Once again, HarpoCons embarrass Canada internationally

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Sabina Becker

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…only this time, they’ve gone and done it in Venezuela:

While many on the left know that Washington has spent tens of millions of dollars funding groups that oppose Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, less well known is Ottawa’s role, especially that of the Canadian government’s “arms-length” human rights organization, Rights & Democracy (R&D).

Montreal-based R&D recently gave its 2010 John Humphrey Award to the Venezuelan non-governmental organization PROVEA (El Programa Venezolano de Educacion-Accion en Derechos Humanos). According to R&D’s website, “The Award consists of a grant of $30,000 and a [just completed] speaking tour of Canadian cities to help increase awareness of the recipient’s human rights work.”

PROVEA is highly critical of Venezuela’s elected government. In December 2008 Venezuela’s interior and justice minister called PROVEA “liars” who were “paid in [US] dollars.”

During a September visit “to meet with representatives of PROVEA and other [Venezuelan] organizations devoted to human rights and democratic development” R&D President, Gérard Latulippe, blogged about his and PROVEA’s political views. “Marino [Betancourt, Director General of PROVEA] told me about recent practices of harassment and criminalization of the government towards civil society organizations.” In another post Latulippe explained, “We have witnessed in recent years the restriction of the right to freedom of expression. Since 2004-2005, the government of President Chavez has taken important legislative measures which limit this right.”

Upon returning to Canada, Latulippe cited Venezuela as a country with “no democracy”. He told Embassy magazine, “You can see the emergence of a new model of democracy, where in fact it’s trying to make an alternative to democracy by saying people can have a better life even if there’s no democracy. You have the example of Russia. You have an example of Venezuela.”

Venezuelanalysis goes on to refute Latulippe’s nonsense rather nicely; go there and read it for yourself if you’re so inclined. Since they’ve already taken on the task, I’m not going to duplicate their work.

Meanwhile, those of us up here who’ve been following Harpocracy’s shenanigans are doing our accustomed, dreary facepalm. You see, we know all about what the government has done to this so-called “arms’-length” organization. They’ve politicized it utterly to suit their con-tard view of the world. They’ve gutted it of all voices critical of Israel, and the stress of the scandal killed Rémy Beauregard, who used to head it up (and who opposed what Harpo & Co. were trying to do to it.) There have been several high-profile resignations, too, by members R & D could ill afford to lose. As a result of all this, R & D has gone from unremarkable and respectable to fractious and conspicuously neo-con, with an ugly dominionist-Christian fug on top of all the Zionist miasma.

So no, I’m not surprised in the least that they are the “arm’s-length” bludgeon Harpo & Co. were going to use to club Venezuela, which IS democratic, more so in fact than we are…and which just happens to vote overwhelmingly in favor of non-conservative candidates, when all’s said. Harpo is doing his damnedest to turn this country and all its institutions into cheap, shoddy copies of all the shit we see going on below the 49th Parallel. So of course he’s going to copy their stance on Venezuela, too.

Venezuela has done what we haven’t: rewritten its own constitution (and amended it) democratically, using assemblies of candidates elected by the people. It has freed itself from an old imperial power (Spain) and is in the process of decoupling from a newer one (the US). It has made all healthcare, including eye and dental coverage, free to citizens, whereas we’ve been backsliding into stealth privatization and those odious “public-private partnerships”, which have benefited no one but the private sector, while sucking up ever larger sums of our public money. They have 100% literacy, thanks to Fidel Castro; we don’t, thanks to a prevalent mindset that considers cutting teacher salaries and squandering the “savings” on standardized testing to be the “solution” to our schoolkids’ poor performances. Their citizens make constant reference to their constitution; do many of us even know what ours says? Venezuela has been giving power to its people, while Harpo & Co. have been sneakily taking it away from us. So of course, Venezuela is a “tyranny”–it’s the tyranny of a good example that they don’t want us following. Chavecito walks in the footsteps of Simón Bolívar; what if Canada walked in the footsteps of Venezuela, or at least Tommy Douglas?

And of course, Harpo and his Cons are too cowardly to bring up the matter of Venezuela and its tyranny-of-a-good-example themselves. So naturally they’re going to send The Tulip down on behalf of their little rejiggered Mulroney-era quango to talk to the discredited oppos, who are only too happy to feed him all kinds of bogus horror stories. Of course The Tulip is going to give them our taxpayer dollars, USAID-style, to help them plot their little putsches. And then, naturally, The Tulip is going to dutifully come back and talk smack about Chavecito here! What else WOULD they all do?

This entire fuckery was as boringly predictable as an old soap opera plot. But damn, it sure makes me hang my head when I’m on the tweeter, talking to friends in Venezuela. I still love my country, but I hate this insane, antidemocratic government. It makes me ashamed to be Canadian, and that’s something I never thought would happen in my lifetime.

Guess I’m gonna be flying that upside-down flag of distress a lot here from now on.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito | 15 Comments

Unforgettable footage of a shuttle launch

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Sabina Becker

Different views from over 100 cameras tracking the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. The commentary explains exactly what’s going on; the detail of the footage is incredible. Beautiful lighting, courtesy of a flawless early-evening spring sky, makes the whole thing breathtaking.

In a nutshell, THIS is why publicly funded science programs are the coolest things on this planet. I dare all you anti-science wingnuts out there to call THIS a waste of tax dollars.

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Posted in She Blinded Me With Science | 4 Comments

Music for a Sunday: This one’s just for John Boehner

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Sabina Becker

I don’t know why the perma-tanned Repug leader of the US House of Representatives is always bawling his eyes out. Every time he talks, whoosh–on go the waterworks, for no apparent reason. That’s why this song seems tailor made for dedicating to him:

He’s probably old enough to remember when the original, by The Kinks, charted, too. Isn’t he old enough to stop being such a big bloody baby?

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Los Canadienses: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Sabina Becker

I’d been looking for this NFB documentary for a couple of years now, ever since I picked up a used copy of Dorothy Livesay’s book, Right Hand Left Hand, in which the great Canadian poet chronicles what life was like for her as a leftist woman during the Dirty Thirties. This documentary is mentioned in it. As yet, the NFB has not made it available for purchase on its website. I wish it would, as this film is a window onto a largely forgotten piece of our history. It was made in 1976, the year Franco died and Spain returned to democratic rule. By then, nearly 40 years had passed since the Spanish Civil War.

One of the questions that affected the Canadian left most during that time, as Livesay noted, was the tension between the causes of peace and antifascism. When Spain’s democratic, leftist republican government was attacked by Franco’s forces, the question was resolved for many in favor of antifascism. More than a thousand Canadians enlisted in the International Brigades. At first, they joined the US-based Abraham Lincoln and George Washington Brigades. Eventually, they formed their own–the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. Many never came home; those who did were either ignored by the general public or persecuted by anticommunist fanatics.

Ironically, Canada’s government, like Britain’s and that of the United States, paid pious lip service to democracy while letting the fascists of Europe run roughshod over it. It was illegal for Canadians to fight in the International Brigades, but not to give aid and comfort to the Franco-fascists.

Three Snarls

of a Disgusted Colonial

I

Freedom, in Spain, exhaled a groan.

Her champion, England, scribbling notes,

Refused as yet to throw a stone,

And only held the stoners’ coats.

II

O Ananias! what a waste!

Iscariot too! such gifts misplaced!

For, living now, you’d both be set

To shine in Britain’s cabinet.

III

Let Britain’s leaders, if they choose,

Be cushions for Benito’s hips,

And lick the heels of Adolf’s shoes:

But damn them! must they smack their lips!

–Lorne Mackay, in The Canadian Forum

Meanwhile, the lack of aid and comfort to the more than one-fifth of Canadian adults who were unemployed, was glaring. It was also galvanizing.

The Depression had hit western Canada particularly hard–the very Prairies where so many immigrants had been shuttled off to settle and work the land had gone from being the nation’s breadbasket to being on its bread line. The average unemployment rate in Canada was 22%; it was higher in the west. Drought and poverty forced men to ride the rails, and set immigrant workers at each other’s throats. Ethnic slurs proliferated; anglocentrism revealed its rotten core. Only the left offered an alternative, one which set oppressed Canadians en masse against the federal government, and would later unify the diverse groups in the International Brigades in Spain. Dorothy Livesay notes:

Amongst the deprived, the effect on the single unemployed men was electric. They read of the international brigades that were forming, rallying volunteers to save the Spanish republic from fascism. Although it was illegal for a Canadian to serve in a foreign cause, 1200 young men and some young women managed to get visas to France and from there joined a freedom trek across the Alps. But in Quebec the reverse happened: the Catholic church called for volunteers to aid Franco, and got them.

Apparently, Franco was not a foreign cause for French Canadians, any more than fighting England’s wars had been for Canadians during the Great War and the Boer War had been for their anglophone counterparts. The hypocrisy was blatant, but it was taboo for the mainstream newspapers to talk about it. Smug blindness to the Spanish republican cause was the rule of the day.

A combination of dire poverty, disillusionment, and idealism meant no shortage of commitment among the internationalist volunteers. But the forces of the left were poorly armed, with obsolete weapons. Worse, they had more ideological divisions amongst themselves than their fascist enemies did, and seemed more determined to eliminate each other than wipe out their common foes. A poorly timed separatist movement in Catalonia, along with indiscriminate purging of “enemies within”, decimated what should have been a unified republican battle front. Franco’s fascists, backed by Hitler’s newly formed air force and that of Mussolini, had easy pickings.

Battle Hymn for the Spanish Rebels

The Church’s one foundation

Is now the Moslem sword,

In meek collaboration

With flame and axe and cord;

Deep-winged with holy love

The battle-planes of Wotan,

The bombing-planes of Jove.

–Lorne Mackay, in The Canadian Forum

Wrote the Canadian novelist, Morley Callaghan, a progressive Catholic who condemned his church’s support for the fascists: “Men often find it necessary to wear strange masks to support unholy causes. The spectacle of devout foreign legion thugs and pious, infidel Moors, ancient enemies of the Christian Spanish people marching to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers leaves me very cold indeed.”

Solidarity from abroad became crucial for the Spanish republican forces to survive. Canadian aid led to medical innovation, as Dr. Norman Bethune set up the world’s first mobile blood transfusion service, with funding and supplies sent by the Collective Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation (the forerunner of the modern New Democratic Party). The International Brigades were soon to follow. They went disguised as simple tourists. But since Canadian passports were not valid for travel to Spain (the government, aware of the pro-republican sentiments brewing, had made all travel to Spain illegal), the volunteer soldiers had to sneak in across the closed French border. They received a hero’s welcome, and later distinguished themselves in the battle for Madrid, holding it for the republicans until the very end of the war.

Red Moon

And this same pallid moon tonight

Which rides so quiet–clear and high–

The mirror of our pale and troubled gaze,

Raised to a cool, Canadian sky,

Above the shattered Spanish mountain tops

Last night rose low and wild and red,

Reflecting back from her illumined shield

The blood-bespattered faces of the dead.

To that pale moon I raise my angry fist,

And to those nameless dead my vows renew:

Comrades who fall in angry loneliness,

Who die for us–I will remember you.

–Dr. Norman Bethune

There would be many more falling “in angry loneliness” than there would be comrades to raise their fists to the moon in memory.

The volunteers were, in most cases, absolutely raw recruits, lacking all military training. Many had come from pacifist backgrounds; they had never held a gun in their lives. Their idealism was the one thing that pulled them through; they made up in political conviction what they lacked in soldiering experience. They learned quickly; their survival skills as out-of-work laborers provided the necessary physical and mental hardihood for them to become one of the best fighting forces on the republican side. Unlike the intellectuals of the local brigades, who were unused to roughing it, the Canadians needed little hardening. They already had it in them thanks to the struggles they had faced at home.

from The Censored Editor

Who can say

Our sons must die?

Who can say why?

Some say for bread

we gave these dead

Dust is their bread

–Kenneth Leslie, in New Frontier

From a dustbowl they came; in a dustbowl many died; to a dustbowl the few survivors would return.

Despite some brilliant guerrilla tactics (such as stealing rifles and ammunition from the fascists, a trick that would also be used to great success twenty years later by Fidel Castro’s revolutionary guerrillas in Cuba), and a heroic last push that set Franco’s forces back 25 miles, in the end the International Brigades were defeated. The survivors made their way home, where a suspicious Canadian government quarantined them on the trains from Montréal to Toronto. Yet everywhere the trains stopped, bands of admiring supporters turned up on the platforms, shouting encouragement to the returned soldiers, wishing them well, thanking them for their sacrifices.

from The Censored Editor

You ask me why

Our sons must die

This then, is why:

To stand up straight

In the narrow gate,

Once to stand straight.

Is that all, then,

Once to be men?

That is all, then!

–Kenneth Leslie

The returning Mac-Paps were easily recognizable, even in civvies. They were painfully thin and had that haunted look that so many recently demobilized soldiers get when the violence of yesterday is still fresh in their minds. Some were disabled and clearly had their fighting days behind them. Others practically stepped out of one war and straight into another as World War II broke out, enlisting in the Canadian armed forces in order to fight another band of fascists, one that had given Franco his victory in Spain–Hitler’s Nazis.

But the irony of a ringing call to fight for democracy was lost on the Canadian government, which had forbidden the first real pro-democracy fighting forces from striking out for Spain when fascism drew first blood. The Mac-Paps were barely remembered, except among their own, until quite recently. Today they are recognized, though they are still much overshadowed by those who fought in the two world wars. Real honor has been too long coming.

Consider this post a little effort toward setting that record straight.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Under the Name of Spain | 1 Comment

Wankers of the Week: More Wikiwanks, plus a Santa sack of mixed nuts

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Sabina Becker

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Whee! Two whole weeks of Wikileaks. How’s everyone liking the insights into the corporate diplomatic spookospheric complex? And just think, this is only the tip of a very large iceberg. With only about 0.5% of the total of Cablegate currently released, things could soon get a whole lot more interesting, in the Chinese-curse sense of the word, for some people. These ones, meanwhile, didn’t all need Julian Assange to lay their butts bare to the world at large; their wanks are manifestly obvious:

1. Bristol Fucking Palin. Or whoever ghostwrites for her (and probably, her mother.) Attacking Margaret Cho for merely reporting the obvious is pretty damn low. But doing it on the grounds of sexual orientation, when Cho is a well-known bisexual? That sucks even more than Bristol’s lacklustre dancing. But the fun part is that it obviously wasn’t Bristol that even wrote that stupid shit about “commonsense conservatism” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). Bristol is barely literate; she can hardly string together a single sentence, even one that makes as little sense as this choice bit of run-on homophobia: “You say you ‘don’t agree with the family’s politics at all’ but I say, if you understood that commonsense conservative values supports the right of individuals like you, like all of us, to live our lives with less government interference and more independence, you would embrace us faster than KD Lang at an Indigo Girls concert.”

2. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. Still on about the fucking Obama birth certificate that was produced long ago. And here’s the really rich part: the Pigman is disappointed that Wikileaks didn’t have it! As though it were some kind of state secret. It’s not. Especially not in the state of Hawaii. How much OxyContin does one have to guzzle to be unable to accept something so simple–and obvious?

3. Kenneth Fucking Kimbley. Yet another fucking racist psychopath who was “inspired” to try terrorism by Glenn Fucking Beck. There is a running tally of these, BTW; so far, it’s up to at least three. How much longer is THIS bullshit going to go on? When will Biff finally be arrested alongside his loyal, treasonous devotees?

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4. Sarah Fucking Palin. Surprise! She’s not a real hunter after all. Well, okay, so you’re not surprised. Neither’m I. Mainly because we know she’s phony, from the top of her ratted head to the soles of her salon-tanned feet. She was never a real feminist, never a real mayor, never a real governor, never had a real chance of becoming VP (especially since her running mate was not, in fact, a real US citizen by birth, but a Panama Canal Zonian). And now, as she guns for the presidency, she’s once again projecting a false image–this time of a subsistence hunter, one who’s paying obscene sums of money to pretend she’s puttin’ food on her family. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that her much-speculated-on boobs were fake, too.

5. Tom Fucking Flanagan. See, I told you death threats were illegal here, Mr. Manly-Man. So is shit like this.

6. Don Fucking Cherry. Speaking of manly-men, get a load of what the loudest-ever mouth on TV wore to the swearing-in of the loudest-ever mouth (yes, including Mel Lastman) to be elected mayor of Toronto. No, that’s not the wank. The wank is why he wore it, and what he said while wearing it. Fine words coming from someone whose salary (hefty) is paid exclusively by the Canadian taxpayer. Ahem, that’s us “pinkos” and “left-wing kooks”, Don. We’re the Canadian majority, in case you hadn’t heard. (Remove head from ass, ol’ man–then you wouldn’t have to yell so much, either.) You wanna talk about us “pinkos”, “scraping the bottom of the barrel”, Don? Maybe, if you rode a bike to work, you wouldn’t have to buy so much fabric for your gaudy jackets. Some part of you besides your talk might actually get tough. And maybe then we wouldn’t keep mistaking you for an overstuffed sofa that had learned to shoot off its mouth and be utterly wrong, at the top of its crotchety lungs, about virtually everything–including hockey, which those European guys you so love to hate actually know how to play.

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Pinko buttons courtesy of Spacing. I’m gettin’ me one of each. ‘Cause I’m a left-wing, bike-riding pinko.

7. Luke Fucking Scott. Um, are we supposed to take seriously a Birther’s pronouncements on everything from deer hunting, to Maryland’s alleged importation of coyotes (!), to Venezuela’s supposed gun-crime problem (too many people getting shot in the streets with machine guns, but that’s because there are NOT ENOUGH GUNS IN THE STREETS?) He can’t even get straight his own president’s country of origin (Hawaii), so pardon me if I laugh like a fuckin’ hyena and say yeah, I can see how so many jocks (especially wingnuts like him and #6) come by that “dumb” image. Some of ’em come by it all too honestly, I can see that. Anyone who mistakes socialism for communism for gun-grabbing for gun-crime in the streets is not to be trusted in any profession requiring mental exertion; he’d fry the only two neurons he’s got. And if he ran for office, he wouldn’t be “loved and hated”; he’d just plain lose. Let’s hope for his own good that he sticks to baseball. And if he starts running his mouth ever again, someone please just stick a wad of chawin’ tobaccy in there.

8. Charles Fucking Krauthammer. Obviously, the hammer that hit the Kraut was one of utter ideological blindness and high partisan stupidity. We all know that if John McCain had become president and done what Barack Obama did this week, Charlie would be falling all over himself to praise the wisdom of it, the Repugnican party, and the Amurrican Sheeple.

9. Th
e Fucking Vatican. Surprise! Cablegate reveals it to be Cover-Up Central of the Catholic church’s sex scandals. Apparently it also expects the government of Ireland to kowtow to it as a not-so-benevolent overlord. We already pretty well figured as much, but it’s always nice to have hard-wire confirmation of just how sick and perverted the uppermost ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy really are.

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10. Fucking Pfizer. The world’s leading manufacturer of boner pills apparently fancies itself an overlord as well…in Nigeria. Where it’s been using local people as guinea pigs for a drug trial gone very, VERY wrong. And NOT wanting to pay compensation to the locals. Because, you know, niggruhs.

11. Alex Fucking Jones. A sane person would be worried about Glenn Fucking Beck sounding like him. Alex, for one, welcomes his new chalkboard cheeseball overlord.

12. Bernie Fucking Goldberg. He wants “a big bronze and granite monument” to honor his Wall Street corporatist overlords. What a great idea! Can I get the commission? I’ve already built a maquette:

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The plinth will be a nice, solid block of black granite, to represent the bedrock of the global economy. This, in bronze, will squat on top of it. There will be thousands of tiny brass flies crawling all over it, to represent the faithful presstitutes, like Bernie, who copy and paste the corporate news in a fair and balanced manner. Notice that there’s a finger pointing skyward in there? Represents how in crapitalism, the sky’s the limit. It will simply stink to high heaven soar when it’s completed. Isn’t it exciting?

13. The Phucking Phelps KKKlan. Yup, they’re pissing on corpses again. This time the target of their vileness is the late Elizabeth Edwards, who took so much shit in the latter years of her life between bouts with cancer and her husband’s shameful extramarital antics. Speaking of shame, shouldn’t Fred Phelps get some? Or, if he’s too old and senile, can someone at least knock some into his ungodly progeny? This crap has nothing to do with freedom of speech; it’s just plain cruel and inhuman.

14. Fucking TIME Magazine. “Palin” and “progress” are two words that should NEVER be juxtaposed, unless you’re striving for irony, because those are two terms that cancel each other out. And an e-mail “interview”? Srsly? How do they know they didn’t get the twit who ghostwrites the Paliness’s Facebook page? They don’t, of course. They really don’t know a whole lot of anything. But then, we already knew that.

15. Charles Fucking Ford. His cartoonish portrait of ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya takes some poetic licence, to say the least. Having seen enough videos of the latter in action (including footage of him holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigolpe, where he was shown in excellent spirits, playing guitar and singing “Happy Birthday” to a supporter) to know that he is anything but erratic, capricious, dictatorial and friendless, I wipe my posterior with Ford’s “impressions”. Just another fine example, courtesy of Cablegate, of how little real intelligence exists in US “intelligence” circles.

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16. and 17. Joe Fucking Lieberman and Dianne Fucking Feinstein. Invoking the Espionage Act of 1917 against Wikileaks? There’s a whole lot wrong with that, as any legal expert could tell you, but let’s just sum it up with the basics: Julian Assange is neither a terrorist nor a spy; he’s a webmaster and a whistleblower. He did not pass on secret information to any foreign army for immediate field use; he made a small portion of a heap of diplomatic cables–documents which should be in the public domain, seeing as they were generated and paid for with public funds–available to anyone with a computer and Internet access who cares to read. And the New York Times got there nearly four decades ago with the Pentagon Papers, and they didn’t end up jailed for it either. Neither, in the end, did Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the papers in question. This is a craven attempt at censorship, and it is guaranteed to be an epic fail.

18. Peter Fucking King. Yes, he’s ba-ack on the list this week. And I think he senses that what Wankers #16 and #17 have in mind is legally untenable. Which is why he, in the spirit of true fascist bipartisanship, has tabled an atrocity in the shape of a congressional act which he hopes will take care of that little problem. If it passes, look for all hell to break loose, and not just in Washington.

19. and 20. Scott Fucking Brown and John Fucking Ensign are also dishonorable mentions; see above. Nice to see that douchebags are never censured in Washington for their sexual peccadoes and nude photo sessions, either, as long as there’s an R after their names. Their scandals are well documented. Yet Julian Assange is being prosecuted on much flimsier evidence as a rape suspect; expect those charges to magically morph into espionage. The mind boggles!

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21. Richard Fucking Milhous Fucking Nixon. Yeah, he’s been dead a few years; hence the extra Fucking. I think you’ll agree it’s warranted when you see just what a prejudiced cretin the old crook really was. But hey, this little red-haired German-Canadian lady has the inborn trait of knowing a Nazi when she smells one, so maybe there IS something to his nutty racist theories, after all.

22. Henry Fucking Kissinger. See above, and recall the money quote:

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

Humanitarianism: It’s un-American. Thanks, Henry, for that timely reminder.

23. Silvio Fuckin
g Berlusconi. A vote-buyer, you say? Well, bless my soul. And no, Wikileaks didn’t reveal that. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion, given that he’s the richest man in Italy and not above doing that. At all.

24. Alvaro Fucking Uribe. Gone from the presidency of Colombia, but not forgotten–thanks to Wikileaks. Nice move there, El Narco…invading Venezuela. To capture alleged FARC guerrillas. The one time you did that, you got your ass frozen. And again when you did it to Ecuador. Gee, I wonder what else is in those cables that can incriminate your scroungy little ass.

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And finally, to all those who’ve resorted to smearing both Julian Assange AND his accuser in sexual and sexist terms. Your arguments don’t amount to a hill of shit if that’s the best you’ve got. A pox on both your houses.

Good night, and get fucked!

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Economics for Dummies: The fuck of the Irish

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Sabina Becker

A real Irishman explains in the simplest (and bluest!) terms what happened to his country’s financial system. Basically, it’s the Second Great Irish Potato Famine, only it’s the “wankin’ bankers” who stole the potatoes, and not the blight.

Also, we learn that Michael Flatley is from Chicago.

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Heroes for Today: Hugh Shelton, taking a leaf from Smedley Butler

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Sabina Becker

He hasn’t written the next War is a Racket yet, but this general shows at least a pinch of Gen. Butler’s integrity in what he WASN’T willing to do to get his Gulf War II on.

(Note: He refers to the Clinton administration. One wonders if he’d have done the same under BushCo. Would’ve been nice to see him say that to Dubya, eh?)

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Short ‘n’ Stubby: Ms. Manx smells fish in the Wikileaks pond

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Sabina Becker

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I know how many of you love the Stumpy Cat, and the feeling is mutual. Ms. Manx loves you all too–so much that she overcame her fear of water, plunged headlong into the Wiki-waters and found…

…that Naomi Wolf is awesome on the whole “espionage” angle! Now do you believe me, those who doubted when I said that she was mocking the inane Interpol manhunt for a man accused of some pretty minor-league sexual assaults, and not the notion of rape itself? I’m telling you: this is a feminist who is not only serious on women’s issues (and specifically, sex and body-wars stuff; look up her oeuvre sometime) but also on her own country’s history, and more darkly, its flirtations with fascism. She knows her onions, and Ms. Manx has never doubted her or lost respect for her take on things, even when it gets a bit too flippant for some.

…that there are historic parallels for the sexualized smearing of Julian Assange. Ms. Manx would have you know that normally she NEVER references flibbertigibbertarian publications, but in this case, she makes an exception, because the parallel is that of Daniel Ellsberg, who has come out steadfastly in defence of Wikleaks. Henry Kissinger tried to smear Ellsberg as gay–something I’m sure came as a terrible shock to the latter’s wife, who obviously had no idea. (Ms. Manx sniffs disdainfully and says rats are for eating, not fucking. She would have Mr. Kissinger know that the Immortal Cats are waiting to consume his soul, come the fateful day.)

…that the Pentagon Papers, in turn, reflect something else: Eisenhower’s abiding concern about the military-industrial complex. How prophetic and true his words turned out to be! And no wonder: he mulled over them for two years before giving that farewell address. As a former military officer, he knew full well how serious the charges were that he was making. A pity he was not also an intelligence officer, or he would have foreseen the dangers of the espionage-industrial complex that hid in the military-industrial complex shadows. Which leads us nicely to our next point…

…that the snake bites its tail when we see how the CIA had a “honeypot” set up–a fake Wikileaks site. Strange coincidence that, eh? And if you really believe it is a coincidence, Ms. Manx would have you know…

…that however well-intentioned as Jessica Valenti’s attempt to link the Assange case to “rape in America” is, it just doesn’t make sense in this context. The incidents in question did not take place in the US, they occurred in Sweden. At most, they point up, as Valenti notes, the contrast between the two legal systems. What Valenti fails to note is the filthy, highly sexist motives of the US intelligence sector, and its willingness to cynically use them as a means of entrapping a man they could get no other way. (Ms. Manx says, with regal feline contempt, that it’s reprehensible–downright ratty!–of the CIA to hide under women’s skirts and Swedish laws.)

…that “intelligence” can be really, really stupid–and that whistle-blowing women are pointing out just how dumb it can be. Susan Lindauer, a former deep-cover agent, spills some absolutely fascinating beans, and says she wishes she’d known someone like Julian Assange during her career; what she knew was utterly at odds with what the general public was allowed to see, hear and think. Her contention, that secrecy makes for bad intelligence, doesn’t stop with her. A former Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year, Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent whose repeated warnings of terror suspects at flying schools were ignored, wonders if a Wikileaks-type operation would have prevented 9-11. Knowledge is power, replies the Stumpy Cat. And if you want to empower a whole country to save itself from attacks, the best thing to do is disseminate knowledge, however embarrassing, to the citizenry. After all, it’s apparent that the CIA can’t do it alone, and they’re sure as hell not gonna co-operate with the FBI.

…that Iraq is not the only victim of a foreign conspiracy to fabricate intelligence against it. Did you know that Haiti is, too? No? You do now. And here’s something for Brazilians and Canadians to hang their heads over: Our governments were in on it.

…that the world takes a dimmer view of the US than it did before the cables came out. Ugly suspicions have been more than confirmed. South Americans in particular have nothing but contempt for the secrecy; Lula has shattered his “good left” docile image for good by saying Julian Assange should not be prosecuted for publishing the cables, and it made me smile to see it. Europe, too, has no sympathy for the US government and wingnuts’ attempts to censor Cablegate. Could it be that they are just as tired of being under Uncle Sam’s thumb as Latin Americans are?

…that while Visa, Mastercard, Amazon and Paypal are all big fat corporate cowards, smaller fish are bravely swimming in to take up where they left off. Even Facebook and Twitter, though they’ve made some cowardly noises, so far haven’t succeeded in censoring the pro-leak messages flooding their systems.

…that the international human-rights and civil-liberties organizations are stepping up to the plate. Amnesty International, PEN and the UN have all chimed in strongly on Wikileaks’ behalf.

The Stumpy Cat yawns and retires, satisfied that all is unraveling as it should. The case against Wikileaks is as shoddy as a cheap old acrylic sweater, and Ms. Manx, who has all her claws, can’t wait to sink them in again…later…

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Posted in Short 'n' Stubby | Comments Off on Short ‘n’ Stubby: Ms. Manx smells fish in the Wikileaks pond

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Democracy Now in Cancún!

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Sabina Becker

Here’s Amy, talking with Evo today:

“I prefer the dignity of the people to ‘Evo’s knee’.” Spoken like a true trouper.

Transcript here. You won’t want to miss what he says about Cablegate, or the Nobel prizes. Evo’s sweet jabs at dumb diplomats and unintelligent US intelligence agents are proof positive that the so-called First World has nothing to teach Bolivia. This “clown”, despite his modest formal education, is smart enough to school them all. Including Mario Vargas Llosa, the successful author and miserably failed politician, who has sadly become what he spitefully calls Evo. Nota bene: Evo’s government is much envied in neighboring Peru. Gee, do you suppose someone might be suffering from a touch of envy himself there, having lost the Peruvian presidential elections so badly way back when? The late, great Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti nailed it when he said that you have to read Vargas Llosa, not listen to him. (He was referring to Vargas Llosa’s literary work, not his political essays, which are all drivel.) Appropriately, not-so-super Mario had a pratfall on Monday in his Stockholm hotel–while posing for a photographer. Who’s the buffoon, again?

And here’s Amy with El Ecuadorable:

Transcript here. El Ec, like Evo, is unimpressed with the way the rich countries derailed last year’s Copenhagen climate conference and produced a toothless “accord” which, if we know the rich, will NOT be kept. El Ec’s position is that the state and the people must control the markets, not vice versa; an unregulated market will never protect the environment, but democratic state controls can. Spoken like an economist who has his priorities in order!

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Posted in All About Evo, Crapagandarati, Ecuadorable As Can Be, Fascism Without Swastikas, Festive Left Friday Blogging, Inca Dink-a-Doo, Karma 1, Dogma 0 | 2 Comments

Orlando Urdaneta, STFU–and Jaime Bayly, too!

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Sabina Becker

This is what passes for TV journalism in Miami:

Putschist wankers making excuses for Globovisíon TV station owner Guillermo Zuloaga, a putschist crook who profiteered from the Toyota cars he was hiding on his own property, withholding them illegally from sale in order to artificially raise demand and jack up the price. Zuloaga, unfortunately for Toyota, is their licenced importer to Venezuela, as well as the owner of a couple of Toyota dealerships, which he uses to resell the same vehicles back and forth–again, to jack up the price. The bust was major news last year, with TV cameras rolling as the federal police moved in and seized the hoarded vehicles–dozens of them–as evidence. Zuloaga was nowhere in sight, having fled the country. And apparently the State Dept. just loves this old crook, since they keep expressing “concern” for him everytime a new crime of Zuloaga’s comes to light–which happens with nauseating regularity. Isn’t it touching that they’re so concerned about the well-being of a professional swindler and coupmonger?

And oh yeah, they’re also claiming Chávez is a “populist dictator”, when in fact he’s democratically elected. And advocating “soft coups” against Chávez, à la Gene Sharp. They know they can’t get him out of power any other way. Certainly not any LEGITIMATE way…

This is what a bunch of pathetic losers do to pollute the TV airwaves when they don’t know how to run an honest candidate or win an election fairly. Putsch after putsch after putsch, called for quite openly by a foreigner (Jaime Bayly is Peruvian, not Venezuelan!), under the pretext of a TV talk show with an actor as guest. Ignorant political theorizing with zero basis in reality. Overt brainwashing of an audience made gullible by daily overdoses of terror and sensationalism. And vile insults against a very popular leader.

And if you support the Venezuelan opposition, this is the crap you’re supporting. You great democrat, you.

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