Isn’t it pathetic when the major lamestream news outlets start trying to usurp indie, leftist and blogospheric territory? Case in point: TIME magazine’s lame-o “Top Ten Underrated News Stories”. Let’s dissect them in the order they come. Gloves, please…1. The Pentagon’s Latest Nuclear Snafu. Not a bad place to start, but the real story, according to TIME, was how “In March, seven months after the Air Force lost track of six nuclear warheads that were inadvertently flown over the U.S., the Defense Department was informed that the batteries it meant to deliver to Taiwan had actually been fuses used to trigger nuclear warheads.” Well, at least they didn’t send the warheads to China proper, but TIME still thinks this situation was “potentially explosive”. Why? Is it such earth-shattering news in China, or ‘scuse me, TAIWAN, that the US uses fuses to trigger bombs? Any Chinese or Taiwanese nuclear scientist probably could have figured that out already. Why not report how those much more dangerous six nuclear warheads wound up airborne in the first place, and to what end? No, the big news is fuses, people. Because the Yellow People of Kuomintang Country saw them, don’tcha know.2. Civil war displaces a million Congolese. This is underreported news? The latest Congo war is ten years old. And it’s left at least five million dead. I’ve seen it all over the Canadian news. Maybe the US media doesn’t report it because there’s no oil in the Congo? Or maybe because they just don’t care about black people? How about reporting those angles? Now THAT would be news.3. Sri Lankan conflict deadlier this year than Afghanistan. So that means that the war in Afghanistan is okay, then? Or is it simply not news because no Tamils have threatened to blow up the White House? Actually, I suspect it’s because Unocal has no designs on building a pipeline through that little island country, as it has on Afghanistan. (Remember who Hamid Karzai was before he was installed as president? Underreported news, baby.)4. A victory for mental-health advocates. Wow, is this a cynical sell job for corporate bailouts or what? “Buried in October’s financial bailout package was a landmark provision, 12 years in the making, that for the first time requires insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental and physical health.” Yes, but what about universal single-payer healthcare? A solid majority of US citizens would like what Canada got under Tommy Douglas, and are hoping for Barack Obama to bring it on. Once again, the REAL story flies below the radar here.5. Genetically modified meat: coming soon to a grocer near you? I don’t disagree that this one’s underreported. This is actually one worth exploring in depth…much more depth than the single, superficial paragraph TIME devotes to it, unfortunately. 6. Southern Baptists decide against pedophilia database. This one, too, is worth reporting in greater depth, I agree. The blogosphere has done a better job on this one than anyone, including TIME. (Google the terms “Southern Baptist pedophilia” and see what comes up.) That’s the OTHER unreported side of this story.7. More Mexican immigrants move home. This is underreported news? Again, not where I sit–I’ve seen it on CBC, the BBC, the whole alphabet soup. Hell, it’s just an inevitable end result of the US economic crisis. What’s truly underreported? The fact that NAFTA plays a major part in this crisis, from more ends than one. It’s what drove the Mexicans to seek jobs to the north, and its fallout is what’s sending them home. Among many, many, MANY other underreported things.8. A gap in genetic nondiscrimination law. Again, the big US insurance-industrial complex gets its sneaky way at the expense of human health. This one definitely deserves more coverage than just one paragraph in a throw-away end-of-year top-ten in TIME. So, why isn’t it getting it? Anyone care to inform?9. U. S. ships sand from Kuwait to Idaho. Kuwait? Great! Now, how about the much greater amount of radioactive dust in Iraq? (Crickets.)And finally, a really, REALLY underreported doozy: 10. Venezuela’s potty-mouth President. This is “underreported news”. Uh-huh. How many US-based, English-language news reports were screaming blue murder about the rhetoric of Chavecito? ALL OF THEM. Yet this somehow qualifies as “underreported”. Actually, what’s underreported is that they got the English translation of his remarks all wrong–he said “crappy Yankees”, not “fucking Yankees”. And the fact that it came in response to the exposure of a real, live, US-backed coup plot against Evo Morales in Bolivia. And most of all, the fact that the US major media–TIME magazine being a major, CIA-connected outlet–have a constant drumbeat of anti-Venezuela propaganda going on.Let’s face it, TIME is no Project Censored. The latter covered not 10, but 25 actual underreported stories–and covered them thoroughly. Go look.
Yep, this one’s mine, all mine. I call it “Ten things I will never for the life of me comprehend…at least not THIS year.” All of them having to do, one way or ‘nother, with the Hardcore Stupid…the world’s most incomprehensible people.
