I missed this video while my pute was in the shop, but I still think it’s worth posting:
What sort of person was Alex Jones behind the scenes? Well, according to his former wife, Kelly, he didn’t use to be a hardline, far-right personage…at least until he got a cash infusion from the Sinclair Broadcasting Corporation. Or a snake-oil salesman, either. And now he’s not only NOT the independent thinker he presents himself as, he’s also a professional charlatan and brainwasher, using the proceeds from that snake oil to keep her own kids away from her. And along the way, we learn just what’s wrong with the Texas family court system, and the judge hearing the case. It’s 25 minutes of must-hear information that should result in a massive boycott.
“I still dislike invented pronouns, but I now dislike them less than the so-called generic pronoun he/him/his, which does in fact exclude women from discourse; and which was an invention of male grammarians, for until the sixteenth century the English generic singular pronoun was they/them/their as it still is in English and American colloquial speech. It should be restored to the written language, and let the pedants and pundits squeak and gibber in the streets.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, “Is Gender Necessary? Redux”
(So, there you have it. Jordan Fucking Peterson, you are and always have been dead WRONG. Please proceed to eat your fucking heart out.)
CBC’s The Fifth Estate examines Bruce McArthur and some still “unsolved” killings that took place in Toronto’s gay community as far back as the 1970s.
If you think the Seventies were a “swinging” time, you probably got that (largely false) impression from the media. If you actually remember it being that way for you personally, you might just be straight…or exceptionally well-connected and lucky. The victims of these murders were not so privileged. Public sentiment at the time was extremely homophobic; gay men were often beaten up or pelted with rocks in the streets, and police did little to stop it. Cops could and did arrest you if they caught you in the act of being openly and consensually gay; it was the law. Even just holding hands while walking with a same-sex partner was grounds for arrest. Bathhouse raids were commonplace up into the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis, which grew in the shadows of the closet (and its flipside, the de rigueur promiscuity of the clubs), fueled the hatred and resentment that gays were feeling already. It’s a little better now, but a strong undercurrent of hate still remains, often openly tapped by the likes of Ontario provincial premiership candidate Doug Ford, a very right-wing former Toronto city council member. The recent provincial Tory leadership race, in fact, was rife with ill-disguised homophobia; at least two of the candidates jockeying for the post made no efforts to hide theirs. And yes, the Toronto police are still arresting queers for queering it up where they can be too easily seen, such as certain public parks — a frequent “cruising” area for the closeted.
Which brings us current. Many of McArthur’s known victims were closeted themselves — married to women and even fathering children by them, but frequenting gay establishments on the sly. So were some of the gay murder victims of the 1970s, who have not yet been linked to any known perpetrator. And serial killers tend to start their criminal careers quite young — often starting with “lesser” crimes such as sexual assaults and/or animal torture and killings in their teens through mid-twenties, then “graduating” to human serial killing by their early thirties. Bruce McArthur is in his late sixties now, and has been living in and around the Toronto area for the past four decades at least. So, if he followed the typical serial killer pattern, that means he could have begun killing as early as 40-some years ago…and that means that a lot of these old “cold” cases could suddenly grow very hot indeed.
Yay! My computer is finally fixed. I have a working keyboard AND trackpad again. Regular posting to resume shortly. Meanwhile, shall we dance? I feel like dancing…
Sorry for this, but posting will be light in the next few days…technical difficulties have struck again. I have nothing further to say but this: Whoever said not to cry over spilled milk, never got any on their laptop keys.
Farron Cousins gives the best possible quick-and-dirty summary of this whole latest Drumpfian rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Here’s Tillerson himself:
He sounds a wee bit shaky. And no wonder: He found out he was fired from Twitter. (His assistant was also fired.) Imagine having a boss so unstable and capricious that this is how you find out whether or not he likes the way you’re doing your job. Still think the ultra-capitalist model is a great way to run a government?
On the plus side, Venezuela can breathe easy; he’s no longer in a good position to stick them up for their oil. On the minus side, the whackjob former CIA director, Pompeo, is now about to take Tillerson’s place, and that means the dirty trickery from Washington is still on. And as Pompeo is being replaced by one of Dubya’s black-site torture overseers, don’t look for any real, substantive changes anywhere.
And what’s hilarious is all the ways he contradicts himself. You can’t have both “free will” and “God doesn’t like that”, and if you believe you can, you might just be the kind of dumbass, blue-skinned, rotten-toothed sheep who buys Alex’s “flouride free” mouthwash. Now with even MORE lead paint chips!
Thoughts and prayers for Alex, folks. Thoughts and prayers!
It’s not an exact translation of the words of that ol’ Italian Partisanenlied, but it will do just fine for the sense. And since today is the first day of Daylight Saving Time, it works on THAT level, too.
Share this story:
Posted inMusic for a Sunday|Comments Off on Music for a Sunday: I’ll say the sunlight dragged me here…
The whole thing began in January 2015, when Anne King posted a short Facebook status expressing frustration that her ex, Corey King, refused to drop off some medication for their children on his way to work.
“That moment when everyone in your house has the flu and you ask your kid’s dad to get them (not me) more Motrin and Tylenol and he refuses,” she wrote, adding an “overwhelmed” face to the post.
Some of her friends chimed in, including Susan Hines, who referred to Corey King as a “POS,” saying, “Give me an hour and check your mailbox. I’ll be GLAD to pick up the slack.”
According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Anne King, her ex-husband told her to take the post down. When she initially refused, he posted a screenshot on his own Facebook account.
The ex-husband then filed an incident report and, according to his own admission, requested an arrest warrant because of her “derogatory statements.”
The arrest warrant, as noted in the complaint, said: The “subject did, without a privilege to do so and with intent to defame another, communicate false matter which tends to expose one who is alive to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, and which tends to provoke a breach of peace.”
The next day, a Washington County court magistrate issued warrants for both Anne King and Hines.
The women were charged with “criminal defamation of character,” processed and spent about four hours in jail before posting $1,000 bail.
At their hearing, state-court judge stated there was no basis for the arrest and the case was dropped.
“I don’t even know why we’re here,” the judge said, according to the complaint.
And the best part is, there was nothing defamatory about it all. In the event of libel or slander, both stating an opinion is considered a legitimate defence. Anne King said that she was “feeling overwhelmed” because her son was sick and their father wasn’t even lifting a finger to fetch some meds from the drugstore:
Are women going to be arrested for being overwhelmed by their maternal burdens, now?
As for what her friend said, it may have been nasty, but telling the truth is also a legal defence, and it was proven true by subsequent events. Who BUT a total wanker would order his ex-wife and her friend arrested, just for noting that he was a piece of shit because he wasn’t helping to look after his own sick child — even though it would only have taken a few minutes out of his busy, busy day to pick up some pills and leave them in the mailbox? Yeah, I can see how that would be embarrassing, and why he would want to keep the whole world from knowing what a piece of shit he is. Even though the whole town probably knows it already.
He could have gotten it taken down without making a fuss, but he decided to “hang it on the big bell”, as my German mom would say. First he took a screenshot and posted it to his OWN Facebook page, which was pretty damn dumb, because if he’s trying to defend his own character, that’s just advertising his own lack thereof. Then he filed an incident report. And then he hauled her off to jail with the help of a so-called judge who hasn’t even been to law school (yes, that’s allowed in Georgia) and is totally ignorant of the law — which, if he’d studied any, he would have known didn’t allow for that!
And now that big dumb bell has rung, and can’t be un-rung. Ding, dong!
Now, instead of just one li’l ol’ Georgia town knowing what a jackass you are, the whole fuckin’ WORLD knows! Good job, Deputy Dawg!
Cenk Uygur, who believes Tillerson is the reason Russia meddled in the US elections, certainly thinks so:
I, on the other hand, think he may yet stay on. There’s a reason for that, and its name is VENEZUELA.
Venezuela’s proven oil resources are the largest in the world, and the facilities to tap and process them are already well established, unlike those of Rosneft in Siberia. Foreign oil companies must sign agreements with the Venezuelan government — agreements which are not as favorable and lucrative as they’ve been in decades past. As (former) CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson still stands to make major money on Venezuelan oil, even though the deal with Rosneft has fallen through. Ten years ago almost to this day, they failed to extort the Venezuelans out of their oil, but as ExxonMobil hasn’t been kicked all the way out of Venezuela yet, he could try for another robbery.
And there will be a major opportunity for him to do so. The Venezuelan elections are coming up, and there’s a big push — or PUTSCH — on for the opposition to “win” them. Or cry “fraud” if they fail yet again, as they’ve been doing ever since Chavecito and his loyal Bolivarians beat back their first coup attempt in 2002. The US, no matter who was president or what party was in charge, has always backed those putschists and fascists of the opposition, so there’s no need to speculate as to where Tillerson’s loyalties will lie this time around, either. He’s going to throw everything he can behind whomever they’re running, and if that candidate loses — as that candidate surely will, because the Venezuelan people aren’t fucking stupid — he’s going to back the coup attempt that will follow, just as night follows day, in the usual State Dept. pattern.
Of course — and this is where it will get stickier for him than the heavy Venezuelan crude — the Venezuelan people will beat back the next coup attempt, just as they’ve done all the previous ones. Politicians who back the putsch will go to jail, as I’m sure will quite a few “aid worker” gringos found funneling guns and money (though maybe not lawyers) to the thugs on the street. It’s happened before, and don’t think that Madurito and his still very loyal Bolivarian forces won’t be aware of who’s up to what. They’re not fucking stupid, either.
And that’s where they differ sharply from Donnie and his buffoonish band of corporate raiders.
The Venezuelans have been buying guns and Sukhoi jets from the Russians for years now, and diplomatic and trade relations between them and Russia are not so fraught. By now, they have plenty of flying hours with the Sukhois, too, should worse come to worst. And nearly two decades of fascist putschism have taught them well to beware of gringo-aligned traitors in their midst. Any “rebels” in the Bolivarian Armed Forces will be dealt with harshly. There is no incipient Pinochet in Venezuela, and there is no taste for fascism there, either — Venezuela’s armed forces have long been politically progressive. Their officers come not from the ranks of the upper classes (twits one and all), but from the common folk, thanks to the Andrés Bello Plan. Chavecito was one himself. And he made sure to model the military after his own heart, with a keen political awareness. Under him, the Venezuelan army served the people, not their oppressors. It still does.
And if Rex Tillerson thinks he can go up against that, his Rexit will be even more ignominious than anything those devilish, scheming Russians could devise.
Fear doesn't travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory's truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next.
--Arthur Miller, "Why I Wrote 'The Crucible'", The New Yorker, October 21, 1996
All opinions here are the brain-wrackings of Sabina C. Becker, unless otherwise credited. If you cite them, please give credit where due.
