News of the Restless

A patriotic country song that doesn’t suck

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Sabina Becker

Here you go–enjoy. (I promise it will make you cry. Thanks to Corey for sending me the link!)

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Conquest of the East

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Sabina Becker

A study in “soft” imperialism. A French documentary with subtitles in Spanish:

Presented on VTV by journalist Erika Ortega Sanoja, with commentary and discussion by US/Venezuelan author-attorney Eva Golinger, and French sociologist Romain Mingus.

This doc is particularly relevant for Venezuelans right now, because the so-called “student groups” agitating against the government are financed and trained by the same US-based groups who backed the “Color Revolutions” in Eastern Europe. These US imperialists think they can simply import the same strategies to Venezuela to get rid of a leader they don’t like, but there’s a problem: For one thing, Venezuelans aren’t stupid. Nor are they amnesiac. They’ve seen 40+ years of the glories of “democratic” capitalism and rejected it by democratically electing a man sworn to drive a stake through it. For another, Chavecito is neither weak in power, nor unpopular, as were the leaders the “Color Revolutions” (colorful coups d’état, really) overthrew. And above all, they have alternative and public media dedicated to exposing “soft” imperialism, and drawing the obvious lines between the “White Hands” movement and the “nonviolent” student groups ginned up by the colorful coups.

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Stupid Sex Tricks: What’s in this yummy Bolivian soup, again?

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Sabina Becker

El Duderino alerts us to a Bolivian “delicacy” you may want to either seek out or pass on, depending on your sexual whims and/or strength of stomach.

He also suggests a serving of it for Simon Romero, the NYT’s resident plagiarizin’ fool. I agree, although I suspect he may eat it with rather more relish than most of us would. Y’see, there’s something about Simon…

Anyhow, there are times when I’m seriously glad to be a woman, and this is one of them. I have never felt the urge to prove my genderness by eating a soup made from some other creature’s ovaries, and I never will.

PS: Whaddya bet Evo’s never eaten this soup? He sure as hell doesn’t need it.

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Posted in All About Evo, Crapagandarati, Stupid Sex Tricks | 6 Comments

Men Who Just Don’t Get It: The Sheriff and the Judge

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Sabina Becker

I don’t know who’s the bigger pig here, the sheriff who thinks his badge guarantees him the right to rape–or the judge who doesn’t consider him a menace to society:

A former North Texas sheriff pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to sexually assaulting a woman, telling her sex was the only way to avoid going to jail for drug possession.
Former Montague County Sheriff Bill Keating, 62, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He will be sentenced in May for the civil rights violation.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert K. Roach did not detain Keating, saying he did not pose harm to the community and wasn’t a flight risk because of his family ties to the area.

“Did not pose harm to the community”? Funny, but reading this makes me think otherwise:

In the signed plea documents, Keating admitted to forcing the woman to perform a sex act after he and deputies went to her house to arrest her boyfriend in November. The one-term sheriff was defeated in a runoff after the March primary election, and the assault took place before his replacement was sworn in.
Keating and some jail personnel also face state charges related to having sex with inmates and taking illegal substances into the jail, Montague County District Attorney Jack McGaughey said.

Looks like this one was in office just long enough to have figured out how to use his position to ugly advantage. If that doesn’t make him a menace to society, I don’t know what does.

But then again, I suppose the judge’s line of reasoning goes something like this: “Those women were all trash anyway, so they had it coming.”

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Posted in Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, Men Who Just Don't Get It | Comments Off

That whole “good leftist/bad leftist” thing…

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Sabina Becker

…got just a tee-tiny titch more meaningless today. From Aporrea, an interesting little note:

The president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, confirmed yesterday in Honduras that she would travel to Cuba “without any type of inhibitions” to make the first official visit in 37 years and with reference to the late president Salvador Allende.
Bachelet, who made a ten-hour visit to Honduras, gave a press conference with her host, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, where she announced her upcoming visit to Cuba, for which she left yesterday afternoon from Tegucigalpa.
“We have agreed on an agenda between both our governments, and I believe it will be an important visit, since it’s been more than 37 years since a Chilean president has been there,” Bachelet said, recalling Salvador Allende’s visit to the island in 1972.
“Any topic which appears to me to be indispensable to the interests of the country, I will discuss not only with the government of Cuba, but with any government,” Bachelet said to the press.
Zelaya and Bachelet signed several co-operation agreements in technology and exterior relations.

Translation mine.

This is doubly interesting. It means that Chile and Honduras both have now shrugged off the “no contact with Cuba” yoke imposed on them more than three decades ago by the Washington Consensus. Since Bachelet left for Havana from Tegucigalpa, it means that Honduras as well as Chile is now in the process of establishing normal relations with Cuba.

What else might it mean? Well, as Chileans have been benefiting indirectly from Cuba’s free healthcare system (via Venezuela’s health missions, which have provided free transportation to and from Cuba), I suspect Chile might soon be playing host to a number of Cuban doctors in its poorer parts. And I don’t think Michelle could just stand idly by, observing Venezuela and Bolivia’s resounding success at achieving full literacy with Cuban help, either. Something tells me she’ll be seeking help from the Brothers Castro on that front, too.

Above all, it means that Dubya’s efforts to drive wedges between the “good” (docile) and “bad” (uppity) leftists of South America have been one hell of an Epic Fail. The terrible truth is, the “good” leftists get along famously with the “bad”. Lula has spared Chavecito no praises, and it’s obvious that Michelle thinks highly of Evo, if her sea-access agreement with him is any indication.

All in all, it looks like LatAm integration is proceeding rather nicely, and the whole “good leftist/bad leftist” dichotomy is just so much horseshit.

Or, in other words: Latin America is nobody’s backyard anymore.

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Posted in All About Evo, Brazil is the Bomb!, Chile Sin Queso, Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), Huguito Chavecito, Not Hiding in Honduras | Comments Off

Venevisión’s subliminal media coup revealed

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Sabina Becker

Yesterday, I noted with some approval how Venevisión, the putschist commercial station, appeared to have mended its ways with regard to Chavecito. Well, guess what, kiddies: there was apparently an ulterior motive to that hour-long interview. See if you can spot it in the background (helpfully highlighted here by Mario Silva on his VTV show, The Razorblade):

Silva notes that the word “NO” appears three times in the oddly placed “folds” of the painted flag backdrop, which also appears to have only seven stars in the blue central band (the new flag has eight; only oppositionists use the old seven-star one.) Once behind Chavecito (the “O” frames his head); once behind the male interviewer, and depending on the camera angle, once behind the female interviewer. The subliminal message is clear: Venevisión wants a regression to the old (seven-star flag) Venezuela, and to get that, they want their viewers to vote NO, NO, NO in the referendum of the 15th.

Unfortunately, how well THAT message will carry in the face of Chavecito’s cogent and very lucid remarks remains to be seen. Swami Binananda hereby peers into her crystal ball and predicts that the tactic will backfire, and the oppos will be the ones getting the NO, NO, NO vote instead.

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So…about that “anti-semitic climate” in Venezuela…

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Sabina Becker

To hear the lamestream media up here tell it, Venezuela is well down on the slippery slope to being the next Nazi Germany. If it’s not Chavecito’s cordial relations with Iran, it’s that synagogue mishegoss. Apparently all this is “evidence” of an “official policy of anti-Semitism”, to hear the Miami Herald tell it.

Well, Miami Morons, I hope you can read and comprehend English, because something about the synagogue thing just came out on Venezuelanalysis that makes you look like feces-flinging monkeys:

A confession by security guard Víctor Escalona revealed that a personal struggle over money was the motive of the crime. Edgar Cordero, a Caracas police officer and bodyguard of Rabbi Isaac Cohen had been denied a loan by the rabbi, so he planned to rob money from the synagogue’s coffers, and approached Escalona for assistance, according to investigators from the from Venezuela’s national Criminal, Penal, and Scientific Investigations Unit (CICPC).
El Aissami said anti-Semitism was not the motive, but rather a tactic used for two purposes, “First, to weaken the investigation, and second, to direct the blame toward the national government.”
El Aissami also detailed other evidence gathered during the investigation that implicated the security guard Escalona. “We observe that the fence was cut from the inside out and there is no evidence that would demonstrate that it was climbed or broken into from the outside,” said the minister, pointing to photos of the scene of the crime.
“Another thing we found was that the security guard [Escalona] declared he had been tied up and did not see anything, but we discovered that at one o’clock in the morning he sent a text message to the rabbi’s bodyguard [Cordero],” and had been separated from other security guards who were tied up, El-Aissami reported.

And here’s minister Tarek El-Aissami, on video, pointing out all that boring evidentiary stuff (for those who can comprehend Spanish, and/or need to see it in order to believe it):

So much for that “climate of anti-Semitism”, eh? Turns out, the climate is just plain old warm and tropical down there after all.

Looks like they’ll have to gin up some other excuse to stop the referendum, which is now five days away and pretty much a walk-in for Chavecito.

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Men Who Just Don’t Get It: The Preacher Man from Down Under

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Sabina Becker

I feel for Australia right now. Not only do they have dozens of bushfires and nearly 200 gruesome deaths to deal with, they also have fundamentalist fools who insist on twisting the tragedy to their own ends. Case in point: Pentecostal pastor Danny Nalliah. Not only does he preach for a ministry with a stunningly inappropriate (and downright arsonistic-sounding) name, he also comes to a stunningly inappropriate (and downright arsonistic-sounding) conclusion about what really caused the wildfires:

The Catch the Fire Ministries has tried to blame the bushfires disaster on laws decriminalising abortion in Victoria.
The Pentecostal church’s leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah, claimed he had a dream about raging fires on October 21 last year and that he woke with “a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb”.

Oh joy, the Holy Spook is a firebug. One who doesn’t trust women to make up their own minds about what goes on in their own wombs, at that.

Naturally, there’s been a huge outcry about this whacked-up “explanation” of the fires, which are the product of a combined drought and suspected arson. Some of it comes from downright devout quarters:

The former Treasurer, Peter Costello, who sent a video message to an Australia Day prayer meeting organised by Pastor Nalliah this year, was outraged by his remarks on the fires.
“To link the death and suffering of bushfire victims to other political events is appalling, heartless and wrong,” said Mr Costello, who has lost a Christian friend in the fires.
“Those who have suffered deserve ever support and sympathy. It is beyond the bounds of decency to try to make moral or politcal points out of such a tragedy.”

One would think that with such unequivocal rejection of his theory, a person would sit down and give it some sober second thought. But not Rev. Danny. Nope, he’s not merely unrepentant, he’s downright arrogant in his insistence that he’s right:

Asked by the Herald if he did not believe most Australians would regard his remarks as being in appallingly bad taste, he said today: “I must tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.”
He said it was no use “molly-coddling” Australians.
Asked if he believed in a God who would take vengeance by killing so many people indiscriminately – even those who opposed abortion, Mr Nalliah referred to 2 Chronicles 7:14 to vouch for his assertion that God could withdraw his protection from a nation.
“The Bible is very clear,” he said. “If you walk out of God’s protection and turn your back on Him, you are an open target for the devil to destroy.”

Really? That’s news to me. I became a Wiccan, stopped calling myself a Christian, and quit believing in devils more than 20 years ago, and I haven’t been destroyed yet. Soon after my quiet inner revolution, I and thousands of other Canadians, women particularly, marched for the total decriminalization of abortion here. We got what we called for; the Supreme Court struck down existing legislation, the Parliament passed no new laws, and so there hasn’t been a law forbidding abortion here since 1988. That’s right: THERE IS NO ABORTION LAW IN CANADA. We are free to terminate a pregnancy if we so decide. Most who do, do so in the first trimester; rarely in the second; almost never (unless the woman’s health is at risk) in the third. In other words, we uppity wimmin self-regulate rather nicely up here.

Now, according to Pastor Dan’s reckoning, we should all have burned up 20 years ago. But we’re still here, and we’ve had remarkably few deaths by deliberately-set wildfires, all things considered. That’s not to say that global warming and climate change haven’t touched us in other ways (hello, shrinking glaciers; goodbye, Arctic pack ice!)–but who are we to blame abortion for something so totally unrelated as the loss of polar bears?

And what kind of God would be dumb enough to send his signs in such a ham-fisted way? This is supposed to be the same lord of Israel who guided his chosen people by giving them literal road signs to follow–a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, and a star over Bethlehem to indicate where they’d find their newborn king. Plus, he’s supposed to be beneficent and merciful to those who believe in him. Why torch hundreds of people (including those who believe in him!) and then send just one self-important crank a kooky dream to say “I don’t like abortion” when he could merely write the message in the sky and save everyone a lot of hassle and ambiguity?

But no, no. We’re supposed to believe this pastor dude. He had a dream! Big deal, last night I dreamed of tangles of dirty laundry and leaky plumbing. Oh noes, it’s a SIGN! Of what, I’m not exactly sure, but I dreamt it, therefore God must be talking to me!

Except I quit believing in THAT God over 20 years ago, and have never been given a plausible cause to regret it since. I’d rather put my faith in the scientists on this one; they called the true cause of all this horror correctly.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Oceania, Pissing Jesus Off, She Blinded Me With Science, The "Well, DUH!" Files, The Hardcore Stupid, Uppity Wimmin | 3 Comments

Yep, those Venezuelan oppos sure throw great, big marches.

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Sabina Becker

Bwahahahaha:

What? You want both sides of the story? Okay, here you go–compare and contrast with the Chavecito video here.

And don’t say I never give you the other side of things!

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Pride goes before…uh, what was the saying again?

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Sabina Becker

Whatever it is, it seems to have hit some Middle Eastern plutocrats’ paradise or other…

Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles — sedans, SUVs, regulars — abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months. Police say most of the vehicles had keys in the ignition, a clear sign they were left behind by owners in a hurry to take flight.
The global economic crisis has brought Dubai’s economic progress, mirrored by its soaring towers and luxurious resorts, to a stuttering halt. Several people have been laid off in the past months after the realty boom started unraveling.
On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. “Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year,” director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport.
Faced with a cash crunch and a bleak future ahead, there were no goodbyes for the migrants — overwhelmingly South Asians, mostly Indians – just a quiet abandoning of the family car at the airport and other places.
While 2,500 vehicles have been found dumped in the past four months outside Terminal III, which caters to all global airlines, Terminal II, which is only used by Emirates Airlines, had 160 cars during the same period.

Bear in mind that this exodus is of the middle-class real estate professionals. Nevertheless, they are an important keystone in the whole structure. Pull that out, and guess what happens? Especially in Dubai, where real estate–high-priced, glittery, not-for-peons real estate–is the chief industry?

Here, let Hanif Merchant–a real-estate developer (or former one, rather), commenting at Juan Cole’s blog, enlighten you:

Currently, Dubai’s economy is causing hardship to lot of people. As developers we are also having trouble with our investors. We have had a lot of cancellations which has caused us serious trouble with financial institutions like banks and other private equity investors.
Our companies like Emirates Neon Group better known an ENG Media has recently filed for first bankruptcy protection in the middle east. Our Ruwaad Holding (owners of the Amazulu project) has gone into a definite tail-spin as investors money has been removed totally.
A lot of investor related fraud has also caused us some serious financial hardships.

Yep, those trickle-down economics work great. Especially when they skip a whole tier.

Just imagine what taking a chunk out of the middle of a building all of a sudden does to the structure. Can’t picture it? Well, as luck would have it, there’s a nice little piece of video showing just such disaster capitalism at work, albeit in metaphoric form: