News of the Restless

Stupid Sex Tricks: Air WHAT???

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Sabina Becker

How to lose just under two minutes of your life, irretrievably: Click the play button on this.

Was it bad for you, too?

I’m sorry. Goofy people pretending to have sex — and COMPETING at it — are just really, really fucking weird. (Pun intended.)

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Posted in Stupid Sex Tricks, The WTF? Files | Comments Off

The latest round in the Egyptian Revolution

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Sharif Abdel Kouddous, of Democracy Now, returns to Cairo to report on the religious tensions rising in Imbaba, and the across-the-board outrage against the military trials of protesters:

What’s heartening for me about this situation, dire as it may seem, is how much unity there is among the young Egyptian revolutionaries (and also, between them and their counterparts in other countries in revolutionary ferment, such as Tunisia). They want civilian trials, fairness, impartiality and an end to religious persecution of any kind. They are resisting the efforts of the counterrevolutionary factions to drive sectarian wedges between them. They are Christians and Muslims working for peace, freedom and democracy together. As long as they maintain that unity, there is no shortage of hope, no matter what else may be lacking. Egypt will, I think, be the proving ground for the truth of the slogan: The people, united, will never be defeated!

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Posted in Fascism Without Swastikas, Law-Law Land, Rivers in Egypt | Comments Off

Stupid (Anti-)Sex Tricks: Hillary Clinton, too hot to print?

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Look closely…do you see anything missing here?

No? Perhaps this will help, then:

And if that still doesn’t make sense to you, here’s the original:

Yes, that’s right — Hillary Clinton and the lone other woman in the Situation Room who watched video of the raid that ended in the death of Osama bin Laden, Audrey Tomason, were just too hot for an ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper called Di Tzeitung to handle, simply by virtue of being female (because all women equal S-E-X, don’tcha know). So they photoshopped those two red-hot mamas out. Because women standing there looking grim, or sitting there with a hand in front of their mouths after a cough, are just too damn sexy to be kosher, at least in some men’s eyes.

What’s truly funny, though, is that this kind of thing violates the Jewish law against deceit. And that’s definitely not kosher.

PS: Nice non-apology apology you got there, bubbeleh.

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Posted in Fun With Photoshop, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Newspeak is Nospeak, Obamarama!, Stupid Sex Tricks, The WTF? Files, Uppity Wimmin | 4 Comments

The Feminine Mystique that never died

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Sabina Becker

A padded bikini top by Abercrombie and Fitch, marketed to 8-year-old girls. Much fuss was made about the “push-up” (i.e. cleavage-creating) shape of the bra, and the premature sexualization of little girls it seems to create by making them appear to have developed breasts at an age when most are still flat-chested.

If you ever want to know just how far we haven’t come, read Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking first book, The Feminine Mystique, sometime.

Sure, you’ll think at first that we’ve come very far indeed since 1963, when it was published; nowadays, for instance, it’s no longer the norm for women to write “housewife” in the census blank reading “Occupation”. But that may be the only thing that’s changed, other than maybe the fashions. And even the fashions make me wonder. For example, it’s very fashionable once more to be a professional housewife, as all the TV shows with “Housewives” in the title give us to know.

But if you think that dressing little girls to look like grown-up (or merely teenage) sexpots is some evil new development, Betty Friedan can disabuse you of that notion quite firmly. Here, in a passage from the first chapter, titled “The Problem That Has No Name”, she tackles the pressing, cutting-edge issue…of premature sexualization of girls:

By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping, into the teens. Fourteen million girls were engaged by 17. The proportion of women attending college in comparison with men dropped from 47 per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in 1958. A century earlier, women had fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a husband. By the mid-fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bar. Colleges built dormitories for “married students”, but the students were almost always the husbands. A new degree was instituted for the wives — “Ph.T.” (Putting Husband Through).

Then American girls began getting married in high school. And the women’s magazines, deploring the unhappy statistics about these young marriages, urged that courses on marriage, and marriage counselors, be installed in the high schools. Girls started going steady at twelve and thirteen, in junior high. Manufacturers put out brassieres with false bosoms of foam rubber for little girls of ten. And an advertisement for a child’s dress, sizes 3-6x, in the New York Times in the fall of 1960, said: “She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.”

Emphasis added.

“She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.” At an age when she hadn’t yet heard that boys have cooties, the average little girl of 1960 was already being groomed to catch herself a man. Honestly, other than the silly, stilted language of advertising (which will always be silly, and stilted), what’s really changed?

