» 2010 » August News of the Restless

Strange case of serial murder in Argentina

August 31, 2010 — Sabina Becker

You want more creepy? You got it:

A young man of 22 was arrested last weekend in Buenos Aires, accused of killing six persons in four weeks to fulfill a promise to “San La Muerte” (St. Death), a “saint” venerated in prisons and rural parts of Argentina, according to a police source on Tuesday.
“The killer made a pact with ‘St. Death’, in which he promised a death a week in exchange for the protection of his family,” said the source.
Marcelo Antelo was arrested on Saturday, August 28, accused of having killed a philosophy student, 27 years old, who was found with a bullet wound to the chest in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, south of the Argentine capital, near the accused killer’s home.
Upon his arrest after an intense gunfight, the police confiscated a .38 calibre pistol, similar to those used by federal police officers.
At the moment, “Marcelito”, as he was known in the barrio, is in custody for the murder of the philosophy student, but the police suspect that he may be the killer of five others, including a double homicide on August 15, five days before he celebrated the day of “St. Death”.
“A half-dozen witnesses have already come forward. One of them gave us details of the pact with ‘St. Death’,” said an investigator in the case.
“St. Death” is a traditional figure of folk worship in the rural northeast of Argentina, particularly in the provinces of Corrientes, Chaco, and Formosa, and is also venerated in many prisons. His devotees invoke him for ordinary favors, such as to protect a harvest, but he is also sometimes called upon to bring death to an enemy.
In routine raids on the homes of suspects, the police have often found the image of “St. Death”, in the form of a tiny human skeleton.

Translation mine.

The veneration of “St. Death” under various names (La Muerte, La Santa Muerte, San La Muerte, etc.) is not limited to Argentina. Mexicans, too, are known for their veneration of the unorthodox “saint”, particularly on the Day of the Dead. He (or sometimes, she) is commonly invoked by members of crime gangs, for fairly obvious reasons. When even St. Jude, the patron of lost causes, won’t do, St. Death seems the natural choice for drug-dealers locked in endless turf wars, or battles with the police (or both, simultaneously).

Of course, invoking Death brings karma down on you like a duck on a junebug, as this one unlucky Argentine found out. The elaborate tombs of Mexican drug-gangsters are also testimony to how well the double-edged sword of “St.” Death can slice. Just something to consider, if ever you’re tempted to make a pact with Death.

Posted in Don't Cry For Argentina, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Mexican Standoffs. 3 Comments »

A climate-change denier comes in from the cold

August 31, 2010 — Sabina Becker

Hello and welcome to reality, Bjørn Lomborg. What took you so long?

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN’s climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.
But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. “Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century,” the book concludes.
Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as “cloud whitening” to reflect the sun’s heat back into the outer atmosphere.
In a Guardian interview, he said he would finance investment through a tax on carbon emissions that would also raise $50bn to mitigate the effect of climate change, for example by building better sea defences, and $100bn for global healthcare.
His declaration about the importance of action on climate change comes at a crucial point in the debate, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions stalled amid a resurgence in scepticism caused by rows over the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming.

Not that I’m not glad to hear that he’s had a change of heart, and not a minute too soon. The solutions he proposes (other than the iffy cloud-tinkering one) are also sound, if this brief summation is true. I only wonder if it’s actually already too late.

Well, anyway, welcome to the fold, Bjørn. I’m sure your namesake animals are glad to hear it, too.

Posted in Environmentally Ill. 6 Comments »

This is what the real Canada looks like

August 30, 2010 — Sabina Becker

This is what it looks like when real, ordinary Canadians from all walks of life turn out to take back OUR streets from the thugs of the G-20 crime cartel. It’s no coincidence that the national anthem was sung, and that its most-repeated phrase “We stand on guard for thee” sat ill with the transnational oppressors. When a government takes 2 billion dollars away from the people and spends it on thuggery, it is up to the people to stand on guard…and not let their country get sold out to the transnationals for a profit that most of us will never see.

Posted in Canadian Counterpunch. Comments Off »

Crow is on the menu in Colombia lately

August 29, 2010 — Sabina Becker

First it was Chavecito, now it’s El Ecuadorable heaping something black and feathery onto the plates in Bogotá. No, it’s not the chickens coming home to roost, it’s another bird entirely…

The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, announced on Saturday the re-establishment of normal relations with Colombia, as a sign of dignity, justice, sovereignty and respect, on his weekly program called “Citizen Link”.
“We will re-establish relations with Colombia for the good of our countries and our peoples,” said the Ecuadorian leader, in response to an invitation to a bilateral meeting with the new president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, who was inaugurated on August 7.
It is worth emphasizing that while demonstrating goodwill in re-establishing bilateral relations, the Ecuadorian president has not forgotten the reason for which the two countries became estranged, since in his estimation, an “illegal bombardment” is not to be so easily forgotten. At that time, Santos was the defence minister of Colombia, who authorized the military action of March 1, 2008, without informing or receiving permission from the government of Ecuador.
Correa pointed out that at the root of this event that violated the sovereignty of his nation, there were members of the FARC, and reiterated that he had never met a member of the FARC, “but they accuse us of being accomplices in order to justify an absolutely illegal bombing, disloyal and unjust.”
Correa also maintained that there are illegal FARC camps in the rainforests of Peru, which are much more inaccessible than the equatorial rainforests of the Ecuador/Colombia border. “But no one has accused Alan García of being in league with the FARC,” meaning that “the truth is self-evident”, and now the whole world knows it, since his government and country enjoy great prestige. “We have an immense credibility at the national and international level,” Correa concluded.

Translation mine.

And of course, Santos and his magic laptop have ZERO credibility. That may be a reason why things are suddenly warming up between him and his two alienated neighbors. Colombia stands to lose a lot more than Venezuela or Ecuador if things stay in the deep-freeze much longer. Hence, out comes the old crow, thawed and ready to eat.

Karma, babies.

Posted in Ecuadorable As Can Be, El NarcoPresidente, Huguito Chavecito, Karma 1, Dogma 0. Comments Off »

Short ‘n’ Stubby: Remembering Katrina

August 29, 2010 — Sabina Becker

I recall Hurricane Katrina only too well, as it happened on my dad’s birthday five years ago. It was a surreal day, to say the least. As my folks and I sat in front of the TV and watched the storm roll inland on a traffic camera, and the traffic lights in the foreground began to swing wildly, we knew in our guts that this was going to be a horror. And it was: More than a thousand people drowned in the storm surge, most of them poor and black.

What followed was even worse: We learned that it was not the storm itself that had done the most damage, but bad BushCo policy and plain old human neglect. Levees that should have been shored up and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers, were not; FEMA, which should have helped the survivors evacuate and put their lives back together, ended up both neglecting them and, bizarrely, imprisoning them in trailer-park camps as if they were common criminals, and not merely poor folks in need of a home and the basic necessities of life. (And we haven’t heard the last about those infamous trailers yet. Or “Heckuva Job” Drownie Brownie, either.)

And then the real horror of it hit home. Pictures of floating corpses leaked out, one by one. Stories emerged, too: people seeking help being shot by local police and the National Guard, presumably for “looting” goods that had become unsaleable anyway; the Superdome stadium and the convention centre, meant to shelter storm refugees until they could be evacuated, being neglected and filled with filth and desperation (and rumors of rape gangs that turned out to be false, although there were a handful of deaths inside, only one of them violent); a hospital forced to euthanize its sick and elderly patients because it could no longer keep them alive; a flooded prison, locked down and its inmates abandoned to a hideous combination of sweltering heat, hunger, and water-borne diseases. And then there were people like Miss Vera, who survived the storm only to get mown down by a hit-and-run driver, some random asshole who just didn’t give a shit. Every Katrina death seemed somehow emblematic of what happens when people in a position to do something just stop caring and let things go to hell. It got so bad that I developed a Pavlovian nausea that acted up every time someone uttered the K-word.

And I wasn’t even physically there. Can you imagine what life must have been like for those who were?

Life is still hard for the storm’s displaced survivors. But it does go on, and pockets of hope have been slowly appearing between the wreckage and the tacky “rebuilding” so touted by whites of the privatize-all persuasion. Here are some of the hopeful stories.

Truthout tells the Katrina story in poignant black-and-white cartoons. The hero of the story is New Orleans itself, “a city where people not only ask how you are, they wait for an answer.”

Yes! Magazine has a positive account of the spirit of that city. No, it’s not dead yet, in spite of corporatism’s best efforts to kill it. In fact, it seems to be catching; those who came as volunteers to help rebuild, keep coming back. There is no shortage of need for their help, and no shortage of love, either.

Ann Beeson finds some hints as to how and why that spirit continues to survive. The secret, it seems, lies not in the “experts” trucked in from without to whiten and restructure the place, but in the local people, most of them black, who stuck around and picked up the pieces when no one else cared.

Sarah Jaffe relates the old wound of Katrina to the new one of the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe, and reminds us of why we must not succumb to “disaster fatigue”, but keep on fighting for what we love, wherever it may be, no matter what. New Orleans has been battered and abused, but its people aren’t giving up. Nor should we give up on them.

And on that note, I really love Rachel Maddow for stating the painfully obvious.

And on a final note, Color of Change is raising funds to help the (still very ongoing) rebuilding process. Kick in what you can.

Posted in If You REALLY Care, Short 'n' Stubby. 8 Comments »

Stay classy, haters.

August 29, 2010 — Sabina Becker

This is what passes for discourse on the right, concerning the Cordoba community centre at Park 51, Lower Manhattan:

Thanks to a little birdie on the tweeter who spotted this.

And no, I’m not going to conceal any of those names. They felt they could post this publicly, so more publicity they and their insanity shall get.

FBI, consider this a heads-up. NYPD, same goes for you. Do your duty, coppers.

PS: That guy who says he did it before? Maybe this was his handiwork. Srsly, FBI, read Facebook. Innocent people’s lives are depending on you, and this is better intel than you’d get through waterboarding.

UPDATE: It now appears that shots were also fired near the site this afternoon. Yeah, this shit is serious.

Posted in Fascism Without Swastikas, Fine Young Cannibals, Isn't That Illegal?, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Sick Frickin' Bastards, The Hardcore Stupid. 47 Comments »

Music for a Sunday: Chuck a can, chuck a can, chuck a can…

August 29, 2010 — Sabina Becker

Silly schlock: We haz it.

And if you wonder where the “chuck a can” bit really came from, here:

Flashy keyboards and a funky bassline. What more does a soulful diva need? (Besides a funky hunk, that is?)

Posted in Music for a Sunday. Comments Off »

Wankers of the Week: Bad eggs edition

August 28, 2010 — Sabina Becker

Pee-fucking-yew–what IS that smell? Looks like salmonella’s not the only thing that can turn your stomach, and it’s not the only thing stinking up the joint of late. These bad eggs–of the human variety–are making me wanna puke:

1. Kim Fucking Tran. With an attitude like that, she deserves to lose ALL business at her nail salon, not just that of the overweight. Or does she think those extra pounds come stuffed with extra cash?

2. Roy Fucking Blunt. You know what’s REALLY inappropriate? Comparing the Cordoba Centre to “Dr.” Laura Fucking Schlessinger’s “nigger-nigger-nigger” rant. Why is it okay to discriminate against Muslims, and not all the other religions whose believers died on 9-11?

3. Erik Fucking Prince. If you’re not a fraudster, what the fuck are you doing in Abu Dhabi–knowing you’ll never be extradited from there?

4. Conn Fucking Carroll. The burden of proof is still on the accuser. Prove to us that Julian Assange is responsible for even ONE death in Afghanistan as a result of publishing what Bradley Manning gave him on Wikileaks. Just one. Can’t do it, can you? Oh, surprise.

5. Mary Fucking Bale. Cats are beautiful creatures (I would argue the MOST beautiful); cat haters are ugly (and in the case of this one, downright hideous). Fortunately the mistreated tabby survived, but it’s a testament to the ugliness of this hag’s soul that she first acted friendly toward it, then dumped it in a garbage can without even pausing. That’s just beyond words.

6. T. Boone Fucking Pickens. He stinks up the Huffington Post slandering Chavecito, and now we know why. His real agenda isn’t green energy, it’s OIL THEFT!

7. Randy Fucking Kuntz. Constable is out of line; police chiefs SUPPORT our long-gun registry. And no wonder. Of the last 16 police officers shot to death in Canada, 14 were long-gun homicide victims. And the registry is consulted more than 10,000 times a day–BY COPS. It’s an effective crime-fighting tool. Gun control IS crime control, people!

8. BTW, Shelly Fucking Glover is a wanker for the same reason as #7. It’s bewildering that a woman could support abolishing something that’s saved so many of her sisters from a grisly, untimely death.

9. Ditto Candice Fucking Hoeppner. Why do you two wankers hate your own sex so much? PS: Nice junket, Candy.

10. These fucking homophobes here. Seriously ugly wanktardery there, folks. God did not tell you to do it, you did it off your own bat and then claimed it was God. You are not God, no matter how much you might think you are (or claim to speak for Her.)

