Short ‘n’ Stubby: Ms. Manx revisits Gitmo

Meowy Monday, everyone! The Stumpy Cat has been scouring the Internets again, and for some reason, she keeps getting her paws on stuff about Gitmo. I think it’s a sign, don’t you? So, let’s see what’s ittying on down there…

Frequent commenter Cort Greene has sent me this link from Al-Jazeera. Seems that Wikileaks has done it again, publishing over 700 secret files revealing that at least 150 innocent men are being held at Gitmo, indefinitely, with no trials. They’re considered “high-risk”. Innocent is high-risk? asks the Manx. I guess what they’re at high risk of doing is tarnishing the good image of Team America World Police. It’s the only answer that makes sense.

And if you’re wondering what it takes to get your guiltless ass jailed at Gitmo, one of the reasons, according to Raw Story, is a penchant for cheap ’80s digital watches. Yes, that’s right, Casio is not kosher! Apparently it’s been flagged as the bomb timer of choice for al-Qaida. And now that al-Q knows that the Yanks are onto them, may Ms. Manx suggest that they switch to Rolex or Cartier for blowing shit up?

A more sinister underlying cause for the ongoing (and largely wrongful) imprisonments at Gitmo comes to light in this Truthout piece. Apparently, psychological torture methods are being tested. And since no one in the US is volunteering to be the guinea pig to help the US army find out what drives a person insane and makes them “confess” that they learned the black arts at a secret terror training camp and/or have been kidnapped and rectally probed by aliens, well–guess who’s being used instead? (Apparently, sniffs the Stumpie, somebody has learned nothing from the Spanish Inquisition.)

And finally, for those interested, the Gitmo files can be accessed in their entirety here. Ms. Manx wishes you fun in finding out other potentially humiliating facts that the gringo powers-that-be don’t want the world knowing.

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Music for a Sunday: I heard the general whispering to his aide-de-camp

I first heard this lovely, understated song done country-style by Linda Ronstadt (who, of course, does it justice, and very sweetly). But hearing this earlier rendition made me fall in love with it all over again. Warren Zevon lifts it to a level that most rock never even approaches. And he does it without ear-shattering volume, crazy gyrations, outlandish costumes, or a single smashed guitar. Learn from the master, kids.

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Honduran coup benefits Mexican drug gangs

The Honduran people? Not so much…

Surprise! Fascism is great for crooks, lousy for law enforcement. It’s not just democracy that suffers.

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Posted in Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Guatemala, Guatebuena, Isn't It Ironic?, Mexican Standoffs, Not Hiding in Honduras, The "Well, DUH!" Files, The Salvador Option(s) | Comments Off on Honduran coup benefits Mexican drug gangs

Wankers of the Week: The “humanitarian intervention” on Easter, and other wanks

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Crappy Easter, everyone! Bitten the heads off any innocent bunnies yet? (Chocolate ones will do.) Watch out, FUX Snooze will say you declared war on the Resurrection of Baby Jesus! Well, just call it a humanitarian intervention, à la Libya. Meanwhile, here are this week’s headless, hollow bunnies…and they damn sure ain’t made of chocolate:

1. Wally Fucking Daudrich. This lesser northern teabag clearly hasn’t got the courage of his convictions, or else he wouldn’t have taken down his insulting Facebook post that insinuated that Niki Ashton is a Maoist because she got a scholarship to a prestigious school in Hong Kong (before it transferred from Britain back to China, yet). And all his blatting about his Tragic Family History™ being the reason for his “individual rights” dog-whistling would be a lot more touching to me if I didn’t come from one that’s arguably much more tragic. Mine is what turned me into a total antifascist who knows right-wing bullshit when she smells it. Hey Wally, try having a family whose distaff half had to flee Yugoslavia when the Russians invaded. Try having a maternal grandfather who was drafted into the SS. Try going through what my mom did on the run to Germany, where her family hadn’t lived in some 200 friggin’ years. She lost her grandparents and her 11-month-old sister. They lived in DP camps, and in constant fear of “partisans”, along the way. And her family lost everything but the clothes on their backs. Yeah, Wally, I’m totally feeling your pain. In my ASS.

And if ever I’m in Churchill, I won’t be patronizing your establishment, either.

2. Giorgio Fucking Mammoliti. Pandering to homophobia AND the Israel lobby? For shame. I remember a time when this dude was young, hot and progressive. He’s now none of the above. And his constituents are probably wondering where the man they elected went. I have a hint for them: Look under the Bs, for BIGOTRY.

