights she gets so artificially choked up about. I used to like her when she was a bush pilot on Northern Exposure, but that was a long time ago. Just proof that there need to be more roles for actresses who are neither ingénues nor crones. Because when actors lack for real work, this is where they land up. And, bottle-blond helmet hair notwithstanding, it is not a pretty sight.

18. Jon Fucking Voight. Speaking of washed-up actors, how about Angelina Jolie’s oft-disowned old man? He was in fine form, too, insisting that Obama was “controlling” the media, just like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Only — oops! — neither democratically-elected, non-white president is doing anything of the fucking sort, as is evidenced by the endless parade of right-wing nutjobs (like, oh, say, Jon Fucking Voight) in both countries bellowing that they are being silenced by “that dictator”, and having it repeated and amplified 24/7/36fucking5 by the ever compliant whore media. Are there not enough raving-lunatic roles to be filled anymore, either? Hollywood, shame on you. You call yourselves liberals?

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19. Rick Fucking Santorum. He’s not an actor by trade, but he’s definitely washed-up. And he’s talking an awful lot with his hands, but nothing (except the ooky obvious) is coming out. Hey Ricky, don’t you have a family to get back to? Or are they just for show?

20. Gabby Fucking Mercer. No, no, don’t anyone stop her from running; let her racism follow her all the way to a resounding defeat at the ballot box. Of course, it being Aryanzona, maybe her shit is just par for the course…

21. Shirley Fucking Hornstein. A photoshopping tech-fraudster and the RNC go together like greaseburgers and day-old fries. But who can blame her? She’s only gravitating to where the stupid people’s money is.

22. John Fucking Boehner. Awww, isn’t it cute? The Weeper of the House is scared that blacks and Latin@s will turn out to vote! So scared, in fact, that he’s melting…and is expected to turn into a puddle of rancid orange oil any day now.

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23. Benedict Fucking Groeschel. Talk about victim blaming! I have yet to see a single case where a teenager seduced an older person in a position of power, authority or responsibility over them. Unless by “seduced” you mean “merely existed in the presence of”.

24. Courtney Fucking Stodden. Hooray, you turned 18! Finally you’re legal…but your marriage is still gross. And your new dog’s name sounds like “dorky” to me.

25. Krista Fucking Ford. Move over, Robbo and Dougie, here comes your niece and daughter, respectively. And for that matter, move over, Officer Slutty, because you’ve got company on the bullshit bandwagon. It’s an insult to anyone who was raped, especially one who wasn’t dressed the least bit poorly. And it’s all especially rich coming from a chick who used to play lingerie football. (No, I shit you not.)

26. Clint Fucking Eastwood. Time to retire, old man. That is all.

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27. Gina Fucking Rinehart. Awww, da poor widdle rich bitch wants all of us plebes and proles who actually work for our daily crust to stop being so jealous and socialistic and class warfare-y. She doesn’t want to pay taxes, because it would ruin her “self-made” (read: inherited from her deeply racist daddy) empire. Isn’t she precious? Too bad I can’t afford a solid-gold, diamond-encrusted binky, or I’d send it to her, nicely gift-boxed, with an engraved note on thick, scented paper…reading SUCK IT.

28. David Fucking Kappheim. If a difference in politics bothers you so much, break the fuck up. Don’t murder somebody just because she’s not a fascist fucking nutjob like you.

29. The Fucking King of Spain. Parking badly is bad. Hitting someone for parking badly is worse. Worst of all: Doing it under royal privilege. NOT FUCKING CLASSY.

30. Mark Fucking Harris (and his fucking wife). “Mark and Irene are both pro‐life, believe marriage is between one man and one woman, are for open records and transparency, believe in very conservative principles and the Republican platform.” Translation: They’re anti-choice, homophobic, hypocritical, full of shit, racist and xenophobic…and they wear really ugly swimsuits, too.

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And finally, to all you walking fucking freak-scenes who seriously believe that the Moon Landing was faked, that Neil Armstrong was with the nonexistent Illuminati, and all that other shit…gawd, you people are STUPID. Learn some fucking science, maybe then you won’t get all hung up on elaborate conspiracy theories that just don’t hang together for shit.

Good night, and get fucked!

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Festive Left Friday Blogging: Well hello, stranger!

Because we haven’t had any Evo in this space for a while…

…here is an adorable, if oddly angled, shot of Evo looking adorable, if oddly angled. Happy Friday!

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Stupid Sex Tricks: Really, REALLY defeating the purpose

Gentlemen: The above is a product that you should probably avoid if you cherish your virility. Gawker explains why:

29-year-old Adrian Carter of Houston says he experienced “significant pain and observed a large quantity of blood squirting out of his penis onto the sheets, walls and mirror” after engaging in sexual intercourse with his “paramour” at a local motel.

He rushed to the emergency room, where doctors were forced to “deglove” his penis in order to fix the fracture — a procedure that reportedly resulted in his inability to copulate or produce progeny.

Ouch! But to be fair, maybe the placebo effect was more to blame for this broken dong:

“What happens is, when a guy has an erection, the penis is filled with blood and there’s a lot of pressure,” Dr. LeRoy Jones said. “If the pelvic bone hits the penis, you can kinda think of the penis as buckling. You can get a rupture and blood can leak out.”

Dr. Jones further noted that it’s highly unlikely the pills were responsible — mostly because they don’t work. “Maybe guys will have a placebo effects,” he said, “but there’s nothing in there that will help them.”

Likely scenario: Youngish guy, trying to impress his girlfriend with his amatory prowess, takes some snake oil he only thinks will improve his performance; gets carried away; pushes too hard; hits an immovable object with his “irresistible force”; breaks penis. Happens all the time, right?

But still…ouch.

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Posted in She Blinded Me With Science, Stupid Sex Tricks, Teh Heterostoopid | 2 Comments

Stupid Sex Tricks: Bad, bad, BAD bad vibrations

Honestly, this sounds like it came from The Onion:

…but no, it’s apparently real. Ladies, wouldn’t YOU like to take smartphone app requests to buzz your clit while your Dear Hubby is off “on business”, driving a flashy car in some chic other part of the world (and probably schtupping someone younger and prettier than you IRL)? Yeah, that would sweeten ME right up, especially if I had three crying, clinging kids hanging off me so constantly that I could scarcely get time to meet the smartphone for sexytimes in my my dowdy pink robe and bunny slippers. John doesn’t need to send Jane any stupid app requests, he needs to get his ass home and help out there. Or at least hire proper daycare and take Jane on a kid-free cruise, fergawdsakes.

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The strange case of Máximo Laura

The following article was sent to me by my friend Sasha, who divides her time between Canada and Peru. It’s by Antonio Rengifo Balarezo, and it describes some disturbing tendencies afoot in Peru today:

The reason for accepting the charge of Ambassador of Brand Peru is “to serve the homeland” and be on display for the media backed by government and big business. Vargas Llosa would not have accepted such a charge, and neither did Máximo Laura need such repayment for his actions.

However, Máximo Laura, our greatest master in the art of tapestry weaving, accepted the nomination of Ambassador of Brand Peru plain and simple. The Peruvian state wanted to use, for publicity reasons, his great international prestige as an artist and his national flavor to promote sales of Peruvian merchandise abroad, and to attract foreign investment to our country. Laura did not realize that, upon accepting this charge, he would be accepting the official politics of the government, and was mercilessly thrown out the window.

PromPerú irrevocably withdrew his nomination as ambassador of Brand Peru, due to his statements in which he expressed “sympathies” to the Shining Path guerrillas in an interview given to the newspaper La República.

To explain the defenestration of Máximo Laura it is of greatest importance that the text of that same interview be placed in its social context. The interview in question took place in a moment in which the Executive Power had prepared a legal project, called “negationism”, and applied all its artillery of propagandistic supersaturation to bring about its approval in the Congress of the Republic.

According to said project, which would modify the Penal Code, those who denied the grave damage the Shining Path and MRTA had done to the country would be committing a crime. That is, anyone who publicly approved, justified, denied or minimized the crimes committed by terrorist groups in the country, in accordance with Article 2, Law 25475, would be sentenced to between four and eight years in prison.

The justification at the heart of the penal code is to protect the victims of terrorism, and to protect public peace. However, the law, as defined, only deals with violence and terrorism by non-state actors. Even though we know full well that the former members of the Colina group of the armed forces have committed violations of human rights, they were not included in said legal project. There is a direct correlation between this project and the recent sentence handed down by Judge Villa Stein against the Colina group.

The Colina group is the tip of the iceberg, since it officialized the counterinsurgency operations manual, M 41-7. Let’s appreciate what said manual serves up:

“In more than ten years of internal warfare, more than 12,000 officials passed through the different emergency zones, carrying that manual as though it were the Bible. There were human rights violations on both sides. In the case of the members of the forces of public order, the manual told them they had to physically eliminate not only the armed elements of Shining Path, but also their political directors and administrators, who didn’t necessarily have to bear weapons. […] They were given carte blanche to kill whomever they suspected of belonging to the organization, even if it wasn’t an armed combatant, but only a simple administrator. […] This manual undermined the morale of the soldiers and many of us refused to abide by it.”

Those are the words of then-lieutenant and today president of the republic, Ollanta Humala, in his book, From Locumba to Candidate for the Presidency of Peru, printed in Mexico in 2009, by Quebecort World S.A., Querétaro. (See pages 36-64.) Tell me, reader, if Ollanta Humala should have been thrown out of the presidency for saying “There were human rights violations on both sides”.

However, PromPerú wasn’t satisfied with the explanations given by Máximo Laura after the interview with La República. Let’s look at the “sensitive” bits taken as causes for his defenestration:

What did your father want you to become?

I think something different from him, nothing more. Because I am a huamanguino of the generation of the ’60s and ’70s, it was impossible to predict what one could be.

You studied at San Cristóbal de Huamanga when Abimael Guzmán was there. Did you know him?

Yes, because Huamanga is very small. There were these conferences, meetings, totally free public debates. Since we were just boys, nothing was alien to us.

Did you have sympathies for the Shining Path as an idea?

Oh yes, definitely…

Was Abimael a seducing kind of guy?

Not only that. One of the ideologues, Víctor Zorrilla, was an extraordinary theoretician. Luis Kawata, what a pedagogue he was! You received a class in materialism, and you never forgot it.

And when did you break with that line?

I didn’t break with it, exactly, because my work was not political but rather literary. That was what I studied. I never finished, because when I moved to Lima to carry on with my studies, I began to work in weavings.

That is, you went back to your roots.

To those that were known. I used my ability to draw since I was very small to get a grasp on Peruvian iconography and recreate it.

What is your outlook now on Abimael Guzmán and the whole Shining Path process?

I think it was one of the most important movements we have had, historically speaking, a political project to change Peru.

In spite of the violence?

When it comes to a change of systems, it effectively has to be that way. But now, I do this kind of work, I make what I make, and I’m in the middle of the system.

And the system hasn’t treated you badly.

Oh no, on the contrary, I’m a proud defender of the system and the reality of the country today. If you look at my career from 1985 onward, when I began to have my first exhibitions, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to this day.

Crystal-clear answers in the interview. But the Torquemada who took the decision to leave him without the title of publicity ambassador brought in the machinery of the times to reverse the actual experiences of Máximo Laura’s youth.

In sum, what happened to Máximo Laura is a warning signal in the field of the arts and culture of the law of “negationism” and the current tendency of the government. And it is written in the “purges” of the personnel of the State, the raid on the Vórtice publishing house, the sentence handed down by Judge Villa Stein, the bloody repression of the people of Cajamarca for their just acts of self-defence against the implementation of the Conga mining project, etc.

Our Peru is a land of surprises, but no one ever imagined that Máximo Laura would become a “socio-political subversive”. Still, he has antecedents, because I published Máximo Laura: Subverter of Traditional Weaving in the newspaper El Comercio on January 22, 1989. He has lived up to that title. He is one of our universal Peruvians.

Translation mine. Linkage added.

Strange that what’s fair in Ollanta Humala’s court is somehow foul in that of Máximo Laura, a master weaver who never hurt anyone, and whose early ideological sympathies for the Shining Path came into existence before the drug wars of the ’80s, with all their corrupting influences and horrific terrorism — a terrorism certainly not limited to Maoist insurgents, as Ollanta’s own army memoir makes clear. A most disturbing case of “do as I say, not as I do”. Is it because the one enjoys only symbolic power as “one of our universal Peruvians”, while the other’s power is more concrete?

Rhetorical question. We all know the answer to that one.

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Posted in Artsy-Fartsy Culture Stuff, Do As I Say..., Fascism Without Swastikas, Inca Dink-a-Doo, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, The WTF? Files | 1 Comment