News of the Restless

Is the LAHT a bunch of Koch-suckers?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Sabina Becker

I’ve always had my suspicions about a certain crappy “news” outlet pretentiously calling itself the “Latin American Herald Tribune”. I never did trust it; there was something of a rightist stench about it. And today, I received this in my e-mail. I think it tells us something about who may in fact be behind them, making sure nothing but bad news gets out about Latin America’s socialist successes. You be the judge:

Now, anyone who knows even a little bit about Venezuela should be doing a facepalm over the headline alone. Venezuela is not a “communist” country in any sense of the word. That’s not merely editorializing, that’s just plain WRONG. Venezuela is democratic, and its president is duly elected, as are all its national assembly congresscritters. And some, including the president himself, are duly re-elected. And every major piece of legislation they pass is publicly ratified. Unless a surfeit of democracy is your idea of communism, Venezuela is not a communist country.

Of course, Venezuela does have an old and honorable communist party, one which was illegal under more than one military dictator (as well as quite a few of the weak-tea “democrats” of the Punto Fijo era of 1958-98). But it does not rule the roost, even though it does openly support the president, and its members often agitate for greater social reforms. They are also decidedly NOT under the control of Chávez, who criticized them not so long ago for organizing protests against the visit of El Narco Uribe. (It should be noted that public criticism, not jail, was the worst that any of them got for that show of undiplomatic independence. Chavecito is a president, not a dictator.)

And Venezuela enjoys close ties to Cuba, which is said to be communist, but is actually also surprisingly democratic at a grassroots level. Maybe it’s Cuba that the mindless drones behind that press release were thinking of? If so, they’re still in error. They wrote Venezuela.

Now, about that fertilizer company that the Koch profiteers are so hot under the collar about: Guess what, it was not “expropriated”, it was nationalized. And there’s a good reason for that: Venezuela can and should produce the overwhelming majority of its own food, and not be forced to rely on expensive imports from multinational monopolies. It was an agrarian country before oil was first discovered and commercially developed there, and when the oil runs out, it should be one again. That’s not going to happen without a lot of help from the top. And Chavecito knows this full well, which is why he’s nationalizing all these foreign-owned agro- and petro-chemical industries (with strong public approval!), and turning their output over to Venezuelan farmers instead of putting it up for foreign sale on a glutted world market. (You can’t fertilize your fields with dinero, after all.) It’s a perfectly rational and intelligent way of getting the country back to its self-sufficient agrarian roots, it’s producing high-quality local food (often by co-operative farming), and it’s helping Venezuelans to feed their families for less, too. Foreign corporations HATE that. So, of course, what better way to denigrate the reasonable measures of an elected government than to call it “communist”? And award lucrative cash “prizes” to opposition “students” who will never get themselves elected to anything?

But hey, if the Koch brothers want to make open fools of themselves suing a country whose citizenry holds them and their kind in rightful contempt (but bought them out for a fair price regardless), and the lazybums at the LAHT want to reduce themselves to just printing their shoddy press releases, maybe Venezuela’s Bolivarian government can counter-sue…for LIBEL. That money will surely come in very handy for more social missions to make the lives of ordinary Venezuelans better. Trickle-down and all that, you know.

(Thanks to Richard for sending me that screen-grab!)

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Posted in Barreling Right Along, Crapagandarati, Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), El NarcoPresidente, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Socialism is Good for Capitalism! | 7 Comments

Music for a Sunday: Never mind the bollocks

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Sabina Becker

What could be better than this song for Merry Old England right now?

Okay, maybe this one:

And after all this, won’t you give me a smile?

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Posted in Merry Old England, Music for a Sunday | 4 Comments

Wankers of the Week: London Burning

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Crappy weekend, everyone! Well. How about those riots in Merry Old England, eh? Looks like London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…and not just in London, my fair ladies (and gents). Shit is hitting the fan all over the place. And here are some of the choicest turd-nuggets of the past week, goin’ splat in no particular order…

1. Lindsey Fucking Graham. Two things: Barack Obama is NOT a coach (they are hired by the capitalists who own teams, not elected by the people), so it’s irrelevant whether or not he’d be fired; this comparison of politics to football is just suck-ass stupid. But then again, Graham IS a Repug, so of course he doesn’t see anything wrong with an elected official being a corporatist hireling! And yes, the Teabagger Party IS to blame for the budget mess and credit-rating downgrade. Anyone who can’t see it is either blind or inbred. And since this wanker’s not blind, guess what that leaves?

2. Judson Fucking Phillips. Last week, the tea-tard leader was stupid about Nazism; this week he’s stupid about its polar opposite, the left. Which is, in his mind, exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, out here in reality, it’s not. And if you’re going to toss out unsubstantiated claims that the left has killed a billion people, you’d better be prepared to account for the exact number that CAPITALISM has killed…which is also unknown, but in any event higher than anything you could blame on “the left”, capitalism running the world as it does (and the left does NOT).

3. Arnold Fucking Schwarzenegger. He has the gall to wear a t-shirt boasting that he “survived Maria”…a woman who deserves some kind of award for having quietly put up with his egomaniacal, groping, mistress-impregnating, blatantly sexist shit (he even bragged about not letting her wear pants in public) for twenty-five fucking years. Or at least some tribute nicer than such a demeaning t-shirt, which is precisely the sort of thing that would make even a living saint want to take Arnie to the cleaners. (Hint-hint, Maria!)

4. Giorgio Fucking Mammoliti. Rob Ford’s neocon butt-boy says he can sniff out the “sour smell of communism” because he kinda-sorta used to be one. Yeah? Well, I can sniff out the sploodgy smell of a malaka. That’s Greek for wanker.

PS: Ha, ha.

5. Travis Fucking Keen. I always did think that you’d have to be a wanker to love Wal-Mart, but now we have literal, living proof that this is, in fact, the case. This one is so aroused by the place that he invariably whips out his schlong whenever he’s in there, and whacks off. Must be all the fumes coming off the cheap plastic crap made in China. I hear those have the strangest effect on your better judgment.

6. Warren Fucking Jeffs. And while we’re on the subject of literal wankers, this one does it fifteen times a day in jail. No doubt to make up for all those underage girls he’s no longer molesting under the pretext of “celestial marriage”.

7. Ann Fucking Coulter. She’s gay? Really? Oh. Wait. She’s just out to get our attention again, seeing as she’s run of out ridiculous shit to say. Never mind!

8. Stephen Fucking Harper. He wangled a fucked-trade agreement with fascist Colombia, but he wasn’t as lucky in Brazil. And, out of sheer spite, he apparently locked himself in a minister’s bathroom, and held his breath until he turned blue. What was he really doing in there, as if we didn’t suspect? What a national embarrassment this motherfucker is proving to be, and on a daily basis, too!

9. Alex Fucking Jones. “Robot helicopters with airborne Ebola”, my ASS. Let’s face it, if “they” wanted us dead en masse, they wouldn’t be doing it the way this wackaloon claims; they’d just machine-gun us all. Whatever this conspiracy kook shaves with, it sure as hell ain’t Occam’s Razor! PS: That “mack daddy” bit is a racist dog-whistle, for those unaware. Yup, good ol’ boy Alex is one of THOSE conservatives.

10. Michele Fucking Bachmann. “Submission means respect”? No, actually, it doesn’t. When one person submits, the respect of the other is lacking. She claims she and her husband “respect” each other, but does HE submit to HER? If he does, he’s in violation of evangelical nutter principles. Because THOSE state clearly and unequivocally that women are inferior to men and must act the part. In any case, no presidency for her, since candidates must submit to the will of the people, and the people don’t want evangelical nutters in the White House. PS: No, you can’t pray away the gay…or the gay teenage activists coming to confront you and call you on your shit.

11. Megyn Fucking Kelly. “Entitlements for me, not for thee” seems to be her motto. That’s why it’s so funny to see her sparring with Mike Fucking Gallagher over her recent maternity leave. Two dumb, but entitled flibbertigibbertarians ripping each other’s hair out. Maybe they should both lose their jobs, and then we’ll see what happens to their feelings about entitlements, eh?