3. Marilyn Fucking Davenport. No, of course a photoshopped picture making Barack Obama out to be a chimp isn’t a bit racist. Not at all! Perish forbid! And of course, the birther teabag has “friends who are black”! And she made a non-apology apology, too! Oh yeah, that makes everything better! So does the “but nobody cried when they called Bush a chimp” schtick. Maybe the chimps did…or maybe they’re just better people than Marilyn Fucking Davenport. In any case, I think calling Dubya “Chimpy” is a terrible insult to chimps. PS to Tim Fucking Whitacre: WTF is a “lighthearted stab”? Is that where you stick a knife into someone, then, when they yell, go “Just kidding”? Yeesh.

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4. Sarah Fucking Palin. Speaking of creatures and insulting comparisons, how about this one? I was going to compare her to a hyena, but then I realized what a horrible insult that would be…to hyenas. Who totally don’t deserve it. Just as she doesn’t deserve any audience NOT solely comprised of protesters anymore.

5. Andrew Fucking Breitbart. He joins #4 in the “insult to animals” category. In this case, it would be an insult to a baboon’s ass.

6. Michele Fucking Bachmann. What is there to say about Michele Batshit’s latest flop except Ha ha!?

7. Bruce Fucking Carson, again. If anyone was wondering whether he had a penchant for hookers (or “former” hookers), we now have an answer for you: Yes. Yes, yes. He apparently can’t find a woman who’ll touch him without getting paid…and in the case of a previous paid girlfriend, without a job for her niece. Must be nice to have such connections! But of course, it’s all par for the SupposiTory course…there is literally no level of sleaziness to which they will not sink. And of course, Harpo claims he never knew about any of that. After so many years of having this guy as his aide, how the hell could he NOT?

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8. Fabian Fucking Bruskewitz. It’s people like him who make me glad I wasn’t raised Catholic. It doesn’t help, either, that he digs up the old canard that Margaret Sanger was racist and favored eugenics. Newsflash: JUST ABOUT EVERY WHITE PERSON OF THAT TIME WAS LIKE THAT. It was hardly Sanger’s invention. Plenty of “good” Catholics were just as racist, and in Nazi Germany, by virtue of the church’s cozy, power-sharing association with the Nazis, a lot more genocidal.

9. Terry Fucking Jones, AGAIN. Speaking of religion holding hands with fascism, look who’s back in the news! Yup, the Preacher of Hate, who obviously has no better gospel message to share, or else he wouldn’t be planning on trucking weapons across state lines, all the way up to Michigan, to “protest” (so he says) at the Dearborn mosque. I’d say he’s planning on looking for trouble, and bound and determined to find it. Fortunately, the county prosecutor had other things to say to that. And given that Jones is careless with his gun, as well as a fucking nutjob, I’d say he has a point there! PS: Oh for fuck’s sake. Can’t the motherfucker tell he’s not wanted in Michigan?

10. Scott Fucking Adams. He’s deep in the troll hole and still digging. At this rate, he might actually make it out…in China.

11. James O’Fucking Keefe. Speaking of getting out of holes by digging, isn’t it nice to know that this piece of griftwood and Wanker #5 are still such good friends? Each is now probably the only one the other has left. And it’s not hard to see why. That lugubrious auto-tune “music”! And that video, incorporating phony footage from all his fake stings, is just fucking SAD. He has no talent in any direction–writing, singing, acting, dancing…sad. And to think he maxes out a million credit cards for this! I think it’s a cry for help, don’t you?

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Holy shit, he IS delusional. Straitjacket, STAT!

12. Donald Fucking Trump. Wouldn’t you love to take a buzzcutter to that head, just to see what’s hiding under that hideous comb-over? I would. And I suspect I’d find…a manure pile, complete with flies. Ewwwwww.

13. Whoever the fuck vandalized Andrés Serrano’s “Piss Christ”. Hope you’re satisfied that you hacked up Jesus in the name of your religion, you fucking Judases. Next time, learn the artist’s motivations before you deface his work. Better still, just stay the hell out of art galleries and don’t deface anything!

14. Binyamin Fucking Korn. His “Jews For Palin” group is literally a group of one. Two if you count the unnamed “scholar of Hindu-Buddhist-Jain studies”. And maybe three if you count Pamela Fucking Geller, the Randroid who’s made a cottage industry out of islamophobia but who doesn’t practise real Judaism for shit. I think I’m gonna go with just one.

15. Paul Fucking Ryan. Have I mentioned yet that he’s a pluperfect fucking hypocrite of a Randroid public-teat sucker? No? Consider it done, then.

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16. Ezra Fucking Levant. Is he a maker, or a taker? Considering he’s a longtime recipient of wingnut welfare, who is now forcing their worldview on YOU with his mindlessly didactic stilted broadcast on the newly launched (and soon to fail) FUX Snooze North, I’d say the Putz is a TAKER. I’d ask why he’s preaching the virtues of the “makers” (i.e. corporatists, who are even bigger government welfare queens than he is), but I already know. He’s just making sure his taking never ends.

17. Brad Fucking Trost. See what happens when you brag to the anti-choice lobby (i.e. your party “base”) about the defunding of International Planned Parenthood while your boss is on the campaign trail? You get poopy all over your party! (And it looks good on them, too.) PS: Oh look, it’s a double wank. That’s double the poopy on the Con-Tard Party! Bwahahahaha!

18. Dharun Fucking Ravi. How’s it feel to be on the receiving end of intense, disapproving public scrutiny now, eh? Considering that’s what led your former roomate, Tyler Clementi, to kill himself after you web-cammed his private tryst with another man and shared it out to the world, I hope you’ll be feeling it for a long, LONG, lonely time. You fucking wanker.

19. Adam Fucking Conner. So, Facebook’s lobby-wank thinks there’s “too much free speech” on the Internet? Well, that explains why you can’t find any pro-Algeria freedom groups on there, and why the one I was on got yanked. And here they’re the ones trying to sell every scrap of our personal data that they can to advertisers. But then again, that’s not free speech, that’s highway fucking robbery. And highway robbery, unlike freedom of speech, is something you can actually make money off of. Free speech is too, y’know, like, FREE. And Fucking Facebook spent so much on lobbying, dammit! It has to recoup all that moolah somehow!

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20. Yona Fucking Metzger. Oh, if only history HAD been a Monty Python movie. Would have been a helluva lot funnier. Oh well, let’s all laugh at this silly old wanker instead. It’s the next best thing!

21. John Fucking Ensign. Finally, one of the worst Repugnican hypocrites in the US senate has stepped down. What the hell took him so goddamn fucking long? He’s a wanker for having waited until now, when he’s finally facing an ethics probe, to do it.

22. Stephen Fucking Harper. A liar in debates? NO! Perish forbid. That’s simply not true…except, you know, it sadly, totally IS. And that’s not the only place he’s lied to us. This man lies as easily as he draws breath. Constantly, chronically, pathologically. And he won’t stop lying until they zip up the bodybag over his bulbous nose. Or to put it another way: Every single thing he says is Simply Not True!

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Including the assertion that he’s left his far-right political roots behind him.

23. Sean Fucking Hannity. First it was the War on Christmas, now FUX Snooze’s chief whiny wanker has decided, in a folie à trois with two silly guests, that there’s a War on Easter. Pop culture has driven him over the edge, not that he was ever far from it to begin with. I’m no fan of Lady Gaga or Ricky Gervais, but my hat’s off to both of them for making him lose his head. Or was it the two wankers who were the Baby Jesus’s guests? Either way, let me just say this: Nice work, you two!

24. Justin Fucking Bieber. Yep, he’s a wanker again this week…for legitimizing Israeli apartheid with his vapid, pretend-profound adolescent presence. And for trying to be Jeebus, and then getting all petulant at the paparazzi (who enable him in the delusion that he is Important, please note) for keeping him from it. What would Jesus do? For starters, he wouldn’t have grown such a gigantic ego (and on such small substance!) by the ripe old age of 17.

25. Barack Fucking Obama. Yes, that’s right, you’re listed, Your Barackness. When challenged on the hopes you disappointed and the change you haven’t brought, don’t just say thanks for the nice song–start living up to your hopey-changey promises (and that Nobel prize) and free Bradley Manning, dammit. Your term is already half over, and yet the war in Iraq is still raging, Afghanistan ditto, Gitmo is still open, and WTF is up with Libya? This is not change anyone can believe in, this is just more of what the people thought they had voted against when they voted for you and not that ancient Repug dude with the idiotic running mate, for fuck’s sake.

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26. Bruce Fucking Caswell. I have to ask–did this man ever have to wear nothing but secondhand clothes himself as a kid? If he did, would he be forcing kids in foster care–FOSTER CARE!–to do the same, just so he could cheap out and (supposedly) balance the fucking Michigan state budget? Just how much of a saving IS that, anyway–and more importantly, what does it say to foster kids about their own worth? I wore hand-me-downs a lot as a kid, and let me tell you, it made me feel second-rate myself–especially if the clothes were long out of fashion. (We’re talking DECADES here, in some cases.) It wasn’t meant to, but that’s the effect it ultimately had. And worse, the other kids at school noticed, and made me feel even more alienated than I already was. That’s just the way it is, eh? Well, fuck it–if anyone deserves a break right now so they can go out later and make a difference, it’s the kids everyone else alienates and picks on! Buy them some new clothes and give them some dignity–they have so little to feel good about as it is!