10. Truck Nutz. Especially when dangling right below an anti-abortion bumper sticker. Even more pathetic: they’re not real chrome, but they charge you extra for the falsies painted chrome. Hey, if you REALLY wanna be a macho badass, go hump a Hummer.9. How the hell anyone could think the Coultergeist is sexy. Dude, she had to buy her boobs! 8. What the hell those Palin women were thinking when they named their kids. 7. For that matter, what they were thinking when they conceived them with those guys. 6. How anyone gay can also be a totally pathetic right-wing nutter. Granted, it defies the gay-guy stereotype of impeccable taste…but still.5. How anybody can seriously believe that a war on an emotion is possible, let alone winnable, let alone that Dubya is winning it. 4. Why anyone is still bothering with those stupid virginity pledges.3. The bizarre and mysterious allure of those $10-a-pop blue boner pills, particularly when deployed as a secret weapon. 2. The persistence of a pathetic parody like “Barack the Magic Negro”, let alone that anyone would get a chuckle out of it in the first place. Actual black people don’t find it funny, and neither does Peter Yarrow.1. How anyone can still claim, with a straight face, that capitalism works.Happy New Year!
From Aporrea, a little end-of-year gloat from a good-looking guy who’s got plenty to gloat about. Along with full literacy for Bolivia and the turfing of the worse-than-useless DEA from his land, Evo also managed to singlehandedly knock down the opposition’s house of cards…and this is the card he pulled that toppled it all:
President Evo Morales affirmed on Tuesday that he was not wrong when he declared the US ambassador, Philip Goldberg, to be persona non grata, because his departure from Bolivia unraveled a conspiracy against the government.“After putting up with that interference by the right, by the empire, I was not wrong when I decided that Ambassador Goldberg had to go. When the ambassador went, down went the opposition. Clearly, someone was in charge of the conspiracy against democracy and against our national government,” Morales said. On September 10, Morales declared Goldberg persona non grata, accusing him of having conspired against his government and aiding a failed coup d’état which took place in August and September with the taking of various public institutions, airports and the murder of several campesinos in the department of Pando.
Translation mine.And what happened on September 11? Call it the Wrath of Goldberg. The timing could not be more interesting.Someofus could smell this conspiracy brewing long before it bubbled over; others are still reluctant to call it by its right name. Whatever. Evo’s still vindicated, as the continued crumbling of the opposition’s cake is proving rather nicely.
Some cops are so bad you want to pelt them with stale doughnuts until they die. How bad is that? Well, try being this SOB, who tortured a cat that had the bad luck to get stuck up a tree in his yard:
Brutis the cat is back home with his owner after going through a bit of a pickle. He had been stuck in a neighbor’s tree for nine days, according to the owner.And the cat’s owner says a police officer may have been partly to blame.The cat got away from his owner, Michael, last Sunday at a home near 12th Street and Bell Road. When Michael finally tracked Brutis down, he was stuck in the branches, two stories in the air, on his neighbor’s property.The neighbor is a Phoenix police officer.Michael had tried to get the cat out with no luck. Animal Control told him they don’t handle cats due to limited resources.On Christmas morning, the Humane Society tried to rescue Brutis but said its ladders were not tall enough to reach him.They also suggested Michael leave food and water at the base of the tree, something Michael said he couldn’t do because his police officer neighbor would not let him back on the property.“He said he wouldn’t let us go back there and try and rescue the cat,” Michael said.Michael said the officer told him he was concerned that if someone got hurt while trying to get the cat on his property, he would be liable.“He said no because of insurance,” explained Michael.
How much insurance does one need to put a dish of cat chow at the base of a tree? How many injuries can result from setting down a bowl of water? Jeezus.But wait, it gets better…
Toni Smith and Terry Toman are with Citizens for North Phoenix Strays.“There’s some friction here between these neighbors and I said I could care less about the people I just want to go up and get the cat,” said Smith.Smith and Toman said they chose to go behind the home on a public sidewalk and lean a 25-foot ladder against his back wall.In this way, they figured they were not on his property.Just as they were about to get the cat, Smith said, “This guy comes barreling out of his house, flashed his gun and his badge, and started screaming and freaking out.”
Lemme guess: Insurance too? Never mind a lawsuit, I think he should be charged with cruelty to animals. “Defending his property”, indeed. Would it have killed him to call the fire department and get them to rescue that cat, so the owner could go away happy–or just go away? Was he so intent on tormenting his neighbor (with whom there was “tension”, that lovely euphemism) that he felt a burning need to punish an innocent cat, too?And aren’t there laws against police departments keeping psychopaths on the payroll?
Thanks to conglomeration and corporate distribution models, some of publishing’s biggest houses were laid very low by the current stock market collapse. And scary holiday book sales figures compounded the industry’s woes, with recent news of a 20 percent drop in sales in October from last year’s book market. Even worse, Nielsen Book Scan reported a 6.6 percent drop in unit sales during early December. Not even the holiday season could bolster book sales.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was particularly vulnerable to the Wall Street crash. Since the turn of the 21st century, investors have struggled to spin gold out of the different companies that now make up the conglomerate. In 2001, Vivendi Universal bought Houghton Mifflin (which has been publishing literary and educational books since the late 1800s), but then sold it to private equity firms a year later. In 2006, an Irish firm bought Houghton Mifflin; within a year, they had merged with one of Houghton Mifflin’s largest rivals, Harcourt. The publisher’s parent company is now saddled with billions in debt.“There were hedge fund guys with no background in publishing buying up publishing houses,” says André Schiffrin, founder of the New Press and author of “The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read.” He explains that corporate owners of major publishing houses expected impossible 15 to 20 percent profit margins in an industry with traditional margins of 3 to 4 percent. “They were part of that whole feeling that you could make money by buying and selling companies, rather than by selling books. At some point it comes to a dead end.”
Free us, oh, please FREE us from the “free market”!
More than 11,000 Metropolitan Caracas contract workers are demanding payment of their last paycheques and social benefits from the new mayor, Antonio Ledezma.
Translation mine. You can see a video of the protesting contract workers here.Do they look like thugs to you? They don’t look so bad to me…Oh Phil, could you please explain to me how all these secret hirelings of armed thuggery would have the nerve to show their faces, when, as has already been noted, actual Tupamaros wear masks?
Yes, Phil…the Interwebz iz laffing at yew. Especially a certain auburn-haired lady in THIS widdle corner. And here is why.
The surprise electoral defeat last month of Hugo Chávez’s candidate for mayor of Caracas — and the consequent change of city government — has helped cast light on some of the more unsavory activities that went on under outgoing Mayor Juan Barreto.One result is that a large, though so far undetermined, number of hired gunmen may suddenly be out of a job.The gunmen, belonging to armed political organizations loyal to the leftist government, are thought to be among some 4,000 city employees who have failed to show up for work since the new mayor, Antonio Ledezma, was sworn in two weeks ago.”Altogether, we’ve found more than 9,000 employees on short-term contracts,” said Richard Blanco, a top city official. “We’re carrying out an investigation to find out who and where they all are.”
Oh me, oh my. Sure smells to me like Philsy-wilsy has been smoking the wacky tobacky. Or something more crack-y. I’m not the only one to have noticed how quick he is to reach for the glass-pipe-o-stoopidity. Here’s a key snippet from Narco News about him…
…Gunson has an undisclosed conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest (all journalistic codes of ethics prohibit such nondisclosure), with the key source that he quoted last April 11th to blame the still unsolved sniper assassinations of that day on supporters of the government of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela: His source for that uncorroborated statement – part of the justification for the coup d’etat – was Eurídice Ledezma, who Gunson has told sources (but did not disclose in his article) was his former girlfriend; a rapidly pro-coup reporter in Venezuela, also – coincidentally? – a vocal defender of Dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona.
You really MUST read the whole piece; it’s hilarious, and Gunson (egotize much?) gets hung out to dry big-time. I wonder if this Ledezma woman he was boinking back then could be one of his “undisclosed” sources for this one, too. Seeing as she shares a surname with the new mayor of Caracas, whose alias among locals is “Grandpa Munster” (or, less kindly, “The Vampire”), the likelihood is high. Certainly the political proclivity is the same; both are putschists. As is, for that matter, Phil Gunson!BTW, it’s also ever so nice of Phil to mention that there are criminals in the Metro Caracas police. Yes, there certainly are…and were on April 11, 2002, as well, when an opposition mayor (i.e., one of the same political persuasion as the current mayor-elect) was in control of the force. He ordered them to fire on people demonstrating peacefully. As luck would have it, those peaceful demonstrators were Chavistas…demonstrating on and below Llaguno Bridge. In fact, most of the casualties of that day’s violence were Chavistas. A fact I’m sure Phil Gunson finds too inconvenient to be worth mentioning, since he is a known partisan with known partisan ties.Oh dear, was that a pwnage? Yes, dear reader, it was. And there’s more to come, too…If Gunson is serious about his crack-brained contention that there were “armed thugs”, i.e. Tupamaros, on the police force in Caracas, maybe he should read this piece in Venezuelanalysis. It seems that the actual Tupamaros are not actually cops on the payroll of city hall; they’re freelance vigilantes, unaffiliated with any gummint, defending and policing areas where the uniformed cops won’t go, namely the po’ folks part of town. (Maybe it’s no surprise that uniformed cops won’t go there; those are the same parts that said cops used to go into and beat people to death with impunity, back in the good ol’ “democratic” days of the Fourth Republic. They can’t get away with that shit there anymore, especially not with Tupamaros keeping an eye on things.)I found this passage particularly instructive. See if you can tell me why, dear reader:
Among Chavez opponents, the Tupamaros are viewed as Chavez’s armed thugs who indoctrinate residents at political meetings. But most observers agree that the Tupamaros have their own agenda and are difficult to rein in. Chavez’s loosely-defined “Bolivarian” movement is inspired by South American liberator Simon Bolivar. Chavez has focused on U.S. imperialism, Latin American integration and peaceful social justice. The Tupamaros, on the other hand, prefer a rapid and radical nationalization of the country’s resources.“We are Marxist-Leninist. He is Bolivarian,” said Chino, in describing their differences.To be sure, the Chavez government maintains an ambiguous relationship with the Tupamaros and other ultra-leftist groups. Far-left views have often been criticized by Chavez for their lack of “revolutionary discipline,” which he says feeds the media images that help the political opposition.At the same time, there are signs of rifts between the Tupamaros and the government over their illegal role as neighborhood vigilantes.Since the slums are overrun with crime and the police force is too ineffective, corrupt and overstretched to control them, the government has tolerated vigilantism, observers say. But the government has recently showed the willingness to send in the military when Tupamaro members clash with the police.
Oh, fuck. I think I just blew Phil’s whole thesis right out of the water there with that one.Pwnage accomplished. ‘Bina calls it a night!
So, whose chimney did Santa poop down this week? I don’t know, but I sure hope these people got some of his turds, and I hope they’re NOT made of chocolate:1. Rick Fucking Warren. Just imagine if the next president of Iran were welcomed into office by a rabid jihadist advocating for, say, the assassination of the president of the United States? It would cause an international diplomatic incident, would it not? Well, guess what: it’s going to happen on January 20. Only–my whoopsie!–the inauguration in question is not gonna be that of a new Iranian president, but a new US president. And the assassination-monger in question isn’t a Muslim jihadi, but a so-called Christian. One from the same ranks as those who accuse the soon-to-be President Obama of being a Muslim and in league with terrorists. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Well, DOESN’T IT???2. Pope Ratzi von der Hitlerjugend. For Gawd’s sake, how much more embarrassed can we Germans of the world get? Yeah, the gays are the real cause of global warming–it’s all those hot guys having the hots for each other. And overpopulation (a logical result of being against birth control) and overconsumption (a logical result of thinking mankind is the centre of the Universe) have nothing to do with it. Uh-huh. This is the calibre of the brain that’s sitting on the Throne of St. Peter, my friends–fear it. I’m not Catholic, so I thank heaven for THAT small mercy…but remember, this guy is trying to control members of MY country’s parliament, and those of many others, too. Not to mention there’s that Nazi-collaboration thing in my ancestral country. They may order priests and Catholic politicians not to get politically involved (in progressive causes), but I think it’s the popes who really need to get the fuck out of politics.3. Marjorie Fucking Dannenfelser and Team Fucking Sarah. Stop smearing the honorable name of Susan B. Anthony with your stupidity, hate, racism and skirt-wearin’ sexism, you Palinite bitches. 