12. Robert Fucking Vietze. Being drunk on a plane is bad enough. But pissing on an 11-year-old girl, while drunk, on a plane? Dude, that’s a wank and a half.

13. Faytene Fucking Kryskow. She’s got a new surname…and she’s ready for her close-up, Mr. DeMille! But she’s still an evangelical nutter. Pity!

14. The Fucking Pentagon. How to make a billion dollars go poof? Squander it on a hypersonic aircraft, probably for spying purposes. Recession? What fucking recession?

15. Matthew Lee Fucking Anderson. Yoga may be old (and in his opinion, “degraded”), but it’s still a helluva lot hipper and more useful than certain spiritually-bereft doofi who write for Christianity Today — which, given its own dedication to useless antiquated beliefs about Jeebus (and not to following what he actually said we should do), should be called Christianity Yesterday. I’ve been doing yoga since I was six years old (that’s a loooong time, kiddies), and I have to say it’s done more for my spirituality than any amount of bible-thumping ever could. Oh yeah, and I’ve found out from experience that it’s perfectly compatible with Wicca! Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want other Christians doing it?

16. Sarah Fucking Palin. Shut up about running for president, already. It’s not as if the Repugs are lacking for joke candidates, anyway. Also, shut up about the “lamestream media” (a term the left invented, ahem) — just who the hell do you think is enabling you in your presidential delusions, lady?

17. Jessica Fucking Chastain. Gaining 15 measly pounds and still not being anything close to fat is “torture”? Get serious, girl. I’ve put on way more than that over the course of several years, and never felt it. But trying to find stylish clothes in a world geared to size-zero twits who kvetch about having to gain weight for a role? Now THAT’s torture!

18. Mitt Fucking Romney. Corporations are “people”, under some obscene twist of US law…and that’s why he panders to them so shamelessly, while forgetting actual relatives of his whom conservatism has killed.

19. Christine Fucking O’Donnell. I still can’t believe anyone was stupid enough to award this nonentity a book contract (much the same as I still can’t believe anyone was stupid enough to award any to the nonentities of the snowbilly clan Palin). But apparently someone has, and now she’s reaping her just deserts by being tagged with dildos and books about witches at Amazon.com. Fitting! May similar things also befall the snowbillies. Please, Goddess, please…

And last but certainly NOT least, David Fucking Cameron, the unacknowledged author of the London riots. If you’re going to prattle about how kids today are brought up all entitled and disrespectful, and how this is totally justification for your waxing all totalitarian on the social-networking sites, it might behoove you to check your own past, as well as that of the current lord mayor of London. Every public-affairs commentator in the UK apparently has.

Goodnight, and get fucked!

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Posted in Wankers of the Week | Comments Off

Economics for Dummies: Mike Ruppert on provocateurs and the British riots

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Mike Ruppert, a former drug-enforcement cop from Los Angeles who helped expose the CIA’s role in drug smuggling to the US, analyzes the London riots. These riots have an economic root, and it’s NOT what the conservatives of the British parliament would have us believe. This is actually global in nature, and the Arab Spring has demonstrated as much, as have the anti-austerity protests in Greece and Spain. Watch and listen, you’ll learn a LOT.

(Thanks to Corey for the video!)

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Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Economics for Dummies, Fascism Without Swastikas, Greek Salad, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Merry Old England, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Rivers in Egypt, The United States of Amnesia, Under the Name of Spain | 3 Comments

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Who is this?

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Anybody recognize this skinny kid?

Here’s a hint: 40 years ago as of August 8, he entered the Venezuelan military academy as an officer cadet. His original hope was to become a big-league baseball pitcher. (He’s a southpaw.) Baseball took a backseat to a passion for history and eventually politics, though, as he read up on Simón Bolívar and became something of a revolutionary himself.

And today, he’s kind of a big man in that country, as well as being, well, not so skinny anymore!

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Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Huguito Chavecito | 1 Comment

Short ‘n’ Stubby: Ms. Manx looks at London

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Sabina Becker

If the Stumpy Cat is meowing and pawing at my leg, I know there is something she wants me to address. And sure enough, our cyber-kitty friend has found several links of interest regarding the London riots…

First up, Cort G. sent this Marxist link which gives the best summation so far of the root causes of the riots. A sick society? A criminal element? Yes, and it all begins at the top. Austerity measures imposed by the greedy and corrupt demand brutal, fascistic enforcement…and a campaign of ridiculous propaganda to justify it all.

At Salon.com, Murtaza Hussain delves into how austerity measures play into the general malaise in Britain, fueling both protests and the “need” for violent police crackdowns on even the slightest peep of objection to the government’s hard-right turn. High unemployment in a time of obscene corporate profits? Education priced out of reach? Closures of government-funded youth clubs leading to disaffection, aimlessness, and eventually violence? The Stumpy Cat is feigning shocked surprise.

Meanwhile, right-wing politicians are stumbling over their own feet in their haste to explain it all away: The kids are just entitled and greedy! They have an uncivilized lust for violence! Their parents raised them wrong! One wonders who these wrongly-raised youngsters are. Nathaniel Tapley has an idea, and has written a funny, yet all too true open letter to the parents of the biggest one.

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Posted in Cops Behaving Badly, Crapagandarati, EuroPeons, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Isn't It Ironic?, Merry Old England, Short 'n' Stubby | Comments Off

Stupid Sex Tricks: Tampons Ate My Virginity

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Sabina Becker

My gawd, it sounds like a campy horror flick, doesn’t it? But yes, there are still adults dumb enough to worry about their daughters using internal absorbents to mop up their monthlies:

Oh lordy, lordy, good Gordie. I’m so old I remember when Tampax Slenders first came out, and their label prominently read “Slim enough for a virgin to use”. Which was mortifying for me, but reassuring for my mom, because I was 12, already bleeding like a slaughtered ox just six months after my first period, and embarrassed of waddling around in maxi-pads as thick as my baby sister’s Pampers. And my mom was worried that I hadn’t “grown out”, as she put it, enough to use the bigger stuff.

I found out a few months later, when the skinnies weren’t cutting it and I started stealing her Super Pluses (which are still much narrower than any adult penis), that SHE was wrong, too. Nothing got broken; in fact, there was probably nothing there to break in the first place. Nothing broke the first time I had sex, many years later, either. There was no bleeding and very little pain, and what pain there was, was from nervousness on my part. A subtle shift in position fixed that. (I do, however, credit tampon use with helping me learn how to relax those all-important muscles.)

The hymen isn’t a hermetic seal that breaks with the first penetration by whatever; it’s a vestigial product of embryonic development that some of us have already evolved out of altogether. And it’s literally nothing to worry about, because on some of us, it’s literally NOTHING!

As for the vagina, it’s elastic. It can stretch to accommodate everything from a tiny tampon to a ten-pound fetus. It’s not wise (or, if you’re another person, legal) to force anything into it, but as long as the muscles aren’t clenched in fear, you can safely and comfortably insert whatever you need to in order to have a discreet time of month. The same in 12-year-old virgins as in their 40-year-old mothers.

It’s so funny how some people, who should have learned them early, forget all these things when THEY become parents. How on Earth do they manage to conceive children amid so much ignorance?

This, people, is why sex-ed belongs in schools. Learning it at home from your folks is often no better than learning it behind the bike sheds from your buddies. And being forced to learn certain things entirely on your own, as I was, is no good, either.

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Posted in Stupid Sex Tricks, Teh Heterostoopid | Comments Off

“I don’t call it rioting, I call it an insurrection”

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Watch a BBC anchorwoman get a bad case of Teh Stoopid (as well as racism) against a respectable man:

Darcus Howe tells it like it is. These are NOT just riots and looting, this is raw outrage by the British underclass at the police state the country is turning into. It is a raw cry for change. It may be inarticulate, but it is important to remember that the “riots” started as a legitimate protest against police brutality. A fact that will no doubt be obscured by this kind of biased and racist reporting in the days and weeks to come. As Jezebel notes, things are getting awfully heavy on the nasty conjecture over there of late. The legitimate, peaceful protests, meanwhile, get no coverage at all.

And don’t you love how they changed the subject and promptly started to play the fear angle to justify the unjustifiable?

Yes indeed, the Beeb has gone WAY downhill. Lord only knows when it will ever get up again. I hold out no hope for it anytime soon.

PS: I’m adding a new category, as I can see one is needed for this sort of story. How about “Merry Old England”?

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Posted in Crapagandarati, Merry Old England, Newspeak is Nospeak | 3 Comments

Who killed JFK? Jackie’s theory: LBJ was in on it

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Sabina Becker

By now, if you still believe Lee Harvey Oswald did it, you’re probably as much of a patsy as he said he was. Here’s the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s theory as to who conspired against her late husband, the president of the United States:

Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal.

The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him.

She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy.

Texas-born Mr Johnson, who served as the state’s governor and senator, completed Mr Kennedy’s term and went on to be elected president in his own right.

The tapes were recorded with leading historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963, and had been sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston.

The then Mrs Kennedy, who went on to marry Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, had ordered that they should not be released until 50 years after her death, with some reports suggesting she feared that her revelations might make her family targets for revenge.

Jackie’s not the only one who thought so. Here’s an episode from the banned series by Nigel Turner, The Men Who Killed Kennedy:

The notes at YouTube are interesting, to say the least:

The Men Who Killed Kennedy is a video documentary series by Nigel Turner that originally aired in 1988 in England with two one-hour segments about the John F. Kennedy assassination. The United States corporation, Arts & Entertainment Company, purchased the rights to the original two segments. Three one-hour segments were added in 1991. A sixth segment was added in 1995. Finally, three additional hourly segments were added by the History Channel in November 2003. The ninth segment, titled “The Guilty Men”, directly implicated Lyndon B. Johnson. Within days, Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird Johnson, more of his surviving associates, ex-President Jimmy Carter, and the lone, living Warren Commission commissioner and ex-President Gerald R. Ford immediately complained to the History Channel. They subsequently threatened legal action against Arts & Entertainment Company, owner of the History Channel. “The Guilty Men” segment was completely withdrawn by the History Channel. Also during the series, French prisoner Christian David named Lucien Sarti as one of three French criminals hired to carry out the assassination of Kennedy, when he was interviewed by author Anthony Summers. This claim is one of the most strongly investigated theories presented on the show.

I was able to purchase the original series, of six episodes, spanning from 1988 to 1995. In it, the Corsican mafia assassin, Lucien Sarti, who was shot dead in 1972 in Mexico City, is revealed as being one of at least three hired guns who set up a “crossfire” along the motorcade route. (The description above contains an error: The author who interviewed Christian David, the imprisoned mafioso who named Sarti, is not Anthony Summers, but Steve Revelle.) As well, Lee Harvey Oswald is definitively cleared by witnesses on the scene, including at least one Dallas motorcycle cop, as an assassin (and proven to be, as he said, a patsy). This DVD set still available, but when I got it, it was not that easy to find. I suspect it is easier to get in the US than in Canada!

The video above is from the later three, which are unavailable for purchase now. It’s not hard to see why; the claims this video makes, and the complaints they sparked, make it abundantly clear that something was not kosher with “Lyin’ Lyndon”. At the very least, he appears to have known what was going on, and though he was in a position to stop it, he did not. It appears that he had something on his conscience. Could that have been the reason for the well-paid psychiatrist who looked after him in the few years he lived after his last presidential term ended? And could Jackie Kennedy have been right when she pointed the finger at him?

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Posted in Isn't That Illegal?, The United States of Amnesia | 4 Comments

“If you see me in the street”

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Sabina Becker

A spoken-word poem worth taking to heart about just how unpleasant it is to be a woman in public. (And yes, I can vouch for just about everything she says, except maybe the bit about cigarettes; I’m a militant non-smoker.)

BTW, if you think she’s paranoid and oversensitive, take a look at what’s “recommended” by the mindless software at YouTube in conjunction with this:

Of all the recommended videos, only one — the fourth in the list — is actually relevant (another video by the same young woman). The rest are all voyeuristic drivel. And some appear to have been taken without the consent of the women who appear in them. YouTube is clogged with this kind of law-skirting crap.

But yeah, this girl is just totally blowing things out of proportion, isn’t she?

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