27. Jim Fucking Inhofe. Christ, how many times have I listed this pollution-addled wanker? This week, he claims fracking doesn’t cause contamination. And–gotta love his timing–he said it right after a fracked gas well blew, leading to–you guessed it–MASSIVE FUCKING CONTAMINATION!

28. Ann Fucking Coulter. Oh look, the Coultergeist has had another “let’s all eat radiation, it’s good for us!” moment. She thinks excessively high doses are a “vaccine” against cancer? Um, no, Ann, they’re not. Only a vaccine is a vaccine; radiation is another animal altogether, and it is well known to CAUSE cancer. And if I were you, I’d get that goiter looked at. You don’t want to leave it too long and have it eat your head right off your C-spine, do you?

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And finally, to whoever the fuck almost decided to award Fucking BP a prize for safety. What the bloody fucking HELL were you thinking? This is the company that cheaped out on safety measures everywhere it possibly could, and then tried to shift the blame to its subcontractors–whom it ORDERED to skimp. And it’s now been a year since the Deepwater Horizon blew, and they’re still doing damage control, and the worst part is, the fucking media is falling for it. Even the CBC, goddammit. And you know what all that is gonna lead to? This Onion story coming true, fer chrissakes!

Good night, and get fucked!

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Festive Left Friday Blogging: Happy Earth Day to you…

…Happy Earth Day to you! Happy Earth Day, dear Evo…

…Mother Earth loves you, too!

And when you’re striking terror into the hearts of religiofascists who don’t love their mother, you know you’re doing something right. ¡Viva Evo!

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Short ‘n’ Stubby: Ms. Manx’s MidEast roundup

Meowy Thursday, everyone! The Stumpy Cat has been bugging me all week to get this out to you, so let’s not waste any time. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, and a lot of countries…

First up: Iraq! Have you forgotten about it? Ms. Manx hasn’t…especially not after learning that it is an oil war after all. The dead giveaway? Documents, baby, oily-smelling documents. Top secret, oo-ee-oo. Just as in Iran in 1953, the oil companies have pretty much divvied up the country between them. Which may be why it has no government worth speaking of. And why the US (and to a lesser extent, Britain, on behalf of BP) is still the one really running the show.

Ms. Manx hasn’t forgotten the abuses at Abu Ghraib, either. Which is why this shocker–a video taken by British troops, of their own men abusing Iraqis in what’s being billed as a “revenge” assault–doesn’t surprise her as much as it might you…that is, if you were stupid enough to believe that the British army was any more gentlemanly than its US counterpart.

But if you think that’s bad, then follow the Stumpie on over to Libya and see what those cuddly anti-Gaddafi rebels are up to. There are several videos showing a side of them that they didn’t invite western journalists along to see. Torture, mutilation and execution of pro-Gaddafi soldiers surrendering to them, for one. (I could only watch the first two of these four videos; they were horrific.) Not all, it seems, are as caring as the ones who made a point of saving a pro-Gaddafi soldier’s life the other week. Does this taint their revolutionary efforts? I should say so. It’s just as ugly when they do it as when western imperialists do it in Iraq.

Louis Proyect also has videos, these from The Real News, at his site. These aren’t graphic, but they also reveal a lot about the Libyan rebels from a different angle, apparently showing the more benign face of the rebellion. Paul Jay talks with Jihan Hafiz about what she witnessed in Benghazi, the scene of a lot of rebel fighting lately (including the awfulness apparently seen in the videos at the earlier link.) The rebels there have made one thing clear: they don’t want outside military intervention. Which begs the question: Why, then, the no-fly zone? And why the strange footage I’ve seen all over the mainstream news, in which French flags were hung from buildings in Tripoli and banners in English invited foreign intervention? Apparently, there are rebels and there are rebels in Libya, and they are far from a unified force. Will the US try to co-opt them as it has done with some Egyptian revolutionary groups? Well, given that the usual USAID/NED suspects–the IRI, the NDI, etc.–have their boots on the ground in neighboring Egypt, it wouldn’t surprise me. Or Ms. Manx, either.

But in case that benign face strikes you as not the whole story, you’re right. How about this piece–about how the rebels managed to set up their own central bank? Such a disparate and confusing bunch, they are! The Stumpie doesn’t know what to make of them, but she smells a rat.

And for a little historic perspective, Ms. Manx recommends this Salon piece. Seems that the current “humanitarian intervention” isn’t the first “well-meaning” quagmire the US has bogged down in, in Libya…in fact, their history of interference dates back to before Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, however, takes the biscuit here, since he decided to try to fight the Gaddafi of his day–Pasha Yusuf Karamanli, the tyrant of Tripoli. A foolish move, considering that the revolution at home was only newly won. And, worse–no international allies, not even for the charismatic Jefferson! But it was historic first nonetheless–it was the first instance of US foreign interference ever. And now the wheel has come full circle after more than 200 years.

And finally, on a lighter note, the Manx heads over to Egypt…and giggles into her paw about those funny Egyptian tweeters. And also the arrogance and idiocy behind the notion–popular only in the US, of course–that they needed Gene Sharp, “expert” in “non-violent” US-backed “revolutions” abroad, to teach them anything. Yeah, says the Stumpie–Gene Sharp taught me to make baba ganoosh!

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Headline Howler: Bet the New York Daily News didn’t see this coming…

This was attached to the NYDN’s story about the journalists who came to grief in Libya today:

Here was the poll question:

I guess this result isn’t what they had in mind.

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The Bay of Pigs–fiasco or triumph?

The Bay of Pigs invasion happened 50 years ago this week. What was the nature of the beast? It really depends on which side you sat. If you were on the US side, it was a fiasco; if Cuba’s, a triumph for the Cuban revolution. Here’s a 45-minute documentary on a long-classified and very damning bit of intelligence related to that:

According to the evil folks at Google, this video will be removed ten days from now, so watch it while you still can.

And just to make sure things stay relevant long after the video’s gone, here’s a roundup of links relating to Playa Girón:

The Nation’s Jon Wiener takes a look at the lesson JFK failed to take away from Playa Girón. And no, it was NOT that the invasion would have succeeded if only it had had better intel or more air cover, as many insist was the case. The truth is, it was doomed to fail no matter what, because the Cuban people were serious about their revolution and willing to defend it to the death. It wasn’t just the Brothers Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and their rag-taggety bunch; it was the great majority of Cubans, and they fought back hard even with severely limited resources, and won. That had to be a bitter pill for the CIA-backed “exiles” (really, just émigrés) who landed on Girón Beach thinking they were going to have a cakewalk overthrowing Fidel. The only thing they walked into was a sure and certain stint in jail. As for the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed in the months shortly thereafter, you may be surprised to learn that the real hero was…Nikita Khrushchev. For it was he who secured from JFK the promise of no further invasions of Cuba–at Playa Girón or anywhere. Unfortunately, Cuba’s gain was Vietnam’s loss. The war begun there by Eisenhower got ramped up after JFK was assassinated. Hey, someone had to show them dirty commies…

Meanwhile, at OpEdNews, Kevin Gosztola delves into Peter Kornbluh’s fight to get the CIA’s Bay of Pigs documents–ALL OF THEM–released. Why are they still considered too important to declassify after all this time? Well, the video above should be an indication. The CIA knew full well that an invasion was bound to fail, and they went for it anyway. A vendetta against Fidel? Mafia-style? Yep, that’s exactly what it was. The mob ran the casinos, all of them, on the island. When Fidel & Co. shut them down, that spelled more than a million dollars a day in lost gambling revenues for the Mafia. They would have to make up for it in drug trafficking. Heroin had yet to reach the peak of popularity it did in the late 1960s, when the Vietnam war was at its height. It didn’t help, either, that Bobby Kennedy was his brother’s attorney general, and he was serious about gang-busting. Something had to give. Guess what that “something” was. And when that failed, something else would end up giving…and you can watch the Zapruder film to see how that went. (You may also be interested to know that Lee Harvey Oswald was, as he said, just a patsy…and that the real assassins were supplied by the selfsame Mafia’s ex-Cuban division, using a notorious Corsican mercenary who would himself be gunned down–in Mexico City in 1972.)

And finally, for those who want to hear the Cuban side from their own lips, in their own language, the VTV media-crit show La Hojilla was recently in Havana, where they shot two episodes at the “Round Table” with leading revolutionary figures and historians, thoroughly debunking the nonsense that still prevails in the United States of Amnesia. Here’s the first; here’s the second. Enjoy!

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The Douche

One of the funniest, truest educational videos I’ve seen in a long time. Girls, watch and learn–these are the guys who put roofies in your drinks, who neg and insult and harass you just to get that elusive ego-boost. Watch, learn–and AVOID!

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Stupid Sex Tricks: How NOT to put a condom on your guy

Honey, turn that frown upside down. What you’re learning to do there could save your life one day.

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