4. All those fucking bailed-out execs. Hey, here’s an innovative idea: instead of asking for more money from Washington, how ’bout you guys kick back into your respective businesses the 1.6 BILLION you received last year? BTW, some of us would really like to know where the current cash bailouts are going. It’s a safe bet that it won’t be to the hard pressed workers producing your obscene profits, salaries and bonuses for you, if the Republic Doors and Windows case is any indication.Trickle-down, my ASS.5. Ollie Fucking North. Say, weren’t you still supposed to be rotting in federal prison? What the fuck are you doing on the FUX Snooze channel? Oh yeah, now I remember…same thing as you were doing during the Iran-Contra hearings. Never mind!6. Fucking Alberta, particularly Fort McFuckingMurray. A whole town, a BASTARD? Hell, yeah. It’s the fucking oilpatch, and they’re already sworn to serve the big oil companies, not the people. When the jobs don’t pay enough to put a roof over someone’s head (and those prairie winters are a BITCH), something is wrong with the picture. But you see, that’s where the province of Alberta deserves a fat thump on the head: they believe in letting the “market” take care of things, while getting government to stop helping people off people’s backs. Or at least, that’s what all their right-wing demagoguespoliticians say. Behind their rosy blah-blah, however, lies a long and sordid list of poverty stats. Would it kill them to build affordable social housing, so that all those job-seekers from out east have someplace to stay where a drunken Ralph Klein won’t stagger in, flinging money at them and telling them to get jobs?7. Bernard Fucking Madoff. Was there ever a more singularly appropriate surname? He made off with over $50 billion in what’s got to be the biggest Ponzi scheme since Wall St. (which I often think is just one big Ponzi scheme anyway) was founded. But what really galls me is that he is responsible for the suicide of one man whom he took for over a billion. I bet he has not the grace to be ashamed even of that.8. Dick Fucking Cheney. Finally, the truth comes out: The Big Dick DID leak Valerie Plame’s identity to Novakula. Go fuck yourself, you Big Dick.9. Jackson Fucking Diehl. BoRev wonders if he gets his “facts” from the Great Gazoo; I say he pulls them from his big wazoo. Or that of the Venezuelan opposition. Same shit, interchangeable assholes.10. Bruce Fucking Pardo. Okay, all you bitter divorced males out there, this one’s for YOU, too. If you can’t pay your divorce settlement, take it up with the judge. Explain your situation in detail, and keep your fucking cool. Get the payments postponed until you are in a position to make them. And if you’re emotional, do the primal-scream thing until your rage dies down. And if you can pay, but just plain don’t want to? Go fuck yourself. But whatever the case may be, do NOT do what this fucker did, which is dress up as Santa, shoot a little girl and set a house afire in an elaborately planned bombing, killing nine people. Not only that, but he booby-trapped a rented car, which could have blown up the police who investigated the crime (and was probably meant to.) And the kicker? He was found in possession of $17,000 when the police turned up his remains. That would have paid his $10,000 divorce settlement and then some. He was also in possession of an airline ticket to my home and native land, but apparently changed his mind and just decided to off himself. Good, because we don’t fucking WANT the likes of him. Give us your Iraq war resisters instead. They don’t want to kill, which makes them the polar opposite of this mo-fo. 11, 12, and 13. Stores that rely on holiday sales to make up the deficit for the rest of the year, stores that hold post-holiday door-crashers, and most of all, the people who are dumb/greedy/assholish enough to run to such sales and get into fights ju
st because they think they can get a big bargain on big-ticket merchandise. Which leads me to 14. Anyone who’d shoot each other or trample store workers to death during a door-crasher, be it pre- or post-holiday. You people are sick fucks and beyond saving.Merry Christmas, you filthy animals… …and a happy New Year, too.
I once worked, briefly, in a retail mall that had one major thing in common with [the Sambil La Candelaria]–no windows. Only the corridors had a poor semblance of windows–skylights, badly constructed ones shaped like prisms or pyramids, their glass sides set at a steep angle that grabbed a lot of sunlight but didn’t soften it. The glass was not polarized or filtered in any way. This made for a nasty, stinging glare in the eyes–a glare you could only get relief from by ducking out of the middle of the hallway, and moving closer to the storefronts. I’m sure that was no coincidence!
Well, here’s a picture of the inside of a Sambil. Not the one under construction in La Candelaria, but its upscale cousin in a “better” part of Caracas. I found it on Aporrea in an article appropriately titled “San Vil” (“Saint Vile”):Makes you go “hmmmm”, don’t it?
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.
And finally, a really, REALLY underreported doozy: 10. Venezuela’s potty-mouth President. This is “underreported news”. Uh-huh. How many US-based, English-language news reports were screaming blue murder about the rhetoric of Chavecito? ALL OF THEM. Yet this somehow qualifies as “underreported”. Actually, what’s underreported is that they got the English translation of his remarks all wrong–he said “crappy Yankees”, not “fucking Yankees”. And the fact that it came in response to the exposure of a real, live, US-backed coup plot against Evo Morales in Bolivia. And most of all, the fact that the US major media–TIME magazine being a major, CIA-connected outlet–have a constant drumbeat of anti-Venezuela propaganda going on.Let’s face it, TIME is no Project Censored. The latter covered not 10, but 25 actual underreported stories–and covered them thoroughly. Go look.