Nothing. That’s right: NOTHING.

Premature sexualization of girls, often hyped in the media as some new and sinister development of our oversexed times, is actually as old as the hills. (So is complaining about premature sexualization.) And in fact, if you lived in the hills during the time Betty Friedan was writing her book, the odds were good that you’d be a child bride, or at least know quite a few of them.

But here’s the thing: None of them wore fake boobies of foam-rubber, or Abercrombie Kids push-up bikini bras. They were all ultra, ultra conservative in dress and religion both.

The old-fashioned bible-based family values of the fundie-Mormon polygamists held that girls must be married off, and set to breeding, practically as soon as they started to menstruate. Since the average age of menarche is 12, and was back then, too, child brides were a real, and not-much-talked-about, fact of life in the Golden Age of Wholesome Family Values, the 1950s. That is, until the polygamist town of Short Creek, Arizona, was raided by the feds.

Short Creek was raided in 1953, a full ten years before The Feminine Mystique came out. The raids shone a harsh light on polygamist practices, most sensationally child marriage. But the polygamists haven’t gone away, nor have their mores loosened one whit. They’ve gotten even more conservative, if anything. In the 1950s, they dressed much like any other modest housewife, in dresses that hit slightly below the knee. But now, they wear those long calico dresses that look like they were ripped straight out of Little House on the Prairie. And they are still engaging in the premature sexualization of girls through forced child marriage.

There is really not that much separating the FLDS from the reactionary fundamentalism of the Ayatollah’s Iran, which forced all females to wear the chador and halved the legal marriage age for girls from 18 to 9. Other than, maybe, the fact that there are fewer “plural” wives among present-day Iranians!

Meanwhile, we in the oh-so-much-better-than-them modern west live in a culture of unabated sexism and sexualization, not only of little girls, but of everything. Even genderless inanimate objects have been sexualized; Sigmund Freud would be left wondering if a cigar really is just a cigar, ever. In the 1950s and ’60s, North American girls were directed to be “man-traps”: pretty, sexy, educated enough to hold up their end of a conversation, but not smarter than the guys; they might work outside the home for pin money (or to put their menfolks through school), but they would consider housewifery and motherhood to be their full-time careers — after catching themselves a suitable husband, of course. In the current climate, it’s not enough for a female to be merely stylish, pretty or even beautiful; you have to qualify as slammin’, bangin’, fuckable, hot. Brains? What are those? Ewwwww, grey matter — not sexy. You have to be always “down” for sex, even if you don’t really want it. That, or risk being a nonentity. Even an 8-year-old knows it.

Yes, the 1950s were an awful time to be female; the career vistas for women had shrunk since the 1930s and ’40s, and as Betty Friedan indicates, they were still shrinking apace. But beneath the eroding veneer of 1970s social progress, this is still a bad time for girls and women — even in the sexual sphere, oddly enough. Because if you’re dressing and acting mainly to please others, and doing so from an early age, how on Earth can you expect to know, much less dare to demand, what pleases you? It’s as hard as trying to form a facial expression when all your muscles have been Botoxed into a state of permanent, wrinkle-free paralysis, à la Real Housewives of Upscale Wherever.

And no, this is not freedom, nor is it a product of feminism; it’s the old Feminine Mystique, mutated and updated. Meet the new sexism, same as the old, old, old sexism.

But there is still the chance that something might change. Girls are now being encouraged to speak out against premature sexualization and other distortions of feminine body image.

The question is, will any of them hear the call over the perpetual roar from the mutant Feminine Mystique that still pervades our media and ad-saturated culture?

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Posted in Isn't It Ironic?, Madvertising, Newspeak is Nospeak, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Pissing Jesus Off, The WTF? Files, Uppity Wimmin | 2 Comments

Music for a Sunday: One for those who voted Conservative

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Sabina Becker

I guess you like how it feels…eh? Can’t wait to hear how you like it after four more years of utter contempt for our democracy.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Music for a Sunday | Comments Off

Wankers of the Week: Osama bin Rottin’ edition

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Sabina Becker

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” — G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

“And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.” — Barack Obama, 2008

Well. What a difference a decade makes, eh everyone? A trillion and a half dollars down the spider hole, ten years and two wars (plus a “humanitarian intervention”!), and even though the initial culprit is now officially gone, it ain’t over yet. His Barackness has yet to justify his selection for a pre-emptive Nobel Peace Prize. Would sure be nice if the late Osama were the last #2 Al-Qaida man we heard of being captured and/or killed, but alas, this imperialistic shit is just never gonna end. And neither, it seems, are all the racist metastases the War on Terra hath wrought. From graffiti on mosques to gun-toting preacher-idiots going where they’re not wanted, to Texan teachers with Teh Stoopid (thanks, Snarla!), the wanks just keep on coming. And I just keep on callin’ ’em like I see ’em. So here are this week’s offenders, in no particular order:

1. Robert Fucking Watson. So, if you’re for pot decriminalization, you must be “a Guatemalan gay man who likes to gamble and smokes marijuana”? Well, I guess Robert Fucking Watson must be gay, Guatemalan, and a gambler, because he was just busted for pot possession himself. And drunk as a skunk, to boot.

2. Curt Fucking Schilling. There is so much of Teh Stoopid in his “analysis” of Osama’s demise, it’s hard to say where to begin. Burial at sea is not a Muslim custom, for one. Adolf Hitler WAS a Christian, for another (Roman Catholic; never excommunicated, not even posthumously; and oh yeah, his view of the Jews was THE standard Christian one at the time; he got it from a bishop whose sermons he followed as a devout young Austrian Catholic). But my big question is this: How the fuck does a stupid-as-shit baseball pitcher become an “analyst” of world politics anyway? I’d like to kick him in the nuts…except I’ve a strange feeling he doesn’t have any. He talks like a very insecure little man, if you know what I mean.

3. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. “Praising” His Barackness in snarky terms for continuing the Fucking Bush Doctrine (which is certainly NOT praiseworthy no matter who does it)? That’s wankish unto itself, but seriously: Osama’s hideout was an “enlarged hut”? No. I’ve seen the pictures. It’s a large HOUSE. But one could be forgiven for thinking of the Pigman as I do…as an enlarged, and seriously bloated, sack of dog shit.

4. Sarah Fucking Palin. Just when you think she’s run out of wankery, she pulls a stunning new boner out of her beehive. Yes, folks, she actually decided to credit Dubya with the killing of Osama! Nearly ten years to the day after Dubya curtly dismissed a CIA briefer who had come to inform him that Osama was about to strike within the United States (“All right, you’ve covered your ass, now”), after two full terms of Epic BushCo Fail in two wars, and just two years into the first term of his successor (who, let’s give His Barackness due credit, IS successful when he makes up his mind to be), Dubya is magically responsible for the death of the man he let slip away at Tora Bora! And now another painful secret is out: That which we call Sarah Fucking Palin, turns out to be nothing but a well-programmed Stepford Wife — a ‘droid that defaults to crediting the far-right white guy, no matter how incompetent, over a black guy from the other side, no matter how competent.

5. Stephen Fucking Harper. Did someone hold a magnet up to his head and erase his hard drive? Someone please tell this amnesiac Stepford Prime Minister that Québec has had federalism for an awfully long time. Has had it since Montcalm and Wolfe had their little duel on the Plains of Abraham, really, but in living memory, they’ve also had it under Trudeau, Chrétien, etc. In fact, the decisive victory belongs to Chrétien. But hey, that’s Harpo: true to his ultra-partisan programming, never giving a Liberal the credit, even when that’s where it’s due. He’s the same about our economy, too–shocking when you consider how little credit for that actually accrues to anything he’s done, and how much actually belongs to what he hasn’t. And les Québécois are smart enough to know that, which is why they handed his party its collective ass in their belle province. Jack Layton, whom Harpo fears (and wants us to fear, too) is their (latest) federalist man.

6. Fucking Dubya. Yes, he’s wanking again. (Maybe he’s drinking again, too.) This time, he’s a no-show at Ground Zero. Seems that since he either can’t take credit for the demise of Osama, or has choked on another pretzel, or has road rash from riding his mountain bike under the influence (or some combination of the above?), he doesn’t want to turn out, even for just one day, to honor the dead. Maybe that’s because they are dead due to his own deliberate, malicious angling for pretexts to declare war on Iraq? Oh, just maybe.

7. Thomas Fucking Mulcair. Sorry, Tom, but even a Dipper makes my wank-list when they develop foot-in-mouth disease. And seeing as how you’re the guy who’s gonna be training the rookie New Democrat MPs, that was really a bonehead move. Hold it up to the newbies as an example of what NOT to do, mmmmmkay?

8. Scott Fucking Walker. A little too late for a goodwill tour. And what good will it do, anyway? The whole world now knows that the governor of Wisconsin is a wanker who’s cuckoo for Koch-o-puffs. And the whole world stands in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin, but not the Koch Brothers, and certainly not YOU.

9. Brad Fucking Wall. Wisconsin North: Saskatchewan haz it. Right down to the poll showing strong public support for the teachers, not the right-wing SaskaTory (lesser northern teabag) premier. Still waiting for the tractorcade, but no doubt that’s still in the works. Go public sector!

10. Drew Fucking Magary. I didn’t realize my boobs were silently screaming at men to grab them. Oh wait, yes, I did. That’s why I tend to keep them all covered up. And even then, dammit if the odd muffled shriek doesn’t somehow manage to escape the confines of my bra! Gee, dude, thanks so much for making me aware of the fact — I had no fucking idea where all the fucking harassment was coming from! PS: Love all the wankers in your comments section, too. And if any of you boys try to get funny on me with a little grabby-da-boobie, you’re gonna find yourselves on the receiving end of a highly satirical crushy-da-testies, just to see if you can take a “joke”. Capisce?

11. Tim Fucking Hudak. Uh oh, is that a backpedal I see? Why yes, it is! What could have brought that about? Maybe the fact that Ontarians, like all Canadians, actually LIKE human rights — and want their governments to uphold them, rather than trashing them? Oh, who’d of thunk?

12. Terrence Fucking Patterson. So, yer “honor”, let’s see if I got this straight. If a man is drunk when he’s sexually assaulting a woman, he gets off scot-free. If a woman is drunk when a man is sexually assaulting her, he gets off scot-free. By that token, a man who is too drunk to know what he’s doing when he gets behind the wheel should also get off scot-free. Now, how about a woman who cuts off a man’s nuts for assaulting her…while drunk, of course?

13. William Fucking Melchert-Dinkel. Elaborately falsifying your identity over the Internet and then counselling people to commit suicide so you can watch them die on webcam is surely grotesque enough to merit more than just the slap on the wrist that this sick fuck got. Two people are dead thanks to his pressuring — an 18-year old Canadian student, and a Briton in his 30s. I don’t think “they were going to kill themselves anyway” is any excuse. Also, “freedom of speech” has got to be the most grotesque defence I’ve ever heard. “Go on, kill yourself” is a death sentence, and surely illegal when coming from someone other than a hanging judge. (Hanging was Melchert-Dinkel’s suicide-counselling method of choice, BTW.) I know from experience that suicidal ideation can and will be outgrown, given time…and that means NO encouragement to self-destructive impulses so long as they are present. A person who is suicidal today can be a mentally healthy survivor tomorrow, and to deny them that chance is a crime. This man should be tried for first-degree murder in the case of both the suicides he pushed over the edge. Otherwise, what’s to stop him from going back and doing it again, and again, and again…under who knows how many new fake names?

14. Rob Fucking Ford. Whatsamatter, Robbie, are you afraid you’ll catch Teh Ghey? Why else not march with the friendly queerfolk in the Pride Week parade through Toronto this year? Don’t worry, no one would dream of molesting you. Come on — you chicken? Buk buk buk bawwwwk!

15. John Fucking Yoo. Torture just short of death is okay (in fact, in his “legal” view, it’s not even torture. But killing Osama was wrong! I bet he wouldn’t have said that if Dubya had done it. In fact, I bet he wouldn’t have said it even if Dubya had ordered Osama to be tortured to death.

16. John Fucking Bolton. Yes, Dubya’s sheepdog-who-hates-the-UN has barked up again. Funny how the death of Osama has brought all the BushCo relics out of the closet, looking worse for wear (if such things are even possible).

17. John Fucking Ashcroft. Yet another BushCo relic named John has resurfaced. This one, who got appointed Dubya’s attorney general after losing his Missouri senatorial race to a dead man, is working as “ethics chief”, whatever that may be, for the notoriously ethics-free mercenary corporation Xe — formerly, and infamously, known as Blackwater. And speaking of black water — isn’t it time we flushed all these Johns? Because dang, they been stankin’ an awfully long time…

And finally, to the minority of Canadians who voted for the not-so-new Conservative “majority” government. Enjoy your petty, vindictive triumphalism while you can, you fucking wankers–because the 3/4 of us who did NOT elect this band of democracy-hating teahadist thugs will be telling you just how much you deserve the misery that lies in store for you, every chance we get. And we know we’ll get plenty of chances. By giving your rights the death of a thousand cuts, Harpo and Co. will be making your life so shitty over the next four years that you’ll end up wishing you’d not voted at all.

Good night, and get fucked!

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Posted in Wankers of the Week | 2 Comments

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Happy Belated Birthday!

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Who’s the birthday boy?

Comrade Karl! He turned 193 yesterday. And yep, he sure as hell did tell us. We’re only beginning to find out just how right he was.

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Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Socialism is Good for Capitalism! | 1 Comment

Heroes for Today: Steve Simon

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Watch and learn, kiddies. This is how social justice gets done. Steve Simon, Democratic member of the Minnesota state house of representatives, makes the case for gay rights within the framework of the traditional separation of church and state. And, oh yeah: he also does it within the tradition of religious belief. “How many gays must God create before we accept that (s)he wants them around?”

My answer is: Apparently, a whole lot of them, since they keep on showing up in spite of all the homophobia and all the vain and futile attempts to pray them out of existence. And they show no signs of going away, either. Even though efforts to deny them the right to marry keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed in their faces. I hear what God is saying, loud and clear. Now, when will the so-called “values voters” sit down, shut up, and LISTEN?

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Posted in Heroes for Today, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Pissing Jesus Off, Teh Ghey | Comments Off

Short ‘n’ Stubby: Osamarama

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Sabina Becker

Hey, everybody…Ms. Manx is meowing, and you know what that means: She’s found us some stuff! And sure enough, she’s found plenty about the death of Osama. Lead on, O Stump-Tailed One…

First off, the Manx is confused by all the different versions of the Osama death story circulating out there. Something’s been changed, she says–and sure enough, several things have. Memo to the White House (and all you hero-makers in the media): Your story would be a lot more credible if it didn’t keep mutating!

At Global Research, Paul Craig Roberts ably dissects the “fog of war” bullshit. Uruknet does likewise, noting that Osama was taken prisoner first, and then killed — according to the testimony of his wife, who contrary to the mutating official version, was not among the dead. The heroic narrative of the “double tap” that Osama got from the US Navy SEALs while holding a woman as a human shield is as much a fairy tale as Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, it seems.

In fact, more and more, it looks as if they were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. The raid was so full of bungles that it’s a wonder they pulled any of it off. It appears that the first tweeter from Abbottabad to report the incident, Sohaib Athar, who talked of hearing a helicopter crash, was right. One of the “hero” team’s choppers did, indeed, go down, and its wreckage was abandoned at the scene.

Meanwhile, not only the narrative of the raid itself, but the legality of the whole operation, is under question. For all that he has been crudely likened to Adolf Hitler, Osama has not gotten the due process that the Nazi war criminals tried at Nürnberg got. He was taken prisoner, then shot and his body dumped in the sea. Team America, World Police — judge, jury and summary executioner? That’s illegal under international law, and the “war” cover is no excuse. Even a terrorist wanted for nearly two decades does not deserve to become the victim of a war crime, says the Manx. Otherwise, “we” are no better than “they”.

At AlterNet, Joshua Holland makes the case against heroic narratives and triumphalism, tying it in with the doubtful legality of the whole shebang. He also dares to ask the question that will bring a shitstorm of criticism down on his head: Did Osama win, after all, even by losing? After all, those who will be outraged at his death, and consider him a martyr, don’t need photos of his blown-up head to stoke their anger, or a graveside to turn into a shrine. They will claim him no matter what, and they will probably use his death as justification for other terrorist murders still to come. In which case, this “major” victory could become very, very Pyrrhic indeed.

And finally, Jon Stewart makes the case for releasing Osama’s death pix with his usual, inimitable truthful humor. Ms. Manx adds that there is one thing Jon neglected to mention…

…yep, those gory death-pix. Which DID eventually see the light of day, many years after JFK’s assassination. And some of which were found, oddly enough, to have been altered in several ways, as was the body of the slain president before it was photographed. Ms. Manx doesn’t know what, if anything, the death pix of Osama will show that may also contradict the much-mutated official version of the story, but she thinks, based on the lingering controversy surrounding JFK, that knowing the truth is better than being “protected”. And who can blame her?

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Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Do As I Say..., Fascism Without Swastikas, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, Short 'n' Stubby, Spooks, The 'Stans, The United States of Amnesia, The War on Terra | 4 Comments

Four dead in Ohio…

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Sabina Becker

The Kent State Massacre — the logical outgrowth of a militarized society, addicted to imperial wars, that could not brook protests against bad public policy. As Simón Bolívar said: “Cursed is the soldier who fires upon his own people.”

Forgetting is forbidden.

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