11. Rocco Fucking Rossi. Really, defending the homophobes’ “right” to annoy a neighborhood? I hope that costs you votes, jackass. Nobody has the “right” to harass others! And if you want to see what “the people have spoken” looks like, may I remind you that the community came together to kick out the ‘phobes from their quiet street? Yeah, that’s right…gay or straight, NOBODY likes self-righteous wanktards, and no one thinks they have a right to disturb the peace with it!

12. Anna Fucking Ardin. Ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger, but between that skeevy Wikileaks “scandal” and her own antisemitic fringe-right (not left!) leanings, there’s just something majorly unattractive about her.

13. Alan Fucking Simpson. Oh, the social safety net–”310 million tits” and one big fat BOOB.

14. Michael Fucking Enright. Funny or Die? Definitely DIE. Should have stuck to filmmaking, nerdy boy–attempted murder does NOT look good on a résumé unless you’re trying out for CIA covert ops.

15. Chris Fucking Young. Ever wonder why so many people have trouble finding Jesus? It’s because he’s hiding from wankers like this one.

16. Brian Fucking Williams. Dude, if you’re gonna talk dick, do it on Chatroulette.

17. Stephen Fucking Harper. He thinks he makes the rules? Um, no, Stevie, you’re just a bad employee of the Canadian public. You may also think you’re a wit, but you’re only half right.

18. Nathan Fucking Herbert. Stalking and lewdness: is that some kind of Mormon thing? Or is it a governor-of-Utah’s-son thing? Whatever it is, your magic underwear isn’t going to protect you from the consequences, y’know.

19. Joe Fucking Miller. Lisa
Murkowski may be what you say she is, but what does that make you? My vote is on the box marked “wanker”. PS: Pathetic excuse does not wash.

20. Rob Fucking Ford. Among all else, form letters–quite possibly his classiest move to date.

21. Peter Fucking Thiel. Want to cancel your PayPal account? Can’t say I’d blame you if you did. It’s not Teh Ghey, or even the conservatardery, it’s the Coultergeist Cooties that’re the problem here. Aside from the cognitive dissonance that goes with being both gay and conservative, there’s this little conundrum: If you’re gonna throw a HomoCon, shouldn’t your guest speaker be somebody other than a rabid homophobe?

22. Ben Fucking Stein. Dull as tofu, and nowhere near as useful. But hey, at least he’s fact-free! I hope he lets us know when he decides to step out of his own little world and rejoin the rest of us in the bigger one. And until then, I hope he STFUs.

23. Pamela Fucking Geller. Have I mentioned yet today how very loathsome this hate-mongering idiotess is? No? Well, consider it done.

24. Dennis Fucking Miller. Unfunny fratboy has been to one kegger too many. Sure does put the ASS in class, though.

25. This fucking racist middle school. Naturally it’s in Mississippi GawdDAMN. But still–what the fuckity-fucking FUCK?

26. “Dr.” Laura Fucking Schlessinger, AGAIN. She has a black friend! And a gay one! Big fucking whoop, so did Renee Fucking Baio. Must sure make them feel good to know they’re just tokens, eh? I wonder if she tells THEM not to be so hypersensitive about other people’s racism and homophobia, too. Because hey, she suffers from both, and if it doesn’t bother her, why should it bother THEM?

27. Laura Fucking Ingraham. So hateful and dumb, she can’t see the OTHER hateful dumbasses even when they’re right under her nose. Because to her, hate and dumbassery are normal!

28. Michele Fucking Bachmann. You know you’re a bad egg when you have to tell shaggy-dog stories to impress the voters, and you can’t get the dates (or any other relevant data) straight. Someone please tell Ms. Batshit that the U-2 wasn’t a German submarine (that was the U-boat, U being short for Undersea), it was a US SPY PLANE. One of them got shot down over Russia. Hell, Lee Harvey Oswald used to track them on radar for the US Marines from Atsugi! I bet she doesn’t know any of that, much less how the Dorchester really went down. And yet she uses that wartime incident shamelessly for her own gain–and abuses it in the process. How does someone this smug and stupid even make it through school, never mind into politics?

29. Sarah Fucking Palin. She was at Glenn Fucking Beck’s Wankfest in Washington today, and sure enough, some creep in the crowd decided it was the perfect opportunity to rock out with his cock out while she was up there squawking. How anyone could get turned on by that grating voice, I don’t know, but it happened. They should both have been arrested for public indecency. (And the anonymous diddler should be thankful he didn’t do it in front of the Fucking First Dude, who I hear has a wicked bad temper.)

30. Luis Fucking Bonilla. Sexual abuse and alienation of a teen: bad. Sexual abuse leading to teen pregnancy: worse. Sexual abuse of teen caught on tape: horrifying. All of the above, while presumably celibate and in a position of trust: GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL, YA FUCKING BASTARD.

31. Paris Fucking Hilton. Pots of unearned money + unearned fame = Shit Girl. When will the media learn to stop glorifying this talentless twat?

32. Rod Fucking Blagojevich. I don’t know how he managed not to be convicted, but I’d say it’s just more evidence of how crooked he is. His hair alone is worthy of a ten-year sentence. The jurors who failed to convict him are wankers too.

And finally, to Glenn Fucking Beck. Today was his big, bull-goose loony day–the national day of backlash by self-righteous whites against them evil, uppity blacks. With unmistakable fascist overtones. Of course this would never be happening if one of Them had not “invaded” the White House (thus tinting it a subtle, yet strangely becoming shade of coffee brown.) Let us now enumerate the ways in which this “reclamation” (which sounds suspiciously Civil War-ish) is a wank…with a little help from Charles, Bob, Zaid, Monica and anyone else who has written something nasty but true about him today. He usurped a day that was about equal rights, trying to take it over in the name of white supremacy. All that was missing was the burning cross and the hooded sheets. Frankly, Glenn, I hope your hemorrhoids burst…and that no doctor will be able to stem the hemorrhaging (or want to).

Good night, and get fucked!

Posted in Wankers of the Week. 1 Comment »

Another day older and deeper in debt, for sure

August 27, 2010 — Sabina Becker

A little mood music, Maestro Ford…

And now, the story.

I saw on the CBC news this evening how they’ve brought up a hydraulic borer to help start the rescue effort for those 33 miners trapped 700 metres underground in Chile. A NASA psychologist is also on the way to them now, to make sure their mental health withstands the strain that lies ahead. There are concerns that some of the men are more isolated than the rest, because they didn’t appear in the video sent up to confirm that they are all still alive; these “isolated” ones, trapped in a less than 500 square-foot space, are the ones most likely to crack under the strain of the long wait ahead. With some four months to go before they’re free, it’s incredible enough already; it’s unprecedented.

But you haven’t heard the worst of it yet. If you wonder how the miners wound up in such an awful predicament in the first place, you can stop wondering now and just read this:

The owners of the mine in which 33 workers remain trapped since August 5 have said that they don’t know whether they can continue to pay the salaries of their employees.
Alejandro Bohn, one of the proprietors of the San Esteban mine, admitted as well that his company did not buy insurance for its workers, and lamented the economic deterioration of the company, according to the DPA press agency.
“Due to prolonged closure, we have experienced a significant economic deterioration and to date, we have not been able to remedy it,” said Bohn. “The company is calm considering that there has never been a precedent for a catastrophe of this type.”
The Chilean minister of mines, Laurence Golborne, reacted with immediate “indignation” to the declarations of the businessman, and said that the government would prosecute those responsible for the incident. “These declarations are incredible to me. I heard them and found them really surprising,” said the minister.
Golborne added that the incident showed a “lack of concern for safety,” pointing out that if there had been an emergency exit, the country would have been “spared this drama”. “We can forget the possibility that the government will bail out this business, which has comported itself this way.”

Translation mine.

Lax and shitty workplace conditions, and now this. No salaries. How are those miners and their poor families supposed to live?

You can really see how little has changed since Che Guevara and Alberto Granado wrote their respective angry analyses of the Chilean miners’ situation. And how current Tennessee Ernie Ford’s song is, not to mention universally applicable to miners throughout the Americas, whatever they dig up from the dirt.

If the right one won’t get you, then the left one will…

Posted in Chile Sin Queso, Economics for Dummies, Filthy Stinking Rich, Isn't That Illegal?. 1 Comment »

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Socialized medicine, epic fail?

August 27, 2010 — Sabina Becker

Don’t tell it to Chavecito’s Venezuela. They just graduated another big class of new doctors…

…meaning that 90% of Venezuelans now have access to public medical care, up from less than 40%, which it was when Chavecito was first elected in 1998. In another year or two, it should be 100%. Chavecito really is the Tommy Douglas of Latin America.

But in case all that factual stuff about the abject failure of privatization (which is really a form of privation) bores you, here you go. The obligatory adorable shot: